Mod Note (Andy): I'm pleased to introduce LaFemmeFinancer; the newest addition to our contributing author team. LFF is "typically involved with large sums of money, often mistaken for a pastry, has bigger testicles than most cockerel’s and could possibly bring disaster to any man who becomes involved with her". See more bios of our contributing authors here.
You religiously work out, you avoid fried cheese and other artery-choking foods, you’ve maintained your pre pubescent 24-inch waist + tight tush, you’ve developed boulders for arms and can now bench press triple your weight. But you’ll only be happy when you complement your Tatler magazine worthy schmoozing and looks with the prestige of a banking or trading job… so whadya do?
Recently, Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo for the uninitiated) advises people starting out in their careers to consider four things when choosing between jobs:
"Work with the smartest people you can find, do something you're not ready to do, find an environment in which you're very comfortable so you can find your voice, and work for someone who believes in you -- because when they believe in you, they'll invest in you."
What has Marissa Mayer’s advice got to do with my abs of steel you might ask? Read on kiddos….
There has been a lot of talk about fit and how interviewers are often screening for this. Since you’ve memorized the vault guides, read the WSJ/WSO and as a result, are now an expert on where the markets are headed you definitely want to know if your SA/FT offer is going to result in a good fit and your subsequent meteoric rise. While Marissa Mayer gives some great advice on how you can evaluate an employer’s potential fit, what exactly does it mean when someone believes in you?
Let’s break it down:
1) Geeks: Where’d they come from?
The last 3 decades have seen a huge rise of the geeks with the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Sage of Omaha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Nerds), so now you need to hone your quantitative skills and learn programming to make it right? (Don’t you wish you had Tiger Mom now?) Since Marissa Mayer said to surround yourself with the smartest people you can find it would be prudent to look for a team of brilliant quants, right?
While it is highly recommended for all analysts to refine their valuation, pricing, modeling and general thinking skills; trying to force a square peg into a round hole and attempting to prove that you’re quant can be career suicide.
2) High School: It ain’t over till it’s over baby!
Yes that’s right, remember the kids who no one ever talked to in school? The socially awkward ones who you might have called “dweeb”, “nerd” or perhaps “loser”. Guess what? They never forgot that and most definitely haven’t gotten over it either. If you are a hot girl trying to learn from them in finance, you represent all the women who rejected them or were unattainable in high school. If you are a buff jock, you represent those guys who made fun of them in gym class and whom they could never be. So now if you are trying to learn from them in order to have both people and quant skills, what makes you think they want to give you that competitive advantage? Now, imagine if that’s your boss?
3) Believing in you?
First of all do you believe in yourself? If so – great, that’s the first step to having your boss or anyone ever believe in you. But if you already do and still trying to see if there’s a good fit in your current / future team, let’s think about what this all means. Eli Manning and Cristiano Ronaldo have uber hot wives/gf’s right? Bill Gates has well... Melinda Gates.
Bottom line; birds of a feather flock together.
In order for someone to believe in you and therefore invest in you (as Marissa Mayer said) they have to be able to see you as an extension of themselves (to a certain extent at least). This means there have to be similarities. School, major, sports teams, choice of poison, school of thought and general points of conversation are some important similarities that should exist.
Girls and boys, always open your eyes wide when evaluating fit.
What was the point of this?
Also, I wouldn't call Abbey McGrew "uber hot". She is an attractive woman (more attractive since she got her new rack) but she has been with Eli since they dated in college, meaning pre millionaire and pre-allstar. She is clearly with him because she cares about him. While we are on this subject, I don't understand the reference to these men and their women at all. I can promise you if Bill Gates wanted a gorgeous wife, he could have one. He is probably a lot happier with his nearly 20 year marriage to a woman that not only loves him but believes in him.
"Birds of a feather flock together" is total horse shit. There are so many people dating and fucking outside of their ecosystem it isn't even funny.
Swing and a miss.
Spot on, especially the last sentence. People outside of this particular world think it works like revenge of the nerds or something, but it definitely doesn't. Most of the people who end up getting far enough to be considered successful aren't even your typical high school nerds who didn't get girls and are trying to make up for that now. They're usually the smart kid from high school who everyone liked, wasn't overly nerdy or overly jockish, had a decent love/sex life, socially competent. These ultra-caricatures a la Prestigious Pete make people think that the outliers are actually the norm when they're almost nonexistent. All my friends come from pretty average backgrounds, have wives or girlfirends, and are really no different than anyone else other than their occupations. They differ in that I've got a friend with a gothic looking hipster wife, another with a typical hot blonde who's 2 weeks removed from a boob job, one with an ugly ass Jewish chick reminiscent of Mrs. Einhorn, and another with a long-term girlfriend who happens to be a batshit crazy Wiccan. Don't think revenge of the nerds had anything to do with who they decided to fuck.
Marissa Mayer is certainly not worth the $138 MM compensation package she bagged at Yahoo.
She is an average skirt who was lucky to get into Stanford and cannot get enough of it now. Hope she gets Yahoo into the gutter ASAP and gets fired in three years or less - the sooner the better.
The fact that Yahoo is even still around is mind boggling. What is even more disturbing is this woman was chosen to help turn the company around.
I am missing the overall point of this post.
Is this Bankarella 2.0?
Why is this on the front page?
This reads like a poor man's Bankerella, which is concerning because Bankerella reads like a poor man's teen fan fiction.
Actually, isn't it really sad that society has people acting like this? I can only assume that women feel they're forced to act like massive dicks in order to be taken seriously in finance. Of course, that probably goes for some insecure men as well.
Sad but true. Cannot help but think it's a Waste of bytes this post.
Welcome to WSO, LFF! Judging from your bio, do you, by any chance, enjoy heavy metal?
The Bankerella approach is your fatal mistake. Now you will never have your own identity here.
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