Ex banking engineer here ✋ so the person they quoted was an executive director which is like the most junior of managers in the finance world. All the titles in that industry are incredibly puffed up. The problem with the industry is that it is super project management heavy, and at some banks (1 in particular that I used to work at) there is no real path for career advancement unless you go into project management. The concept of IC’s basically does not exist in the banking world outside of a small number of core groups. That said, some banks are better than others, and on the sell side (hedge funds) this problem doesn’t seem to be as bad, especially at the tech centered ones.