The Investment Banking Prestige Myth: What Actually Separates the People Who Thrive

I had jobs in high school and college. I did not come from money. There is a real misconception that everyone in IB comes from an upper-middle-class or wealthy background. It is not true, and I think that misconception does real damage to people deciding whether this career is even open to them.

The prestige myth, and why it is wrong

There is a version of investment banking that gets sold online: target school or bust, Manhattan or bust, the right social clubs, the right MBA program, Goldman or you failed. I think that framing is mostly wrong, and worse, I think it discourages people who would genuinely do well in this career from ever trying.

The honest version is that breaking in is hard for almost everyone. It is not a rich-kid career specifically, it is a hard-to-access career generally, and the one real exception I've consistently seen is having a senior family member already inside a firm. Outside of that, pedigree gives you a better shot at an interview, not a guaranteed outcome. I know Stanford students who applied to every bulge bracket bank on the list, Goldman included, and struck out at every single one. They ended up at UBS, which is a genuinely strong bank, and the industry still treats that outcome as a disappointment. It isn't. Where you land in college, or even right after, does not determine the rest of your career. I think of this as a career built around growth over time, not a single outcome locked in at 22.

Why a senior VP walked away before making MD

I stayed close with people from my high finance days, and one of them made it to executive director level, roughly the VP-to-MD range at Goldman specifically (note: at Goldman, "executive director" is not really a distinct title the way it is at some other banks, it functions closer to a senior VP). He was making real money, VPs at that level can clear seven figures in a good year, and he was on a realistic path to MD, which meant a real shot at millions more.

He walked away at the senior VP level. When I talked to him about it, his framing stuck with me: does it actually matter. He told me he would rather retire with $3 million than grind another decade for $15 million at 65. That is not a story about money not mattering. It is a story about perspective, and about a genuinely thoughtful person doing real math on what the additional years were actually buying him.

What actually separates people who thrive

I've watched people thrive at every single level of this business, analyst through MD, and the pattern is consistent: the ones who genuinely love ECM, M&A, or debt markets as a craft are the ones who last and grow. Not the ones who talk about comp constantly, and not the ones counting the days until the next bonus drop. A lot of people burn out or eventually realize the toll it takes on their social life. But the people who actually love the work find it meaningfully easier to sustain, at every level, not just as a 24-year-old analyst who hasn't hit a wall yet.

I think that distinction gets almost no real coverage. Most content about IB either stereotypes the lifestyle as universally miserable or universally glamorous. Neither is accurate. It depends enormously on whether the specific person actually likes the specific work, and that's a much less quotable, much more honest answer than most career content is willing to give.

Why your network matters more in the age of AI

Here's something I think about a lot: understanding a DCF or the mechanics of different LBO scenarios is genuinely important. But so is the unglamorous execution work, adjusting fonts, moving logos around, formatting a pitch deck. Back in 2019, well before generative AI was a mainstream thing, banks were already outsourcing a lot of that formatting work to teams in India specifically to save analyst hours. Half-jokingly, we'd complain that the work came back slow or inaccurate and we'd have to fact-check it ourselves anyway. But the instinct was already there: offload the mechanical part.

Today AI can do a lot more of that mechanical layer, and it raises the real question: if AI can do more and more of it, what actual value do you provide in IB. Increasingly, I think the answer is relationships and sourcing, not modeling speed. I have a friend, a strong senior associate, who personally connected a health tech company he knew with Goldman, and that relationship later turned into an actual debt deal. That is genuinely impressive to a partner, because MDs are expected to bring in business, but a VP or even a strong associate showing that same instinct signals real future potential far earlier than the traditional track assumes.

I saw the same pattern from the IR side. During my own time in biotech IR, I remember senior VPs at banks like Credit Suisse presenting biotech talks at capital markets events, not because it was required, but because it built exactly the kind of exclusive network that makes someone valuable regardless of title. The instinct is the same whether you're in IB or IR: build a real, specific network, don't just execute the work in front of you.

Brand name vs. your own network

Here's a real tension in this industry: your bank's brand genuinely matters. Goldman gets better deal terms and more deal flow than a bank like KeyBank, not because Goldman bankers are individually better, but because the brand itself commands the relationship. If you're the number one bank in a category, you get more of the deals in that category. That's just how it works.

But I've also watched a lot of people from Goldman specifically move down a tier every few years, trading brand strength for a faster title upgrade. That's a real trade-off, not a mistake, but it is a trade-off. If you have a genuinely strong personal network, that move can be just as valuable as staying at the top-brand shop, because your relationships travel with you even when the logo on your business card doesn't carry the same weight. I saw this directly at Wells Fargo: a number of people who joined from bulge bracket banks specifically brought relationships from firms like JPMorgan with them. The bank hired the relationships, not just the resume. Relationships are, in a very literal sense, everything in this business, arguably more than the name on the building.

What this actually means for you

If you struck out of every top-tier bank and ended up somewhere the internet treats as a lesser outcome, that outcome is not your career verdict. It's one data point at 22. If you're grinding toward MD purely for the number and you don't actually love the work, take the senior VP's question seriously: does it actually matter, and what are you trading for it. And if you're early in your career wondering what actually differentiates you as AI eats more of the mechanical work, the honest answer is your network and your ability to source real relationships, not your modeling speed. That was true before generative AI existed. It matters more now.