Walk the Plank Walk
By S. Harcrow, Guest Writer
Issue date: 4/1/09 Section: Perspectives
When I graduated in 2006 with an undergraduate degree in finance, the question wasn't if you were going to go into investment banking (just "banking" to those involved because "could there be any other type of banking?"), but rather to which bank you would be headed. Now, there is a new question: how will investment banking survive as we evolve out of our current economic conundrum?
But I don't want to get ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, at the height of the glossy stretched out bubble. After graduating with honors and getting all settled into a tiny walk-up apartment in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the summer of 2006, I was to start the job with a standard six-week training program.
My final college semester, I had received countless brochures providing a description of this very unique and empowering opportunity for which I should be quite grateful. According to The Firm's literature, this was to be a renaissance of sorts: where my college education would be recalibrated and built up to ready me for real work.
Despite the heavy doses of syrupy propaganda that made me feel as though I had joined a cult, I anxiously prepared myself for the supposedly blessed atmosphere of the "elite of the elite". Then, I showed up to the first day of training. I never knew how often "I went to Princeton" translates directly to "I am a huge tool and my father—also a huge tool—has money, and you are lucky to know me."
Of course, not everyone was blessed enough to be the Ivy League trust fundee. There were the requisite nerdy guys from high school who were going to make their money, and finally fraternize with hot girls. In that order. These most passive, most repressed individuals had finally found an environment that tricks them into thinking they are now cool Masters of the Universe.
That's the thing about the job I couldn't quite wrap my head around. It wasn't just that it seemed to have everything to do with massaging egos, but moreover, it had nothing to do with good management and efficient business practices. My year in investment banking was like being Scarlet Johansson's character in Lost in Translation: you feel like reality ran out on you and left you in a strange, strange world. You are pretty sure you aren't the crazy one. And, yet.
But I don't want to get ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, at the height of the glossy stretched out bubble. After graduating with honors and getting all settled into a tiny walk-up apartment in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the summer of 2006, I was to start the job with a standard six-week training program.
My final college semester, I had received countless brochures providing a description of this very unique and empowering opportunity for which I should be quite grateful. According to The Firm's literature, this was to be a renaissance of sorts: where my college education would be recalibrated and built up to ready me for real work.
Despite the heavy doses of syrupy propaganda that made me feel as though I had joined a cult, I anxiously prepared myself for the supposedly blessed atmosphere of the "elite of the elite". Then, I showed up to the first day of training. I never knew how often "I went to Princeton" translates directly to "I am a huge tool and my father—also a huge tool—has money, and you are lucky to know me."
Of course, not everyone was blessed enough to be the Ivy League trust fundee. There were the requisite nerdy guys from high school who were going to make their money, and finally fraternize with hot girls. In that order. These most passive, most repressed individuals had finally found an environment that tricks them into thinking they are now cool Masters of the Universe.
That's the thing about the job I couldn't quite wrap my head around. It wasn't just that it seemed to have everything to do with massaging egos, but moreover, it had nothing to do with good management and efficient business practices. My year in investment banking was like being Scarlet Johansson's character in Lost in Translation: you feel like reality ran out on you and left you in a strange, strange world. You are pretty sure you aren't the crazy one. And, yet.
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alice burguieres
posted 4/06/09 @ 11:46 AM EST
To me the article Walk the Plank Walk was both insightful and informative --- Botton line it was very entertaining.
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