Everyone says that I have a dream job. Ivy League degree, corner office view, tailored suits, and seven figures dangling at the end of the year like a shiny golden carrot. But all that happens to very few of us. And here is the truth nobody puts on Linkedln: this job takes everything, and it doesn’t ask for permission.
I’m an Investment banker in New York City, and that’s all you need to know. I work at a top-tier firm, and I’ve worked on deals you would’ve heard about with people whose names you probably have seen in a business magazine. I look sharp, walk and talk fast, and I haven’t had a real vacation in two whole years.
I usually start my day before sunrise; I check my emails on my phone while I brush my teeth. There’s always something urgent, something to be taken care of constantly. Someone from Hong Kong needed a model update. Someone in London is waiting for a reply. My coffee isn’t even warm before I’m neck-deep in Excel and PowerPoint, spinning narratives out of numbers.
People think I have a very glamorous life because I am an Investment banker, like flying in a private jet and closing billion-dollar deals every day over steak dinner. There is some truth in it, but partly. It’s true for managing directors but not for the rest of us. It’s 100 hours per week, so many missed birthdays and cancelled dates, and apologising to your mom why you forgot to call back for the 4th time.
The office culture? You’re always being watched, judged, and ranked. There’s no space for hesitation. Every mistake is magnified. Every success is just the new baseline. You’re only as good as your last deal or your last 2 a.m. memo. But you learn fast. You grow a thick skin. You become fluent in jargon. You know how to power through exhaustion and pretend everything’s fine when you haven’t slept more than four hours in a week. You become the person who “gets it done,” no matter what.
And weirdly, you start to crave the chaos. The high of pitching something that lands. The rush of a closing call. The quiet pride when a partner says, “Good job,” even if it’s the only compliment you get in six months. You live for those moments.
And yet, so many times, I wonder, how long is this going to last? I watch senior bankers whose kids dont even know them anymore, whose marriages are thin as threads and who have made billions but look empty and just existing, not living. And I think, is this it? Am I going to be one of them as well?
Maybe I’ll leave, maybe I won’t. But for now, I keep going because there’s prestige here. There’s money, power, and, I think, somewhere in the mess of it all. Still, a little part of me believes that if I survive long enough, I’ll finally earn the freedom this job promises.
So until then, I’ll just hang around here, building pitch decks overnight, smiling through the ring and cashing numbers on someone else scoreboards. Quitting is very rarely respected, but winning is always.