No one tells you the truth about this job. Not at career day. Not in the glossy brochures. Not even in business school. The truth is: being an investment banker in New York is like signing an unspoken pact with chaos. You trade your time, your body, and sometimes even your soul—for a title, a paycheck, and a seat at the table. But the table is sharp-edged, and the chairs are uncomfortable.
I won’t tell you my name. You’ve probably passed me on the sidewalk outside Midtown, eyes bloodshot, suit impeccable, Bluetooth in my ear. I’ve done deals you’ve read about in The Journal—mergers, IPOs, buyouts that look sexy in headlines but were stitched together with caffeine, panic, and 3 a.m. slide decks.
I wake up to emails. I fall asleep to spreadsheets. Weekends? I might get a few hours off, but my phone is never off. Ever. There’s always a deck to review, a model to update, a managing director who “just wants to get ahead of Monday.” It’s not work-life balance. It’s work-work compromise.
You lose track of normal things. What day it is. What your friends are doing. Whether you’ve eaten anything that wasn’t from Seamless. You measure your life in deadlines and deliverables. Your worth is defined by billables and bonuses. And when that bonus hits? It’s less joy, more relief. Because by then, you’re already too deep to celebrate.
But I won’t lie—it’s not all misery. There’s adrenaline in closing a billion-dollar deal. There’s pride in knowing you can hang in one of the most demanding industries in the most unforgiving city in the world. There’s a high that comes from being the fixer, the closer, the one they call when everything’s on fire.
And sometimes, when I walk out of the building at 2 a.m., when the city is half asleep and the streets are quiet, I remember why I started. Ambition. Drive. Wanting to be someone.
I don’t know how long I’ll stay in this world. No one really does. It burns you out. Chews you up. But for now, I’m still standing. Still running with the wolves. Still chasing the next deal.
Just don’t believe everything you see in the movies. The real drama? It’s in the calendar invites, the redline edits, and the 400th version of a pitch book no one will ever actually read.
Welcome to Wall Street.