My first job out of college was in finance. My role involved coming up with complicated financial structures that minimized interest rate and currency risk our clients are exposed to when they raise debt financing. I enjoyed the technical aspects, but in a way I feared what my job would entail if I were to rise in seniority.
The senior members of the team brought in business, junior members execute the work. In that way finance is similar to other professional services like law or consulting. That said I wasn’t sure I wanted my performance evaluated on how much my client liked me, whether that be at the office or the golf course. What if I don’t like golf?
Over the years I’ve come accounts from others. In chronological order, Nicholas Chirls on his time at Lehman.
Investment banking was a default career of sorts in 2007, something for the over-achieving ivy-league kids who didn’t quite know what they hell they wanted to do, and there were plenty of jobs being given out back then… I vividly remember walking into the career services office my junior year in college and being prompted with, “Well, which bank would you like to work for?”
If you're in a competitive thing, “I want to win” in high school, you want to go to the best college. Part of winning in college is you want to get the best job… If you're 22 and working at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs and the pay isn't even that good relative to other things that you can potentially be doing with your time if you know how to optimize it, it has the imprimatur of “Wow, you are a very successful person!” and that's the hardest job to get after graduating from a school like Harvard.
This week, David Perell on integrity.
One place we try to get integrity without people being themselves is the classic thing where… they become lawyers and doctors and they go into a very small list of fields. What I think lacks integrity about that, I mean there’s a nobility to it of “hey you’re going to do your family well”, but what lacks integrity about it is misses human individuality which I really value and think is important.