I've read some threads, and Jesus Christ you guys sounds exactly like the pushovers who forewent drinking beer on Thursday to lie your way through the least challenging degree to apply to Goldman Sachs in secret in order to not have anyone else know that applications were open after your bootlicking father told you that you should be a nerd from day 1.
Investment banking wasn't always like this. In the 60s it was where guys with life experience would go in at their mid 30s and make MD at 55 and drink whiskey and were those nylon things which hold up pants
This is gone. The kids are awful. The most awful and they don't even want to allow anyone who's not awful even try to be around
Since when did this industry just get taken over by the types to actually buy Armani watches? It's a shame
It's like the job market is now this thing where nothing and noone means anything outside of the nerd-hyper-lane
Where are your girlfriends? Where are your friends? Why are you so confident when all you ever did was go A-A?
You never had skin in the game and yet here you are being a professional at 18. Fucking whores at 18
This generation is lost. 0 respect. No wonder noone likes you guys.
Jokes on you Im a diagnosed alcoholic
suck my cock
The truth is that the comp is not as outrageous in real terms as it used to be. Before the latest hikes (that also got a bite out of them because of inflation), the business was turning into a highly commoditized field, so it naturally attracted grey grinders. We are only now starting to catch up. Do you want me to drop 20ks on a watch and 2k a night for bottle service when I make 500k, the government takes half and I have to pay through the nose since I have two kids?
wife works bringing in low 6 figures, good work-life balance so she spends a lot of time with them on extracurriculars (swim class, ice skating, music). kids in school. childcare costs are approximately around 40-50k. I live in one of the areas with the highest cost of living in the country, and drop ~4k on mortgage. I also set aside 30% of my base + the bonuses, which only started rolling in last year (before, I was at a boutique with lame comp).
Yet you're spending your weekend writing this rant and posting this... k
Someone didn't get a return offer lol
What you don’t realize is that this industry has always been mostly nerds. You have this false idea of what it used to be
I'm 24 but i've always wondered about this. The image that people had of bankers doing coke on their desks in the 80s doesn't seem realistic to me. I am sure it might have happened but i am also sure those shops didn't last too long and the guys that ran it were borderline or straight up scammers and low lifes a la stratton oakmont.
Also i've used cocaine and its not a drug you want to do before sitting at a desk and literally trying to make sound decisions. I am sure people did do it in their personal party time when not working though, no discounting that.
I know a few bankers in their 60s and they're all nerdy as hell, definitely not the type to down a bunch a quaaludes to sleep then sniff coke to wake up in the office. People i know who say they did that in the 80s and 90s are very Charlie Sheenish and have very scattered mannerisms and they definitely aren't rich suave types that people seem to envision when they think of hay day bankers.
Even if they used to be, a hardcore life does not lead to a long and healthy one while i am sure they were a few stereotypical 80s and 90s banker types Iived and partied like the stereotype, I am sure a lot of them aren't alive today and if they are I'll be surprised if they are wealthy or healthy.
Getting to the point where you do drugs in the office and in your personal life constantly to the point it becomes a stereotype means you had a problem and I usually drug and alchohol problems become all encompassing and i dont even know why people look up to guys like that
edit: https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/02/ross-mtangi-credit-suisse
May he Rest in peace but i think this shows some validity in my statement
I think people keep confusing the culture of the Sales, Trading , and the brokers from back in the day with Investment Bankers. It’s laughable when people use market central roles as their example of why they want to get into IB.
Natural order of things.
The more IB becomes a meritocracy, the more it rewards nerds, particularly at junior levels.
Totally cool and confident dude makes a thread about losers and absolutely slays. Cool dudes use words like “forewent” and come up with weird romanticizations of 1960’s investment banking all the time. There is definitely one thing I know now, this guy is cool and I am definitely not.
Also there definitely aren't any guys in IB who are social / extroverted / can talk to girls but just also happen to be intelligent and interested in finance. And to be clear, the guys that I just described (who don't exist as I have already established) are definitely not the type of folks to secure the best BB / EB / MM offers.
Reading the OP and responses here, I think the answer is it’s somewhere in between - as someone who worked in IB and now in PE, I would describe the majority of bankers I’ve met/worked with as “socially adjusted geeks/nerds” (I count myself as one of them FYI).
What I mean by that is the type of people in IB are absolutely nothing like the characters portrayed in Wolf of Wall Street (and for good reason considering they weren’t real bankers/brokers anyway). Your average IB guy was studious in college, works hard, doesn’t do drugs (except maybe adderall). Given their studious background they will probably be into “geek activities” eg Game of Thrones/fantasy, reading, chess, politics etc. So if you’re expecting to work with a bunch of chest thumping chads you’ll be disappointed (personally I wouldn’t want to work with those guys anyhow).
But at the same time, most IB/PE guys I’ve met are very well socially adjusted. Meaning even if they may be slightly on the spectrum or a bit geeky, they’re generally well-dressed/presented, can speak well, and frequently into fitness/working out. Also many of the more senior IB/PE guys I know have pretty attractive (and intelligent) wives.
I think a big part of that is once you get past analyst level (and certainly once you hit VP) you need to be able to articulate your ideas well. You can build the greatest model in the world but if you can’t succinctly and confidently explain how it works and what it means, no-one internally or externally will take you seriously.
Now contrast that to tech - maybe it’s just my experience (interviewed with couple of big tech firms after IB and also been on a couple of coding courses) - those guys really are nerds. By that I mean lots of overweight badly dressed programmers with limited social skills. Again I think that’s selection bias related to the job - as a programmer you can afford to be esoteric and focused very narrowly - when you fix a bug you don’t the have to explain it to management.
Probably the best portrayal of finance people I’ve seen in the media is the series “Industry” - ie intelligent people who while they may not have been running frat houses, are decent looking/presented and socially adept.
Wolf of wall street types in today's day are in tech sales. Lol