Deaths Draw Attention to Wall Street’s Grueling Pace | Hacker News Reader

Deaths Draw Attention to Wall Street’s Grueling Pace

nytimes.com

123 pointsjackgavigan80 comments

My background is film production, which is an industry that I think has really tested the limits of how many hours a person can work without dying. If a film shoot could work their crew more hours, they would, but at a certain point your crew will die in car accidents on their way to and from set due to sleep deprivation. See a documentary called "Who Needs Sleep?" for more on that.

Thanks to unions in the film industry there are rules about how many hours a crew can work in a day without the production incurring very expensive overtime penalties. For example, once an actor is on set for 16 hours, they hit what is called "Golden Time" and they are paid their full day rate every hour. There's also a 12 hour turnaround for actors, meaning that if an actor is wrapped at 8pm, they can't be called to set until 8:00am the following day (there is a 10 hour turnaround time for crew).

Film shoots are extremely time-sensitive endeavors. You might only have rented a location for one day, so there is a lot of pressure to shoot everything you need for the movie at that location, no matter how far overtime the production must push their crew. This would quickly get out of control if overtime rules were not stringently enforced.

The result is that every day of a film production is scheduled down to the minute before the day even begins, ideally. Night crews and swing-shifts get scheduled, rather than working a crew for 24 hours straight, again ideally.

My point is that it is possible to do time-sensitive, high-pressure, complicated work without pushing people past their physical limits. It just requires tons of planning and scheduling. However the only way to get an employer to put resources into planning and scheduling is to make sure that there are incentives (or disincentives) for them to behave this way. There must be strict financial penalties that prevent employees at banks from working too many hours. A 29 year-old banker getting a $400,000 bonus is not going to tell his employer that he needs to leave the office by 7pm anymore than an aspiring Hollywood actress is going to tell her director that the crew must stop shooting because it is past her bedtime. In certain industries, where jobs are highly sought after and rewards are large, you cannot depend on workers to regulate themselves.

> You can’t really stand out because most of what you’re doing does not require original thinking. So the only way you can distinguish yourself is by sheer endurance.

Several years ago, when I was weighing junior roles in trading and banking, a private equity manager with whom I consulted advised: "nobody became a millionaire by being a grunt".

Hard work is important, but it shouldn't be your chief differentiator. On a broader level, I've always found firms that rely on over-working their junior staff to (a) have rotten pathways for internal advancement and (b) a sore bias towards throwing grunts, versus technology, at process problems.

Thank's for sharing this inside info. It's hard to imagine a better example to explain the importance of rest and sleep even if people are motived to keep on working.

> there is no evidence that the incidence of suicide by young professionals on Wall Street is higher than in any other industry.

Doesn't this undermine the premise of the article? The deaths are tragic, but if the suicide rate of Wall Street professionals is no higher than normal how can the suicides be tied to the "grueling pace" as opposed to whatever causes suicide in the general population?

For one thing, the people that work on Wall Street are highly educated, mostly Ivy League types (from the article). I guess the premise is that if you were smart/rich enough to get that, society expected you to succeed spectacularly, not jump to your death. i.e. the expectation is that the suicide rate be negligible.

Numeracy and journalism aren't exactly bossom buddies.

Junior doctors do similar hours, sleeping a couple of hours at the hospital when they can.

What is absurd is that the long hours juniors do in investment banking are terribly inefficient.

First because they spend them on tasks that could be automated or outsourced: compiling financials, formatting powerpoints (Microsoft shares a large part of responsability for their poor UI!).

Second because the more tired they become, the less efficient they are at what they do. It is often the case that they would probably get the same done quicker by calling it a day at 9pm and coming back the next day with a fresh mind. But peer pressure prevents that.

Third because even though they spend their time at the office they actually do not work continuously. Them staying late is more often than not because they were assigned something at 5pm with an unrealistic deadline. In this business managers usually disregard the implications of when in the day they give work or feedback. And I suspect it is often because they have been there, done that, as juniors, and have little sympathy for the juniors' time spent at the office. It's a kind of rite of passage.

Banker here. We actually have automated and outsourced quite a bit of the drudgery, although doing it within the framework of Excel and PowerPoint often requires some pretty strange contortions from a UI perspective.

I just finished the longest stint of work that I've had in my short career. Probably 80 hours for two weeks. I didn't really keep track.

I have mixed feelings. I got a lot done. The quality of work that happened around 8-10pm was pretty low, but it got done. I did no physical activity and my stress levels were through the roof, which led to some moments of intense mental anguish. On the other hand, I felt a great sense of accomplishment and knowing that I am capable of working that diligently on something is satisfying.

So I understand why bankers work these hours and even defend them. I also understand why someone might feel like killing themselves after working >80 hours for months or years on end.

I've done this too. I think it is dangerous, maybe even something that could become addictive. I know, the pressure to get the product out the door. If you truly have down time and can truly get away, maybe there is a way. But that is the trick, you may get trapped in that lifestyle and "just one more all nighter".

I have a friend who is a Market Maker on Wall St. He's very successful makes a lot of money, works very long, but he has a very low self esteem. He tells me "I don't know how to actually do anything of any use in the world." I don't really understand him but I think he ends up feeling like his life is worthless. At the end of the day he could be as rich as Midas but he hasn't figured out what life is worth even to himself.

Assuming your belly is full, I think if you're not curing cancer or something like that you'd better be doing something that makes you happy: the work itself has to be fun. Otherwise you could end up like this guy or my friend.

The funny thing is, when it boils down to it, many jobs in our society are superfluous... We survived without technology, with a less-developed finance sector, without cars and airplanes, yet here we are with entire sectors of the economy that probably aren't 'needed' for a happy life.

At least in finance you can get to a number where you can finally say 'fuck it', and go do what you really want to do...

I can't help it but comment on how much posts regarding work/life balance focus on optimizing for happiness, but rare is the article that mentions how important is finding meaning in one's work to leading a fulfilling life. I would argue, for example, that finding meaning as a grunt or even as a big fish in the financial sector is harder than say, being a doctor. It's much easier to work long hours as a doctor and feel content when you see that your work has direct impact.

All of this is obvious, but I rarely see it mentioned. We should optimize for meaning in our work, not happiness.

It's more then that.. it's about perception (how you spin things). For example, you could look at american doctors and say they mainly work on patients of self-inflicted diseases such as heart disease, obesity, etc. Then you could look at finance sector workers and see how they help people get jobs, loans and move the economy forward which leads to furthering humanity's progress and capabilities.

Yeah, you can get to the number. The problem is by that time your health will be wrecked, so you won't ever actually get to do what you want to do.

Long ago I traveled to Puerto Rico on business. One of the locals was a refugee from just such a Wall Street job. He had his first heart attack in his early 40s, and a decade later when I knew him it seemed as if all he needed was a loud noise to send him to his final reward. He had come back to PR to be with family, both because he needed help and because that's what you do when your mortality stares you in the face.

Doesn't seem worth it to me. When he was young he worked around the clock - he said some days the only sleep he'd get was the 20 minute cat nap on the toilet at work. When I knew him he had plenty of money but couldn't walk a quarter mile down the street without stopping to rest. What's the point?

>At least in finance you can get to a number where you can finally say 'fuck it', and go do what you really want to do...

I recently quit my job. I was working for a large investment bank. Many people talk about leaving to do what they really want to do, something interesting that they can be proud of.

Very, very few actually do it. Turns out no amount of money is ever 'enough'. Turns out adjusting your lifestyle from 400k$ to 100k$ is not so easy.

This golden cage phenomenon is well described here: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/can-buy-me-...

Reality warps in some really weird ways, the more you do this. You stop being able to interact with your friends that aren't doing it; you stop taking care of yourself in ways that don't feed maintenance your ability to keep grinding; you're always "on" so you never really relax enough to reflect or see things in other contexts or perspectives; in the back of your head you might know there's something wrong but you maybe can't put the pieces together, and since you've always been told you were so smart, that scares you, and you become defensive; at some point the idea that you've been on such a wrong track for so long becomes intolerable and rather than cut your losses you decide that "saner" approaches are really weakness.

That's at least part of what I experienced, in a similar life style. At some point I realized if I kept doing it, I'd end up dead or crazy in ways I didn't want, and found alternatives that let me live and explore. But quitting was one of the scariest things I've done in my life.

Greed is cruel. A lot of us here want to "make it big". Don't do this to yourself or to others on your journey. Behind every perverse way is a devil whispering in your ear, "its okay". Don't listen to that.

The tragedy is that this is unnecessary. If Wall Street compensation can support paying enormous compensation, it can support hiring enough people to do the work. As with medical residents' brutal schedules, it's tradition over rationality.

I've no direct experience of this, but this is my take as well. Can anyone explain why two people doing 50 hour weeks at half the salary wouldn't be better for everyone (the employees, their colleagues, the firms that employ them, their clients, society)?

I think it would be better for most people but coordination cost doesn't grow linearly. So if part of the job imply coordination or communication you will need more than doubling to have the same output.

Very much this. Also: knowledge production isn't a linear function of time.

"If it takes one mathematician 12 months of work to prove a theorem, how long would it take 12 mathematicians?" ... probably 13 months :p

That would be true if each problem were unique, as it is in mathematics. FTA:

> You can’t really stand out because most of what you’re doing does not require original thinking. So the only way you can distinguish yourself is by sheer endurance.

These three cases seem to be ill-linked in the correlation/causation department. One was a clear medical condition; another a suicide; and the third was linked to an event involved a relapse of substance abuse. Three deaths of this nature could easily occur in any industry with a presence in a major city like nY, sf, london, tokyo, hong kong, paris etc. How many creatives list similar CODs ? Heath ledger, amy winehouse, peaches geldof and many other creative types at varying levels of success. We can look high-risk activities and see near-suicidal behaviour in the extreme sports athletes (RIP dean potter and 250 others http://base-jumping.eu/base-jumping-fatality-list/). And similar medical related deaths and accidents occur in athletes even in standard sports (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/healt...).

Which is no apology for mis-management. Its just perhaps a larger picture issue than any single industry or particular niche. Glory and all that.

This is not a new development and certainly not exclusive to Wallstreet or the City or Amazon or magic circle. It is part of the aura of these places—belief that the endurance necessary for this kind of over work isn't present outside and that they are/will be better for overcoming this ordeal— that this makes them different from others this is part of the exclusiveness of these places along with the pay.

But there are many people working equally harder and sometimes even [harder].

Here is another story from less prestigious cousins of WallSt. and magic circle law firms: Big 4 auditors! A PwC associate overworked to [18 hours a day, 120 a week].

[harder] : http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/woman-n...

[18 hours a day, 120 a week] :

1. http://offbeatchina.com/25-year-old-auditor-at-pwc-shanghai-...

2. http://goingconcern.com/2011/4/did-a-pwc-auditor-work-hersel...

My rule is that no job is worth dying for. If the expectations are unreasonable, quit.

My rule is that unless yours or a loved one's basic well-being is at stake (e.g. you have family to support and no savings), you should not be putting up with a job that's causing you physical or psychological distress. Obviously situations can be complicated, but you should aim for that most of the time.

A lot of good talent is wasted on Wall Street. Fortunately, most (who don't care for the lifestyle/can't hack it) get wise and leave. The hard thing is knowing when to exit.

> A lot of good talent is wasted on Wall Street.

Why do you say that? Finance funds most of society's ventures, the 'system' would look much different without the capital and services that the banking sector provides...

What should we put as the price tag of 'increased liquidity,' just one of a few of the mantras that the middlemen of finance use to justify themselves?

http://www.tcf.org/blog/detail/graph-how-the-financial-secto...

Liquidity is only tangentially related to what the financial sector does.

It's finance that funds ventures. Assesses risk. Decides what ventures will have good payoffs. Its' an incredibly important sector of the economy.

Tell me. Take a look at the services provided here and tell me which ones are "bad" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_services

People that say we shouldn't like the financial sector are people that don't understand finance.

Liquidity actually means that the middle men get less..

I would like to say that talent is not wasted on social network and user tracking websites.

I knew someone doing corporate accounting who left at 6 in the morning for work, and almost always came home after midnight. 7 days a week (because who needs weekends, right?). Since the work cycled quarterly trying to get "the numbers", the only thing that resembled a break was the end of a quarter; and even then, this pathetic "break" was like a single day because they felt they had to get started on the next quarter.

He actually told me that divorces were fairly common among his co-workers. I wonder why.

He appeared to be paid well but (as others have noted) certainly not nearly enough when you divide a seemingly-impressive salary into an hourly rate.

And frankly I think peer pressure was a big problem. All throughout the chain, it's like they're all too afraid to be the first to say "wtf is this?" and propose a sane work week.

If I extrapolate this type of job to the number of large companies out there, I am astounded by the number of people whose lives are essentially ruined by quarter-to-quarter. It's garbage. Decades ago companies did not seem so pressured to show results each quarter or come up with insane ways to avoid taxes; they just pursued a reasonable profit.

I was on Wall Street in the 1980s. Things weren't that bad yet. I was the only stock analyst in a department of ~50 who routinely pulled all-nighters, which was one of many reasons I was considered odd. There was only one guy who definitely flamed out on cocaine, and only a few others of whom debilitating substance abuse could even be reasonably suspected.

And I'm pretty sure that investment banking wasn't all that much worse.

Many people work long grueling shifts in stressful positions for years and don't see the need to binge on alcohol and cocaine to manage. I feel sorry for anyone that dies, but I see this as a situation where this person suffers from symptoms of a weak character and/or mental issues.

Hard work is important and it is the only effective and reliable way to be successful. This does not mean all nighters or alcohol-cocaine binges should be the norm, it must be the rare exception.

End of the day it's-just-not-worth-it over everything else.

If you think it is the norm or encourage such behavior, you're selfish, you're what is wrong with the society.

Meh.

I can't imagine the mindset that would lead someone to sacrifice their entire existence on the pyre of working; what's the point of making big cash if you've got no time or people to enjoy it with? I think that these kind of aberrant/nauseating/maladapted pathological behaviors (working insane hours, money addiction) show a bewildering lack of wisdom that is intentionally selected for among the "most competitive" firms. They can't make a robot or computer program that completely replaces these people's ability to convert life into money, yet a robot is exactly what they need, and so they find folks who are willing to be that robot and dehumanize themselves.

There's always a lot of hubbub regarding Ivy league types landing in Goldman-esque shops then dying of overwork etc, and I think it's telling. Jumping through the hoops despite increasingly unreasonable demands is stereotypical behavior from these people, and it's very much to their detriment, as well as ours. Spinelessness has consequences. These are the people that society views as the elite, yet they're childish in their inability to reality-check the limits of their own lives, which results in poor mental health and suicide or drug abuse.

I can't muster empathy here. They worked hard for their chance to play brutal games, and then got brutalized as a result.

Absolutely on point.

What always amazes me about these "super-lemmings" is that they are so unaware that they are being thoroughly exploited. They don't understand basic economics, that if you have zero leisure time, all of your earnings are for nothing.

I'm sure their goals are some variation of: "I'll work 120 hour weeks for 5 years straight to make a seven figure nest egg, then retire off the interest forever."

This single variable optimization is very childish for somebody supposedly schooled in economics. Very few human decisions are based on a single variable, as we are fragile creatures with a large number of physical, emotional and mental needs that need to be satisfied on a daily basis.

Let this be a warning to all the SV hopefuls: don't be a lemming. Don't sacrifice rationality for idealism. There are severe consequences.

'Meh' this comment sequence. If I overreact, it's because these were at the top of comment thread when I caught the post, and (at the risk going Reddit on HN) this is pure Reddit ad hominem BS. Self-proclaimed übermenschen defy gravity in their own minds. Great. Have at it.

Edit: Sorry, should have said 'self-imagined' rather than 'self-proclaimed.' Regardless, login in 20 years and let me know how it's worked out.

Even with your edit, I'm still confused as to what point you're trying to make. You seem to be calling out the parent comments on behavior, but your ending sentence makes it seem like you agree. The kicker is that you appear to do both in a fairly negative way, so proponents of either side of the argument might find something to disagree with in both tone and message, which is probably netting you some down votes.

You're right. I was trying to moderate my own overreaction. Tl;dr: Stupid greedy bitches! No, you're a stupid bitch, can't wait to see your unemployment app--because arrogant heartless bastards tend to do well, so what happened?

But I didn't want the down votes. So I didn't go there. I need to stay off HN on the weekends.

Luv ya!

For the most part the financial industry doesn't give its people much of a choice. Finance is much more hierarchical than tech. You either work 120 hour weeks for 5 years straight and make it up to the VP/Director level or you stay as an analyst/associate (or burn out).

>don't be a lemming. Don't sacrifice rationality for idealism. There are severe consequences.

this should be wrapped in <h1> and displayed on every page on YC.

like: DISCLAIMER: MAY BE FATAL TO STARTUP FOUNDERS WHEN FORGETTING TO BE A HUMAN.

Wow, you can't even 'muster empathy' for people like this? I can understand how you wouldn't want to work these hours, but when the article is detailing someone who dies and your first comment is 'Meh.', that's absolutely abhorrent to me.

Perhaps you are mistaking empathy for sympathy? I too cannot empathize with the people they are describing. Not only would I not let it get to that point, I could not. My personality is such that when overworked and over-stressed I naturally screw-off for a while to release stress. It doesn't always help my deadlines (which is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes you just need to say "I need more time"), but it does keep me from getting overworked for the most part.

So, I feel bad for these people (I sympathize), but I don't understand them (I don't empathize).

Not the OP but I struggle to sympathize with someone who takes that kind of job. I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power.

A friend of mine just turned down an insanely high paying Wall Street job. She told me that there was no way they could pay her that kind of salary without taking every second of her existence and every joule of her energy. A couple of week ago she went to London for less than half that salary (but still a crazy high salary considering how young she is).

Only a fool would think that a WS job at twice the salary of a top London law firm did not come with ridiculous sacrifices.

You can't think of any other motivation besides greed or addiction to power?

Consider 1st generation college graduates from immigrant families who have the chance to singlehandedly lift their families out of poverty by accepting these jobs. That's not greed.

This in all likelihood describes 1%of the 1%. Just adding in a little perspective.

> This in all likelihood describes 1%of the 1%. Just adding in a little perspective.

It's way more than 1% of the young people slaving away in finance. Especially as finance has gotten less racist, a lot of high-achieving immigrant students go into it under pressure from their family.

Yes, but just because someone is an immigrant doesn't mean their motivation for working those jobs is to lift their family up. Immigrants can be selfish too. And they, too, can simply get addicted to money and power.

Sure, but my original point is that greed/power are not the only reason to take these finance jobs.

Whether you sympathize or not, saying "meh" to someone's death is a slippery slope with psychopathy at the bottom.

> Whether you sympathize or not, saying "meh" to someone's death is a slippery slope with psychopathy at the bottom.

You literally made a "slippery slope argument". You might not be aware of it, but this is a logical fallacy [1]. Psychopathy is not the end result of lacking empathy to a certain person's death.

[1] http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html

So... does anyone else finds it funny that on that list, (2) is true and (1) is getting close?

Heh, yes, I noticed that. That's a good example for invalid reasoning leading to a correct conclusion.

> I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power.

A lot of people have been conditioned to achieve. In my foolish youth I spent a few years doing tech for financial traders and a number of my colleagues were former Olympic athletes. It was natural for them to jump into another demanding and competitive field.

Other people I worked with were indeed addicts of various sorts. Finance is great for workaholics, adrenaline junkies, and thoroughly broken people. The intensity and the pace leave you little time or energy to think about the things inside you that you're dodging. And the money lets you paper over the holes in your life.

I agree it's a struggle to find compassion for people pulling down a lot of money. But I think it's worth the struggle. If there were fewer fucked up people in the world, we'd have a smaller, saner financial industry.

> I agree it's a struggle to find compassion for people pulling down a lot of money. But I think it's worth the struggle. If there were fewer fucked up people in the world, we'd have a smaller, saner financial industry.

I totally agree. Especially since "fucked-up-ness" (e.g. alienation and narcissism/fleas) can be so infectious; abuse does breed abuse. Basically, the inability to have a fulfilling life without destroying self and/or others, and to even relate, think or talk about anything without some kind of stilted, shrill "corset" of euphemisms and rationalizations. I think it's all a matter of degree, too, it's not like "they" are fundamentally different from anyone else.

> [..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did.

> I don't think, that if we are really in touch with the inner reality of ourselves, that there is any crime, or perhaps any virtue, which we cannot discover in ourselves. We shut ourselves [off] from the awareness of our inner reality, we project the evil to our opponents and enemies, and believe that the good is in ourselves; indidivually, nationally, and group-wise in general.

> But if you can really see that every one of us, carries all of humanity, the good and the evil, within himself, then indeed is very hard to be a fanatic, then indeed it's very hard to be a judge, then indeed would follow, a deep understanding, if not love, of your fellow man. Which is part of being truly a person.

-- Erich Fromm, lecture called "The Automaton Citizen"

I do think self-defense is also important, but there is something to be said for calm and non-hateful self-defence... being firm and focused doesn't mean you can't still have compassion with whom you're disarming. But by the same token: when we react differently, when we get angry, whether righteously or self-righteously, that may not be ideal, but it's also something to have compassion with, surely.

There is a window of opportunity; if what people turning themselves and others into robots, as age-old as that may be, doesn't get nipped in the bud before we can "grow" whatever robots we want orders of magnitude more cheaply than we are growing humans, then life on this planet will become infinitely more poor. When nobody gets fucking mad over this stuff anymore, it will be so much worse. I'm not saying getting mad is constructive, but it's understandable and secondary in the big scheme of things. Worker's rights weren't won for by people making polite suggestions, neither will be any future worth a thing. Apart from the people who have a change of heart or collapse, there are a lot who don't, and they play for keeps, while the people that die every few seconds don't even get to complain. It's not as if any of this happens in a vacuum.

> I can't think up any other motivation other than greed or addiction to money/power.

Here's some possibilities:

-The desire to please others?

-Not knowing what else to do (Often the jobs are filled by kids who only know how to jump through hoops that others have set up for them)

-The hope that it's only going to be a few yers of grinding?

How about financial security/early retirement? Many people take jobs like this for 5-10 years, then quit with a little bit of security and freedom to do what they want. It's really not unlike what PG has advocated before for starting your own company.

I'm glad that your friend made that call, and I'm definitely not in the wall street camp, but I can see reasons for working there.

You can think this through a few ways. One is that they see finance jobs as desirable jobs, focus their whole lives up to that point on getting the job, get it - and find it's horrible. What do you do then? Do you go back to all the people who were really proud at your achievements and tell them you're a failure?

Another is that they really do think it gets better. If they can just make it through the first four or five years, they can go from 80 to 50 hours, and then if they get to MD, they can get down to 40-50. In the meantime, they're making great money, they can enjoy what exists of their personal lives, if they just get past that first couple years.

Characterizing these folks as "spineless" is perhaps accurate for some, but in the end, reductionist. A better conversation to have would be to ask:

- Are the same number (proportionally) of people committing suicide in finance today the same as 15 years ago?

- If not, why today? What's different about today?

- What's to be done about it?

>One is that they see finance jobs as desirable jobs, focus their whole lives up to that point on getting the job, get it - and find it's horrible. What do you do then? Do you go back to all the people who were really proud at your achievements and tell them you're a failure?

Is it a surprise to those on that career path? I work with people applying to law school, and it's widely known that major firm jobs demand an incredible amount of your time.

I think people might, mistakenly, expect "I can handle it, I like a challenge", but the gist of what a job at biglaw requires is pretty well known.

I'd be surprised if finance is different.

I agree spineless isn't the word, though. Motivations for entering that type of job are simply very different from what motivates people who wouldn't even consider it. I can't say exactly what it is, because I'm very far from that type. But the people I know on that path (in law) certainly are quite able to stand up for themselves. They're very confident, capable people.

As someone who knows many who went into this field, some who burned out and some who didn't, it's one thing to describe the challenge of 100 hour weeks, and another to live it.

Biglaw is similar, but the gulf from 80 hours to 100 hours is very large.

I meant to imply that, but I guess I wasn't clear enough.

I hadn't realized 100 hours was the norm though. That is a significant increase over 80.

> get it - and find it's horrible. What do you do then?

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

Except, here's a situation that doubles up the tragedy.

You start off your youth, determined that the lack of money is what's stopping you from doing things that you really care about - things you would do in leisure. Pursuits of pleasure - art, music, altruism, atavistic quests (become a farmer?) and even hedonism.

But the sacrifice at the altar isn't entirely possible for everyone - the process demands that you survive a psychosis of sleeplessness, mixed with a caffeine dehydration, in an air-conditioned room, filled with fluorescent light with no hint of a dawn.

And then there's the superficial solidarity of everyone around you surviving this, without even a hint of complaints (furiously "ducking" as they call it).

Breaking out of it demands failure. And failure is hard to swallow for the best of the best, who are hit the hardest. Not having dealt with failure for 20 years makes it even harder to face up to failure & quit.

Attracting the brightest into the fold will naturally push up the numbers of those who'd rather die than fail.

> One is that they see finance jobs as desirable jobs, focus their whole lives up to that point on getting the job, get it - and find it's horrible. What do you do then? Do you go back to all the people who were really proud at your achievements and tell them you're a failure?

One would hope that people in finance would understand the concept of sunk costs. Today is always the first day of the rest of your life. It's better to fail fast than to fail later, because you can get back to success and happiness faster.

Spineless is the word.

This is all about the psychology of pride and envy. You go to Princeton, buy into the whole mindset and at the end of the day, when you figure it out, pride and greed prevent you from making a decision in your interest.

There's a reason why those things were categorized as Cardinal sins in the old days.

Double meh.

I think you're pretty much on point, until your last paragraph, which seems pretty childish itself if you ask me.

Lots of people make all sorts of bad choices, and yes, sometimes they result in terrible outcomes. It's important to analyze the choices of others (which you have done, fairly well) to learn from them but it's also always important to muster empathy regardless of whatever path they have taken.

Choose not to do so and you may find yourself blinded by the allure of logical oversimplification as you walk a path down towards some pretty maladaptive behaviors yourself.

They are making big cash FOR those above them. The attitude of those above is "fuck the slaves"- even if these "slaves" make far more than the average American...

So these firms don't care.

Wall Street is cancer.

I can't escape the odour of sour grapes in discussions like these, where people who could have gone into finance reassure themselves and each other that they made the right decision to take a less lucrative path through life.

Naturally I agree.

The question is better framed thus: who has taken the more lucrative path in living their life? Who has found burgeoning vitality rather than pecuniary richness? Who has traded what is priceless for what can be used to pay other prices?

"Better framed" in the sense "tells you what you want to hear"?

"focuses on actually important things rather than mere money"

If you disagree with something in that comment, argue against it. Just implying baseless things about the poster instead, much less talking about "discussions like these" doesn't have the effect you may be seeking to convey.

> I can't imagine the mindset that would lead someone to sacrifice their entire existence on the pyre of working; what's the point of making big cash if you've got no time or people to enjoy it with?

For most people who do it, it's a few-year long stint that will leave them with a chunk of money in the bank, a top business school admission, and a resume line-item that will parlay into a nice corporate finance or management gig. And if you're good at the job, working at a top bank or consulting firm is still the most direct route into the C-suite at an established company.

These people don't make an active choice to give their life to the company/firm. It's a series of small decisions that add up to a huge sacrifice. It's like boiling a frog. Nobody ever says when you sign up, oh, you'll have to skip Easter Dinner because you can't afford two hours off that week.

The trick is to create a culture where it is not only normal, but taken for granted, that you work all the time. They work with a bunch of other smart, capable people. They can't all be wrong can they? (yes, but it's easy to see why they can't see it).

So the mechanism of the slave driving isn't just someone sitting there telling you--work 100 hours a week or you are fired. It's by assigning you almost unlimited work and having a competitive environment where you look bad if you can't complete it.

So these people become their own slave drivers. They stay at work late without having to be asked. They make the choice themselves. It's a sick culture, but it makes their stockholders money. You actually feel bad when taking time off because you feel like you are falling behind.

Part of it is definitely the striver culture that elite education often encourages. You are supported to give full intensity and take any abuse to succeed.

However, I wouldn't write off all people like this off as sheep. I bet you'd be very surprised how you react under similar pressures. And certainly some tech companies employ similar tactics and have similar cultures of encouraging people to give 100% effort.

Another big factor in these sorts of jobs is that it's view as a temporary hardship. You do a stint and exit into the "good jobs" that aren't this insane. That causes people to try to tough it out. And they end up breaking before they bend.

This sentiment is shared by many displaced blue collar workers in SV and NYC. They see finance and big tech taking jobs and ruining the economy. In the bubble, status driven workers push themselves hard until completely burned out and jaded they are stuck in a depressing cycle. On the otherside of the spectrum, I find myself markedly depressed at having no legitimate career or contributions. One can only hope to find something fulfilling and find balance.

In some ways these people don't begin this way it don't imagine becoming what they do become and what they become is a product of the organizations they work for themselves. That is, outside of working for these organizations, these people would likely behave differently, so it's not something you can lay at their feet entirely.

Live by greed, die by greed.

commenting on this quote from the article: "‘I’m 29. This is what you do when you’re 29"

I don't know what the fuck is it with this wall street culture. I find SV culture banal and disgusting but no where close to the shit show that is the wall street glamorized by movies and tv shows.

I would've done the same and I have done the same when I was 25. Working like crazy. You realize one day, this is bullshit. Everyone in this shitty place is fucking bullshit. A check at the end of the fucking month that translates into a measely minimum wage if you count the long hours and the office male bravado bullshit. High school never ends.

It's only after I was chewed and spit out, I realized, no amount of glamor or prestige is worth chasing if there's no chance at MY happiness and MY health.

This make it till you are 30 mentality bullshit has got to go. The anxiety it gives a person in early to mid 20s to feel like you need to keep moving to feel like you are moving closer to success.

Lot of young men like ourselves are conditioned to believe that giving up a decade of our youth to live like kings and gods the rest of our lives is a pretty seductive thought, no matter how unlikely the chances, society almost expects young men to behave and perform like robots, showing no emotion, just take it and bring home the bacon.

These days, I'm a bit older and beginning to think, good things, like all other things, take time. This kamikaze rags to riches type of mentality we see in movies, doesn't seem to work very well (you burn out quickly).

This quote from Frank Lopez in Scarface rings true here.

"Hey, Tony. Remember when I told you when you first started working for me, the guys that last in this business, are the guys who fly straight. Low-key, quiet. But the guys who want it all, chicas, champagne, flash... they don't last. "

Don't think I want to be part of any work culture where shitty cocaine mixed in some shithole in colombia and commiting adultery with overpriced hookers with plastic boobs .

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