A recent piece in the New Yorker got me thinking about a close friend of mine. He is a senior banker at a middle market firm and currently, he loves his job. For those of you just starting out, this may seem odd. I don't doubt you love your salary, and your job is likely interesting, but the work that's required is immense, and no one in their right mind would fault you for hating such a demanding aspect of a job. This was certainly my friend's viewpoint while he was an associate. He hated the hours, the bullshit, the seemingly unending litany of PowerPoint decks and models that seemed to require constant updating. During this time, I asked him why he didn't just quit and go do something less soul crushing. Peculiarly, what he told me then, why he wouldn't/couldn't quit, looks a lot like why the MLB player decided to do so. Here's what he told me:
Yeah, I work a lot, and yeah, it sucks, but I'm putting my time in and I know the next step is where I want to be. Plus, the fact is, there's millions of equally qualified people just waiting to take my job and do twice the work I do. I'm replaceable. If I quit, there's no going back; the end of the line, of those waiting to break in, is too far behind me. If I quit, I'm quitting forever, and that's not what I want.
Similarly, in the New Yorker piece, the former MLB hitter makes note of what I imagine to be some of baseball's banking qualities.
[As] I became friends with players and heard about the relationships and marriages that broke up, the relatives and close friends who faded from view, the parents or grandparents whose funerals were missed because of an expected call up to the majors. Sometimes I’d stay awake through the night, almost laughing to myself, mentally weighing the small fraction of success against the overshadowing personal and professional failure that comes with being a ballplayer.
On this very site, on a regular basis, I read about all of the newly minted analysts and associates going through similar situations. Seeing questions like, "I have work to finish, but my grandparents just died, think I should ask my boss for time off?" would attract gasps of shock from the uninitiated, as if they had been approached by a wild bonobo asking them for two cords (or six ricks) of saffron in perfect French. It's confusing on so many levels to those unaware of how long young bankers are expected to work that they wouldn't know what to be confused by first. This suggests another similarity between professional baseball and banking:
I came to realize that professional baseball players are masochists: hitters stand sixty feet and six inches from the mound, waiting to get hit by a pitcher’s bullets; fielders get sucker punched in the face by bad hops, and then ask for a hundred more.
I'm not sure there's an actual strain of masochism running through the lower ranks of banking, it's certainly seems that way from the outside. However, there's something to be said about putting it all out there in the face of grueling schedules and demanding positions.
Baseball is visceral, tragic, and absurd, with only fleeting moments of happiness; it may be the best representation of life. I was, and still am, in love with baseball. But I quit.
While I wouldn't say that banking is the best representation of life, after reading countless posts from young bankers, it certainly appears that banking - like baseball - is visceral, tragic, and absurd, with only fleeting moments of happiness. So, despite these similarities, how did my friend and the ball player come to such vastly different conclusions? The ball player's closing remarks give us insight into why this may be true.
The American dream didn’t tell me that an experience only matters if I acknowledge it, that losing yourself in the game is a good way to lose what makes life meaningful. When you’re standing at the plate and you hit a sharp foul ball to the backstop, the spot on the bat that made contact gets hot; the American dream forgot to tell me to step back and enjoy the smell of burnt wood.
When he was standing at the plate, he had reached the pinnacle of his chosen career, while those of you who have only recently begun have a wide world in front of you. There's plenty of time to step back, and enjoy the smell of burnt wood.
Would like to hear @crashdavis12's opinion on this. I played against Adrian in summer ball in high school and he was an absolute stud. I was talking with a former teammate about this article and the problem with how baseball is structured. It was almost a blessing that I was done with ball at 24 because I had time to start my career. My friend and I agreed that the worst thing that can happen is to keep getting moved up and then be stuck as a fringe big league guy or "4A" guy because you get just enough incentive to keep coming back without making any real money. All of a sudden you're 31, there's someone younger and better than you in your spot and you get released and it's too late really to go back to school or start a second career that doesn't involve athletics in some way. As for the masochism part that is 100 percent right. Every time I went in to pitch I felt so scared that I always wondered "why the hell am I doing this to myself?" If I pitched poorly it was even worse. When I couldn't sleep crammed on the floor of the bus on a midnight 7 hour ride to Williamsport, PA it was even worse.
In terms of satisfaction on the job there is a similarity between baseball and banking (at least at the junior levels) in that the work isn't necessarily the most intellectually stimulating. It's pretty tedious to fix pitchbooks in the same way it's very tedious to practice pitcher fielding practice for four hours on a 100 degree day. I'd say the difference is that if you quit banking you have options. Bankers have college degrees and have skills to succeed in other fields. The average baseball player has a high school education and if not for sports would not have a ton of options. I can't tell you the number of guys I met both in the minors and especially in independent ball who said something along the lines of "If I don't play ball I'll be the assistant JV football coach at my high school". There is honor in that and it's an honest living, but it doesn't compare to the options that a guy who quits Goldman has.
Personally, I think that getting crushed before eventually moving on to something "more normal" is the best way to enjoy your life. I know a lot of people who have worked in 40-50 hr/week jobs for several years and, to them, that's the natural state of affairs. Many of those same people accomplish very little with their free time. Those I know who spent a couple years in IB / big law / etc. and left tend to make the most of their free time: they know what it's like not to have any.
I agree with you completely. There is definitely something to be said for not taking your free time for granted because you have so little of it in jobs like IB etc. I get the feeling most 20 somethings who work no more than 40 hrs a week do not fill their free time with very productive or personally developing activities.
Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
The thing is, most 20 somethings don't realize they're wasting it.
This is another one of the many reasons why I'm definitely doing IB for 1-4 years. Thought about going to buyside straight, but I really want the training towards attention to detail and the long hours to make me appreciate a better lifestyle
This is full of dumb. You don't NEED the long hours to appreciate better hours. If you actually do have the opportunity to jump straight to the buy side and you don't do it because you want to "learn attention to detail" and skew your perception of what a normal work week is, then you're an idiot. You're only 23 once.
Personally dont see how anyone can stay in this industry past the analyst years. Banking just seems like a dull, meaningless existence past the analyst years. I mean the whole point of banking just seems to get the skills/credibility to go off and do something else more interesting/purposeful. I mean do you really want to look back on your life and all you have to show for it is some fancy powerpoint slides you made and countless hours sucking clients off.
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