the prestige of banking

"what do you mean you have to work 100+ hours every week? nobody can do that."

"yeah but what if you're getting paid minimum wage??"

"hmm.."


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it is everyone's dream in our society to become a banker.

it started when we were kids. coming home from day care, we would see men dressed sharply in dark colored suits, their ties carefully sticking out so you can clearly see the 'ferragamo' label on them, their shoes so shiny that you can spot a blemish in your reflection on the high quality leather, the looks on their faces wore concern, stress, and calculation. constantly barking commands into their blackberries. constantly in motion, checking their watches, fixing their hair. but overall their image screamed money. success. power. as if nothing else matters more than where the Dow Jones closed at today or whether the new drug was approved by the FDA. if it didn't make a dollar, it didn't make sense.

we looked at them with awe and wonder. true businessmen. our parents kept reminding us, 'that is real success in the world. commanding power and respect, making money, living a comfortable life style.' this line, repeated over and over, deeply ingrained itself in my mind. i wanted the money, the success. to feel important. i kept it close to my heart and knew that i wanted to play an integral role in society as a banker.

as a child, i honed my banking and finance skills wherever possible. although many write off the popular boardgame monopoly(tm) as a game of chance, i studied the manual for days and nights and eventually was able to consistently win the game seven out of ten times. instead of playing with a play keyboard or reading a book that emitted plot-related noises like mooing cows and meowing cats, i was busy familiarizing myself with a miniature banking system by Fischer Price. i am even proud to say that i was able to recite the rules on the instruction manual verbatim.

i argued over technicalities in social games with my class mates. to me, being right took precedence over everyone having a good time. i didn't want to be the agreeable pushover. i knew that in order to succeed i had to have an opinion and then yell it in everyone's faces (i saw that in a movie somewhere and it sure as hell worked). needless to say i didn't have that many friends growing up. but i only saw them as future competition for a big pay check so it didn't bother me.

the minute i was able to enroll into a finance program (i chose NYU Stern first for its job placement because, lets be honest, that should be the only criteria for rating schools. i'm not going to pay $200,000+ just for a piece of paper with some no-name signature on it certifying that i learned shit. also, i chose NYU Stern for its student body of finance tools and douches--and i wasn't going to let anyone out douche me) i did. i was so eager to be a part of the finance world that my parents had to convince me with money to wait until my actual graduation year in high school before i went off to college.

choosing to enroll in Stern was a great choice. not only was i able to flash my prior knowledge of financial markets while sitting in the front row of lecture hall classes in the most douche baggery fashion, but also i made friends with a few like minded individuals. granted, we did not celebrate the true rewards of friendship since we were competing for the same jobs (and yes, finding a job and getting paid should be our first priority, lets get real here), but finding acceptance among peers was one joy of life that i had missed out in my childhood. even though, my chief goal of being the best led me to spend so many late nights in solitary confinement pouring over accounting and financial textbooks.

i was having a great time in college. surrounded by aspiring bankers, feeling the competition, learning as much as i can about the world of finance. i sucked so hard and shamelessly at the teat of every professor i had, just in case he or she had a job lead. all i needed was a foot in the door. i padded my resume with the biggest buzzwords--'managing expectations', 'database maintenance', 'industry research network autonomous high frequency trading'--sometimes even creating my own nonsensical phrases just to catch people's eyes. i was so close to my dream life that sometimes i would lie awake in bed, head swimming with thoughts of prestige, glamor, and torso soaked in my own excited anxious ejaculate.

then all shit hit the fan. the wall street financiers, so convinced that they correctly ran the modern world, truly bit off a little more than they can chew and soon enough, the entire financial system, built on a house of tooth picks glued by false ratings and greed, eventually collapsed. and with its explosive demise went my childhood full of solo monopoly games, knowledge of pro forma financials, and my hope that forfeiting my supple virginity to be ravished endlessly by corporate america will land me a dream job.

like there will even be a job available.

my aspirations of becoming a glorified slave, working 100+ hours in the maze of cubicles in a high rise building in manhattan all vaporized in a matter of minutes. me, among thousands of others in the same position, seeing our futures implode, toying with the ideas that we could find other professions. what a shame to graduate college with a finance degree and end up working as a full time baby sitter. suddenly happy hours and $1 beer on tap didn't seem so lame. and forgoing taxi cabs and walking everywhere. little by little, i had to give up what seemed like an attainable dream, the soulless job just within reach.

i spend nights lying awake, wishing i could be stressing over excel worksheets and dreading client meetings. and now, i have all this free time but no greedy corporation to devote it to. i am a mere shell among many many shells, hollow and unfeeling, purposeless, with only the function and intention to carry out corporate america's trivial bidding. my entire upbringing devoted to banking and now, with the demise of that profession, i am lost in the world. soulless, inhuman.

-andy

the Economy

first and foremost, thanks mike gao, who reminded me of the existence of blogs and to the quiet lull between earnings reports that has allowed me some free time at work to frolick among various servers in what we affectionately call the intar webs.

the following is written tongue in cheek :)

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we are almost there. teetering on the edge, straddling the days of our sheltered suburban public education on one side and a world clouded with uncertainty, hope, and discovery on the other. great, now is the time to finally put to use the hours we spent struggling to attain the 'outstanding mark' in penmanship in the third grade, the knowledge we learned while repackaging the analysis of 'the Great Gatsby' from sparknotes.com for AP Lang, and the understanding of complex social dynamics only derived from stomaching one too many middle school dances. did we ever really know what we were getting ourselves into? what is the long term goal of late night papers and math problem sets?

to make money, my parents said. allright then, making money. but i may have deceived myself into thinking i knew what this meant. selling lemonade or something like that, some milton bradley baby shit. any retard with basic arithmetic skills can do that.

and only a private university--excuse me, a technical/vocational school like NYU stern finance--can fully prepare me for cubicle life. how exciting! the brochure would tell me, while i flip through glossy pictures of smiles, handshakes, opportunities, and success. the world of cubicle life is a world of glory, fighting on the front lines of the battle of finance, always in the line of fire, in the middle of action! and of course, opportunities for great success and money. every word i read made me more excited to be a part of this giant machine that, as they claim, drives the innovation and progress of mankind. i was sold. so where do i sign up, when can i put on that crisp new suit, when do i get my first six figure paycheck?

not so fast, they told me. NYU, the world of finance, wall street, like any organization, requires people to jump through a series of hoops. sure, its not like i've never done that before. so i did. take these classes, join these clubs, say these lines, go through these motions, network like this, don't act too interested, don't act too desperate. before i knew it, it was more than just some plain old pony tricks. it soon became a method of thinking, a way of life. i went in play-doh(tm), molded myself into a small cog, and came out a small piece, uniform with thousands of other pieces, ready to be placed into a big machine. soulless, unthinking, slave.

but i kept qualifying the molding process. its ok, i'll work for a few years and get out, no biggie.

then i was called to duty. the job description detailed all the battle action i will be engaging in, all the excitement and thrill of being on the front line. the financial landscape is constantly changing, always dynamic. be prepared to think quickly on your feet, solve challenging problems on the fly. no weak stomachs, it warned. this is what i believed i was born to do. and damn was i determined to do one hell of a good job.

welcome to cubicle life, i triumphantly told myself. this is it, i made it, i'm doing it. even if i'm failing miserably, i'm doing it. chasing the so-called dream, or was it the dream that they told me i should be chasing? it doesn't matter anymore.

rows and rows and columns and columns of cubicles. people silently tapping away at their keyboards. everyone connected to their computers, hands to the keyboards, eyes to the screens, minds to the computers. this is it, the white collar work place. just like every stereotype of an office that i have seen on TV or in the movies. i'm ready to get started, to get plugged into this giant machine we affectionately refer to as 'The Economy'. i am one impatient baby.

a cold voice refers me to my desk. Row 42, Column AB, like the grid of cubicles is an excel worksheet. on my desk i find two monitors. its like they knew i had ADD, or if i didn't have ADD, i soon will get ADD. i get settled in my black office chair, mess around with the seat height and swivel around in it, feeling the range i get on my chair, how far i can lean back while still being able to use my computer. i fill out some paper work and surf the internet. before i knew it, the work day was ending and people were leaving for home. what a fantastic job, a great first day.

but soon days blurred into weeks blurred into months. the internet was replaced by excel worksheets and microsoft outlook. any idle time for day dreaming was superseded by number crunching and formatting. my fingers became so intimately familiar with the hot keys of excel that when i am working full throttle, my keyboard sounds like one that belongs to a korean starcraft master. sometimes i would work late nights, motivated to work only by fear of failure from a supervisor. i felt like i was cramming for an exam. and day after day, week after week, this became my life. waking up in the morning to punch out numbers on a computer coming home and sleeping only to do the same thing the next morning. i have become a small cog in the big machine.

my life is a cubicle. not only are my testicles shackled to my seat, my thoughts are tethered and monitored by the Company. i can only think what is best for the Company, for Corporate America, for the Economy. in the big chess game between dueling forces that determine the direction of our society, mankind, i am a pawn. indispensable. forgettable. i was created to fight in a battle that i know nothing about.

but i do get paid. and i spend money. and i get paid. and i spend money. sometimes i would catch myself thinking, is there anything more to life than this? probably not. i didn't read it in any glossy brochures or anything.

they will probably find my dead body laying face down in a cubicle one day, with packaging peanuts scattered around, a few post it notes on my desk, excel silently humming away on my monitors. they will see the wounds on my fingers from banging out numbers a bit too intensely, working excel a bit too ferociously. they will find my eyes glazed and unfocused, figuring that my mind has rotted earlier, leaving only my physical body, with the hot keys ingrained from years of building models, left to continue to work. they will look for any signs of medical illness, any previous record of heart disease or high cholesterol or gout, and upon seeing a clean bill of health, write it off as another casualty. it happens, they will say. another sacrifice, albeit necessary, to maintain and preserve the Economy. and two hours into finding my body, they will reset the computers and clean the packaging peanuts, prepare the desk for a new pawn, young, eager, full of ambition, and unaware of his eventual demise.

and the Company will continue to recruit. NYU Stern will continue to tell aspiring young minds to forgo their engineering skills to begin a life full of excitement on the front lines of finance. that supporting the Economy is a good thing. that it is the only thing worth living for.

andy

joy of less

"The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied."
Pico Iyer

(full op ed here)

andy