If you’re new here, welcome. I promise it won’t always be this long. Or this angsty.
Most of the time.
Welcome to the Rat Race
The sun was going down.
We’d just had 12 hrs. of meetings back-to-back. 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
We’d been on that schedule for about a month. It was summer, but I’d barely been outside.
That’s when my boss’s manager logged into our Zoom call.
And began talking about rats.
I’m dead serious.
Here we were, hours from submitting our 130-page proposal to one of the biggest companies in the world, with mountains of work still to go.
This deal was worth billions.
And then this person logged in and started telling us how the rats ate the wires on their car in New York City.
I remember thinking… Rats? Are you kidding me right now?
Every single person tried to smile through sweaty foreheads, bloodshot eyes, and frayed nerves. I felt like logging off, or at least turning down the volume on my computer.
That night, I finished working at 4:00 a.m. and went to bed.
The sun was coming up.
I woke up around 6:00 a.m. and went for a walk in the hot summer air along the river that flowed a block from my apartment. I had to be logged back on in a few hours.
I felt proud of the work our team had done.
But it was hard to forget about the rats.
Bright Eyes and Bright Futures
I used to work at the largest bank in the world. And for a brief stint, I worked on the deals team.
Prior to this, I made $48k a year managing an online high school program with 1600 students. It was incredibly hard work, with long nights and weekends, but it was also fun, and it was rewarding.
Eventually, I went to grad school at the University of Notre Dame to earn my MBA.
When I joined the bank in 2019, I actually really liked being an intern. It was fun and exciting, the pay was incredible, and I had an amazing boss.
I had made it to the big leagues.
Somehow, between Covid, a mix of bad bosses, and death by PowerPoint presentations (or decks, if you’re a snob), I began to get the sense that this wasn’t for me.
But, the money was good, I hate moving, and I kept thinking things would get better. Somehow, my original plan of two years turned into three. Then it turned into five.
Which begs the question. If you made $48k doing a job that made you happy, would you trade it for a job making $150k a year that made you miserable?
I did.
I just didn’t know it at the time.
If you want a better sense of how much money that is, here’s a few facts for you.
Making $150k a year puts you in the top 5% of America. To be honest, I thought you’d need to make a lot more to clear that hurdle.
For comparison, if you make $30k in America you’re in the top 10% in the world. And if you make $150k in America, you’re in the top 1% globally.
People say money doesn’t buy you happiness.
That’s only partially true.
When I made this much money, I got to buy a lot of nice gifts for my family. I didn’t have to flinch every time I bought something at a coffee shop. I got to go to Europe twice and Canada once. And I paid off a huge mountain of student debt in only 5 years.
I had a lot to be grateful for.
At the same time, most years I was so busy I didn’t take a vacation until Christmas.
So, I guess there is some truth to the old adage.
Money didn’t fix everything. It didn’t make my ocd or depression better. It didn’t solve all my family’s problems. It didn’t stop me from losing 20 lbs. in a month from a stomach infection. And, It didn’t make me feel less sick every single day working for a string of toxic bosses.
In short, money makes some aspects of life easier. But it doesn’t make life easy.
Finance Bros and Gucci Sneakers
You meet a lot of interesting people climbing up the corporate ladder.
I’ll never forget a coworker I didn’t know well inviting me to get dinner with him. He was a confusing guy. Simultaneously one of the nicest and also most off-putting people I’ve ever met.
It quickly became apparent that dinner was nothing more than an exercise in sizing me up. For what purpose? I never found out.
I remember him asking me, “Want to know what percentage I give that you’ll stay in finance?”
What a weird question. Or, maybe this is just small talk for finance bros.
It wasn’t that it was even that bad a question. It was the way he said it.
Like he was better than me. Like he’d figured me out. Like he was in charge.
Maybe the thing that bothered me the most was how similar it felt to other experiences I’d had.
My first boss telling me on our very first call that she didn’t want me on her team.
My second boss saying, “I don’t give a crap what the name is of the person who works in the dining hall.”
My coworker claiming a beautiful corner office overlooking a river and saying, “I don’t give a shit about the view.”
There were a lot of nice people at the bank. But it seemed like if you wanted to succeed, you had to be a bit cutthroat.
I’m not anti-banking, anti-capitalist, anti-credit card, or anti-ambition.
But you should probably know that somewhere in Delaware, a financial analyst is using Excel to model how many of you will not pay back your debt.
And someone in Philadelphia is talking about how they hate capitalism while wearing $600 Gucci sneakers.
And someone in New York is making boatloads of money deciding your financial future.
I wish I could write this big tell-all piece on what investment banking or stock trading was really like. I can only imagine it was more cutthroat. The truth is, I wasn’t even important. I just did consumer marketing.
Eventually, my position was eliminated, which is fancy talk for “we’re getting rid of you, but in a nice way.”
This came a few months after my boss’s supervisor was fired the day he returned from vacation.
6 months after I left, the guy who replaced me lost his job too.
The Millionaire Socialist
Which brings us to Gary Stevenson.
You might know him from his YouTube channel Gary’s Economics. Or, maybe his acclaimed book The Trading Game.
Or, if none of that means anything to you, you should know two things.
Gary might have been the top stock trader in the world. At least that’s what he claims. Based on the data, at least top 5 of 10. But I think he might be right.
The other thing you should know is that Gary Stevenson is a socialist.
I was never either of those things.
But I did like his book.
Gary grew up poor in East London. So poor they didn’t have a shower. Just a tub with a hose they attached to it.
He didn’t do great in school, but he was great at math. And he was great at reading people. Somehow he made it to the London School of Economics. There, he won a trading simulation put on by Citi Bank: The Trading Game.
Like I said, he was good at reading people. Winning the competition landed him an internship and then a job.
Eventually he became one of the top traders in the world for Citi Bank, if not the top trader. He made millions of dollars, but he wasn’t happy.
Somewhere between the countless drinks, witnessing his friends spiral into drug addiction, and the neverending accumulation of wealth, he started to fade a bit inside.
To Gary at least, he felt like he was getting rich on the backs of poor people. People like his family and neighbors. It’s hard to laugh about your millions when you made them by betting the economy would stay awful.
He tried to leave. Instead, he got transferred to Japan. It was a sort of sabbatical. A chance to reset and see new things.
But it was a punishment too. From one boss to four bosses. Less responsibility. More oversight. And constant threats hanging over his head.
Until I read this book, I didn’t realize that leaving certain banking jobs is a bit like leaving the mafia.
If he quit, they’d say he did something illegal and tie up the next 10 years of his life in court, to make sure he lost all his money.
His health started to decline. He got down to 125 lbs. and spent insomnia-fueled nights running or riding his bike around the city.
He got a months-long sick leave. He got another one. Eventually he wasn’t allowed to take any more time off.
As his depression worsened, he began going to work and sitting there doing nothing. HR wouldn’t fire him, and he couldn’t quit. He just sat there drawing cartoons and slowly whiling away the hours.
I’m not saying Gary was a role model. But I understand the feeling.
Eventually, one fateful day, HR called him down to their office.
He was finally free.
Later, when his friends asked around about him, they asked “Who won? Gary? Or the bank?”
One of his old teammates spoke up.
“It was Gary.”
The American Dream and One-Star Reviews
When I read Gary’s book, I wondered whether it was as bad as he said. You might be wondering that about my story too.
See, there’s a problem with negative reviews.
Comedian and SNL veteran Colin Jost has a bit about this.
Whenever someone writes a one-star review of a restaurant, it’s usually more about them than the restaurant. The reviews almost always have ridiculous personal details like “my boyfriend and I broke up here, so the food was terrible.”
I don’t want to be like that.
When it comes to my experience at the bank, I’ll acknowledge that plenty of the problem was my ego. Stepping down from managing 100 people at a startup to being near the bottom in a company with 100,000 employees is a tough move.
Another major factor was my health. I got incredibly sick from food poisoning, and I haven’t been the same since. At a certain point, it’s difficult to explain to people that you basically feel sick every single day.
Then again, I just read today a quote from Scott Galloway about how sometimes your body tells you things your mind doesn’t want to accept.
Looking back, it wasn’t a completely bad experience. I had a few really good bosses, Eric and Liz to name two. And I had a few really nice friends.
There’s plenty of people who can work in a big, corporate environment and be happy.
I’m just not sure I’m one of them.
Or maybe I don’t have a problem with big, corporate environments. Maybe I just don’t like ruthless, money-worshipping people.
At a certain point, 5 years of working mainly for bosses who treat you like an idiot, in an environment obsessed with the bottom line, working on projects designed to get people deeper in debt…
Well, it gets to you.
To quote the great Jon Foreman of the band Switchfoot, “Maybe we’ve all been caught singing red, white, blue, and green… But that ain’t my American dream.”
That song haunts me.
How are you playing the game?
What does it actually mean to run the rat race?
Some people use that term to refer to all corporate jobs.
I don’t think that’s quite accurate.
Like I said, I don’t have a problem with capitalism. Or jobs in banking. Or ambition.
I don’t think it’s really about the job, or the industry. Or even wanting to make it to the top of the ladder.
I think it’s about how you play the game.
Capitalism without care causes damage. And ambition without virtue creates tyrants.
A Better Path Forward
So, as we come to the close of this story, where is everyone now?
Now that Gary’s no longer at Citi Bank, he talks about economics online and works for nonprofits to try to help the lower classes.
Remember the person with the rats eating their car?
Well, around this same time, the deal team ended up buying a fraudulent company for $175 million dollars. The founder of that company (whom I met on a Zoom call) is currently appealing their 7-year prison sentence. Don’t worry. This is all over the news.
Ironically, as far as I know, no one lost their jobs over that one.
As for me, well, I’m working for an EdTech startup and doing consulting on the side. Plus, I’m getting to interview the coolest people about business, poverty, technology, and what it means to be human.
I think there’s a way to do business that makes the world a better place.
Through my writing and the podcast I’m working on launching, I aim to present that path forward. I know it’s a losing battle. But I think it’s a battle worth fighting anyway.
One year ago today, I found out I would no longer be doing marketing at the bank.
They gave me the opportunity to look for another job at the company, but I decided to move on.
My journey isn’t done yet. This year was just the prologue.
There’s a quote at the end of Gary’s book that really stuck with me:
“So the sun of Japan burnt my shoulders, and I tried to stop thinking at all, and I walked to the sound of cicadas, and I tried to taste the wet heat of the air.
After that, I flew back to London, to try to find a game I couldn’t win.
And I thought, I don’t care if I win anymore, but I should really stop playing alone.”
So, in conclusion, how do you know if you’re playing the wrong game?
Well, look at where you’ll end up if you win. If you don’t like the endgame, you probably won’t like the journey either.
By all means, make what money you can. Enjoy your life and take care of your family.
But on your way up, try to remember the other people climbing the ladder too.
And try to do something good for the world.
Don’t forget.
If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.
Want to read more like this?
Here’s a few of my favorites.
All My Best Friends Owe Me Money
All my best friends owe me money. And I owe them too.
It’s not exactly the world’s best financial accounting.
But I think it’s the best way to build relationships. It works with friends, and it works in business.
Fortune Favors the Bold
Don’t die wondering what would have happened if you just put in the effort.
Everyone else is just as busy, scared, and uncertain as you are right now.
Most of them won’t even try.
When Was Last Time You Saw Something Sublime?
There’s always bills to pay, projects to finish, and deadlines to meet. So many that they can make us forget what’s really important.
So how do you avoid this trap?
Thank you for sharing, @Daniel Thetford! I’m glad you liked it!
Colin, this was very well written. I could feel the anger in my chest while reading this. Starting in a role that was very good in financial services and then a brief stint of being in the thick of this^ made me realize how good I had it before. It amazes me how many people get sucked into this environment and truly believe that climbing to the top here is what will bring them success and happiness. Some of the things you hear or witness in this environment are mind blowing.
In the end, I'm grateful I had a chance to experience it because now I know that this is absolutely not my dream.
Have you read the book Discussion Materials? Would recommend if you haven't.