How to stop viewing everything through the lense of prestige?
I've noticed I've became a massive prestige whore to the point where its becoming detrimental.
For example, I view my peers competency purely through the lense of prestige even when it's not warranted. An example of this is, someone landed a top BB for SA, subconsciously I think they are super smart and hardworking. However, the same person also fails to convert to FT and suddenly I view them as not smart anymore. Literally nothing changed about them apart from them not converting to FT. The same can be said on the flipside with people landing LMMs for SA and rerecruiting to top BBs FT.
I know this is a bad thing to do not only as its a terrible way to judge people, but it's also shortsighted as it can make me get complacent (e.g. makes me think I'm better than people because I work at X firm) and also misjudges people (e.g. makes me subconsciously write people off because they work at Y firm even though they are competent hardworking people with the potential to make it to the top). I know how stupid this is gonna be in the future as people bounce around firms throughout their career, top people at BX burn out and hustlers grind their way up to MD level.
Anyone else deal with this or is the solution to just stop using WSO?
Stop using WSO.
Touch grass.
Talk to people who don’t know what Evercore is.
This is a funny way of putting it but also this is the way
Maybe they should also pick up a prestigious hobby or two?
Good idea tbf. Problem is a lot of my peers are blinded by prestige as well. For example, got far in SA processes for a number of firms and was talking to some friends saying if I got the offers I would take this top MM over a low tier EB for a number of legit reasons and they all thought I was crazy.
average ivy league student mindset.
Once you realize that no one else actually cares, it's pretty easy to disregard prestige. In fact, the blatant prestige whores are people we work to actively avoid.
The vast majority of people disregard prestige and rankings a couple years after college. It really doesn’t matter in people’s minds if you work at a MM or BB.
Once you realize that the guy in LMM loves his job and has a balanced life with his gf while the one in BB's only goal is to get one more hour of sleep this week, your perspective will change
In the end, what really matters is being happy and finding a place that matches your expectations
You are more than your job. Some day, you will die. On your deathbed, you will never think, “My life would have been so much better if I had been able to lateral to Centerview.” You will probably think something closer to, “Why did I waste so much of my life working?”
You sound absolutely insufferable.
The best way to is to just hit the desk FT. You'll get a rude awakening when you're just another A1 liability.
I think OP raises an interesting point, I can see how the amount of effort + execution + luck needed over several years to land a top seat would make OP feel ‘special’.
But yes hit full time and it becomes clear you are just cheap labor for senior monkeys.
Yeah this is the point I was making. Since IB recruiting is so competitive, a lot of what differentiates candidates is extremely fine margins. You might get lucky when you interview for a top BB for a number of reasons e.g. good nights sleep, nice interviewer, questions you'd fully prepared for so you get the offer. Now you load up WSO and everyone fawns over the firm you got an offer for and you think you're god's gift. Next thing you know you get complacent and then you don't convert to FT, and on rerecruiting you keep getting unlucky on lower tier firms. Your overall ability and competency hasn't changed but this site would make you believe you fell off.
I think this site should place more emphasis on the luck involved in landing the top seats as there's such a bottleneck.
The thing is when you hit the desk, you're not cheap labor. You're actually a liability. It takes months to actually become useful.
To think someone is god's gift because they landed at a prestigious (I hate that word) firm is an arrogance we all developed at that age. To judge other people because they didn't land at prestigious firms is just being an asshole.
Finance hires the most autistic people
disagree, tech industry does
Different kind of autism
You spend way too much time on wso, you're going to be a miserable hermit if you keep holding this lense
prestige is rooted in caring about what people think. live for yourself, not for others.
this is hilarious because the silicon valley version of WSO is teamblind.com
bunch of highly paid, young entitled software engineers dick measuring each other by company name and salary
same advice there is "get off blind"
prestige comparisons happen in any occupation / industry with talented people... since the dawn of mankind
Your obsession with prestige is probably rooted in insecurity. Spend some time reflecting on your values. Is it actually important what bank people work at vs. if they’re a good person? Once you believe you have inherent value outside of what you achieve, you will also be better able to see that value in others and be much, much less concerned with what they’re doing
Unpopular opinion here, this is totally normal, in the sense of grand scheme of things and big picture.
Does it make sense to judge someone working at BB vs MM vs EB? No not at all
Does it make sense to judge someone working at IB vs Big 4 Accounting, or Ivy League vs State schools? I don't know but it happens everyday in our society. How do you think the term target school comes about.
I think the site tends to zoom in so much on prestige to think that if you focus on it, it is toxic, insecure, autistic need to touch grass whatever you wanna call it. In reality in our society you are being judged by your job / school / address because it does represent / imply at least part of who you are as an identity. If I know someone who works at GS and I don't know anything else about that person, I can at least make an educated guess that that person has good work ethnic / is smart / is well connected to be at GS, which are all positive traits, that person may have shit personality but it is not something I can just tell on paper.
Fair or not, status and to a certain extend prestige is definitely one of the way for people to evaluate / judge people in society, I think it is all normal, just try to keep slightly more open-minded and understand that you can view one person on many different levels.
so if the person works at RBC in Investment banking for example, can you not make the same conclusion that the person has good work ethic/ is smart/ is well connected, etc.? in the OPs case, he/she is judging between an individual at a BB vs MM, and there is such a small margin that separates those individuals. It's like looking down on a Dartmouth student compared to a Harvard student, when in reality it's prob just a .05 difference in GPA, 20 point difference on SAT score, same stats but diversity, one played sports and the other didn't want to. It doesn't make sense to look down on a MM banker... just because the individual works at MM. From my own experiences at a target school (I am now at a BB), it was pure luck and maybe connections that seperated who ended up at a BB or a MM. I'll even admit, there were more impressive candidates who carried me in a few classes that ended up at MM or a lower-tier bank.
I addressed this in my second sentence.
The root issue here is not being able to form your own opinion.
I would take this a step forward. It is actually narcissism. OP sounds like a textbook narcissist. Narcissists develop a framework of self-worth and 'value' through external sources of validation. They have to grab value from the external environment to validate themselves or when validating another person.
If everyone thinks XYZ job is the 'best job' or ABC fund/bank is the top tier BB/fund, then that creates the external reward/validation associated with all those people who work there. A narcissist could meet a person from a LMM that might be a superior analyst/talent in terms of modeling, statistical analysis, industry knowledge but the narcissist will want to associate with the person from the BB who has been 'validated'. It won't be based on the facts/data and that is where you get this inability to have an informed opinion.
The narcissist fails to form a valid viewpoint about what is good/bad about another party because it's only about external validation. Is that person dating a hot model? Did that person go to an ivy league school? Does that person have more money than everyone else? External sources of validation.
A lot of narcissists flock to finance for the money/notoriety. It happens in a lot of other areas like Hollywood or politics.
I don't know, live a life for more than two decades and realize that no one cares.
Or, work and get it and find out that nothing's changed and you're still not happy.
Such an under-rated comment. I happen to love this career / industry but would so not be worth it I had other interests.
Completely resonate. Grew up poor and miserable because I was poor. Thought going to a prestigious university and IB would yield me money, which would yield me happiness... now I am at base zero.
I will be less harsh than others, I semi possessed this mindset and it completely evaporated within 3 months on the job. Once you realize how silly & stupid IB / PE work can be and just how many interesting and varied occupations there are in cities, any sense of smugness will evaporate fairly quickly. The whole top undergrad bubble + WSO echo chamber has created this weird sub-culture amongst a few undergrads.
In reality, 3-4 years out of college and the tier of IB / PE / consulting gig that people got out of college had very minimal impact on 2nd / 3rd jobs. In fact 80% of my uni friends are completly out of the IB/PE world only 3 years into the workforce...
Thanks for your reply. Curious on what the outcomes were for your friends who joined the IB/PE world since you say 80% left. What sort of things are they doing now and what made them leave?
people that have low self-esteem derive their self worth from external things (brands, sport teams, bank names, etc.).
Not necessarily even prestige. As I’ve hit 24 years old, i work a lot.
what’s the meaning of all this. I feel like if I’m average it makes my life meaningless in some existential crisis. Money seems to be the greatest differentiator and allows one to live a better life, support their children, and even attract a better mate.
It may be an adaptation to be a prestige whore, as long as it’s for the right reasons.
This post is not prestigious
The best way to stop caring about prestige is to land a job that has it. Once you work at a "prestigious" place you realize how similar it is to any other job in the same industry and the shine wears off very quickly.
Obviously this is easier said than done, so it may make more sense to deal with your deep-rooted insecurity and take a look at how you measure your own self-worth.
Remember that one day, you are going to die. When you are taking your last few breaths in this plane of existence and you are slipping away from consciousness, ask yourself how much you really think the prestige you accumulated throughout your time on Earth is going to matter in that moment.
I think you need to think about it differently, as very little is about being smart or being better than anyone else. In my view, it's mostly about priorities, effort and external factors.
I'm currently an analyst at GS but I'm not here because I am smarter than the guy at Deutsche Bank or the guy I went to high school with who is now working at EY. You need to understand that there are many people who do not base their life decisions on WSO prestige rankings. I know several people who you would probably consider "stupid" because they did an internship at GS or MS and then started full-time at a smaller bank. In many cases, it's a conscious choice because they liked the people more at the smaller bank, enjoyed the type of work more, wanted better hours etc.
Some of the smartest people I have met ended up working at big 4 or being engineers at some random company. Are these guys stupid because they didn't want to pursue a career at GS or MS? No, they just have other priorities and do not want to spend 100% of their time awake working. Therefore, they chose another industry so that they have time for the things that they prioritize in life.
Even within banking, recruiting is definitely not a linear function of how smart you are. I applied to 20+ banks and was rejected by every bank, except for GS and MS. If you make it to an interview or not is a bit random and even at an interview a lot depends on how well you get off with your interviewers rather than how smart you are.
Whether someone gets a return offer or not is also not purely a function of how smart that someone is. Could just be that a person ended up in a group with a very low headcount for that year or that someone did a great job but didn't fit well in that specific team from a cultural perspective.
To me, it sounds as if you just don't understand how stuff works in the real world. Once you understand how people make career decisions and how the dynamics of the industry work, you will realize that not everything is decided by how smart someone is. Rather, you will realize that A LOT is determined by priorities, external factors and the level of effort.
Lol dudes from Italy and worrying about prestigeAny company worth anything is in the states… don't care if you're at GS in Italy vs. Stifel in the US.All the transactions that are relevant go through a US bank…
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