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<p>Usually a lot of business does NOT happen on the golf course. Golfing, bonding, betting, and drinking happens. Only those who can’t play golf assume that business goes on on the golf course. The solution is to take up golfing.</p>
<p>That’s what I meant, razorsharp (hence the quotation marks around “business”:)). It’s not actually working or cutting deals–it’s building relationships.</p>
<p>I wish the solution were as simple as more women taking up golfing. There is still the matter of many men preferring to golf only with other men. I don’t see this changing anytime soon.</p>
<p>^^^Probably true.</p>
<p>D2 wants to go into a field which is very much a male dominated profession. I know she has her work cut out for if she actually does go that direction.</p>
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<p>If a female executive is the type who does not golf because men prefer to golf only with other men, she is not likely to advance in her company anyway.</p>
<p>No, if men exclude women (even good golfers) the women don’t have a choice. Look at Augusta.</p>
<p>My kids’ peers, in their late 20’s, early 30’s, very successful in their careers and they do not golf. No one has the time to golf, they work 12-13 hours a day.</p>
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<p>Women play at Augusta all the time. No one can keep a woman off a golf course.</p>
<p>Golf is completely irrelevant in my industry. The idea of having Friday afternoons to golf with one’s clients seems practically Mad Men era. Very dated.</p>
<p>Depends on the business, some still thrive on the golf course, old buddy network kind of deal making, but in many ways that has gone the way of the 3 martini lunch and such. It wasn’t all that long ago that many deals between major companies happened on golf courses, financing for a mega buyout could happen at the 19th hole and so forth, but these days, golf courses are probably IME going to be minor league deals with local, small businesses…</p>
<p>There is all kinds of crap in recruiting and such, the frat boy network is one of them, but it isn’t the only one. Even in this day and age of quants being gold and so forth, lot of financial firms when they interview on campus line up the football players and such (not talking a BCS school, talking Ivies, elite liberal arts schools) to interview for jobs and internships, and the ivy league old boys network still exists, where kids of friends get the jobs and so forth, and no, it isn’t because they are all superior, lot of them quite honestly are idiots getting makework jobs (and yes, I work on Wall Street, have for almost 30 years, not talking as an outsider)…one of the reasons the ivies are so prized is in certain fields, it is almost but not quite a golden ticket into firms like the Evil Empire (Goldman), How low can I go (JP Morgan Chase) and the “Gentleman’s bank” (UBS, hah), and so forth…what the article is talking about often goes well beyond recommending people, it is basically nepotism, where it isn’t saying "oh, check out this guys resume, he is good’ it is “oh, Harry, this kid is Fiji” and Harry nods and the kid gets a job, it does happen, and more than some might think…it might seem to be counterproductive, but who ever said that getting ahead or promoted is necessarily a meritocracy? Often what happens is you have a talented person, who brings up on their coattails a group of friends, and as the top dog goes up the ladder, so do the cronies…</p>
<p>The real problem is when decisions are made strictly on the old boy/old school network, it is something even a snake pit like Goldman is figuring out, that it leads to inbred thinking, a bunch of yes men and often not great results, because no one in the old boys network wants to tell the old boy no…(there was an article recently that shocked me, where Goldman was hiring non conventional people, like music majors, rather than finance and business majors, shocked the you know what out of me…). It is changing, companies realize they can’t really afford to have what used to go on, and the old boy network is changing more than a bit, that Harvard or Yale degree and your best friends dad is a managing director might help get you an interview and maybe more weight on your side, but it won’t get you the job necessarily as it once did. Too much competition, and given the hiring environment, they aren’t going to fill limited openings to please someone, the days of huge scores of newly minted Ivy leaguers filling waves of jobs on wall street is long gone…and on the tech side, those ties are going to get you much of anything, there it is about your background or if coming out of college, what you can show you bring to the table.</p>
<p>My son did a summer internship during his college years at a bulge investment bank. The experience was brutal. He worked 18-20-hour days seven days a week. He started getting nose bleeds from the lack of sleep and the stress of meeting impossible deadlines. He said it was the hardest thing he ever did. </p>
<p>Of the 8 interns in this particular office, one was a female. Although she managed to survive, it was very tough for her. I am not sure how many women want to undergo this type of boot camp, which is probably equivalent in some ways to what a Navy Seal goes through without the intense physical training.</p>
<p>“Of the 8 interns in this particular office, one was a female. Although she managed to survive, it was very tough for her. I am not sure how many women want to undergo this type of boot camp, which is probably equivalent in some ways to what a Navy Seal goes through without the intense physical training.”</p>
<p>Why shouldn’t a female want to face this kind of stress? There are probably just as many females who can thrive under stress just as well as men, but it is attitudes like this (“a women can’t handle this kind of stress as well as the guys do”) that prevents them for having that opportunity. </p>
<p>As to this environment being similar to SEAL training? No, it isn’t. Not even close. And that is regardless of the pysical stress aspect of SEAL training.</p>
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<p>Wow, if he was an intern the firm probably violated the Fair Labor Standards Act big time. Sounds like it was a tough summer but he probably learned a lot.</p>
<p>Bullet, before you conclude how difficult that internship was, I would suggest you try doing it. Try going 10 weeks without sleep, working impossible hours and constantly being evaluated on your work product. I don’t know what Navy Seals go through but it can’t be more mentally challenging. </p>
<p>Toward the end of the internship, each intern was given an independent project in addition to their multiple everyday assignments, where each of them was expected to make a written and verbal presentation with financials, Powerpoint displays and written summary of a proposed buyout of a real company in which they had to choose. This was in addition to the work they were already assigned. Trust me, it was brutal. </p>
<p>I am not saying women can’t cope with extreme stress as well as men, although in this case it was very traumatic for the one female intern. One reason, however, why there may not be as many women as men in this business is because women may not be interested in pursuing a career where you have no personal life.</p>
<p>Razor, I thought there must have been some laws broken but OTOH the interns were paid incredibly well. You would be shocked how much money they were paid for the ten weeks. The overtime was an enormous amount of money. In retrospect, my son says it was the best thing he ever did. The learning curve was huge and the internship gave him a leg up in his job after graduation.</p>
<p>Investment banks do not seem to be nice places to intern:</p>
<p>[Bank</a> of America Intern?s 5 A.M. E-Mail Before Death Worried Mom - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>Nor pleasant places to work if you are concerned about your health:</p>
<p>[Warning:</a> Banking May Be Hazardous to Your Health - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204062704577223623824944472]Warning:”>Warning: Banking May Be Hazardous to Your Health - WSJ)</p>
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<p>you are comparing an office job with everything you could want at your fingertips to Navy SEAL training?</p>
<p>… right.</p>
<p>the interns might well make more money than a Navy SEAL though.</p>
<p>There are many people that do all kinds of stressful work where the stakes are way higher than whether someone on wall st will make $10 billion in profit or $8 million in profit. There are people on 14+ hour workdays making decisions that will literally impact whether people live or die. Not just military (and civilian counterparts), but people like doctors also.</p>
<p>[Social</a> Darwinism and class essentialism: The rich think they are superior.](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/social_darwinism_and_class_essentialism_the_rich_think_they_are_superior.html]Social”>Social Darwinism and class essentialism: The rich think they are superior.)</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t you like to think that any resources you inherited are rightfully yours, as the descendant of fundamentally exceptional people? Of course you would. New research indicates that in order to justify your lifestyle, you might even adjust your ideas about the power of genes. The lower classes are not merely unfortunate, according to the upper classes; they are genetically inferior.”</p>
<p>^^^^^And nurses too.��</p>
<p>Who cares what the rich think. </p>
<p>I never said what these interns did was important, just that it was extremely difficult. Since I was updated on a real-time basis during this time, I know what it was like. Surviving the ordeal was the paramount concern for these kids. I don’t think I could have done it.</p>
<p>" I don’t think I could have done it."</p>
<p>I am sure you couldn’t. ;)</p>
<p>There are very few people that could survive on that little sleep, and so much pressure. I’ll remind my kids to stay away from the banking world. They like their sleep.</p>