Johnathan Knee channels Rilke in admonishing young professionals to think twice about banking. Apparently, Knee thinks the young finance professionals are a shallow, thoughtless bunch, content to drift through the world, driven to and fro only by the winds stirred up by parental accomplishment wake-turbulence, unable to direct even a fraction of the introspective energy required to see past what is effectively a simple, single-line, plotted course mapped out more by peer pressure and lack of true vision than any kind of real drive.
He paints the neo-financier class as too disaffected to even rise to the level of fickle. Too dull to exhibit real independence. Too competitive to wonder about self. Too lost to find the elusive goal of deep, self-fulfillment, at least of the sort required to bring even a modicum of contentment to existence.
I suppose Knee also expects the neo-financiers are too focused on money to pull very hard on the rudder. He doesn’t speak these words, but the undercurrents are clear enough. That word “money” makes not a single appearance in his piece suggests he thinks it important to deemphasize it to the neo-financiers, even only if implicitly. This is, of course, a thinly veiled insult to his target audience, like the mother who manipulates the six year old with reverse psychology.
Though it all he exhibits that condescending, caregiver tone that exposes his attitude for what it really is, exactly paternal contempt neo-financiers fled to the open arms of finance to escape in the first place.
In all, his piece is a stinging indictment of neo-financiers, cutting edges dulled only by the background against which it is told: massive layoffs. He draws a cruel and mocking picture.
And every word of it is right on the money.
Must I Bank? [WSJ]
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Most bankers I know are fairly dull people with little to no perspective or sense of loyalty to friends, clients or even themselves.
Mostly they are boring, self-absorbed people
@8:20, that is true for most people working on Wall-Street. They either become like that or don’t survive on the street.
ONOH, when philosophy enters wall-street job market then we should assume we are fucked.
The guy has a book to sell. Money, money, money.
and his point is?
I’m pretty sure there’s a solid list of (humorous, satirical, and self depricating) reasons to bank…i humbly suggest you all list them in comments today. Could be pretty funny.
Also, serious question, why are the studio analysts on CNBC world so hideous?!
i dont really see private equity people being “loners”
“Posted by big r, Apr 23, 2008 9:09AM
i dont really see private equity people being “loners”
HAH.
Why I ‘bank’:
To learn from other people’s mistakes.
To that end, the last two years have been quite productive.
When I’m done with that, I’ll have other people ‘bank’ for me.
Let’s see, 1-2. Here’s a first cut. I encourage the DB community to add to it at will.
Banking:
1) Money
2) More money
3) Girls, which turn into wives and children, which necessitate more of 1 and 2
4) Nice ties, suits, and mistresses, requiring more of the same
Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and other Investors:
1) These the only significant sectors in this economy where the highly functioning autistic individual can make lots of money. (See, e.g., Jim Simons, Steve Cohen, Warren Buffett, et al.)
2) and 3) See banking, above. (In my experience, these guys don’t really care about nice clothes, unless they are Kravis or Schwarzman.)
Operations:
Surely no-one here at DB cares about this field, do we?
Funny, I cannot seem to find “personal fulfillment” anywhere on any of these lists. Hmm.
– The Epicurean Dealmaker
Personal fulfillment comes from getting preppy chicks to do my sexual bidding on my command.
This is so easy. People “bank” (I hate when its used as a verb like that)because it offers (or they think it offers) the best opportunities around for goodies taken out vs. effort put in. Lets face it, every job sucks. You may as well be well rewarded.
Let me tell you about a woman I know. Ivy law school, interested in family law, battered women, abused children. Summer after first year of law school worked in the Bronx courts. She was left handed, the phone was screwed to her desk on the right side and couldn’t be moved. She asked for a new pencil, they said she had to turn in her old. She got the old pencil, they said it wasn’t worn down enough. A few more indignites and she decided fast to give up on her idealism. She wound up a partner at Skadden doing M&A. ITS THE MONEY STUPID.
does she put out after a few drinks?
9:29 — right on the money. Most every job in the world blows, sucking away your soul slowly day by day. At least we work at soul-sucking jobs that pay well. The only people that are better-off self-actualization wise as far as I’m concerned are entreprenuers, though many of them are so busy running their enterprises, they have even less life than bankers.
It’s practical proof of graduates being economically rational. When your choices are A) Corporate and B) Bank and B($)=3*A($) in NYC/Chi/SF as opposed to Sacramento/Philly/Trenton…at some point the offer becomes overwhelming (don’t forget the $10K sign).
Excluding “good, wholesome people”, those who jumped straight to HF/PE, trust-funbders, and entrepreneurs those who didn’t bank did so because they couldn’t bank.
Coming from Jonathan Knee, this is the pot calling the kettle black. He left his job at an airline to spend his entire post business and law school career in banking. Douche bag.
@9:37 She would eat you alive. She’s fkn hot.
@ 9:56…now you are forcing me to go to Skadden’s web page to figure out who you are talking about.
don’t bother, she left and went to a PE firm.
@10.01 — 10.07′s comment means she only exists for him in his delusional mind as he combs the internet in Mom’s basement playing dungeons & dragons looking for ultimate porn…….
10:10 I swear its true. Went undergrad with her. She has a Kim Kattral (sp?) thing going on. Not everyones thing, but I think hot.
yeah, kim kattral is not so hot.
anyway, wtf is ultimate porn?
mmmm…Cougars
@9:33 – Bunny Bear, is that you?
Epicurean Dealmaker, 1-2, Equity Road Apple
I call bullshit on these so called “points” with the exception of the aformentioned high functioning autistics, these jobs all require exactly the same skill set, ie: kissing your bosses ass.
Whether you find yourself as an associate in i-banking, PE, a hedge fund, OR a middle manager at Ford Motor Co your role consists of smiling while your boss takes credit for all of your work and you try to keep the shit to shoe level. Corporate America is a giant cluster fuck and the only reason people go into finance is so that they have to take it up the ass for a shorter period of time before they can tell everyone else to go fuck themselves.
If you’re starting off as Stevie Cohen then you already have enough money that you shouldn’t be wasting your time working anyway. Most people I know go into banking because they want to *become* Stevie Cohen, only to realize that their boss has a very odd gleam in their eye and may or may not be slipping female hormones into the redbull.
So the only question to ask yourself is how exactly you’d like to have your shit pushed in. Slow and steady over 40 years or hard and fast at the beginning of your career?
please, more about this “ultimate porn”, damnit don’t hold out on me!
Random Banker,
I call Bullshit on your Bullshit call..
~SEG
@10:20 In a lot of cases its kissing your client’s ass. Turning on the charm to pull fees/deals/assets/whatever out of them. But why be so introspective about all this. It beats building pyramids (seder memories). Life on balance is real good I would say.
ultimate porn exists only in theory and has never been observed. the act of observing it in nature causes it to change into penultimate porn, which is not as good.
@Random–Folks at GM have some skills, such as building stuff that works and people want. Bankers basically play Houdini and switch money from one pocket to another and for that brief period no one is watching take a cut….
Think about that during your ONE HOUR commute to your retail bank job offering credit cards to the unwashed masses.
@anal – ask girl, she knows…..
You wanna see ultimate porn? Check out corbinfisher.com The guys are like every clean cut first or second year buff analyst that you work with. Oh and for you boys that are out of work, look for the “think you could be one of our models” button. GAnalYst
I’d assume that the bigshots have to be good at sales, analysis and operations.
I would have believed you had you said Toyota, but GM? Come on. The problem is that they in fact don’t have skills.
I don’t believe that your job defines who you are. Anyone who works in the arts is always attempting to show people in finance something they’re missing. People in banking aren’t the only ones that could use some real questions, but someone has to play the bad guy I guess.
And speaking of talking, did anyone in a certain state hear Timmay on the radio this morning? Does Timmay ever sleep? He mentioned in the interview that he works 20 hours a day.
@9:23 Great minds think alike.
Thadius R. Rogers
Financier/Evaluator of Talent
I’m fairly certain Timmay takes a sh!t-load of adderal every day, possibly oh, I dunno, 60mgs+, and not the time release kind either
@9:09 Bankers are never alone. Rosie Palms is always there to make your day a little better.
@10:37 One of the reasons that the arts are so extraordinary in NY is because of all the money that’s thrown at them. Makes for an interesting relationship between the two and a smart division of labor. The singers sing, the patrons work hard at what they’re good at but write checks. Why is that a problem or difficult to understand.
@11:09 I bet a lot of people here contribute to the art of dancing at various strip clubs. Helping out those less fortunate dancers makes us all feel better. Many of these dancers are very, very talented. I know our contributions are greatly appreciated in the art community.
Thadius R. Rogers
Financer/Evaluator of Talent
@11:09 I think the arts industry (music, performance, film etc) preys upon finance industry to pay for projects that very rarely make a profit(if its supposed to).
@11.28 – How dare you mention money and art??? Art is priceless, which is why good implants are so expensive.
@11:28 And some projects (most modern art comes to mind) are just scams. I was at an art auction a few years back and I overheard some supposedly famous artist joke privately about ripping off people because they were bidding on works that he considered just garbage and not worth anything but that bidders kept buying them just because they were from him. He said it took him like ten minutes to spill paint and yet people were spending outrageous prices for his works. It wasn’t Damian Hirsch.
With great $, comes not great taste…
I bank because… GREED, in other words, IS GOOD.
Recent article on Salander O’Reilly gallery in NY said that people would spend millions on a painting with a handshake and no due diligence. They compared it to the army of attorneys that gets involved in a real estate transaction of a similar size. Art is all emotion. Hard to compare. But like everything, you need to remember that the buyer should beware.
Got more hot pussy in 2001-2002 bust, than previous 10 yrs in bulge….
Bone up.
IB is good for $, not pussy
MDs are all sales & flash
nerds carry bags
For Mr. Pink and GAnalYst:
http://www.luxist.com/2008/04/22/the-changing-face-of-wall-street/
@11:41
Agreed, modern art is a scam
Hirst seems like a opportunistic guy, but not too smart to utter such truths at an art auction
Okay, back to this Knee guy. I think he may be worried that the neophyte bankers are slicker, more cynical, greedier than he is AND WILL FUCKIN’ EAT HIM ALIVE.
Splashed her face like a painter’s radio. That’s how I got my muse….
Ghost of Jackin Pollock
I love working as a boring long-only portfolio manager because I get to understand myriad business models and industries and vote with my company’s billions on where the world’s capital should be allocated. And to a certain extent, I get to set my own hours and be my own boss. I can’t imagine the appeal of the sell-side–the money isn’t *that* much better, and the risk of getting fired every downturn is ridiculous. It’s an industry in secular decline, and you have to be at the beck and call of company’s clients 24/7. Is that worth an extra $100K of fifty cent (thanks IRS) dollars?
Banking is different than research, but I think you can make the same arguments just replacing “sell-side analyst” with “i-banker” and “buy-side portfolio manager/analyst” with “industry management”.
@2:31 Same business as you. The fact that you’re minimizing the firing risk has me wondering. In my experience clients are very fickle and ready to leave when things go sour, which they invariably do sometimes. Retention is a big challenge. Maybe you’re blessed with consistently superior returns (unlikely) or dumb clients (more likely).
@2.39 – are you gay? anal retention is very gay.
@2:39 here. I thought I asked nicely, guess not. I repeat: you make it sound like it has the security of a job with the post office, when the reality is that clients bolt in seconds.
11.54 – if you can’t get the quote right, don’t bother. Piker.
Couldn’t agree more with previous comment.
What the fuck is ‘greed, in other words, is good’?
You should watch the movie a few more times, memorize the proper lines, and report back