Whoa, I briefly worked on a project related to this, over in Redmond, like 20 years ago (ya I'm an oldie). So weird to see this being talked about in 2017, based on an article from 2012!?!
My background is in banking, here is some additional info on the F1 key thing in case anyone is interested in this random odd topic:
The article is not exactly wrong but it's misleading (more on that later). Yes the F1 key opens the Excel Help Window. Removing the F1 key is NOT a common practice among bankers.
The origin, or one of the origins, of removing the F1 key as seen in this article, comes from how banks used to train their new interns and first year employees to use Excel. The first few weeks on the job at a Wall St bank were spent in a little training course and the training course was allowed to have a bit more "fun" than the real more professional side of the job soon to come for these rookies.
It was important to teach new banking analysts to be very efficient in Excel, this meant requiring them to memorize how to use the features of Excel without needing to look it up in the Help Menu AND training them to use keyboard shortcuts not the mouse, as keyboard shortcuts are faster. What this led to was some Wall St banks in their training class would have a little fun in training and tell new analysts/students to unplug the mouse from the computer (so you have to learn the keyboard shortcuts) and tell them to remove the F1 key (so they can't just look up how to do something that they should have memorized).
Of course, these training aid tactics of silliness were only relevant for the first few weeks on the job. As new analysts would very soon start learning all about macros and VBA in the second half of the training course. The F1 key can easily and quickly be disabled in a number of ways in the VBA editor of Excel [1] and the idea that a bunch of bankers are removing the F1 key from the keyboard so they don't accidentally press it while reaching for F2 as this article describes is frankly ridiculous. Everyone uses macros and if F1 is disabled it is coded not physically removed, more than likely the help menu has been remapped to a multi-key shortcut just in case.
To those comments who say this is banking and the computers are locked down to the point you cannot install other software or make changes to current software, this is partly true but this does not extend to blocking employees from macros and VBA in Excel. Using and writing Excel macros is crucial to the job and it is expected to be utilized. I have never seen a bank where access to macros and VBA is blocked.
Now, it is possible to go to a bank and see someone has removed their F1 key from their keyboard. But it is not a common practice. IF you do see an F1 key removed it usually is because either: (1) the person removed the F1 key during training and then lost it or just never replaced it. (2) They are a brand new employee still in training (though less likely because training has changed in recent years and fun is not allowed anymore). (3) They were told incorrectly by a frat buddy or other "wall street bro" that removing the F1 is cool and sign of being an Excel ninja wizard. Reason 3 is sadly the most likely reason and if you read the article you will see they only spoke to and interviewed banking analysts, i.e. brand new rookie employees, not real investment bankers who have been on the job more than a few months and are out of the analyst phase.
If I saw an F1 key removed at a bank keyboard I would judge that person a little as it would not reflect very well on an experienced banking employee - unless that person was on one of the tech teams in which case they can do what they want and many have their own keyboards (which are loud guys) and I wouldn't question their computer knowledge skills. The main reason not to permanently remove the F1 key after training is because other important finance software (like Bloomberg) needs the F1 key for other functions (in fact the bloomberg terminal official keyboard moved the help key to its own different button and its on a different row from the F1-F12 keys).
Also, having worked at Microsoft very briefly I think I can say Microsoft is aware of the issue of the F1 key Help Menu bothering some users where it is located and how slow the Help Menu can be. Back in 90s they used to talk to their customers and power users all the time and it's likely they still do today, in addition the telemetry they snatch from everyone these days. They know, they aren't changing it.
Lastly, while this was a mild case of an outdated and misleading article with a clickbait headline, business insider is usually much worse and I would just like to recommend that business insider be considered a fake news site and spam and blocked from Hacker News. Just a suggestion. Thank you.