下面转自 Quora，他是在回答一个问题：Is it fine to call yourself a “banker” just because you work in a bank even without proper banking knowledge? 其中称呼某人 “IT” 其实就是指 one level above the janitor，这确实有点过分，不过我还是觉得好笑。这篇文章就当笑话读读吧。
Joseph Wang · Follow Ex-VP - Big investment bank6y This is a fun question, but the basic answer is “if you have to ask, then the answer is no”. It turns out that like ever other society, banking has some weird rules about what you can call yourself, and what you can’t, and if you aren’t aware of what the rules are then you don’t know enough to call yourself something. So usually what happens is that some “names” give you “reputation.” For example, if I call myself a full professor, but I’m just an assistant professor, then I’d get into a lot of trouble. Other names don’t. For example, if it turns out that a geophysicist does something different in the oil and gas industry as a geologist, but since the two jobs have roughly the same status, no one minds if you mix one with another. It turns out that in investment banking, the job “investment banker” is a specific job in which you are basically a salesman and person that talks directly to the client. The thing is that it’s not a particularly high (or low) ranking job, so if you call yourself a “banker” and you don’t have that specific job title, you won’t get into much trouble. By contrast, if you call yourself a “trader” and you don’t actually work at a trading desk, you will find yourself in a great deal of trouble. Also what matters a lot for status is whether you are front, middle or back office. For anyone that understands the industry, and asked what I did at JPMorgan, I tell them that I was a “derivatives quant” or “quantitative developer”. The trouble with that is that most people outside of banking have no idea what a “quant” is, so just to save time, if they want to call me an investment banker, that doesn’t bother me and I don’t think it will bother anyone else. It turns out that most job titles aren’t that important in banking. Ranks are. So if someone called me an investment banker, I wouldn’t correct them, but if they claimed I was an executive director, I would, since I was a VP. It also works the other way. The name that you want to avoid in a bank is anything with the word “technology” particularly IT. If someone calls, you part of “IT” that puts you one level above the janitor. The thing is that I have a sense of humour about this so I half-jokingly call a “quant”, a computer programmer with better marketing and a higher bonus pool. But the short answer is if you have industry experience, you can figure out what you can call yourself and what you can’t, but if you don’t have the experience then you should be very careful about what you call yourself.
So usually what happens is that some “names” give you “reputation.” For example, if I call myself a full professor, but I’m just an assistant professor, then I’d get into a lot of trouble. Other names don’t. For example, if it turns out that a geophysicist does something different in the oil and gas industry as a geologist, but since the two jobs have roughly the same status, no one minds if you mix one with another.
It turns out that in investment banking, the job “investment banker” is a specific job in which you are basically a salesman and person that talks directly to the client. The thing is that it’s not a particularly high (or low) ranking job, so if you call yourself a “banker” and you don’t have that specific job title, you won’t get into much trouble. By contrast, if you call yourself a “trader” and you don’t actually work at a trading desk, you will find yourself in a great deal of trouble. Also what matters a lot for status is whether you are front, middle or back office.
For anyone that understands the industry, and asked what I did at JPMorgan, I tell them that I was a “derivatives quant” or “quantitative developer”. The trouble with that is that most people outside of banking have no idea what a “quant” is, so just to save time, if they want to call me an investment banker, that doesn’t bother me and I don’t think it will bother anyone else. It turns out that most job titles aren’t that important in banking. Ranks are. So if someone called me an investment banker, I wouldn’t correct them, but if they claimed I was an executive director, I would, since I was a VP.
It also works the other way. The name that you want to avoid in a bank is anything with the word “technology” particularly IT. If someone calls, you part of “IT” that puts you one level above the janitor. The thing is that I have a sense of humour about this so I half-jokingly call a “quant”, a computer programmer with better marketing and a higher bonus pool. But the short answer is if you have industry experience, you can figure out what you can call yourself and what you can’t, but if you don’t have the experience then you should be very careful about what you call yourself.