Family Office Internship is Paradise
Ever since your chesty high school girlfriend dumped you during COVID for spending too long playing Warzone with your Discord boys instead of having vigorous e-sex with her and listening to her complain about how much of a bitch her ethnic mom is, you knew you had to make a name for yourself. One day you’re scrolling through a “Highest Paying Jobs” list and you find something called Investment Banking. You click and end up on some Sam Shiah funnel ad with him grinning in a wrinkled, sweat-stained Men’s Wearhouse special, captioned $150K OUT OF COLLEGE. That leads you straight to Wall Street Oasis.
After hours of reading tier lists made by non-target prospects and insecure juniors, you realize you’ve found the cure for every insecurity you've had since being picked on in elementary school. Every post is either a college sophomore at a non-target asking if he can get Evercore with a 2.2 GPA and a search fund internship, or a grown man having an autistic meltdown because someone said Guggenheim isn’t an EB. You learn that FT Partners is a “top EB” (140k base btw). From that moment on you’ve chased prestige like a stray dog chasing Teslas in Miami. The dream: GS TMT → MF PE → HBS → divorce at 29 → partner by 33 → die of a heart attack in Ibiza.
By sophomore year I was sending more cold emails than a Nigerian prince with a Wi-Fi hotspot. My “Hi First Name, hope you’re doing well!” opener was loaded like a double-barreled shotgun of desperation. Most read the first line, smelled non-target, and vanished faster than my high school ex when I sent “u up?” in 2022. I collected rejections like an autistic 11-year-old collects train sets. Polite ones: “We’ve decided to move forward.” Another came a week before the first round. One guy replied with a JPEG of a chinchilla eating its own shit and titled it “This is you.” Meanwhile on LinkedIn, Blake IV and Chadwick post “Thrilled to announce my SA offer at Evercore!” and I’m just happy my printer still works.
Finally after months of ghosting, a scheduling mix-up, and a VP telling me to circle back next year, I land a final round. Two-hour train ride into the city. Thirty-seven minute walk through Midtown because I’m too scared to take the subway after watching a TikTok about a guy having a guitar shoved up his ass during rush hour. I walk into an “office” that’s just two rooms, peeling paint, a broken A/C, and the lingering smell of someone’s tuna sandwich from 2019. The interview is merciless. DCFs, debt schedules, and then the classic “how many golf balls fit in a 747” brain teaser while my tie is choking me. I finish drenched, tie crooked, hands shaking. The MD leans back, smiles faintly, and says “We’d love to bring you on… the position is unpaid.”
Day three I’m summoned to the conference room, which is really a storage closet with a dying plant, a Keurig, and the faint smell of toner and dread. Lights are off, one slide on the wall: Performance Review. “Do you know why we outperform other family offices?” the MD asks. I start to answer but the VP violently jams his index finger into my throat and cuts me off with “Shhh. No talking unless spoken to.” The MD snaps his fingers and two assistants walk in wearing latex gloves, carrying a mountain of CIMs they slam on the table like sandbags before a flood. They hand me a mouse with no scroll wheel, a keyboard missing the letter E, and for some reason a ball gag. “Make a comps table. No internet. No templates. Six-point font.”
They circle me like predators in bespoke suits. The MD leans in and whispers “Merge the cells… slower.” I right-click by mistake and the VP slaps me hard across the face, yanks my tie so violently the chair tips, shoves me back upright by my shoulder, and grabs me by the jaw until I’m staring into his pupils. “Bad intern. Again.” He shoves me toward the desk so my ribs hit the edge, then spins my chair toward the wall and forces me to stare at a misaligned PowerPoint chart while European Sex EDM blasts. The MD runs a leather belt slowly over my wrists like he’s testing tensile strength, while the VP flicks my ear every time my formatting is off by a pixel. They hurl tickers at me like dodgeballs. LMT. GD. RTX. WHY IS EBITDA OFF BY $3.26?! They make me color-code a football field chart without touching the mouse, like some depraved Excel human centipede experiment. At one point, the MD wedges an 8-K between my teeth and orders me to hold it there while the VP scrolls through a 200-page CIM, moaning in satisfaction every time I wince. By the end I’m dripping in a polyester shirt I bought on sale, soaked and ragged. The MD picks up my work like it’s a soggy cocktail napkin and says “This? This is Baruch-level output.”
Most people wouldn’t last a week. The hunger. The humiliation. The knowledge that a sophomore at UConn is getting paid for making TikToks while you’re chained to a desk. But me? I’m a freak for suffering. I wake up at 2:17 AM to check if the MD left comments. I crave it.
Because one day when I’m at some stranger’s $14 million Hamptons mansion, standing barefoot on their manicured lawn with a glass of warm rosé in my hand, watching the sun set while pretending to care about the host’s polo handicap, I’ll think of the long Midtown walk, the broken AC, the blindfolded comps table, the chanting, the leather straps, the slaps, the manhandling, and I’ll know I won in life. Family office internship is paradise.
