How Wall Street recruits so many Ivy League grads

It's like so obvious, if you've spent any time at all working for one of these places. Or heck, even interviewing with them.

Here's what it all boils down to: aside the quants, the genuinely alpha traders, and few other wonky actuarial types, most of the grunts (you know: the "analysts"... and the vast majority of the IT types) don't seem to be there, or to have any other propelling motive in life, other than: (1) the above-average salary, and (2) once you're in, you're pretty much guaranteed to do alright -- as long as you're willing to fit in, never even think of rocking the boat, and be ready and willing to continually supplicate your superiors at all times.

Hence the ridiculously subdued style of dress (the dainty dress shoes, the blue and bland off-white shirts), and the curiously submissive demeanor of about 80% of the people you'll meet working there.

Oh, and that drug test, that everyone snickers about below their breath? Including your hiring manager? As everybody knows, it certainly isn't there out of any concern that you'd be abusing intoxicants (after all, you're more than welcome to get shitfaced on alcohol every night of the week -- which most nights you'll find yourself more or less needing to, to drown out the pain, and there sheer inanity of what you're asked to do).

It's there as a gesture of supplication and obedience -- nothing more. Getting you to drop your trousers, whip our your gear, and provide a "specimen" upon demand -- just because your superiors told you to! -- isn't an unfortunate side aspect of drug screening; it's the true purpose of the ritual -- the very end goal, in itself.

This guy has a fairly good understanding of entry-level finance culture but no clue about the Valley.

You get the sex appeal and allure of the tech industry

Lolwut. Sex appeal? Maybe Mad Men's Michael Ginsburg was on to something.

Now it's people who are well adjusted, good looking graduates of elite institutions. It's gone from weirdos in pocket protectors to the guys who used to go to Wall Street.

Carpet-baggers. And they aren't any better (or worse) looking. Same with bankers. On average, they're average looking. What they are is more assertive, while engineers tend to be meek doormats. True-blue engineers don't get driven out because business people are better looking, but because they're more assertive. Blaming it on "pretty people" is refusing to take responsibility. Gates, Jobs, Bezos, and Ellison are average-looking at best.

Ok kids, so here's what the analyst program is really about. When you're in school, deadlines are easy to meet and well-tested. If you miss a deadline that 20 of your peers made easily, then either something bad happened or you fucked up. People coming out of school tend to have a "deadlines is deadlines" mentality, because they've spent 16 years in a world where almost all deadlines were well-tested and could be met by anyone with a work ethic (and a stable home, and no health problems, but we're sampling from the upper-middle class here). The difference, in business, is that many deadlines are untested and arbitrary. Some deadlines you absolutely have to meet. Most are just some guy's opinion, and as long as you aren't personally responsible for the miss, it doesn't matter.

Soft-side finance and biglaw have larger-than-normal proportions of deadlines that actually matter and want to put people through a wringer to see who has the unconditional (again, "deadlines is deadlines") work ethic and who doesn't. In some businesses that are heavily relationship-based, having at least one person on the team with an unconditional work ethic can be a lifesaver.

It's bad for tech that it answers to such people, though, because the sorts of people who tend to have an unconditional work ethic are a disaster in any line of business that requires vision. It's the tradeoff between subordinacy, strategy, and dedication (pick two). People who are subordinate and dedicated (unconditional work ethic) will never be strategic, which means they'll be poor at choosing what to work on. They're great in analyst positions and maybe as VC-funded founders (because the VCs are the true executives) but absolutely useless in decision-making roles.

Not very. I knew someone who did that for awhile. He basically spent most of his time screwing around with his iPhone.

I'm going to disagree with the other posters. At least in investment banking, the hours are driven by the pace of corporate transactions. Mergers and divestitures are fragile things, and there is a tremendous incentive to get them done as quickly as possible. Investment bankers are at the service of their clients, and when the client wants someone to run the numbers on some idea on Thursday evening so he can have them for a meeting Friday morning, the bankers have to get it done. And that work has to be done by the people who have intimate knowledge of the deal, not some night-shift crew. Companies paying tens of millions of dollars in bankers' fees demand a certain level of service.

I've met some pretty overworked Goldman analysts, and they made over 200k a year barely two years out of college. Its definitely the money.