Quite a while ago I mentioned a curious interaction with one of my former managers in the office. I am about one foot taller than he is, but he was obviously my manager. This led to the bizarre situation, which occurred repeatedly, that if we crossed path in an office hallway, he made way for me, and I did the same for him, leading to a brief nonverbal negotiation about who was stepping aside for whom, like in a comedy. Obviously, he instinctively stepped aside because of the height difference whereas I did the same due to the office status hierarchy. When I thought about this situation some more, it appeared to me that there are multiple status hierarchies at play, which can easily intermingle, but we simply normally try to keep them separate. I think there are at least four: professional, financial, social, and sexual.

The professional status hierarchy is only easy to navigate in the confines of a specific company. There is a clear hierarchy. If you are an individual contributor reporting to a manager, that manager sits higher in the hierarchy than you do. This also works across job functions, and some companies even use a formal leveling system, i.e. you are slotted in at a particular level such as “level 4”, which gets shortened to L4. Depending on how big the company is, the number can go up quite a bit. A senior vice president may be an L10 or L11. There may be pay differences between, for instance, Engineering and Accounting, at the same level, but this is not really an issue on a day-to-day basis. However, it is a lot less straightforward to compare levels across companies. Some people will tell you that certain companies are more “prestigious”, even if they pay less, or they tell you that you may have a higher title at your company but they make a similar amount of money at a lower level at Big Tech. It is thus not to so clear how to make comparisons across companies. However, if there is not a wide status gap between companies, which would be the case if company A is a poorly funded start-up and company B an established player in its market, people normally understand that a senior engineer sits higher in the hierarchy than an engineer, or a manager higher than an engineer.

Some people have more than one source of income, however. This can lead to unpleasant conflict situations. Of course, I am referring to guys who have some old money. Because they do not want to sit around all day pursing their hobbies, or think that it would be frivolous not to work, they get a day job. The problem is that they may have a lifestyle and consumption patterns that are far different from their peers. A rich individual contributor may have a lifestyle that is out of reach for a director who sits several levels above him in the hierarchy. I recall that I once heard the advice to never drive a fancier car than your boss as it may rub him the wrong way. This may seem shallow but I can easily imagine that some people would take offense at that. Many people are materialistic so it is easy to see that others may get jealous and attempt to undermine your standing in the company. In your private life, material differences should not play such a role as you likely have friends of a similar social standing anyway and if not, then they probably have gotten used to you spending significantly more, or less, money than them. Normally, though, people seem to drift apart faster if their lives move in much different directions.

There is also social capital, which includes your upbringing and education. I have seen this to be a problem with people from wealthy families who either lost a lot of their money or guys who just did not manage to get anywhere near the level of success their parents had. I recall a guy telling me that he used to own horses and loved riding. Obviously, there was a lot of money in the background, at least at some point. Yet, in the present this did not matter that much. To him, I was probably a mere pleb. To me, though, he was a try-hard who should perhaps better have focused on doing his job. If there is a disparity between one’s upbringing and their position in life, I think this is a much bigger problem for the affected person than anyone around them. These people easily come across as having a chip on their shoulder. On a related note, the value of education is only of an indirect nature. If you got an expensive education but did not do anything with it, nobody will care. Otherwise, the value of your education in a day-to-day context seems to be roughly at the level of wearing designer clothes. If you have the name of a well-known university on your CV, people who also went to supposedly elite schools may talk to you about their university days. In particular alumni you bump into can be quite eager to talk to you, perhaps to justify having spent all that money. In the end, it does not really matter once you are professionally somewhat established.

Lastly, there is the sexual-marketplace hierarchy, which is based on your looks. This is the reason why a short manager may make way for a tall underling when they bump into each other in the hallway. For men, this is not much of an issue. However, for women obvious differences in attractiveness in a professional setting can be a minefield. A young, attractive woman reporting to an old hag will not have a good time, and neither will she get a lot of support from her plain-Jane colleagues. Arguably, the primary hierarchy for women is the sexual one. If she is good-looking, she can often climb any status ladder she wants. Her looks open many doors, providing her with professional opportunities, and she may also end up marrying a guy far above her social station. Granted, there is stratification, i.e. marriages happen mostly among people of a similar level of educational attainment. However, this is quite meaningless nowadays. When only 10% of the population, and almost exclusively men, went to university, doctors ended up marrying orderlies, nurses, and secretaries. Today, way more than half of an age cohort goes to university, so yesterday’s secretary with a high-school diploma has a bachelor’s degree today. There will still be a big difference in status if such a woman catches the eye of a successful doctor or lawyer.