Former Investment Banker Reveals 31 Unspoken Rules On Wall Street | Unspoken Rules | Daily Mail

you've probably heard of the movie Wolf of Wall Street and you probably have a certain impression of what it's like to work in finance so yeah Hollywood High Finance actual High Finance kind of a different thing hi I'm goric ing Harvard career advisor and recovering investment banker recovering uhoh and these are the unspoken rules of Wall Street what does it take to succeed on Wall Street it all comes down to a term that sociologists call studied informality it means that you're able to apply this particular upper middle class way of speaking and conducting yourself that has you coming across as smart but not a know-it-all that means don't show off just in case you're wrong motivated but not threatening don't go around punching holes in people's parachutes basically and cool but not a try hard try hard not to be cool got it so these unspoken rules are unspoken I mean people talk about how it's important to have corporate polish fleece vest check pastel shirt check or it's important to have culture fit or as one person told me you just have to get it what does it mean to get it well I remember one of my managers was talking to a colleague of mine and he said you know I'll tell you when I see it that's not helpful but it really does matter and it came down to me looking left looking right observing how people conduct themselves and and then emulating them accordingly if you want to be somebody if you want to go somewhere you better wake up and pay attention sister 2 I remember it was one of my first meetings and I was not expected to speak in fact one of those unspoken rules is to be just like a Victorian child seen but not heard or if you're on a conference call where you have the Chief Financial Officer the CFO of a company and the head of your investment banking team talking on the phone you have two people talking and then you have like a 100 people listening all scrambling to take notes so I was not expecting to be speaking at all until someone looked over at me and said goric tell me about those numbers my heart sank I was nervous and so what I did was I ended up speaking at a mile a minute because I was so nervous that I just wanted to get the words out and then after the meeting my manager pulled me aside and said goric the next time you're nervous speak half as slowly as you would normally speak yeah like how YouTube lets you adjust video speed yeah you could do that IRL now if I'm observing a meeting and I see someone speaking at the equivalent of 2 xed on YouTube chances are they're probably more junior or the Ben chapiro if I see them speak at 0. 5x speed chances are they're more senior no one ever told me these things I had to look left look right and see it for myself one of the first things that I was told when I got my job on Wall Street is that this is actually not Wall Street this is Midtown Manhattan okay then I'm definitely lost Wall Street has changed a lot over the last number of decades where before it was in fact where all of America's biggest banks were headquartered but after 9/11 these Banks started sprawling their way across Manhattan and Beyond now it's more of an idea ah like the tooth fairy or Dollar Pizza Wall Street means finance and if you're really an Insider it means Finance it means deals it means transactions so I still remember I was on my first of training on Wall Street we called it boot camp the trainer at the front of the room points to me and says you there what is the revenue of this company I had my Excel spreadsheet out I looked at the number staring back to me and it said $3,000 so I thought easy question $3,000 I was told to speak confidently and that's exactly what I did you guys remember rule two 45 seconds in and then the entire room chuckled the trainer at the front said um try again and look at the label in that chart I looked at the little tiny label staring back at me and it said dollars in millions and I was like oh I get it now it's not $3,000 it's $33,000 time $1 million which is $3 billion and this is not an amount of money that you just take out of an ATM when we talking about $3 billion you're talking about buying companies selling companies deals transactions and so you end up with what people call on the inside the buy side and the sell side all right everybody here comes your Finance need to know so if you think about that Apple stock in your retirement account well Apple at one point in time had to hire investment bankers to sell pieces of that company shares of that company for you and I to buy now it's not just you and I who own those stocks it's the pension fund it's your university endowment and it's investment bankers who sell parts of the company that makes it possible for the rest of us to own a share in that company and then you've got people who work in hedge funds in private equity in Venture Capital the buy side the way I think about it is if you're on the sell side you're making PowerPoints if you're on the buy side you're reading PowerPoints when you're in a job where you're staring at $3 three and then a dollar sign but it's actually $ billion doar you end up with high stakes High scrutiny High urgency high stress and probably high OS as well things matter when you make a mistake More Money More Problems you move a decimal in the wrong direction and you've got a massive problem on your hands that can get you fired your team fired your entire Bank fired in the financial industry you also have two fears that plague everybody every single day the first is fomo and the second is this nagging feeling that this doesn't really matter here's the reality if a company like apple is is going to go public so going to list its stock on the stock exchange for the rest of us to buy you have dealmakers who are all fighting to lead that deal you really don't want to miss out which is why if you're on the cell side so much of your work comes down to pitching pitching pitching because the higher-ups are flying all around the world having meetings whining and dining with people so that they become top of mind no matter who pays the check it pays to show your face if you're on the buy side if you're buying companies or shorting companies you have this nagging feeling that no matter how talented people say you are that in reality you're just lucky and if you flipped enough coins or if you had enough people flipping coins eventually you're going to have someone who will flip heads 100% of the time you'll look at that situation and think no they're not an expert coin flipper they're just lucky now if you think about the buying and selling stocks as this binary outcome as well where someone is selling the stock for somebody else to buy somebody's making money and somebody's losing money it's so hard to deconstruct to what extent you were just lucky versus actually skilled in your profession Finance is gambling and you need to stay lucky when you're junior on Wall Street you get respect by being good at Excel when you're senior you get respect by being good with people and the reality is the higher up you go the more you become a salesperson the better you are at building relationships the more likely you are to bring in deals because on wall Street you bet on a stock if you think it'll go up you bet on a person if you think that they're going places so I'm told bullish essentially means optimistic about a stock or the market so you're going to want to keep people bullish for you if you think about who is going to be selected for that next CEO role it's not going to be someone who's going to apply on indeed or on LinkedIn that person has already been identified and is already being groomed that's how things really work be a people person people before I got my job on Wall Street I thought that this land of Wall Street is this mythical place of sorcery it wasn't until I showed up in my job that I realized that unless you're a Quant and you're actually using calculus in your job you know everything that you need to know from middle school math but it's riled up in jargon that makes it incomprehensible to the outside world so you end up hearing phrases like suggest operational efficiencies in the face of Market headwinds not the econom is bad so save more money so you have more money and by the way go fire some people in finance it's not what you say it's how you say it so there's an indirect way and then there's how we actually communicate I can still remember this one time uh I had spent all night on an Excel spreadsheet my Excel spreadsheet had red out which no one likes in the financial industry it just means that your model is broken and you've got this meeting coming up and you have no idea where those numbers even came from I was sitting there stone cold because I was deathly worried that my manager's manager's management manager would look over at me the managing director looks at the number Squints and says let's change that 3. 4 to a 4.

4 and I'm like what like you asked me for this sophisticated formula I spent all night on this and you just change a number like that career advisor and recovering investment banker there's even a term for a situation like that swag scientific wild ass yes nobody has the answer because Finance is not accounting accounting is all about looking backwards at all the numbers that already exist and making sure they add up whereas Finance is about looking forward and no one has an idea of what the future holds you have actually like 12 different ways of saying scientific wild ass gu projection forecast expectation guidance price range Target estimate internal research data driven insights forward looking estimates I mean listen to some business news and chances are you will see one of these 12 synonyms and they all mean the same thing and oh by the way when you have a bunch of scientific wild ass guesses together you have something called a consensus estimate all from the shaman of the financial system who are trying to predict where the future could be when in reality it's anybody's best guess it's not repent to the end is n it's re-evaluate ahead of downward projection so is what separates those who are successful from those who are unsuccessful does it all come down to just whether they're good coin flippers well if you flip heads once maybe you're lucky if you flip heads a hundred times over a decade people start really paying attention confidence matters when you're in the financial industry but confidence can only get you so far long term it's about your track record that really matters if you're a dealmaker what deals have you led if you're an investor what did you invest in and how much money did you end up returning which is also why the people who tend to be the most well-respected on Wall Street tend to be those who are well into their careers you may have some Young Guns flexing and talking about how much of a return they made over the last week but time will tell whether they're actually these skilled or lucky investors sure fake it till you make it but you've got to keep making it when it comes to competence it's important to sound smart but to not overshoot and come across as a no- at all well there's that Golden Rule again studied in formality I can still remember uh one of my very first job interviews was at a big bank I was interviewing for the exact same role with the exact same interviewer with the exact same company as a really good friend of mine he went into the interview room first and he came out sweating turns out he had received five backto backto back brain teasers those impossible interview questions where the interviewer asks you how many burritos were sold in New York City in the last year and what you have to do is look at the other person in the eye keep a straight face and do all of this mental math and Wizardry all while staying cool meanwhile I walk into the same room and we had just a great conversation for half an hour it's important to come across as competent yes that hey you can trust me to be detail oriented to be quick on my beat but moreover I'm motivated to learn and we're going to get along no really enjoy your interview I mean not too much be cool so Banks come in all different shapes and sizes but regardless of where you work the hierarchy is generally the same you've got analysts Associates VPS directors executive directors managing directors heads of something something Chiefs of something something including the CEO and you might think that your life gets easier as you go up the hierarchy when in reality it's kind of hard Wherever You Are when you have an associate job or an analyst job rolls downhill what he means is uh no wait yeah someone somewhere a partner a managing director ends up selling the world and then expecting you to deliver on the world that's when they're in your inbox at 5:00 p. m. just as you were hoping that you could go on that date with this disingenuous phrase hey um don't spend all night on this but but I need this by 7:00 a.

m. the next morning make the deadline even if it takes you all night now at that point you might think gee it's great if you're up top wrong well number one that assumes that you've made it to the top it's hard to make it up to the top and when you are up at the top you're not just answering to your manager you don't necessarily have a manager at that point but you're answering to your team you're answering to your clients you're answering to your shareholders so the reality is everybody has a boss it just depends on what title they hold it's Turtles all the way down one key way that wall streeters demonstrate their commitment and compatibility is through the coffee chat the coffee chat may or may not actually involve coffee but it all centers around the same structure it's a 30 minute phone call or in-person conversation where the first five minutes is all about the small talk where you talk about where you're coming from and bonus points if you went to the same school studied the same program worked at the same prior firm the middle 20 minutes where you flex your commitment and confidence by talking about what you've worked on all the research that you've done how much of an interest you have in their job and their firm the last five minutes are all about talking about next steps and if you've done those first 25 minutes well it will always end in the same manner which is hey how about you send me your resume and I'll forward it along and we'll be in touch which is code for ding you've succeeded in your interview before the interview and so before the process even kicks off I'm going to get someone behind the scenes to FastTrack you to a final round conversation you could be in an interview right now that's how people get jobs sure there's the portal but there's also a side door and those side doors come in these coffee chats when it comes to this corporate polish this thing that we can't quite put our fingers on doesn't come down to just how you speak it also comes down to how you look and how you dress think have gotten a bit more informal over time as is the case with every industry you went from suits and ties to Suits without ties to dress shirts with ties to dress shirts without ties to dress pants to [Music] C there's a uniform for Wall Street as well in fact insiders love to joke about it so much that there's an Instagram account called Midtown uniform where someone goes up and down the streets of New York and takes pictures of of the current attire of Wall Street which is dress shirt khakis and of course a vest invest in vests so yeah there's a uniform there's a certain way of dressing certain brands that people will wear certain Styles as it relates to their collar and the fit and the fabric and the color that can mean the difference between someone looking at you and thinking oh yeah you get it and someone thinking you're trying a little too hard there try again Hollywood High Finance is nothing like actual real High Finance or High Finance drugs they exist Coke Aderall all those things yeah they exist but the data doesn't necessarily show that they exist more in finance than let's say in any other industry however the parties yeah they can get pretty expensive and lavish but there are also a lot of nerds on Wall Street as well especially if you're talking about the quats who are again looking at calculus and crunching numbers all day long the it of the job is yeah you're commuting to work you're taking the train you're walking down the street you're not taking a private jet like any job you're going to have good days you're going to have bad days and in the financial industry so much of how much of those good days you have versus bad days comes down to who you work for and where you work in fact if you go on Google and you search for investment banking sweat shops you'll get an actual list wait a minute hold on a sec oh oh yeah and if you happen to work at one of these companies you've got an instant conversation starter at every party as long as you hold this job because everyone's going to ask you well wait you work there is it really as bad as people say it is yeah avoid the sweat shops but no matter where you work your good days versus your bad days they'll all follow certain patterns what does a good day look like well it begins the prior day where you got home at a reasonable hour and you looked at your calendar and there's nothing Insight which means fire drills at least as far as the eye can see and the eye can only see as far as the next minute so it could change but so far we're off to the we're off to a good start you wake up in the morning and no unread emails maybe in that case you also realize that your manager is away for the summer there are no live deals and things are a little bit slow so you might go to the gym you might grab an extended breakfast you may even grab a coffee chat you might roll into the office at 9:30 10: a. m.

check your email a bit you show your commitment by asking if anybody needs help ideally people say no and your staffer comes along or someone you worked with previously emails you and asks you to update some numbers it's a model that you made so there are no skeletons in the closet that you know of or that you don't know of which is the really bad part and things are going smoothly it's 5:00 pm and there are no fire drills it's complete silence you may even get to go for dinner you then hang around and maybe leave at about 900 p. m. it's a good day now what about those bad days they start the day before maybe you were up the prior night until 4 a.

m. maybe you rolled into the office at 7:00 a. m.

because you've got a conference call with someone in another time zone maybe you haven't even gotten to the office and your email inbox is already blowing up because that Excel model is broken that pitch is getting rescheduled that meeting that you thought was happening next week is happening in 15 minutes someone is calling in sick or has an interview or a copy chat but has a dentist appointment and you're taking over and you're feeling the walls close in on you even before the day begins you're jumping around from Excel spreadsheet to PowerPoint presentation to conference call to meeting and everything is urgent and everything was due yesterday and then you hand in your work and you're feeling triumphant and then you realize it's another fire drill because it's hurry up and wait because this person that you thought would be available isn't available because they're on flight but you don't have time to commiserate over that you've got another assignment that was already due 15 minutes ago it's 5:00 p. m. you think the day is winding down you get another email and another email and another email you text your date you say you've got to reschedule you text your friends you say you can't party tonight and it's 900 p.

m. and those automatic lights in the office start turning off off because they assume that everybody's out of the office except for you half an hour goes by you get a tap on your shoulder someone says excuse me it's the Cleaning crew coming over you swivel your feet to the right to let them in to pull out the trash can from under your desk they empty it and while you're at it you stand up and you wave so that those automatic lights turn back on you grab some coffee you go downstairs the pitch deck isn't anything like what you had sent to them it's delayed by several hours someone else is sending you an email now even though it's 1:30 a. m.

in the morning people are wondering if you're still up you've got to respond and say yes I am it'll be in your inbox in 5 minutes and before you know it it's 5:00 a. m.