> That would mean she likely had immense autonomy and a large group of direct reports whom themselves had teams of direct reports. As someone who has worked at

> That would mean she likely had immense autonomy and a large group of direct reports whom themselves had teams of direct reports. As someone who has worked at a variety of companies - this isn't true. It's just a title. I've seen plenty of "director of X" with no direct reports. I don't know how big Stack Overflow's design department is but with only 300 people in the company - I can't imagine it being massive enough to warrant a typical director title you'd see at some truly big corps where a director has 50+ people under them.