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.
Maybe they should also pick up a prestigious hobby or two?
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.
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.
Finance hires the most autistic people
Different kind of autism
prestige is rooted in caring about what people think. live for yourself, not for others.
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.