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Wall Street banks are always having problems, but it's generally about something more interesting than a job title.
But that was not the case last week, when it emerged that a senior banker claimed to have been given a fake title when he joined Morgan Stanley in Frankfurt three years ago, just to fool European regulators into thinking the bank was adhering to Brexit rules.
Since the UK left the EU, regulators have urged major global banks to run their EU operations with local staff rather than their bosses in London. This banker was appointed “Head of Loan Trading”. But during an appeal against his dismissal from Morgan Stanley, he told the court that his boss had explained that the title “existed only on paper” and had just been created to satisfy financial watchdogs.
Morgan Stanley disputed the banker's claims at the hearing and denied that he had title to the token. But the case was a stark reminder of how serious the seemingly trivial issue of job title can be.
There is, of course, a lot about titles that are quite trivial. We live in a world where bosses have called themselves Captain of Moonshots (Google's Astro Taylor), Head of Underwear (Go Boxer founder Nick Graham), and most recently Technoking of Tesla (Elon Musk).
It is also true that perfectly plausible companies continue to come up with completely confusing headlines. PwC last year announced a senior director of global verbal brand identity, a job it said would involve “evolving verbal identity practices” and “working effectively with multi-disciplinary and cross-language teams to unify as one brand.”
I asked the company early last week if they could explain precisely what this role entails. I am still waiting for a response on Friday.
There is also no need to reconsider the unbreakable corporate addiction to making half the workforce “VPs,” nor the explosion of titles with the word “President” in them. But I will just say that when I asked LinkedIn how common such titles were, they came back with the eye-catching news that the biggest growth in jobs with the title of 'president' in the UK in recent years has been 'chief growth officer'.
However, the truth is that for many workers there was nothing trivial about titles, and unfortunately there are signs that things are becoming more complicated.
More than once I've seen people turn red with anger after learning that their standing in the hierarchy at work has been demoted due to a competitor or new employee getting an inflated job title.
It makes no difference if the sweller is given the title instead of a raise or a higher starting salary. The tragedy only worsens if their actual job is more humble than their grand title suggests.
Unfortunately, some headhunting firms say job title inflation has grown so much since the pandemic that it has outpaced the actual inflation that has spread across the globe.
British recruitment group Robert Walters says its market data shows that over the past 12 months there has been a 46 per cent increase in the number of job adverts in the UK and Ireland that had the words 'leader' or 'manager' in their title – but Does not require more than two years of experience.
Daniel Harris, director of Robert Walters, said this was partly because new companies in sectors such as cryptocurrencies and fintech helped fuel competition for employees who in turn used their market power to negotiate their chosen titles.
But he told me that this strategy can easily backfire, and not just if it irritates colleagues. A junior lawyer who manages to secure the title of general counsel at a startup company may have difficulty transitioning to a larger firm if the potential employer knows the truth about his or her actual role.
Likewise, people who succeed in becoming a “global” head of something, no matter how local the role, sometimes omit the word from their CV because potential employers assume they are too senior to get the job.
However, I don't see the title inflation problem going away anytime soon. Not long ago, Harris was working with a small company that was eager to hire a man who insisted on being called “global general counsel.”
Thrilled to secure the appointment without a higher salary, the company quickly agreed, telling Harris: “He could be called Emperor of the World if he wanted to.”
pilita.clark@ft.com
