Party at the End of the World: Dartmouth kid writes a book about the evils of campus recruiting and “Faceless Hedge Funds”
My post this week is a little different. It’s short, decidedly not sweet and written to start a dialogue amongst the monkeys on this site. Dealbreaker, ran a piece this morning about Andrew Lohse, a Dartmouth grad and frat boy.
The kid’s written a book, ‘Party at the End of the World’, in which he tears to pieces the intellectual spark and creative thinking that once comprised the backbone of Ivy League education (although I think it applies everywhere). According to Lohse, top-universities today have become “vocational schools” for investment banking and “faceless hedge funds” like Bridgewater are buying the intellect of eager young liberal arts graduates and molding them into brainwashed, “inhuman” minions, who crunch numbers and “manipulate capital”.
With a view towards playing devil’s advocate, I want to pose a few questions:
- For those of you seeking to work in banking, what is the motivation for doing so? Is it more than just monetary and the subsequent exit opportunities?
- Do you ever ponder a time in your lives when money, prestige and career just won’t matter as much anymore?
- And if you do? What do you think will be most important then?
- Finally, in college, is it herd mentality and the desire to conform and keep up
with peers that drives you to seek out jobs in banking, HF’s and PE? Or is there always a genuine desire to get into these fields? Is the distinction readily apparent to you?
Bear in mind, I’m not asking these questions to put banking or the quest to break in down. In fact, I’m very much trying to do the same now. There will always be people who consider themselves contrarian, liberal, emancipated, above banking or they may have no interest in finance at all. All of this is well and good – you are, and should always be your own person and for the right reasons. But I’m still curious as to why, those who do choose finance and banking – choose it? And finally, any opinions (good, bad or derogatory) on why this kid may have written the piece- fame, fortune, kicks or true revelation and self-discovery?
Enjoy the WSO conference monkeys!
Isn't this the same kid that did the fraternity hazing expose?
edit: yep. Looks like this kid likes to see his name in the press...
sounds like an entitled piece of shit to me.
maybe when he is done "vomiting" at college students with little to no source of income who are in "desperate" need of a quick way to make a $100 to pay off student loans (by writing a simple paper to a recruiter), he can look in the mirror and realize what a pompous douche he is. Dude is whining about going to one of the world's top undergraduate institutions and abstaining from recruitment to one of the worlds most prestigious and lucrative industries. Sorry to knock this kid off his high horse but I can think of millions of students who would kill to be in his position, both at Dartmouth and in the middle of recruitment from the world's largest and most successful hedge fund.
Reading that pathetic, self loathing essay was honestly mind numbing. Hey man if you hate Dartmouth so much, transfer. Noone is forcing you to attend one of the worlds most revered colleges. Oh yeah and while your ridiculing everyone who wants to do the "menial" work of finance, stop and think about what a disadvantage those students would be in if Dartmouth forbid recruiting on campus. Just because one student, the author, probably had a terrible interview experience given he is what seems to be an antisocial loser who writes articles dismissing university culture, doesnt mean every other student at Dartmouth should be forbidden the undeniable benefits and advantages of on campus recruitment. I have never seen a worse attempt at a disguise for what is clearly a completely spiteful and self interested piece of writing.
What the hell is wrong with you? He specifically went to a liberal arts school to avoid the whole "go into banking, kill yourself slowly, and makes tons of money" ideal embraced by so many others. He's disillusioned with his university for being so largely biased towards finance. How do you not understand that a career in finance, by and large, is hugely unfulfilling to many of those striving towards it? There aren't that many people that love 12 hour days of crunching numbers and menial work to get paid 110k your first year you don't have the opportunity to spend. He's not spiteful- he's speaking the truth so many have felt about finance. It used to be that financial instruments were created for the public good, to provide liquidity, and increase the ease of doing business. Now all we see are predatory practices and scandal after scandal. Notice how you always read about people that went into banking, saw how shitty it was, and got out to pursue fulfilling careers. You don't read about the guy that did the entire process and loved it. I'm not saying that doesn't happen- of course it does. Just much less.
The writer wants people to make a difference in the world- to improve peoples lives. Example- he would rather have people go into renewable energy than big oil. He would rather lift people out of poverty than stuff his own pockets. People like him need to be treasured, not ridiculed. There are bigger things than profit on this planet and one of capitalism's only mistakes (even though it's a great system) is that it works on the assumption that more is always better. Fuck that and fuck profit for profit's sake- THAT is what the author is saying.
And of course the liberal arts solution to getting his way is to write a book about it...
this kid sounds like a grade-A douchebag...
.
What's wrong with the guy saying too many bright students want to work at PE firms and hedge funds? We might have a cure for cancer by now if more students went into STEM fields (although that's a bit besides his point)..
You know, after a conversation with King on this site regarding money, I thought a lot about what I actually thought, and what my ego wanted me to think, my mentality changed a bit towards what life truly is about. Monetary gain and prestige is something everybody wants, but not the main purpose in life. A lot of people like finance and banking however no one likes crunching numbers and starting at the bottom as an analyst, but like the majority they have to. Most people think of a doctor as a more prestigious and purposeful job than a banker. A guy who's only in it for money, and profit only. But I'm sure there are a lot out there that do it because they WANT to do it. They do it because, they like it and enjoy it.
You can't force most of these peoples into becoming doctors, and somehow "curing" cancer. Which theoretically is something very hard to even cure, depending on the stage, and prevention of cell mutation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a banker,.
Here's a really good quote from the move Margin Call describing people's attitude towards bankers.
"Listen, if you really wanna do this with your life you have to believe you're necessary and you are. People wanna live like this in their cars and big f*****' houses they can't even pay for, then you're necessary. The only reason that they all get to continue living like kings is cause we got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off and then the whole world gets really f*****' fair really f*****' quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don't. They want what we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have know idea where it came from. Well, thats more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow, so f*** em. F*** normal people"
That's not to say we are normal, but the notion that all bankers are greedy scums is completely false, and an argument that really has no end meets.
The whole world is faceless, as the evil blood sucking Goldman squid is still wrapped around its face
Am I the only one who read this and thought: "One less person standing in my way, one less person competing for the job I want, one less person I want to be pulling 'all nighters' with, etc.?" I don't have time to applaud his self-righteous, undergraduate sense of enlightenment... I'm too busy networking.
Please tell me this is the work of trolls.
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