Antiwork

Roughly: Titles in management typically denote the scope of what they oversee. A manger will over see a small team. That manager reports to their senior manager, which either reports to or is a director of a large part of the organization. Directors report to vice presidents on progress or achievements by their division.

Vice president is where a person leads several teams by steering their managers. Steering is either a set of objectives, some key results, or other metric that feeds into the corporate strategy. At that level the corporate decision are made by gathering a group of managers to get a feel for what their options are. (This is where most enshitification gets started.) Decisions at this level are not arbitrary but usually run through a few layers of testing for feedback to understand what will happen.

Presidents oversee the same as vice presidents but make more money and have more access to the C levels but otherwise have the same scope as VPs. A president will run an entire part of the org, like Marketing, and approves all decisions made under them that effects the entire organization, like pricing changes.

Senior VPs and Presidents are the same pay scale but have different levels of responsibility, depending on the company culture. Presidents are chief officers within their part of the org and get corporate objectives to meet by the CEO.

CEOs are beholden to a board of supervisors which determines the progress of a corporate objective and also speaks for investors and shareholder. This pipeline to the top of power is what has caused folks to despise shareholder decisions; constant poor voices for only short term gains is counter to any longevity of a company.

From my experience this silliness is due to corporations constantly 'restructuring' in an attempt to make more profit by cost cutting.

I'm pretty confident that in almost every case you see a senior when there is no corresponding junior, it's because they decided to make a position redundant.

Ego, authority, signaling career progression to other employers, or just an excuse to pay someone at a certain level while maintaining "equity".

Sometimes people get titles instead of raises.

The Senior role is based on their prior experience and paygrade. It has nothing to do with those around them in their current company.

"It's a meaningless title, but it makes insecure people feel better about themselves."

If it's a big corporation there is probably a President but it's the same person as the COO or something. If it's smaller the owner might be the President even if they don't actually work. If it's even smaller maybe there used to be a President or maybe they're just quirky.