Burning out on Wall Street does not arrive crashing you down suddenly; it slowly creeps into hidden under polished shoes, dark toys and illusions of ambition. One day, you’re a very eager analyst staying up to date to prove yourself; a few other days, you’re VP staring blanking into a spreadsheet, wondering how you became numb to everyone who once excited you.
Everyone around you is burning you out, but none says that word. They just expect you to keep going. More caffeine, more Red Bull, more half-hearted gym sessions at Equinox to pretend we are balancing everything to finish. I have seen the first-hand effects of this burnout, and trust me, they aren’t great. I got to see guys who throw up in the bathroom from stress and be back in their seats 10 minutes after that. One MD I worked with missed the birth of his kids over a conference call; how absurd is life?
Burnt out is when wins stop feeling like a victory when closing a billion-dollar deal does not give you a high anymore, just relief that you’re gonna get the day off. Slowly, when your weekends vanish, and even vacations are included with “light email coverage”. When you realize you don’t know your closest friends anymore, but you’ve memorized every cell in your client’s cap table.
And this is just the beginning. The worst part about burnout is that it’s celebrated and made to look like a success story. You still get paid, wearing Tom Ford and still tagged in during deal announcements, but inside, you’re hollow, and you’ve forgotten why you’re doing this? Life has become pointless where you only work work and work, work for work, nothing else.
I’ve seen people snap. Quietly. One guy just walked out mid-deal and never came back. Another broke down crying after a pitch meeting because he hadn’t slept in four days and forgot his own name on a slide. These aren’t weak people. They’re some of the smartest, toughest individuals I’ve ever met. But this job doesn’t care. It doesn’t give medals for endurance. It just raises the bar.
But I’m still here, for now; I dont know for how long. I’ve been long enough to learn to spot the signs, the empty stare and short fusses. There’s always background anxiety that never shuts off. You tell yourself it’s temporary, and it goes off, but this cycle keeps going on and on. Maybe with this promotion, it gets a lot better, but no, it’s a graph that only goes up.
Until you dont make a choice, this is not going to change. Because we all know that in banking, the fire that drives you can just as easily be the one that consumes you.