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    gilbertkittensHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:35am

    The drugs?

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      RickeyHendersonForevergilbertkittens
      6/02/15 10:39am

      Ahhhh! I should have looked at your response. I KNEW I would be the first to say drugs, but nope, there was ole gilbertkittens again, just waiting to steal my first response thunder!!!

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      2Dollarzgilbertkittens
      6/02/15 10:42am

      And strippers

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    SyscrushHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:52am

    The average bonus is bullshit, as it’s grossly skewed by the assholes at the top giving themselves 8-figure bonuses. I’d like to see the median bonus. I’m not on Wall Street, but I am on Bay Street as a technology guy, and I see the vast majority of people on the trade floor working ridiculous hours for 5 figures.

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      GMOCSyscrush
      6/02/15 11:18am

      traders and investment bankers are two entirely different animals.

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      SyscrushGMOC
      6/02/15 11:41am

      Sorry, you are right. The article starts with the broad “Wall Street” and IMO it conflates the 2. You may know better, but my perception is that even the investment bankers I know follow a similar distribution where it’s a small # of people pulling huge money and a bunch of folks busting ass for under $300k/yr. I don’t think that it’s as easy to get into that $500k+/yr club as HamNo makes it appear - I am certain that the median is well below that.

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    someguywhoknowsnothingHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:53am

    I’m a second year analyst at a boutique I-Bank, work ~90 hours a week on average, go out 2-3 times a week, have met a lot of incredibly smart and charismatic people, and after my second bonus I’ll have the capital to start a cancer research foundation that will be named after my dad.

    When I think about the environment objectively I see that most douchebags are implemented through varying degrees of nepotism, while most others are just nice people who also happen to be fiercely competitive and smart. You can take this as bullshit but it’s the honest truth; none of your friends will likely call you out for saying all people with exclusive finance jobs are assholes, but every now and then it will give someone a bad impression of your judgement.

    Also this article is pretty low-effort and confusing. Unless you’re Matt Levine you shouldn’t be passing judgement on the validity of certain types of financial transactions, and the points you make about I-Banker’s being miserable come off as disingenuous since you clearly had a reason to make this hateful post.

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      wjd236someguywhoknowsnothing
      6/02/15 11:09am

      Thank you for voicing what i was thinking.

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      Splatworthysomeguywhoknowsnothing
      6/02/15 11:12am

      The reason is that it provokes people of your demographic to respond. It’s nice to have affluent readers and commenters. For some reason advertisers approve, if you know what I mean.

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    theUnBetrothedHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:39am

    Well I can definitely how seeing for a 22, 23yo just out of college, no graduate work whatsoever, starting in the 7 figures with an annual bonus at least as much, can be ‘enticing’ at least for several years.

    Plus the expense account, large contribution towards mortgage, etc.

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      HiMyNameIsJayAgaintheUnBetrothed
      6/02/15 10:41am

      6 figures.

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      theUnBetrothedHiMyNameIsJayAgain
      6/02/15 10:45am

      The 4 guys I know <25yo are all at 7 (seven) figures (i.e., well over a million$).

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    Who the hell knows anymoreHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:56am

    I know we’re all just doin this one for the lols, but that whole “just moving around money” thing they do is kinda, sorta a big deal, and while it’s weird, there are some people who get pretty excited about that. I will never understand this, as my eyes glaze over after about 5 words of a conversation about market liquidity.... sorry, I fell asleep just writing those two...

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      Hamilton NolanWho the hell knows anymore
      6/02/15 11:05am

      Yes, market liquidity is an aspect of a functional society—but no more so than, for example, a functional electric grid, or a functional water system, and yet the people who direct the flow of electricity or water do not make near the salaries that the people who direct the flow of money do. Why is that?

      (Because much of Wall Street pay is essentially a skim.)

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      ThePriceisWrongHamilton Nolan
      6/02/15 11:36am

      The day you make electricity workers and functional water suppliers work on commission is the day you can compare them. You’re talking about guys (who you claim make $175,000 a year out of college, which simply isn’t true unless you’re in the top 1-2% of earners at that age). Wall St is like sales. When people make money, you make money as a trader. When people don’t make money, you don’t make money. We can discuss bonuses and compensation of guys at the top level, but I can guarantee you some kid who is 23 years old is suffering when his clients aren’t making any money. Just because his boss isn’t doesn’t mean that everyone isn’t. That would be like saying since the CEO of a large corporation took a 3% raise last year, everyone got a 3% raise last year, which is likely not the case (I can attest to this from person experience).

      This leads into a broader conversation of executive level salary increases, etc., but it’s certainly not an accurate picture of what it’s like to be a junior associate at one of these firms. And we can also have the discussion about commission-based sales, but you open that up to a much broader spectrum of people when we do.

      Taking the average salary is likely heavily skewed by upper level management. It is far more beneficial to look at the salary distribution versus years of experience, or the median at a bare minimum. We can say that the average salary in a specific job title is $175,000, but how many of the workers are senior level people? How many are fresh out of college? What did the employment landscape there look like 10 years ago? These are all important questions to ask when looking at total compensation of a field.

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    BlergHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:49am

    The ethicist Peter Singer has talked about how some of his students are going off to wall street and living humbly so they can give more to charity. That would make it worthwhile.

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      Medieval KnievelBlerg
      6/02/15 11:59am

      Ha ha ha, Peter Singer is credulous!

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      BlergMedieval Knievel
      6/02/15 12:01pm

      Those students are doing coke off a stripper right now, I bet.

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    RogerWatersBassHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:40am

    Meanwhile, lawyers be like ... we work just as much! [looks at pay check... cries into his/her ramen, when he/she gets back home at 11pm on a Saturday]

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      Medieval KnievelRogerWatersBass
      6/02/15 11:14am

      They just don’t, though. I know young lawyers at the big firms think they work just as many hours as bulge-bracket bankers, but it’s not true. It’s superhuman how the young Wall Street guys work. Every single day, without exaggeration, there are multiple zombies walking around your floor who haven’t left the building in days. People fight over the nasty dorm-room couch in the analyst bullpen in an effort to get 20 minutes sleep while document processing turns the presentation yet again.

      I know. I’ve been both.

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      Yotsuba&TochanMedieval Knievel
      6/02/15 11:19am

      Depends on the firm. Some big firms require 2200 or 2300 billable hours, with bonuses at 2400 billables or some insane amount—which is crazy. Sane(er) big firms requiring 2000 or 2100 billables is definitely less. And Mid-sized and smaller firms is definitely a much better life-style.

      As an aside, I’m also an attorney, but I work in a niche field (foreign language specialist) where I have much more flexible hours—although I do have 100+ hour weeks a couple months out of the year, it’s not constant. 45 hour weeks barely feel like working after doing 7 straight weeks of 105-110 hours.

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    The Noble RenardHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:43am

    To some people, especially those who grew up without money, the pursuit of money can be all-consuming, a desire to avoid the pains of childhood and the pains of poverty.

    Of course, the people like that who end up working as investment bankers is small; probably less than 10% (an uneducated guess). But that mindset is absolutely something I saw among my friends who ended up in Big Law.

    Of course, there’s also the corollary, the person who grew up rich and could never even imagine a life where they weren’t rich, and will do anything possible to maintain that. I also saw those people.

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      BlergThe Noble Renard
      6/02/15 10:58am

      In a way, arguing that people shouldn’t be obsessed with money is an example of bourgeois class privilege. Which is why White grunge fans dressed in Flannelette and dirty jeans and hip-hop artists wore jewelry.

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      verapsThe Noble Renard
      6/02/15 12:10pm

      This is true—and first or second gen immigrants seem to have no concept of leisure time. My hair stylist is a young Chinese man who also owns the salon. I was surprised that he could fit me in at 8 pm on a Sunday evening, and remarked on it. Turns out he never takes time off—works 10 hours a day, 365 days a year. He wistfully said he’d like to celebrate on New Year’s Eve, but that he needed to get up the next day to open the shop.

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    kentuckienneHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:53am

    My brother-in-law is an investment banker. While he was climbing up the ranks, he reminded me of one of those fish that lives in caves and never sees the sun — he was sickly pale, almost to the point of translucency. He routinely worked until 2 and 3 a.m. and was back in the office by 8. He also developed heart palpitations. Now he’s higher in the food chain and has slightly better hours, plus an addiction to Ferragamo shoes. He definitely takes awesome vacations, but I don’t think they offset the ridiculous hours he works the rest of the year.

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      benjaminalloverkentuckienne
      6/02/15 11:14am

      A colleague of mine has a brother who works for Goldman. Apparently they are “super-tight” and yet they haven’t seen each other in 3 years due to the long hours in a foreign office. What’s the point of all the money if you lose your youth to a job?

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      JonnyBonesbenjaminallover
      6/02/15 11:44am

      A relative of mine worked at Goldman for a couple years. He would spend all day there, crash on a couch at his sister’s place a short cab ride away in the middle of the night, and then head right back at the crack of dawn. He hated it.

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    cuntybawsHamilton Nolan
    6/02/15 10:41am

    Your new “Why Would Anyone Work For...” series could be a long-running one, sad to say.

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      Medieval Knievelcuntybaws
      6/02/15 11:57am

      Spoiler alert: money.

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