Maybe I'm misunderstanding job-titles, but how does a 32 y.o. become the senior manager of global intelligence and moreover a 26 y.o. the company’s manager of global intelligence center. I mean the job descriptions sound like their are one level below the directors (also considering the two directors involved). Considering that the 26 y.o. was 25 last year, she would have been out of uni maybe 2 years ago? Is that normal?
The “manager” and “senior manager” titles are IC roles. I’ve seen plenty of people land a “manager” role right out of school. And “senior manager” is a short jump.
And if the team isn’t very big, those ICs report into a Director. Otherwise their may be an Associate Director in between.
A lot of times if you are willing and able to do things that other people can't, you can get quickly promoted. If you are seen as the kind of person who could wage an effective terrorism campaign against a random couple in Massachusetts because they wrote mean things about your Fortune 500 employer, you are in a very small club and you will be sought out when you are needed.
I would phrase it as "things other people can't or won't".
Jim Cramer wrote a book in which he described how someone told him he could have a job if he would just "go in that office over there and fire that guy". He did.
* contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst
* senior manager
None of these are what I'd consider an executive, as titles go, at major tech companies. The highest ranking title (director) is solidly middle-management.
The majority of promotions to management or senior management levels that I've seen in SV (including when I worked at eBay) were the result of knowing someone with the power to make it happen for you.
I had a (thankfully) short stint there as part of an organizational mess that swept me up a few years ago: it was a very painful experience. Clearcase, old undocumented code that you were not allowed to reformat because it would generate too many diffs, database as a message bus, etc. The day I left was one of my happiest ones that year.
That would explain why I haven't seen any memorable product innovation from eBay in a decade...
I tried to sell something last week, and assumed that it would be a 30 second affair of "snap photo, set reserve price, done". No, no. We can't have things be this simple... Have fun clicking through a massive list of options and settings... By the time you've got to the end of that form you wish you just took the item to the dump!
Plus the anti-seller bias generally ensures that a bad buyer can ruin your day. I used to sell my old electronics on eBay a lot but recently have used it as a last resort if Craigslist and Swappa didn't work out.
