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Yes, they are called "Insecure overachievers". They are the bread and butter of investment banks, management consulting firms, big law firms, etc.

They are also the reason that partnerships still thrive. A couple of years ago I was talking with this (big law) partner at a dinner, and we came in on the topic around partnership - and he just said it straight: The competition / rat race towards partnership is 100% skewed to the firms advantage. They get dozens of highly motivated, highly competent professionals competing against each others to prove their worth. They'll be on call 24/7/365 to show that they're worthy of partnership. Even if they become partners, most won't be rainmakers - and many would have made the same amount of money if they struck out on their own, opening a small boutique firm.

Prestige is a powerful motivator.

> "Even if they become partners, most won't be rainmakers - and many would have made the same amount of money if they struck out on their own, opening a small boutique firm."

And the other dirty secret is: you'll still be on call 24/7/365, sleep on the couch in your office, and not know your family, even after you make partner.

The rat race/grind doesn't stop in Big Law. You grind to be considered for partner, and you think maybe once you get there you get to boss around a bunch of associates and take a breather. But no, that's not how it works.

You'll be paid 7-figures (maybe, if you're a book partner and not a work partner) but you'll still be just as miserable and overworked as your past associate self.

Having seen the industry up close I now advise people to run as far away as you can in the opposite direction if you're ever tempted by a big law legal career. It is nearly-exclusively the home of absolutely broken people who'll be remembered for keeling over in the break room after pulling the tenth all-nighter in a row.

I didn’t know that’s what we are called, but now that I see it in words, it sounds very accurate. There is a class issue, me being middle class second generation at play. With no guarantees of financial security from home but expectations of such, there is an insecure element at play. The overachievers is a bit optimistic, though. I’ve been in almost all the domains you mentioned and I would call it overtriers. I would not think overall statistically people would be making more, and if it is the same, then why is the model a bad proposition? My experience is, with partnerships, if you are not on a fast moving track in your first 5 years, then it’s time to move on. Industry is a nice place to be and there is a depth you get when directly employed that you don’t when you distance your objectives from that of your direct interactions.

> Prestige is a powerful motivator.

I know this to be true because I've seen so many people given BS titles instead of raises and be happy about it as if they got something of real value.

But I don't understand it at all. Apparently, I lack the "prestige" gene.

It's not really prestige, so much as it is the perception of security. Many people are driven by fear and thus motivated by security. You can uncover this exceptionally well with enneagram personality tests. A nice new title would give a person that values it the belief that they are less expendable.

that and stack ranking. "dominant male" is hardwired.

My favorite title bump is “Head of X”.

Because rarely the person is ever the actual head.

Declaring someone "head of X" is hedging your bet. If X goes well, then you had the foresight and leadership to expand X. If X fails, then you have a scapegoat picked out.

It also is not a formal executive title like manager, director, officer, VP etc.

In finance, VP is not a “formal” executive title, it is just what they give to 24 to 26 year olds.

In retail/hospitality/many other customer facing positions, manager is also just someone who gets paid a salary in exchange for being on call and working 60+ hour weeks while shortstaffed.

I see this sort of prestige marker as useful for future job searches.

Absolutely. It's part of credentials, like a diploma. Not that it's truly needed but it expands options and can help get much better pay. Even if it does not guarantee that and some people can achieve even better financial success without it, still.

It's important though if you don't want to stay at the current company forever. With the right title it's much easier to get a well paying job. Otherwise you'll have to convince future employers why you didn't have that title despite your qualifications and work.

I call this "resume engineering". Some years ago, I decided to pass on a very impressive position at one of the then-hottest tech unicorns. I kinda liked the people, thought the tech was cool, but didn't see any way for the company to succeed.

As I thought, that company died, firing 100s of folks before the end.

It's been a few years, but a former colleague who took that job, managed to land an impressive title at my previous employer, above my level at the time... I have since left that company (unrelated), moved to a startup, and couldn't be happier.

My opinion is that titles don't matter. At all.

Compensation does matter, but you have to also value your happiness and factor that as well.

titles certainly matter and some fields have very specific definitions as to roles and levels of responsibility. medical workers come to mind.

I have never once had a potential employer express any sort of interest in job titles. They want to know what you did in your job, how much responsibility you had, that sort of thing, and they know that job titles don't tell you that.

Well, you can ask yourself what is "real value". In fact, more likely than not, it's just some imaginary stuff you ascribe value to, just like "prestige".

Real value is something that can pay your bills :)

Sometimes prestige does it, too, e.g. when you're hired to a better position on a next job, due to your prestigious title, a part in a famous project, etc.

Some people have enough money to meet their needs, and value prestige higher.

Others may overvalue prestige.

Or maybe there are hidden benefits to it that are hard to buy (social status).

I refer to it as being "immune to prestige"

That sounds like the "elite overproduction" which is commonly held to be one of the two factors increasing likelihood of a revolution (the other being popular immiseration).

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societa...

As much as I like the idea of PE scum putting their own necks into the guillotines, though, I'm skeptical of whether this theory really works.

I think that’s a symptom not the disease. Society tends to have a lag between needs changing and the adjustment happening.

Pre-revolutionary France didn’t have too many petit nobles because they were dumb — those folks were a legacy of a bygone era. Today technology is rendering while swaths of products, business and industry irrelevant.

Populist movements at their core are driven by fear. What are they afraid of? They know that what do they and where they live is redundant. We won’t see change until there’s a calamity.

> many would have made the same amount of money if they struck out on their own, opening a small boutique firm

Surely this it the same in tech. Most employees of FAANG companies could do something in a small company but the big company is just more prestigious and less risky. Every small business is like this now, doctors offices, restaurants, stores are all chains.

> Most employees of FAANG companies could do something in a small company but the big company is just more prestigious and less risky

It's the opposite.

At a FAANG they won't have to be on-call 24x7x365 and will get great salary and publicly tradable stock but at a small startup they will have to be on call 24x7x365 for "ESOPS" that is so skewed in the favour of the startup and the founders and VCs that they get the double whammy of slaving at much lower salary where they have the ESOP bone in front of them dangling from a thin thread.

I mean it can't get more ridiculous than this that you have to pay and then pay taxes for something you can't do jackshit with it, and if you get fired you have the "opportunity" to pay a company that just fired you and pay taxes again on something that's not even paper money and that too within few weeks to few months.

Big companies also pay in RSUs which immediately convert to real money.

Most of the time, startup equity is funny money. Especially for the rank and file.

Tech is winner takes all. It's very hard to make FAANG salary level income with a couple of clients.

FWIW, there's a study that looked at patent filings and paper publications for inventors in small vs. large companies.

It seems that as a whole, when people choose the Big-X route, they tend to make fewer inventions and publish fewer papers and their inventions and papers get cited less.

So, in theory, by going to work in Big-Tech, you're choosing greater comfort and prestige, while reducing your overall impact on the world, while the startup route holds much more expected impact, but a much higher likelihood of reduced financial comfort.

There's a part of me that thinks that nations that encourage hoarding talent would be less successful than those that encourage innovation, and therefore, I wonder if we need some sort of innovation grant (i.e.: for every successful patent application/company registration/etc. that is NOT fraudulent, the submitter gets 24 months of financial support at the median income level, so they can chase that dream)

There’s a book called “Excellent Sheep” that explores this idea as well. It’s been a while since I read it but roughly the premise was that all these “prestigious” organisations (they focused more on McKinsey et al) are another, maybe final, stage on a long ladder of structured excellence. AP/Extracurricular -> Ivy League College -> Consulting (or PE/IB) -> MBA -> ?

The path is well defined and optimises for essentially racehorses. The path is defined at each step, you bring the sweat and hours. Hope to make it through the filter to the next level.

The book ends with the question of what to do after the last rung of the ladder? How do deal with the existential crisis? To be on the ladder is to adopt an external value system. How to find yourself now? Liberate yourself from the golden handcuffs?

Interesting read

The professor who wrote that book, interestingly, ended up being denied tenure and was subsequently unable to get another academic job despite years of trying. Here's a recent podcast with him: https://www.persuasion.community/p/deresiewicz

It may not be the best thing in the world to be an "excellent sheep," but perhaps it's better than being a lone ram.

If you reject the shepherd, you have to be prepared for the brutal life of a mountain goat.

He was denied tenure before writing the book. So I guess if you refuse the shepherd dog, be prepared to face wild dog predation.

Even if you were a mountain goat, where would you go? Other people already own all the mountains.

This is spot on, but its missing a few important aspects:

Banking used to be a boring, low paying profession. PE was basically non-existent. The whole of banking and Private Equity fire machine has been fed by 2 factors that were absent ~50 years ago:

1) ultralow interest rates for extended periods of time 2) de-risking of hubris via bailouts (most recent case: SVB). 3) Regulation creep. If you look at the industries where PEs are investing heavily, its not where competition is fiercest, but instead they look for captive markets, particularly those with licensing requirements (Like healthcare). Its easier to buy into a company when competition is not likely to show up organically next door.

If you take that secret sauce off the dish, you can't quite cook the stuff that we have going on today.

A friend of mine is VP (not partner), and he seems to spend most of his time on deals. Market research, building financial models for a potential LBO, or for the sale of a portfolio company.

From what I understand, the on-the-ground management work after acquisition is outsourced to specialized executives with whom the firm has a relationship. They can bring expertise in a specific industry, and the deal structure pays them with large performance incentives.

> he seems to spend most of his time on deals

Transactional staff are typically a minority of PE branded employees. There is a stable of executives to pick from. But underneath them, operational staff (who may also be drawn from transactional) who aren’t in on the upside typically come via the fund. They will work in a fund office, have fund swag, but work on operational reporting, portfolio surveillance, refinancing and cap structure management, et cetera.

I had just such an engineering manager once confide to me that it was, for him, a comfy deal at his PE owned company. (n=1)

Prestige depends on the audience. People in Silicon Valley found startups because it's cool, even when their interests are better served at "boring" big companies.

It is an interesting theory, but it is not how it works.

Private Equity partners become board members of the squired companies, some time CEOs, but they don't manage day to day activities of the squired companies.

You can check a company like Francisco Partners which one of the biggest PE firms now. They have another company called Francisco Partners Consulting which helps with the management. The partners are too specialized to become middle managers in the squired companies.

Nobody argued the partners are managing. They’re the ones pulling the arbitrage.

too complex. world is simple.

boom-bust cycles enable capital to buy everything in the bust period. every thing.

legal entities keep shifting to join news tax avoidance tricks. it's not a static game.

> boom-bust cycles enable capital to buy everything in the bust period.

Out of curiosity, what happens to the busted capital in this toy model?

Often it gets bought and consolidated into a bigger entity. In the 80s and 90s it would be shipped to Mexico, Costa Rica or (in later years) China where it was put to use operated by a much cheaper workforce.

The capital in monetary terms is destroyed, it's then either bought out by surviving capital and concentrated in actual terms, or destroyed. In either case, the relative concentration of capital increases.

There’s an intense expectation placed on these folks. If dad was a rockstar banker dude, junior is expected to be on a path of similar prestige.

Banking used to be populated with lots of jobs that require compliance and attention to rules, but not necessarily intelligence. Success was defined as being one of the 200 VPs at a regional bank and chilling at the club.

PE fund managers and associates aren't on the ground managing factories. Very, very far from it.

> fund managers and associates aren't on the ground managing factories

Not on the ground. But providing that service from away. Most commonly, the CFO’s “staff” will be associates. They build the same models and doll up the same decks. Same for communicating portfolio health to LPs. That’s a reporting function.

The banality of evil.

_________ was great. Everyone–from liberal arts to engineering majors–could putz around for years in a pre-defined and prestigious path with moderately above-market pay and the potential to become rich. (Most don't.) It was also a field that could absorb a lot of grunt work, because most of what these folks did was _________ templates.

AdLibs is fun. How about: Developing and React.