What type of personalities do you commonly find in banking?

IB: Alphas The rest: cucks and simps

I know people love stereotyping and listen to outrageous stories as I have many to share myself. But in reality, banking industry is like many other industries as you will find many different shade of people. There are certainly good numbers of 'alphas' / bros and chads, but there are also a lot of very sophisticated down to earth people. The truth of the matter is there is a huge variety of different functions and departments in the overall umbrella of banking. There are a lot of stories about mistresses and wild parties, there are a lot of stories of very happy families and successful marriages. Not everyone is very smart, there are a lot of people who BS all day long and with experience you see them from 100miles away.

In general I can say this though, because of the fact we require the best of each other and performance constantly getting reviewed that requires our most efficient self at work. Outside of work a lot of common complaints are the lack of patience and low tolerance for inefficiency in many other sectors jobs and real life situations.

The fallacy is to believe everyone is all aggressive as we all love hearing stories of star MD and traders smashing keyboards and kicking the bin down. XYZ hedge fund manager has 10 mistress and did coke all night at ABC party. This does happen but it's a lot less than you'd imagine. I personally had one of the youngest MD smashing 3 screens broken on regular basis next to me. I also had one of my boss who's one of the best senior PM being the most kind/charitable/down to earth person I've met inside and outside of the industry.

I'm sure there are a variety of personalities. But from my experience, not many great personalititties sadly.

At the analyst level most people I've met have been either the bro-ey type (probably the group I fall into) or the stereotypical "smart" type (probably not my group because I'm not smart), but regardless of group all have been very friendly and down to earth. Maybe that's just a factor of my firms culture and the need to be friendly and collaborative through some pretty horrible hours, but it has been good so far.

There was one kid who was just a gigantic tool, but I then felt like he might have had some social disorder or something so idk.

Interned in a large BB last summer. Have few contacts in the industry, so limited prejudice. I was personally surprised at how composed/reserved and relatively introverted and nerdy most of the people seemed to be. Perhaps unique to my bank, but I'd been hugely missold on the level of bro-age occuring lol

Disclaimer: I'm still in college, but this is what I get from my experience and networking.

IB isn't easy to get into. To break in, you've gotta be pretty smart (able to do well in school and be precise in interviews). To be successful, you need to have personal skills (communicate with team, talk to clients). To enjoy it, you have to be a hard worker (long hours, can get monotonous). I'd imagine you don't find many legitimate nerds nor meathead chads.

People in IB are probably smarter then most and can be intense, but I doubt too many would be classified by extreme despite the media's portrait of IB. Not sure if this applies to others in "high finance" but I'd imagine IB and consultants that do well aren't crazy. I'm sure different paths of finance have variations between nerdy and alpha, but IB seems to have balance.

A breakdown from my analyst class:

15% - Total douchebags, arrogant, rest of us didnt hang out with them 25% - douchebags from wealthy families, but are less douchy than the above, 20% - Jocks, decent guys, talk about sports, into fantasy football, hung out with these guys 25% - Come from first generation families, know the value of a dollar, hard workers, good guys 15% - Everyone else, people who keep a low profile, fit partially in somewhere, but dont cause issues

1. DORKS
2. Mild sociopaths
3. Everything in between

From my experience, very risk averse and money hungry people, think they know everything and are blinded by ambition that they don't know where their path truly leads or where they're really going. Have a very much one track mentality where they all think IB -> PE -> MBA -> PE indefinitely. Usually are very scared of the unknown or taking the path less traveled, hence risk averse. All are nerds hands down as well, there is no Jordan Belfort/80-90s S&T Persona anymore, that all got tossed after 08 once comps have went down and never recovered (and still won't as banks are now trying to operate like traditional companies by now paying out bonuses in stock instead of cash) as well as since times change, no room for debauchery or stupidity. Typically seen with young bankers, think Analyst-Associate.

Personalities seen at VP and above, very miserable and regretful of their career choice. Very few that actually enjoy banking/very few that want to "win the game" and don't care one iota about the money (These are the ones that I think are the absolute monsters in Finance because they actually have a passion for financial markets, met some MDs and Directors like this but again they're very few in between). Vast majority stay in it because they either have no other career options, have no idea what else they could do/don't think they're good at anything else, or stay because of golden handcuffs/lifestyle they live. Personalities are very similar to those in Law where seniors just want to go home and be with their family but are chained to work. With the seniors that are regretful in their career choice, my experience with them has been that they're very kind and quite possibly mildly depressed, so in an effort to make themselves feel better and cope, they are kind because they know that life isn't fair and it's also part of being an adult. Met very few in the regret career choice who were absolute dicks.

This is a very sweeping generalization though so take it with a grain of salt. I've had bosses that were awesome when it wasn't crunch time and were chill af but those same bosses would turn into absolute dick heads once the pressure rose. This is also from my interaction with the males of finance. When it comes to females, the older generation are cold and very strict, but that's because of a career where they were always mistreated and worked in a field dominated by men. With younger generation women, it's a mix of coldness or them being very kind and nice but also at a distance because they want to keep a professional relationship and not give off any unwarranted romantic vibes/suggestions.

Some, who get their shit done. Many, who get to you to get their shit done.

Nerdy Ivy Leaguers, petite Asian girls, fratty white boys (not MECE but close)

All kinds, really depends on the group. IBD includes capital markets, debt capital markets, industry groups and product groups (like M&A). Every group has different sorts of people. People like to think there are D1 Ivy League jocks everywhere but I've never met them.

These aren't personalities, these are people

• Super accomplished minority from an Ivy who's quiet and diligent
• Super accomplished modeling and finance god who comes from a loving family and is going to be a CEO one day and makes you feel inadequate
• Vanilla wealthy dude from an Ivy whose life revolves around sports
• Son/daughter of an MD's friend (but they never say anything about it)
• Son/daughter of a client (but they never say anything about it)
• Super hot blonde that works in ECM and is bubbly and who everyone likes because she's like a bro
• Smoke show foreign chick that everyone wants to get with but can't. People don't know much about her and everyone is nice to her
• Clueless MBA who is nice and asks for help on everything. Older and generally mature

The only women you list are either a "super hot blonde" or a "smoke show foreign chick" -- does this mean all women in IB are hot as fuck or does it just mean you'll only notice/comment on the women in your office who make your dick hard?