Why do the general public have this strange hatred towards bankers?
Says it all in the title, really.
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They are under the impression that people who make more money than them are inherently evil... Haters gone hate.
For the same reason they don't like politicians: a small group of people concentrated in a few areas have massively disporportionate influence over their lives. The money, the crash, all that, they are distractions from the idea of a group of people making decisions from far away about how life will be run. It's un American.
...and most people don't hate bankers, they don't care at all beyond the knuckleheads involved in the shit in 2007
Because the recession was centered around Wall Street, bankers became the defacto figure heads of the "1%"
Easier for the women's studies majors of the world to hate bankers because they're all centered in the same area too, as opposed to entrepreneurs or consultants or whoever else makes big money who are spread out more
a) Hollywood.
b) People putting it in their heads somehow this "manipulation" of money is somehow affecting their own cash flow and capabilities.
c) Mainstream media needing a headline on a slow day.
d) They don't know exactly what these specific groups of people do, so they just figure it must be illegal and shady.
The list goes on and on.
The vast majority of Americans need to be reminded to breath on a daily basis. I wouldn't concern yourself with their opinions or thoughts.
Hey, at least you bankers can score women with your job title. I work for a top name brand international brokerage firm and can't say what I do without girls thinking I sell houses or some nonsense. No one knows what commercial real estate even is in general.
"I sell and lease skyscrapers and malls and stuff"
"my mom is a real estate agent too! she sold her first house last month!"
"...god dammit"
I just died laughing at this one. Dammit, if only I had some credits.
Me: I work in finance. Random friend/stranger: do you think I should buy AAPL? Me: god damn it.
If there was a "banana dump" system in WSO I'd split you guys 100 bananas each.
This is too good, hahaha!
I've actually witnessed these two happen to some buddies:
Friend: I'm a banker Chick: Oh, that's cool.. So you open checking accounts for people, then? Friend: God damn.
Friend: I work in the front office of a bank Chick: So you're a teller? Friend: F.
Ignorance and misunderstanding. Credit the mainstream media for most of that (I'm talking to you Taibbi).
AnabelleCalthorpe is my favorite troll currently...
Also... @Simple As... I can't believe these people didn't cower in fear at the sheer presence of... analysts... we need to restore the order. Someone has gotta explain to these peasants that bankers are providers of capital and strategic advice.... Masters of the Universe...
xoxo
Whatever makes you think I'm trolling?! But seeing as you already think I'm a troll then do explain what makes me your favourite troll
Truly one of the great tragedies of the world. I think I'm going to put Master of the Universe on my business cards.
Simple As... Vice President/Master of the Universe, Mergers and Acquisitions
xoxo
Low information voters.
Arsehole bankers.
It's like American tourists. As a non-American, you only notice the loud, obnoxious and stupid ones, then assume all the rest are like that.
How do you guys deal with negative press about finance? (Originally Posted: 07/04/2015)
Finance-hate is so common, that almost anything related to the ills of the finance industry passes as news these days, whether or not it makes any sense whatsoever. People are very influenced by the stories they hear. People seem to assume that my peers are Patrick Bateman, Leonardo di Caprio, or some character out of a Michael Lewis novel, but frankly those people are fairly rare in real life. I see very little resemblance between what I do in IBD and these fictitious characters.
I also see very little relationship between what I do and any possibility of harm done to others. I've thought and reflected about it a great deal, and I simply think these people are just plain wrong most of the time. So much of what is said about finance is just so off base that it irks me. People I meet (including my roommates in college) make all sorts of negative, untrue assumptions simply because of what I do for a living.
Examples in the last month: - My uncle to me: "Don't you feel like what you do is kind of heartless?" - My doctor to me: "Why don't you be a doctor rather than stressing out about this finance stuff? You'd make a great doctor." - Startup friend to me: "You should probably start practicing your cocaine game before you start work." - My roommate to me were discussing what would happen to our career if we got caught cheating in school. I said that if I got caught, I might lose my job and it'd significantly worsen my chance of future work. My roommate says, "Really? I thought finance people liked that kind of thing." - etc, etc,
Sometimes, I assume these people are joking, but I feel like most of the time they're being serious and it just pisses me off. Sometimes I react with "It's natural for people to be envious of those who are more wealthy, especially if the wealth is self-made." Sometimes, I feel like my reaction should be just to think to myself "He's just uneducated about finance, I can't blame him." Other times, I react with "people can't help but believe this given what they read in the news." But I feel like all of these responses are kind of arrogant and condescending. Sometimes I react to news with "That's just clickbait, it's what he's paid to write." Of course, we all read and hear the opinions of people with different views and most of the time it doesn't bother me much. It doesn't bother me when people express different religious or political views, but I guess this is different because I perceive it as an attack on who I am fundamentally as a person. Maybe this is because I'm still young and need to get used to it.
Do you guys have similar experiences? How do you guys internalize this? What is a healthy reaction to this?
I don't give a shit what other people think and I don't hang out with hippies.
why do you care
Most of the time, at least when I'm not in mixed company, I give them a nice little throat punch and when they fall onto their knees gasping for breath I whip out my dick and piss on their heads while I scream "you fucking piker! I can buy and sell you before breakfast!"
Or I just ignore it and don't give a crap what anyone else says or thinks. Just say that you enjoy your profession and that's that.
You think it's bad being an Analyst in finance because of the bad press? Try being me if you don't like receiving negative attention about finance.
I did not read your entire post, but you need to realize that the media and people in general lump everything into "investment banking". Providing M&A services to companies is hardly "heartless" or anything of the like. People need those services.
Because being a doctor blows. I shadowed a doctor in high school for about 2 hours and saved about 40 years of mind-numbing, boring work. I can't imagine sitting in an office all damn day and putting up with elderly people who seem to self-diagnose every illness and druggies looking to get an easy prescription. Not to mention that a bulk of your work is dealing with the same damn symptoms and giving the same damn diagnosis every single day. You deal with the same work, same people, and same pay for your entire career. Where's the excitement in that?
Depends on what kind of doctor you are. ER or trauma physicians can get a pretty wide range of things.
Pay isn't necessarily the same the entire time but it depends on how ambitious you are.
Don't you guys think it would be better if we each took a bit of time to explain to these people the truth about the profession? Maybe this is a bit ambitious but we would benefit from better government policy etc if there was a more informed electorate?
If people wanted to know the truth they would. It's not especially difficult to understand.
Understand that media in the US is very polarized, with conversation being drowned out by 'debate'.....aka loud, ignorant morons on opposite sides of the political isle throwing insults at each other. The vast majority of people are more reasonable, and if you're getting a lot of flack for having a job (and that's all this is) then you're hanging out with the wrong crowd.
My honest opinion: just live your life.
Yeah I think I just need to get over it and just avoid talking and hanging out with people that are disrespectful.
It's because the average person hears "investment banking" or "Wall Street" and thinks Bear Stearns and mortgage-backed securities and subprime lending. I don't suppose that explaining that you proofread Powerpoint presentations for mergers and acquisitions would help, or even that they would understand what an M&A advisory is.
there will always be unscrupulous people in finance, it pays well and can attract people for the wrong reasons. better for you to lead your life in a virtuous/ethical way and ignore the noise. people's opinions are mostly made up so trying to convince them is like getting a marxist to believe in free markets. if someone's genuinely curious, tell them, but if not, fuck 'em.
Whenever someone says anything negative about my work, I just throw fun coupons at them and walk away.
I run to the bathroom and cry. About 10 minutes later, I emerge red faced, point at the person who made the comments and demand they leave the venue. My voice becomes more and more adamant (although with a slight quiver), but my finger will continue to tremble visibly.
If they don't leave after the first 5 minutes of doing this, I start to hyperventilate.
If anyone tries to console me, I scream "Don't touch me! DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME!"
After another 15 minutes, I demand that someone call an ambulance. Then I collapse in a heap, crying and wailing.
When the ambulance arrives and I'm being carried out of the venue, I point accusingly at the person who made the comments, shrieking "You did this to me! YOU! YOU did this to meeeeeee!". The last "meeeee!" is an elongated howl as the stretcher bearers haul me out the doors.
I then contact my lawyers and have them send letters to the person who made the comments and the venue owner, making outrageous demands for financial settlements for emotional trauma caused.
5/5 would read again +1
LOL
good suggestion, will definitely keep this in mind next time i find myself in this situation
"People seem to assume that my peers are Patrick Bateman, Leonardo di Caprio, or some character out of a Michael Lewis novel, but frankly those people are fairly rare in real life."
If your peers were like Leonardo di Caprio and Patrick Bateman then you must be a badass too.
Same shit in every profession. If you work in marketing, everyone thinks that you work with the cast of Mad Men. If you're in the military, then expect everyone to think you're badasses who are both saintly and jingoistic like the heroes in Call of Duty or BlackHawk Down. In a college frat? Your lifestyle is clearly straight out of Animal House. A manager at GE? Obviously you're just like Jack Donaghy.
Americans generally can't distinguish TV from Reality so you shouldn't be surprised when people think every investment banker is Gordon Gekko, every stockbroker is Jordan Belfort, and every VC manager is Kevin O'leary.
Educating people about finance is a perk of the profession. No industry is more important and no industry does more to promote the welfare of the common man.
Who the hell cares - the industry still lives.
If someone gives you crap, just ask them what they think you do. They will fumble around and say something dumb. Then ask them what about this thing they can't define is evil. They'll inevitably say something about screwing over little old ladies. You then have an opportunity to tell them what you actually do, and they will listen.
Don't be arrogant about it. Just say something about helping entrepreneurs sell their businesses or whatever you actually do at work. Pulling blinders off of people's eyes is generally a good thing.
"I create opaque and complex financial instruments to finely tune risk and reward levels for pension managers who don't know the difference and will get a slightly higher return, as long as everything in the economy goes fine over the next 30 years. Of course, if anything goes even a little wrong, they will have catastrophic losses, but , really, what are the odds of that happening again?
Also, someone somewhere in the firm is likely selling that to little old ladies as well. But that's definitely not me. That's someone else. There's definitely nothing evil about it, after all I'm sure these clients are doing their due diligence."
I just hate some doctors but I wouldn't go as far as condemning all doctors. Got misprescribed chemo drug and still have side effects two years down the road. Every time when I go see my GP or pay money to treat my problems, they will be like "you're just stressed". A lot of doctors are just evil. There are evils out there in literally every single profession, I literally couldn't care less what people say. Most of them think I do finance solely because of the money and insist that we financiers bankrupt the whole world. Whatever man.
so you've never made a mistake in your entire career?
obviously it's tragic you got misprescribed a drug and that fucked your life up. but that doctor you saw, he probably sees hundreds if not thousands of patients a year. at the end of the day he's just a human being, he makes mistakes. by a function of his job though, when he makes a mistake it has a hugely outsized influence on other peoples lives, quite similar to a finance professional.
it strikes me as extremely hypocritical that you argue "people are wrong to paint finance professionals as selfish because of a handful of corrupt people." yet because of one experience you had you say "a lot of doctors are just evil."
http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/goldman-sachs-doesnt-c…
Stop being a baby
Best answer is just to not care. If you really need to respond, talk about a deal you were on that actually added value.
What I do whenever I feel that way is realize that people hate us for three reasons:
Then, I realize that what I do isn't related to any of those three things, and forget about the whole issue.
In short, who gives a shit what they say?!
I find when people talk poorly about another profession showcases that persons lack of professionalism. There is probably something deeper thats bothering them about their job. (lying to themselves that they are in a career they like, and just want to take it out on you)
keep your head up and just smile. dont let shit like this get to you bro
I think a nuisance can turn into a problem if it's family that's misguided. Someone once asked me "whether anything has changed since the crisis in terms of ethics and morals". Annoyed, I asked the question "do you know what I do?". Then it was basically purported that my work was selling interest rate derivatives right at the moment I knew they were going to change. I worked in M&A. Needless to say, their perception of me completely changed after I educated them on the workings of my job.
People don't understand what's going on in an investment bank, which makes complete sense. It's horribly complicated and most people within the bank don't even understand it. I've spoken to a lot of students who want to work in "investment banking", but when quizzed further don't know the difference between S&T and corporate finance. It's easy to say "they could find out if they want to", because we know what they should be looking for.
I believe strongly that educating those around us can help them appreciate what we do. People profoundly misunderstand the purpose and effect of finance.
Anyway to answer the question seriously:
I don't.
You know the old saying about how when you throw a stone into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one that got hit? The "negative press" doesn't bother me because I know that I'm not a leech or a scam artist.
http://img.pandawhale.com/30488-Woody-Harrelson-crying-money-b-8fc5.gif
Me whenever I'm bullied about my profession.
Lions don't concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.
xx
You made me vomit out of disgust on my keyboard.
Does anyone use this phrase in real finance life? I only come across it in interviews with kids who claim to "have a passion" for finance, but without any real idea what finance really involves.
The media has trained people to hate the 1% because they're obviously flying around on private jets sipping martinis at all hours of the day (when, in fact, this is definitely not the case for most of the 1%, nor is there any inherent reason to hate the super wealthy anyway). Thus, anyone who works with money for a living is clearly the 1%, hates all humans, and only loves making more money.
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