- Jan 15, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 7
After two years, I thought it was timely that I should spend some time to consolidate and reflect on the takeaways, the hits and the misses at the end of the year.
At the point of writing this, nothing actually came to mind. So I ended up spending the new year in a relatively low key fashion. There was no celebration, booze, chugging of beers, fanciful dinners or gatherings to speak of. All I did was head up to the open-air rooftop of my hotel at approximately 23:50 in anticipation of the fireworks overlooking the Hong Kong city skyline.
Even after the clock struck 00:00, there was also no massive display of fireworks, not in Hong Kong, not from where I stood.
This was how I enjoyed crossing into the new year--the serenity of breathing in the cool fifteen degrees outdoor air, and the peaceful anticipation of a quiet morning the following day. Some might even call it a short reprieve from the shit-storm of work awaiting in the first week of the new year.
During my investment banking days as a junior analyst, a VP once asked me about what I did for my weekends. I gave the politically-correct answer of telling him that I was too busy catching up on work to be able to plan for anything else.
It was true anyway. Whenever anyone asked me about my banking days, I always told them that we worked seven day weeks, had after dinner drinks at 9pm, went back up to work around 11pm, got off past midnight and then back into the office the next day at 930am. That routine changed slightly as we grew into our jobs with travel increasingly becoming a part of it but the hours never really changed. Aside from the mandatory two-week compliance leave that we were entitled to, there was hardly any downtime, and hardly a moment to "switch off". This daily cycle can put a toll on you, both physically and mentally.
I recalled one of my colleagues popping pills to regulate this blood pressure because he was getting increasingly affected by the incessant badgering, the non-stop phone calls and the never-ending refreshing of pitchbooks and financial models.
"No matter how caught up we are at work, we must learn how to block things out when it is time to rest. Otherwise, you won't last in the job." - was what the VP said to me.
Stress doesn't discriminate between blue-collar and white collar jobs, it doesn't care for how much you earn either. It could take the form of overtime hours, a nasty boss, an unreasonable client, unhealthy working environment, etc. Everyone deals with the vicissitudes at work differently.
Some say this deprivation of normality over long periods of working in a high pressure environment leads to the dramatic overcompensation of splurging on extravagant stuff. That is probably true for some people.
But despite what the rest of the world says and thinks, I think one of the positive side effects from an investment banking job isn't just about the money, but also the fact that one can take on tremendous pressure under nearly any situation and still maintain some form of sanity and human decency on the job.
However, there are those who have made it through and gone to work for the corporate isde or buy side, but they never really left the job. You can graduate with flying colors from an investment banking role and still stay rooted in a toxic mentality. These are the same people who measure success through lofty titles, name dropping and the size of their paychecks. You can always detect these people based on what they choose to talk about with you. Are they genuinely interested in your life or simply just trying to find out whether you had a bigger bonus than them last year.
Just recently, I re-connected with an ex-colleague over WeChat. To my surprise, after a few text exchanges, he started asking where I was now, if it paid well, as well as other stuff related to corporate designations and how he was working with some important people in the inner circles. I did not write him again.
And so, there will always be nasty people to meet and unpleasant experiences, but there is also the mindset we take with us to deal with it.
We can continue to complain about working on weekends, how much of a pile of work awaits us on Mondays, how we are not commensurately comp-ed to our peers, how much we are sacrificing personal, social and family time for work, or how sucky the markets are. Endless worries.
Life will forever be a struggle, but to some extent, we are almost always in control of the decisions we make and always have the choice of deciding how we want to let the little things shape us and the way we move forward.
