What is the point?
Hi
I want to work in IB for the same reasons as majority of you: prestige, money, exit opps. But sometimes I think what is the point? What is the point in all this prestige that you will have in the end?
I currently work really hard to get into target. Then I will be working really hard to get a spring week. Then an internship. Then a full-time position. Then I will be working really hard to get into a top business school. Then an internship again. And a full time position again. Then to get a promotion. And so on throughout my whole life. Throughout my whole life I will be doing everything I can, to maximize my earning potential and to gain as much social recognition as I can. Obviously I will still have friends and family but the fact is that the majority of my time and energy will be spent on money and prestige chasing.
I don't know whether it will make me happy. I don't know what exactly will make me happy and this seems the right choice in such situation. The values of our capitalist society made this choice right. But how is being a slave of respect and money is a right choice? I don't know anything about finance and banking and yet I am really "passionate" about it and I want to do it. We would want to do anything that would make us rich. Prestige what is matters most to a lot of people. And that is sad. Not because this is empty. But because if our personal happiness wasn’t attached to prestige and money then we could be so much happier.
I personally would be much happier. I care so much about getting into target and getting a good job that I start forgetting about traditional human values such as family, love, helping others and making the world a better place.
Perhaps if all the capitalist values didn’t matter for me I wouldn’t be aiming for an economics degree. Perhaps I would do a history or geology or philosophy degree – something that I am passionate about not only because it will open doors for me. Don’t understand me wrong – I really enjoy economics but I also wonder whether the fact that I like it comes from the fact that it will help me to get a good job. What I really know is that a lot of things that I do now – I do to get a good job, no doubt about that.
What I have a doubt about is whether all this prestige will give us happiness. Imagine that you have a BA from Princeton, an MBA from Harvard and you are a partner at KKR with enough money to do anything in the world and enough prestige to be invited to the Bilderberg conference. So what? What then? I don’t know… Obviously it can be said about anything and it can be suggested that everything is pointless. But right now all this prestige chasing seems especially pointless to me.
I don’t deny that money allows us to do a lot of great things that is impossible to do otherwise and social respect allows us to socialize with and meet very successful and high quality people. It is good to have complete freedom I guess. Yet, if I could, I would go into my own mind and take away prestige dependence that makes respect and money so important to us. I believe that my life would be absolutely different then it will be otherwise. I am 18 right now and I don’t want to wake up at 40 to understand that all my life I have been chasing something that means nothing to me.
Yet, I still will be doing all my best to get into target, to get a spring week, internship, full time position, b-school…
Do whatever you want. No one here is going to tell you how to live your life.
People have been struggling to find the meaning of life throughout history. It all depends on how you see life and how you value it. On one hand, you can look at it as only having a limited amount of time to enjoy yourself. On the other hand, you can see it as an incredible opportunity to make a difference.
My personal opinion: You have an opportunity to be at the top of the world in this industry. You only get a sliver of opportunity to make a lasting difference in this world. If you are even considering banking, you are one of the select few people in the history of the world to have a shot at complete financial independence.
Like iRX said, it's your life, do what you want with it and hopefully by the time you are 40, you will not have any regrets in life.
Like the other posters have said, it's your life, live it how you want it.
That said, I have a few issues with your argument. For one, if you want to be successful in any sort of job you're going to have to work hard. IB obviously has more hours than most jobs. But still, success often closely follows hard-work. I understand the amount of work and effort that I'll need to put in to get a job in IB. And more importantly, I didn't choose to pursue IB ONLY because of prestige, money and exit opps. In fact, other than getting fairly compensated, I could two shits about the other two. I chose to pursue IB, because I think that I can learn A TON about how businesses work across a variety of industries. I can interact (to some extent) with executives from these companies. And, I can develop tangible skills that will provide me with a great technical foundation going forward in my career, whether that be in IB or something else.
If I can be honest with you man, you gotta get off this philosophic high horse. Find a job that aligns with what makes you tick. Find a group of people that you like, where you can learn a lot. Then bust your ass and see where that path takes you. All the best.
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
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