I am in Fidelity India (technology) since 15 years. The 10 Fidelity grades were supposed to standardize the roles and movement, but their various levels of meaning and dilution in different locations have turned into a mess, especially in India. I think a large part of it is Fidelity trying to retain people by promoting everyone who threatens to quit, it would have been better to let some of them go instead of diluting the roles.
In India with its promotion focused hierarchal culture where its humiliating for a person to NOT be in role after certain experience. Every engineer more than 10 years experience seem to be Principal Engineer, which has become more like senior engineer role. Almost all CL and SL are Director (which was a mistake, because now all engineers want CL and SL roles and not enough of them to go around).
Previously there were around 16 grades in India, so a person could be promoted every 2-3 years and kept happy. The concept of tech leads do not exist anymore, that role is played by chapter leads who took up management role for Director promotion. Women like all locations have a massive advantage when it comes to roles/promotion. The US seems to be almost consistent, maybe some of it due to influence from India and Indian employees who got localized there. There was time when there were 20 year experienced senior software engineers in US, I see none of them now.
Now all engineers are wondering why they are at Principal level when CL and SL with similar or even less experience are Directors. What next, will all engineers be also promoted to Director.