oof, pretty on the nose. my dad (nerd/scientist, extreme skeptic re: my post-college career choice, 55 years old and crankily battling the unwelcome incursion of management consultants at his lab for the first time) got a HUGE kick out of the title here, so I owe you a beer for that. Made his Monday.
Now, the real question: what's the best way to break down these strongholds and divert people to actually building useful stuff (art, apps, clean power plants)? There's no doubt in my mind that consulting and finance careers are a fast-track to wasted potential. But all of the seductive pull factors you point out in the essay are spot-on, and only get more entrenched over time.
I have a ton of demoralizing anecdotes about former colleagues who were so jealous of my adventures...until they realized exactly how much ramen I was eating, and that I was no longer staying in plush hotels.
Consequently, I think it's more realistic to start the shift when students are still in college, or even before. I'd like to see a world on college campuses where students are encouraged to take more risks / fail more often (e.g., ending crazy Ivy-league grade inflation) because I have a hunch that learned risk aversion plays a huge role in the growth of these careers.
And, more of an emphasis on inherent value of building stuff (even for us liberal arts majors) because I do think 'elite human capital' has lost the plot there, and it shows. But that's a topic for another essay.
As usual, great stuff. Keep writing about exactly what you want to write about - the eclecticism is what makes this blog awesome.
P.S. For what it's worth, I do think the anchoring on finance / consulting to a certain extent reflects an east coast bias. I'd say the supergeniuses I know out in California tend to pooh-pooh this stuff and are much more dialed-in on getting jobs at FAANG/cashing out on the latest SaaS trend - and I have my doubts about how much social value some of this creates. But then again, at least they're writing code, which is more of a product than another PowerPoint deck! :)
Megan, glad to create some amusement for your dad. I worried about leaving out software engineering--I'm less familiar with that world, so perhaps my frustration is just a reflection of my proximity to consulting and finance (a la "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/). I gave it a pass because while tons of people are working on ad-tech or degen crypto, there is also interesting, cool, and useful work going on that doesn't give me the same inarticulable ick that mgmt consulting and finance seem to generate.
The risk aversion point is the thing that I think I'd like to think more about next. Because it feels weird to say, but taking these paths IS the least-risky path for talented undergrads, undoubtedly. I've gotten a lot of personal outreach from this essay, and many of the friends still in the black hole say that they are too risk averse to do something like quit their job to bike across the country like you, or found/join a startup, or otherwise do something off the rails of traditional achievement. I don't know that I necessarily want to promote risk-tolerance as a pure virtue, but I do feel comfortable saying that it makes for more interesting life trajectories and stories.
You were definitely in mind while I was writing this -- cool to see you pull out of the gravity well and excited to see what's next for you!
what I hear you saying here is that what you find valuable and important ("solar e-biking" etc) is somewhat different from what society as a whole finds valuable and important (as reflected by risk-adjusted compensation, opportunities and prestige, which finance/consulting&tech (and law+medicine) dominate). sounds normal to me, those aggregated revealed preferences of what people are willing to pay for reflected in labor prices (=comp) would typically be different from every particular individual values. people are different, and it's good.
one might try to mount an argument that "social value" created is different from what's earned from the activity (and ultimately reflected in comp) as "value capture" rates across sectors differs, but it's kinda hard to do well as ultimately the market is the best (not to say perfect) aggregator of information on what ppl rly need and want, and every "more ppl should stick to their philosophy majors" cry can be met with "who needs those parasites" cry from another person.
it's tempting and governments around the world keep trying to "prop this industry tax that one", but most economists are probably against those kinda policies as what might seem good is oft not actly much good, and things work better if left up to the markets.
it also seems to me you're a bit unfair re "consulting&finance produce no legacy while tech&industry are so great". plenty an experienced finance folk are proud of "investing in next Zuck when he was 15 and chaperoning him to $10bil val" or "saving Goldman from bankruptcy with an emergency loan during GFC, or, for consulting, for "coming up to clean up this almost bankrupt/dysfunctional mess of a company/division and seeing it rly shine in a couple years". while plenty a techie hates his life coding some GDPR compliance shit, and while most entrepreneurs are gung-ho about their startups, many others don't feel yet another "uber for X with a Y twist" app is changing the world much more than a good ibanking deal. the world isn't so black and white, many people in all sorts of professions love what they do, many don't, some make a huge impact, many don't.
also, it seems you might be a bit biased towards concrete vs diffuse impact, as is common. "Making markets slightly more efficient" boo, "rolling out some dumb new app" yay.
In my original draft, I included Big Law in this diatribe. I thought about including tech as well--the fact that billions of hours of smart people time are invested in creating ever-improving advertisement services is not especially attractive, and tends to fill me with a similar amount of counterfactual dread. Perhaps because I know less about these industries I felt less confident in making such sweeping claims about them.
I agree that government intervention would be a bad solution to this issue. I think it comes down to incentives. I'd focus on the recruiting side--the access these firms get to students and the perverse incentives the colleges have in placing students in these roles feels like the primary driver aside from the obvious one (piles of money).
Excellent writing Michael. This is no doubt one of your most compelling pieces yet. Living in DC, I’ve long thought about this concept in the form of going to work for Uncle Sam. Imagine the societal benefits of a high functioning government that boasts itself as a top landing spot for forward-thinking graduates. Fantastic piece.
A lot of folks have written about the success Singapore has had in attracting its top talent to government positions. It would be interesting to see how our society would be different if that were the case in the US.
“The often corrosive atmosphere of American public life hasn’t helped the sales pitch. “There’s direct through-line here with the decline of civility in the public sphere,” said Bartlett. “We did a survey that indicated something north of 70% of members who are elected officials have either been harassed or assaulted in the last year. In the past, you might have said, well, the pay is not as great in the public sector, but there are great benefits.’ That’s not as true anymore. And on top of that, I’m going to get cussed out by a community member.”
Thanks for sharing. This further develops the casual observation that it doesn't seem like the best talent goes into civic service, fleshing out a lot more of the details of how true that statement is and why it's happening.
FUSE.org started out as a meeting between White House and private sector folks asking, “how could we get disgruntled McKinsey types to spend some time working in local government?” The organization has gone on to do great things, but hasn’t managed to recruit many McKinsey employees. The golden handcuffs are real.
think the black-hole metaphor is/was particularly apt in my experience. the consulting lifestyle & career path offered a reprieve from grappling with questions of what *does* matter in my life, how do i want to spend my time etc.
“You’re a talented kid, top of your class, and those people do this thing and are rewarded handsomely for it, no questions asked”
the material rewards and illusion of stability are hard to escape, especially when the people around you don’t see eye to eye on that. i’m being dramatic when I liken it to heroin but really do think for a lot of people (myself included) it becomes a sort of addictive, easy out. a local minima that you can settle into and watch life go by from.
would love to hear your thoughts on alternative paths for “excess talent” who’d otherwise find themselves funneled into these fields. does it look like a restructured college experience? jobs programs with better incentives? where do you think that change starts?
It seems to act as the default path for "people like you."
The system exists as it exists so I'm not sure that there are really alternative paths as-is. If we are talking hypothetical worlds or different parts of the world, I am interested in reading more about how Singapore has seemingly been successful in making government jobs the high-prestige, high-pay path for their top human capital. I'd love to imagine the world in which American government bureaucrats were highly effective.
I have to imagine that they way you unlock that is through more compensation. I was just at lunch today with a friend who works at McKinsey and we were talking about the government-consulting complex, where the government essentially *has to* outsource jobs via long-term (and overpriced) contracts to consultants because the rigid pay structures of the government makes it impossible to hire, for example, competent software engineers directly
I'd also like to do more research on elite college graduate outcomes over time. In the 70s, when only ~6% of Harvard grads went into consulting and finance, where were they going? Is where they were going then any better or more interesting?
back-to-back bangers, amazing. But I feel like the other side of the crew - the folks who went the creative, supposed-soul-searching, artsy, or entrepreneurial routes - are stuck in black holes of their own. These folks (me) might suffer from a world without boundaries or structure, saying yes/no to everything, or not having a ladder towards a north arrow. Idk what's worse - but grass is always greener, u know? The one underlying constant is the dependency/value of money - can't live without it, need to make it flow into my bank account. And if somehow I can be happy while doing that, then great. Otherwise, give me the damn consulting job and let me make 6-figures quickly and painfully.
I fully acknowledge that my critique is likely based on my proximity to these industries--I know a lot of people that work in them and almost ended up in them myself.
There certainly are tradeoffs. I am glad that some people have a higher risk tolerance and take different paths though, yourself included.
You simply do not grasp the importance of management. I wouldn’t expect you to, though — you live in America. It does not come easily to us. American management is the exception. In the developing world, it is awful.
Would it not be simpler for these great managers to work in the firms themselves rather than extracting maximum value from them as consultants?
My post attempts to focus on the human factor, but I wonder about the economic aspect as well. Consulting firms do suck up a lot of talent that would otherwise be ending up within these firms as management. Perhaps a lack of human capital partially explains the bad management?
I can't really blame anyone because that's the whole thing that they've been taught to do.
If you prioritize getting good grades and doing well on multiple-choice tests, that means studying hard, working your ass off, and trying to beat your classmates. Since you can't gamble and win 110% exam credit by doing a big project or winning awards for your school, you don't think to do that.
Ditto college - winning lots of competitions and being active in organizations while maintaining sky-high grades is what everyone does to get ahead, so that's what you do. Even though you could gamble by doing some art project or whatever, you can't count on that - so you prefer not to risk it.
Ditto work - scoring the job with the big-dick salary and job title is the known optimum, kind of like the old fancy restaurant of degrees - it's expensive, been there forever, and therefore good by default, even if it's not the best fit. So of course you do it.
Averages are averages because they're a good balance for a large proportion, and so consulting, finance, and banking sucking up all the top tier business grads and stars with big money is perfectly understandable, if you just adopt the standard goals.
Besides, the nice thing about money is that everybody wants it, and if you've got a lot of it, you can do a lot with it.
I kinda dislike the "black hole" metaphor as it seems to convey some kinda inevitability, rather than people making choices that make sense to them given the options society offers. Some don't go conventional prestigious corporate consulting/finance/tech to begin with, some try it out and decide that life is not for them, some try it out and love it, some try it out and don't love it but stay for the money and prestige. All seem like fine choices to me. Some want to take more risk some don't. Some like being unconventional some don't.
Some are willing to prioritize their passions and some care about external rewards more. You seem to focus on cases of people who manage to "have it all", "solar e-biking" they love which also rakes in VC money. For many people it's not really an option, they might be passionate about classical piano or philosophy and know they won't make much money there. Some would choose passion and forego nice home in Westchester with two pools and comfort and opportunities for their families and kids, some wouldn't.
Some would prioritize their relationships and social network, some would prefer to focus on work and achievement. Some like prestige and pile of money more than passions or relationships, some don't.
You seem to care about "interesting, generative, cool" more than some others. Well, great, you do you, and surround yourself with people who value that kinda stuff. Some people value the kinda excellence and performance it takes to survive and succeed in high-performance corporate roles, and are appreciated by people who are into that.
The piece feels a bit like a sermon, "*I* value these things (cool vs money etc) and you should value them too". I'm personally more into "know thyself and make the choices that make sense to you".
I understand your position here. It's fair. This is the position that many of my dear friends that still exist in the worlds of management consulting and high finance hold.
The reason I used the black hole metaphor is because of how it appears that the system is pushing people in this direction. As pointed out by Marina Keegan in her essay "Even Artichokes Have Doubts" (https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/09/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts/), when she conducted a survey of freshman at Yale, "Not one of them said they wanted to be a consultant or an investment banker. Now I’m sure that these people do exist — but they certainly weren’t expressing interest at a rate of 25 percent. Unsurprisingly, most students don’t seem to come to Yale with explicit passions for these fields. Yet sometime between Freshman Screw and The Last Chance Dance something in our collective cogs shift and these jobs become attractive."
I do care about "interesting, generative, cool" more than others, which is why I wrote this piece. Since I care more about that, my thought is that if one junior in college reads this and decides not to accept their offer at Bain or Goldman, then it was successful. While it is ultimately individuals making choices and following their incentives, there are societal impacts from this concentration of human capital and it's my belief that we'd have a more interesting, higher-welfare society if things were different.
It seems you truly believe you know better what's best for society, "smarter than the market". I'm suspicious of such claims.
It seems we do share the concern re whether the kids are truly doing what's best for them and making best-informed choices. My preferred solution though is "know thyself", good old-fashioned upper-class attitudes prioritizing the import of self-knowledge, self-exploration, truly diverse college experiences enhancing one's self-knowledge and broadening their horizons. Ivy grads have all the resources and safety net to experiment and explore, one wouldn't care at deathbed if they entered ibanking or PhD at 25 and not 22. Have you seen William Dershowitz's Excellent Sheep talk? For me that is more or less the same thesis you channel here. I'm all for popularizing it more.
My first career was in academia (2nd in quant finance, 3rd and hopefully last one in therapy/psychoanalysis), so I feel while you might be more attuned to the pains of more conventional choices, I might be more attuned to the pains of less conventional choices done without deep self-knowledge. After a couple years at Goldman one has more doors open, some pleasant high-end nightlife memories and hopefully a good amount of money saved, and the freedom to pursue whatever one wants. After a PhD you regret the options are fewer. A failed e-biking startup might be somewhere in between.
I wish more people knew themselves and what they wanted from life, which for some (eg me) entails making rather unconventional choices. But if, unfortunately, one is a clueless kid at 22, I'd rather advise them to make a safe choice over jumping on somebody else's hypetrain, be it Science (tm) or solar e-biking.
For me that's the double edged sword of your messaging, exposure to alternative visions of life is good, being seduced by somebody else's hype train not coming with the safety breaks and flexibility of conventional choices is dangerous to kids lacking wisdom to know for themselves.
Would you agree that Ivy grads, if they "have all the resources and safety net to experiment and explore", should have higher risk tolerances that their current career choices currently suggest? I understand why *individuals* are making these choices, but at the aggregate level it seems like the system that creates graduates that pursue the safe option over all else creates what you could maybe call a lower-variance society. Sure, the individuals are generally going to have great exit options, money, good nightlife memories, etc. but in this society it seems like there are maybe fewer moonshot good events that occur.
Overall, though, I'm very sensitive to your points here. I don't want to suggest I know better than the market; rather, I am lamenting what the market has decided is high value.
In my world, jobs exist because something needs to be done and we don't know a better/cheaper way to do it. Are there possible reforms making say finance (as I know that world the most) a bit less lucrative and talent intensive, without wrecking the economy? Sure. Reform that convoluted tax code and eliminate all the distortions and optimizations that grew around that - this is I think is relatively uncontroversial among economists, which doesn't make it politically easy. Batch auctions every few seconds instead of continuous trading cutting down on HFT is a sensible and much less uncontroversial thing. None of those are easy and imminent, and for the time being, these jobs we mention are able to make the most lucrative use of the brilliant ivy grads. I wish more grads valued what they care about more, and what society likes them doing/comp less, but it's quite understandable why that's a minority view.
You might be thinking "Goldman boring, cool startups fun" for now. I think there are no shortcuts to a satisfying life, I know Goldman traders having the time of their life at work every day, and burnt-out less successful serial founders finally taking a more solid CTO job in their 40s to have more comfort for themselves and their families. "Wild success stories" are ofc appealing, and these days it's more fashionable to valorize tech rather than finance/business (which used to be a thing pre-GFC!), but I'm skeptical of overly broad "you'd be more happy (or have more impact) this way rather than that way" claims - everyone needs to find the right fit for themselves.
I do think these "elite meritocratic" careers have the advantage over others in that they understand the value potential of top talent. I do agree with you that maybe this talent can create as much or more social welfare elsewhere. I don't think it's their burden alone to sign up for that cross without being properly compensated, and that society at large can do better creating compelling options for them elsewhere (teach for america is a bit like that, tho more of a scam imo).
This point is oft made when arguing for "small but competent government/Singaporean model". If we believe good governance is important (and I do), we'll have to have a system there that's more meritocratic and is more attractive to ambitious ivy grads interested in that sorta stuff. Rn those jobs aren't set up for ambitious and talented people, and the few who do sign up typically leave soon disillusioned by the lack of meritocracy and seniority-focused "everyone is equal" vibes system.
I outline this example as I think it's somewhat archetypical of other industries as well. If the industry can benefit from high-end talent in its pipeline, it can create positions making good use of it and hire those ivy grads - maybe it won't match Goldman comp, but it can compensate with impact/responsibilities.
I don't know of many such options existing. "Conventional elite careers" are a better fit for ivy grads not just because of the comp, but also as they can actually appreciate and make use of the talents those people bring.
I'm now in a career (https://quirkypsychoanalyst.substack.com/p/on-therapist-quality) where quality measurement and meritocracy issues are quite bad, and while I'll probably get some interesting return to my talents in 10-15yrs, I also won't recommend this to more sane people. It's unfortunate I couldn't swallow the elite corporate pill, for people who can it might be the easiest path to quite a comfy life.
Loved reading this one, Michael! I’ve been trying to find that balance between life and career since returning to American life. The biggest takeaway for me after returning is how much time goes into these careers. There is no time for anything else. That societal pressure gets to successful students and they don’t explore options.
Like you said, if we put more attention towards socially producing jobs, maybe we’d begin to see that change. Keep it up!
oof, pretty on the nose. my dad (nerd/scientist, extreme skeptic re: my post-college career choice, 55 years old and crankily battling the unwelcome incursion of management consultants at his lab for the first time) got a HUGE kick out of the title here, so I owe you a beer for that. Made his Monday.
Now, the real question: what's the best way to break down these strongholds and divert people to actually building useful stuff (art, apps, clean power plants)? There's no doubt in my mind that consulting and finance careers are a fast-track to wasted potential. But all of the seductive pull factors you point out in the essay are spot-on, and only get more entrenched over time.
I have a ton of demoralizing anecdotes about former colleagues who were so jealous of my adventures...until they realized exactly how much ramen I was eating, and that I was no longer staying in plush hotels.
Consequently, I think it's more realistic to start the shift when students are still in college, or even before. I'd like to see a world on college campuses where students are encouraged to take more risks / fail more often (e.g., ending crazy Ivy-league grade inflation) because I have a hunch that learned risk aversion plays a huge role in the growth of these careers.
And, more of an emphasis on inherent value of building stuff (even for us liberal arts majors) because I do think 'elite human capital' has lost the plot there, and it shows. But that's a topic for another essay.
As usual, great stuff. Keep writing about exactly what you want to write about - the eclecticism is what makes this blog awesome.
P.S. For what it's worth, I do think the anchoring on finance / consulting to a certain extent reflects an east coast bias. I'd say the supergeniuses I know out in California tend to pooh-pooh this stuff and are much more dialed-in on getting jobs at FAANG/cashing out on the latest SaaS trend - and I have my doubts about how much social value some of this creates. But then again, at least they're writing code, which is more of a product than another PowerPoint deck! :)
Megan, glad to create some amusement for your dad. I worried about leaving out software engineering--I'm less familiar with that world, so perhaps my frustration is just a reflection of my proximity to consulting and finance (a la "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/). I gave it a pass because while tons of people are working on ad-tech or degen crypto, there is also interesting, cool, and useful work going on that doesn't give me the same inarticulable ick that mgmt consulting and finance seem to generate.
The risk aversion point is the thing that I think I'd like to think more about next. Because it feels weird to say, but taking these paths IS the least-risky path for talented undergrads, undoubtedly. I've gotten a lot of personal outreach from this essay, and many of the friends still in the black hole say that they are too risk averse to do something like quit their job to bike across the country like you, or found/join a startup, or otherwise do something off the rails of traditional achievement. I don't know that I necessarily want to promote risk-tolerance as a pure virtue, but I do feel comfortable saying that it makes for more interesting life trajectories and stories.
You were definitely in mind while I was writing this -- cool to see you pull out of the gravity well and excited to see what's next for you!
what I hear you saying here is that what you find valuable and important ("solar e-biking" etc) is somewhat different from what society as a whole finds valuable and important (as reflected by risk-adjusted compensation, opportunities and prestige, which finance/consulting&tech (and law+medicine) dominate). sounds normal to me, those aggregated revealed preferences of what people are willing to pay for reflected in labor prices (=comp) would typically be different from every particular individual values. people are different, and it's good.
one might try to mount an argument that "social value" created is different from what's earned from the activity (and ultimately reflected in comp) as "value capture" rates across sectors differs, but it's kinda hard to do well as ultimately the market is the best (not to say perfect) aggregator of information on what ppl rly need and want, and every "more ppl should stick to their philosophy majors" cry can be met with "who needs those parasites" cry from another person.
it's tempting and governments around the world keep trying to "prop this industry tax that one", but most economists are probably against those kinda policies as what might seem good is oft not actly much good, and things work better if left up to the markets.
it also seems to me you're a bit unfair re "consulting&finance produce no legacy while tech&industry are so great". plenty an experienced finance folk are proud of "investing in next Zuck when he was 15 and chaperoning him to $10bil val" or "saving Goldman from bankruptcy with an emergency loan during GFC, or, for consulting, for "coming up to clean up this almost bankrupt/dysfunctional mess of a company/division and seeing it rly shine in a couple years". while plenty a techie hates his life coding some GDPR compliance shit, and while most entrepreneurs are gung-ho about their startups, many others don't feel yet another "uber for X with a Y twist" app is changing the world much more than a good ibanking deal. the world isn't so black and white, many people in all sorts of professions love what they do, many don't, some make a huge impact, many don't.
also, it seems you might be a bit biased towards concrete vs diffuse impact, as is common. "Making markets slightly more efficient" boo, "rolling out some dumb new app" yay.
In my original draft, I included Big Law in this diatribe. I thought about including tech as well--the fact that billions of hours of smart people time are invested in creating ever-improving advertisement services is not especially attractive, and tends to fill me with a similar amount of counterfactual dread. Perhaps because I know less about these industries I felt less confident in making such sweeping claims about them.
I agree that government intervention would be a bad solution to this issue. I think it comes down to incentives. I'd focus on the recruiting side--the access these firms get to students and the perverse incentives the colleges have in placing students in these roles feels like the primary driver aside from the obvious one (piles of money).
Excellent writing Michael. This is no doubt one of your most compelling pieces yet. Living in DC, I’ve long thought about this concept in the form of going to work for Uncle Sam. Imagine the societal benefits of a high functioning government that boasts itself as a top landing spot for forward-thinking graduates. Fantastic piece.
A lot of folks have written about the success Singapore has had in attracting its top talent to government positions. It would be interesting to see how our society would be different if that were the case in the US.
Thought of you while reading this Bloomberg article on city governments struggling to attract talent:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-11/us-cities-are-hunting-for-workers-as-local-governments-brace-for-trump?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczNDI3NDU3NSwiZXhwIjoxNzM0ODc5Mzc1LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTT0NDN0ZEV1JHRzAwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI2Nzk5RjcyQUQ5QkQ0QkNCQjFDNEY2QUEyQUY5QUEwQyJ9.twgAo0AJAaUybihCBIuIlmm6bx9w8N5VuG7fHUoNC24
“The often corrosive atmosphere of American public life hasn’t helped the sales pitch. “There’s direct through-line here with the decline of civility in the public sphere,” said Bartlett. “We did a survey that indicated something north of 70% of members who are elected officials have either been harassed or assaulted in the last year. In the past, you might have said, well, the pay is not as great in the public sector, but there are great benefits.’ That’s not as true anymore. And on top of that, I’m going to get cussed out by a community member.”
Thanks for sharing. This further develops the casual observation that it doesn't seem like the best talent goes into civic service, fleshing out a lot more of the details of how true that statement is and why it's happening.
FUSE.org started out as a meeting between White House and private sector folks asking, “how could we get disgruntled McKinsey types to spend some time working in local government?” The organization has gone on to do great things, but hasn’t managed to recruit many McKinsey employees. The golden handcuffs are real.
Not that you need more ammunition, but Garrison Lovely took the high road: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/mckinsey-whistleblower-confessions/
That article is full of compelling anecdotes toward the “maybe this industry is actively bad” camp.
this one really resonated, great piece :)
think the black-hole metaphor is/was particularly apt in my experience. the consulting lifestyle & career path offered a reprieve from grappling with questions of what *does* matter in my life, how do i want to spend my time etc.
“You’re a talented kid, top of your class, and those people do this thing and are rewarded handsomely for it, no questions asked”
the material rewards and illusion of stability are hard to escape, especially when the people around you don’t see eye to eye on that. i’m being dramatic when I liken it to heroin but really do think for a lot of people (myself included) it becomes a sort of addictive, easy out. a local minima that you can settle into and watch life go by from.
would love to hear your thoughts on alternative paths for “excess talent” who’d otherwise find themselves funneled into these fields. does it look like a restructured college experience? jobs programs with better incentives? where do you think that change starts?
It seems to act as the default path for "people like you."
The system exists as it exists so I'm not sure that there are really alternative paths as-is. If we are talking hypothetical worlds or different parts of the world, I am interested in reading more about how Singapore has seemingly been successful in making government jobs the high-prestige, high-pay path for their top human capital. I'd love to imagine the world in which American government bureaucrats were highly effective.
I have to imagine that they way you unlock that is through more compensation. I was just at lunch today with a friend who works at McKinsey and we were talking about the government-consulting complex, where the government essentially *has to* outsource jobs via long-term (and overpriced) contracts to consultants because the rigid pay structures of the government makes it impossible to hire, for example, competent software engineers directly
I'd also like to do more research on elite college graduate outcomes over time. In the 70s, when only ~6% of Harvard grads went into consulting and finance, where were they going? Is where they were going then any better or more interesting?
back-to-back bangers, amazing. But I feel like the other side of the crew - the folks who went the creative, supposed-soul-searching, artsy, or entrepreneurial routes - are stuck in black holes of their own. These folks (me) might suffer from a world without boundaries or structure, saying yes/no to everything, or not having a ladder towards a north arrow. Idk what's worse - but grass is always greener, u know? The one underlying constant is the dependency/value of money - can't live without it, need to make it flow into my bank account. And if somehow I can be happy while doing that, then great. Otherwise, give me the damn consulting job and let me make 6-figures quickly and painfully.
I fully acknowledge that my critique is likely based on my proximity to these industries--I know a lot of people that work in them and almost ended up in them myself.
There certainly are tradeoffs. I am glad that some people have a higher risk tolerance and take different paths though, yourself included.
You simply do not grasp the importance of management. I wouldn’t expect you to, though — you live in America. It does not come easily to us. American management is the exception. In the developing world, it is awful.
Would it not be simpler for these great managers to work in the firms themselves rather than extracting maximum value from them as consultants?
My post attempts to focus on the human factor, but I wonder about the economic aspect as well. Consulting firms do suck up a lot of talent that would otherwise be ending up within these firms as management. Perhaps a lack of human capital partially explains the bad management?
Decreasing marginal returns.
thought-provoking! great write up.
I can't really blame anyone because that's the whole thing that they've been taught to do.
If you prioritize getting good grades and doing well on multiple-choice tests, that means studying hard, working your ass off, and trying to beat your classmates. Since you can't gamble and win 110% exam credit by doing a big project or winning awards for your school, you don't think to do that.
Ditto college - winning lots of competitions and being active in organizations while maintaining sky-high grades is what everyone does to get ahead, so that's what you do. Even though you could gamble by doing some art project or whatever, you can't count on that - so you prefer not to risk it.
Ditto work - scoring the job with the big-dick salary and job title is the known optimum, kind of like the old fancy restaurant of degrees - it's expensive, been there forever, and therefore good by default, even if it's not the best fit. So of course you do it.
Averages are averages because they're a good balance for a large proportion, and so consulting, finance, and banking sucking up all the top tier business grads and stars with big money is perfectly understandable, if you just adopt the standard goals.
Besides, the nice thing about money is that everybody wants it, and if you've got a lot of it, you can do a lot with it.
I kinda dislike the "black hole" metaphor as it seems to convey some kinda inevitability, rather than people making choices that make sense to them given the options society offers. Some don't go conventional prestigious corporate consulting/finance/tech to begin with, some try it out and decide that life is not for them, some try it out and love it, some try it out and don't love it but stay for the money and prestige. All seem like fine choices to me. Some want to take more risk some don't. Some like being unconventional some don't.
Some are willing to prioritize their passions and some care about external rewards more. You seem to focus on cases of people who manage to "have it all", "solar e-biking" they love which also rakes in VC money. For many people it's not really an option, they might be passionate about classical piano or philosophy and know they won't make much money there. Some would choose passion and forego nice home in Westchester with two pools and comfort and opportunities for their families and kids, some wouldn't.
Some would prioritize their relationships and social network, some would prefer to focus on work and achievement. Some like prestige and pile of money more than passions or relationships, some don't.
You seem to care about "interesting, generative, cool" more than some others. Well, great, you do you, and surround yourself with people who value that kinda stuff. Some people value the kinda excellence and performance it takes to survive and succeed in high-performance corporate roles, and are appreciated by people who are into that.
The piece feels a bit like a sermon, "*I* value these things (cool vs money etc) and you should value them too". I'm personally more into "know thyself and make the choices that make sense to you".
I understand your position here. It's fair. This is the position that many of my dear friends that still exist in the worlds of management consulting and high finance hold.
The reason I used the black hole metaphor is because of how it appears that the system is pushing people in this direction. As pointed out by Marina Keegan in her essay "Even Artichokes Have Doubts" (https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/09/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts/), when she conducted a survey of freshman at Yale, "Not one of them said they wanted to be a consultant or an investment banker. Now I’m sure that these people do exist — but they certainly weren’t expressing interest at a rate of 25 percent. Unsurprisingly, most students don’t seem to come to Yale with explicit passions for these fields. Yet sometime between Freshman Screw and The Last Chance Dance something in our collective cogs shift and these jobs become attractive."
I do care about "interesting, generative, cool" more than others, which is why I wrote this piece. Since I care more about that, my thought is that if one junior in college reads this and decides not to accept their offer at Bain or Goldman, then it was successful. While it is ultimately individuals making choices and following their incentives, there are societal impacts from this concentration of human capital and it's my belief that we'd have a more interesting, higher-welfare society if things were different.
It seems you truly believe you know better what's best for society, "smarter than the market". I'm suspicious of such claims.
It seems we do share the concern re whether the kids are truly doing what's best for them and making best-informed choices. My preferred solution though is "know thyself", good old-fashioned upper-class attitudes prioritizing the import of self-knowledge, self-exploration, truly diverse college experiences enhancing one's self-knowledge and broadening their horizons. Ivy grads have all the resources and safety net to experiment and explore, one wouldn't care at deathbed if they entered ibanking or PhD at 25 and not 22. Have you seen William Dershowitz's Excellent Sheep talk? For me that is more or less the same thesis you channel here. I'm all for popularizing it more.
My first career was in academia (2nd in quant finance, 3rd and hopefully last one in therapy/psychoanalysis), so I feel while you might be more attuned to the pains of more conventional choices, I might be more attuned to the pains of less conventional choices done without deep self-knowledge. After a couple years at Goldman one has more doors open, some pleasant high-end nightlife memories and hopefully a good amount of money saved, and the freedom to pursue whatever one wants. After a PhD you regret the options are fewer. A failed e-biking startup might be somewhere in between.
I wish more people knew themselves and what they wanted from life, which for some (eg me) entails making rather unconventional choices. But if, unfortunately, one is a clueless kid at 22, I'd rather advise them to make a safe choice over jumping on somebody else's hypetrain, be it Science (tm) or solar e-biking.
For me that's the double edged sword of your messaging, exposure to alternative visions of life is good, being seduced by somebody else's hype train not coming with the safety breaks and flexibility of conventional choices is dangerous to kids lacking wisdom to know for themselves.
Would you agree that Ivy grads, if they "have all the resources and safety net to experiment and explore", should have higher risk tolerances that their current career choices currently suggest? I understand why *individuals* are making these choices, but at the aggregate level it seems like the system that creates graduates that pursue the safe option over all else creates what you could maybe call a lower-variance society. Sure, the individuals are generally going to have great exit options, money, good nightlife memories, etc. but in this society it seems like there are maybe fewer moonshot good events that occur.
Overall, though, I'm very sensitive to your points here. I don't want to suggest I know better than the market; rather, I am lamenting what the market has decided is high value.
In my world, jobs exist because something needs to be done and we don't know a better/cheaper way to do it. Are there possible reforms making say finance (as I know that world the most) a bit less lucrative and talent intensive, without wrecking the economy? Sure. Reform that convoluted tax code and eliminate all the distortions and optimizations that grew around that - this is I think is relatively uncontroversial among economists, which doesn't make it politically easy. Batch auctions every few seconds instead of continuous trading cutting down on HFT is a sensible and much less uncontroversial thing. None of those are easy and imminent, and for the time being, these jobs we mention are able to make the most lucrative use of the brilliant ivy grads. I wish more grads valued what they care about more, and what society likes them doing/comp less, but it's quite understandable why that's a minority view.
You might be thinking "Goldman boring, cool startups fun" for now. I think there are no shortcuts to a satisfying life, I know Goldman traders having the time of their life at work every day, and burnt-out less successful serial founders finally taking a more solid CTO job in their 40s to have more comfort for themselves and their families. "Wild success stories" are ofc appealing, and these days it's more fashionable to valorize tech rather than finance/business (which used to be a thing pre-GFC!), but I'm skeptical of overly broad "you'd be more happy (or have more impact) this way rather than that way" claims - everyone needs to find the right fit for themselves.
I do think these "elite meritocratic" careers have the advantage over others in that they understand the value potential of top talent. I do agree with you that maybe this talent can create as much or more social welfare elsewhere. I don't think it's their burden alone to sign up for that cross without being properly compensated, and that society at large can do better creating compelling options for them elsewhere (teach for america is a bit like that, tho more of a scam imo).
This point is oft made when arguing for "small but competent government/Singaporean model". If we believe good governance is important (and I do), we'll have to have a system there that's more meritocratic and is more attractive to ambitious ivy grads interested in that sorta stuff. Rn those jobs aren't set up for ambitious and talented people, and the few who do sign up typically leave soon disillusioned by the lack of meritocracy and seniority-focused "everyone is equal" vibes system.
I outline this example as I think it's somewhat archetypical of other industries as well. If the industry can benefit from high-end talent in its pipeline, it can create positions making good use of it and hire those ivy grads - maybe it won't match Goldman comp, but it can compensate with impact/responsibilities.
I don't know of many such options existing. "Conventional elite careers" are a better fit for ivy grads not just because of the comp, but also as they can actually appreciate and make use of the talents those people bring.
I'm now in a career (https://quirkypsychoanalyst.substack.com/p/on-therapist-quality) where quality measurement and meritocracy issues are quite bad, and while I'll probably get some interesting return to my talents in 10-15yrs, I also won't recommend this to more sane people. It's unfortunate I couldn't swallow the elite corporate pill, for people who can it might be the easiest path to quite a comfy life.
Loved reading this one, Michael! I’ve been trying to find that balance between life and career since returning to American life. The biggest takeaway for me after returning is how much time goes into these careers. There is no time for anything else. That societal pressure gets to successful students and they don’t explore options.
Like you said, if we put more attention towards socially producing jobs, maybe we’d begin to see that change. Keep it up!