INTERVIEWS
Watch
David Bledin on BusinessWeek
From Bankersball.com
Q:
Let’s talk about the Bitter Investment Banker email –
the genesis for Bank. When did you write that email?
A: I wrote the e-mail about ten months in, after a particularly
bleak week of almost-all-nighters. The almost-all-nighters,
when you work until 5 or 6 in the morning, are the worst of
the bunch. With bonafide-all-nighters, the senior staff typically
come in, see you in the same shirt you were wearing the day
before, and send you home for a few precious hours of rest.
But with almost-all-nighters, you’ve had an hour or two
to go home, slip in a tiny stretch of comatose sleep, before
the brutal ringing of your alarm clock, a quick wank and a shave,
and then you’re back in your cube without anybody taking
obvious pity on you, since you’re freshly groomed. So
you’re stuck for another 14-hour shift.
Q: Weren’t
you afraid you were going to get fired, or did you just not
care at that point?
A: I didn’t care. I stopped caring about four months in.
You should have seen my corporate e-mail outbox before I left,
a lot of subject headers along the lines of “I’d
rather gouge my eyeballs out with a paperclip than have to stick
around for another six months.” Even though the “Bitter”
e-mail was sent out anonymously, my firm was able to trace it
back to me, and a colleague relayed that HR did eventually comb
through these rather blatant and crude e-mails. But at that
point I was already safely ensconced in a new city, so I didn’t
care.
Q: Given that
it seems there are a lot of commonalities between Bank to the
Bitter I-Banker Email, I would assume your ex-bosses, co-workers/colleagues
(i.e. the Sycophant) pretty much know who “their”
characters are at this point. True?
A: I’m not really sure; I don’t keep in touch with
any of the senior people. Good riddance to bad rubbish. But
it’s a misconception that all of the characters have direct
counterparts. Many of the characters in Bank are mere hybrids
of real world colleagues. Not to say that there aren’t
some characters that are heavily drawn from real influences.
The Sycophant, for example, is a fairly accurate portrayal of
a former boss, though the real world equivalent would be too
dense and narcissistic to ever realize I was parodying him.
Q: Are the people
who may or may not have been the basis for characters in the
book still in banking?
A: The senior guys have stayed put, since they aren’t
as mobile, but most of my peers have moved on. In my analyst
class, there are only two—one guy, one girl—left
standing. The rest have gone back to school or hit the jackpot
and landed in private equity.
Q: The protagonist
in Bank vows to stick with his analyst program for two years.
I’ve known some people who made it just one year, some
even less than that. How long did you do it for and why?
A: I was two weeks away from the one year mark when I quit.
They made me stay on the extra two weeks, because I wasn’t
heading to another i-bank (otherwise I would have been escorted
down the elevator immediately), so I did reach the full year,
though not by choice. I think with every job you reach a point
when you just can’t take it anymore, when you sit down
at your desk in the morning, switch on your computer, and come
this close to committing hara-kiri right there with a ballpoint
pen. With banking I arrived at this point after six months,
and then stuck around for another six months because I was too
scared to quit before lining up another job. I’ve only
just arrived at this hara-kiri point with my second gig as an
economic consultant, after two years.
Q: What would
it take for you to go back to banking?
A: No chance of that, not with this book coming out. Nobody
would hire me. Maybe in Japan, but I don’t speak the language.
Q: Is that your
hand on the cover, giving the bird?
A: I’m a compulsive nail-biter, so no, it’s not
me. Little Brown must keep a hand model stashed somewhere, perhaps
to marvel at his excellent cuticles in order to boost office
moral.
Q: Fill in the
blanks: the types of people who succeed in banking are typically
________, _________ and _________.
A: Whorish, megalomaniacal, neglected as children.
Q: Were there
any personality types that one often encounters in banking that
were not included in your book?
A: Not really, especially at the senior level (vice presidents
and up). See the preceding question: bankers, especially those
that have lasted in the industry for years, don’t really
cover a vast spectrum of Jungian archetypes. Whorish, megalomaniacal,
neglected as children. Nice people would have enough common
sense not to stick around.
Q: Why do you
think investment banking is so appealing to undergraduates/people
who don’t know any better?
A: When I was in college, the recruiting season became something
of a contest. The cream of the crop landed in management consulting,
the skim in banking, then the rest in random corporate jobs,
and the bottom-of-the-barrellers skulking off to teach English
in Japan (though in hindsight, these last few probably got the
best deal of our lot, especially in terms of getting laid).
Even if you weren’t cut out for consulting/banking, it
was difficult to break loose from the tide and follow your innate
destiny to round up elephants in Cambodia, or draw comic books,
if that’s what really got you going.
Q: Would you
say you were a good analyst or bad?
A: I was so-so. Bad in terms of the actual work (no attention
to detail, no patience for properly adjusting comps for one-off
events), but good in terms of telling dirty jokes, improving
the scope of dinner orders (one of my main accomplishments was
converting our boardroom into an Indian buffet on a weekly basis),
and expanding the nocturnal music selection beyond Dave Matthews
and Pink Floyd.
Q: What percentage
of your time at the Bank was spent actually doing work?
A: 40% on average. 20% on Mondays and Fridays. The work came
in waves, with the wave crashing at 5 or 6pm every night. So
it would be 10% from the morning up until 5 or 6pm, and then
100% in the evening after the work hit, when you just wanted
to get the hell out of there as fast as possible and go to sleep.
Q: I hear you
are now in economic consulting. How’s the work life balance
now?
A: Consulting is billable hours, so there isn’t as much
face time. I’m technically supposed to be working an average
of 40 billable hours a week. Realistically, add to that another
20 hours of “business development” (read: hours
at the office when I’m procrastinating, so I can’t
bill to a client). But they keep San Pellegrino flavored drinks
in the fridge, so I’m not complaining.
Q:
Thanks very much for the interview. Any parting words?
A: Buy my book! Otherwise I’m going to have to figure
out an alternative non-consulting, non-banking, non-writing
career, and I have no clue what that would be. Save me the mental
anguish, please.
Hear
David Bledin on Talk 980 Radio Show
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