It seems to me that as a back of the envelope estimation might be: Suppose we say that an organization has n employees and that everyone in a position of leade

It seems to me that as a back of the envelope estimation might be: Suppose we say that an organization has n employees and that everyone in a position of leadership leads m people. The result would be a m-ary tree whose height is roughly: h = log_m ((m - 1) * n)) If we say that there are l levels of seniority before one becomes a VP, then anyone not in the bottom l levels of the tree is a VP. h_vp = # of levels of VPs = h - l The number of VPs would then equal the number of nodes in a complete m-ary tree of height h_vp: n = (m^h_vp) / (m - 1) (Forgive me if I made any mistakes in my math, it's been a long time since I took algebra.)