I met Caleb my first day in college. Caleb was a sophomore while I was a freshmen. We ended up taking at least one class together every semester until Caleb graduated.
I was a computer science major, and Caleb studied economics. But, computer was Caleb’s hobby since he was a little kid. So, he took several computer science classes with me. We worked on many computer science projects together, pulling countless nighters.
Caleb was a brilliant computer programmer. Although he wasn’t major in computer science, he could have gotten a software development job anywhere he wanted.
But, Caleb’s career goal was to work for an investment bank. He was really into high finance. He took graduate-level finance classes when he was still an undergraduate. At that time, the "hottest employers" on campus were investment banks and management consulting firms such as Golden Sachs, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, etc. Caleb had his eyes fixed on the top investment banks.
Caleb had read Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
In the end, Caleb was hired by one of the top two investment banks. The bank only extended one offer that year out of hundreds of applicants. Caleb was thrilled. Caleb started working for the bank in San Francisco late that summer.
Soon after Caleb started working, he disappeared from his friends. He was working day and night. He was working in the weekends. Although I was one of his closest friends and I was only 30-minute BART ride from him, I rarely saw him.
Several of us went to visit him one Friday evening at his nice 39th floor office in one of the tallest buildings in SF. He chatted with us for about 15 minutes, but he couldn’t go to dinner with us because he had to work.
He showed up on campus several times because he was part of the campus recruiting team for his employer. He would show up at the campus event, well-dressed, but look dead tired. We, his college buddies, would go to chat with him after the corporation presentation. He sounded really tense and business-like. He had to conduct himself in certain way. Most presentations ended around 7PM. He would head right back to work.
He ate all of his meals at work. Every night his employer ordered food for all of them.
A few months later, around the Christmas holiday, I had a chat with Caleb. He was stressed, tired, frustrated, and angry.
He had started to lose hair. This was a healthy young man who was only twenty-two years old. He told me that he took a business trip to the corporate headquarter in New York city. Every single male VP or above he saw at the corporate headquarter were balding. He told me that it was not uncommon for the young analysts and associates to start losing hair.
I asked Caleb what kept him so busy. He told me that as an investment banking analyst, you’re basically doing a lot of paper shoving. His work was like a secretary, proof-reading piles and piles of documents, and getting them delivered to clients under very tight deadline. It’s very high pressure for very mundane and tedious work.
In the investment banking industry, the organizational structure was a reversed pyramid. In his office, Caleb was the only analyst. There were a couple of associates, four VPs, and several directors. Basically, all of the tedious works were pushed down to the analysts and associates.
Analysts and associates made good money. But, if you divided their salaries by the actual hours they worked, the pay wasn’t great at all!
But, what’s worse was the culture of investment banking. There was little respect to individuals. It’s very hierarchical. The VPs or directors would curse at people when they got into an arguments. To put it mildly, many of the investment bankers would not pass Professor Sutton’s No Asshole Rule
So, Caleb hated his job. He wanted to get out. In fact, he was so fed up with banking that he didn’t care about his career path any more.
He had a strategy and a plan. His annual bonus would be deposited to his bank account exactly one year after his start date. Before his "liberation day”, Caleb cleaned his locker. He removed all of the files on his computer. On the day that he got his bonus, he checked his checking account and made sure that the bonus money was wired into his account.
Then, Caleb walked into his managing director office around noon, and said "today is my last day. I’m done." The MD in the office was livid, and started cursing and shouting.
Caleb simply walked away.
Caleb never looked back. Today he work in a field that he would never have imagined or planned ten years ago. But, his career is thriving. He is in control of his own destiny. He is doing just fine without climbing the investment banking ladder and getting an MBA.
Caleb burned the bridge with the bank. He did something that every career advisor would advise against.
But, apparently, his story was quickly passed among wall street junior analysts. Even a few years after he quitted, people are still talking about what he did.
He simply did something that a lot of people wished they would have done.
Disclaimer: This is a true story. But, to protect confidentiality, the names in this story have been changed.
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