<p>"To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue. "</p>
<p>Heh, most sales guys don't really have a clue of the technical aspects of the business. Its just the nature of operating a business. It would be really boring to walk into a presentation talking about the 10000 economic scenarios you generated from your new particle swarm optimization engine to arrive at a portfolio of 9.9% AAA US eurobonds and 91.1% AAA US Corp bonds. But that's just my take on the matter.</p>
<p>True, I don't see 100% base salary bonuses as an average. But its just a weeding process. The most lean and diversified banks will end up on top after this recession bottoms out. But that can't be a bad thing, 40-50hr analyst weeks, possibly? with a 50% bonus? Who knows.</p>
<p>One thing that I definitely see in the future is NO MORE A) espresso machines B) free soda vending machines and C) $100/plate lunches for analysts.</p>
<p>Let me mention that Michael Lewis also wrote, "The New, New Thing", which talked about the creation of a particular dot-com (WebMD--originally Healthion)--and which seemed like a "how-to" book at the time, and was also later seen as an explanation of the excesses (and ridiculousness) of the dot-coms that led to their downfall.</p>
<p>barrons: we get it. You hate the investment banking field and those it employs. What I don't think you realize is that you display a far more despicable attitude than the "arrogant" bankers. Jesus, get over yourself and stop having wet dreams about banker layoffs already.</p>
<p>On a side note, I'm not particularly fond of investment banking either.</p>