A Primer for Success for Women in Investment Banking

[Andy Nguyen]

Book: Suits: A Woman on Wall Street​

Nina Godiwalla, an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, meets with an associate and a senior officer of the bank at Starbucks. In the middle of discussing a basketball game, the senior officer says he can't continue the conversation because they're in "mixed company."

Another time, Godiwalla eats dinner with several senior directors at MS who spend the entire meal discussing their times at Scores, a local strip club. She also goes for an expensive meal with a female analyst who's barred from attending a golf trip with a client and is told instead to "splurge" on a meal on her own.

These are just some of the stories that Godiwalla, 35, tells in her new book, "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street." Godiwalla, who received her MBA from Wharton and a master's in creative writing from Dartmouth, worked at Morgan Stanley from 1997 to 1999 in corporate finance. That group is among the most competitive to enter at the bank and is notorious for its hazing culture, she said.

"I thought if I got there and did a good job, it would pay off," she said. "But for women or minorities or anyone else who's an outsider, there's an element of having to prove yourself. You don't have the benefit of the doubt."

To succeed on Wall Street, Godiwalla said, you need to ingratiate yourself with those in power, most of whom are male. If they want to talk baseball, you have the option of learning about what it is they're talking about [Godiwalla used to get scores off the Bloomberg terminal every morning], or come up with something they'd be interested in.
http://www.fins.com/Finance/Article...r-for-Success-for-Women-in-Investment-Banking

 

[DominiConnor]

My problem with is that this is the sort of shit anyone has to put up with, whether they piss sitting down or standing up.

I despise soccer, one of my earliest memories is from 1967, hating it, a lot. I deal with the moronic droning about this low quality homoerotic porn by forming harsh and informed opinions about the worthless fools in charge of English soccer, and the suicidal economics of the English game, and joining the conversation that way. Unlike this bitter woman, I have remained true to myself.
Also, sport is by n0 means a bar to "minorities", that is typical of the shit that feminists spout to shield the idea that they are merely pushing their own personal interests.Do black people hate sport in her bitter little world ?

She talks about ingratiating yourself with those in power, hey I'm a headhunter I do that professionally, some people I know can have you killed and your company shut down (in that order). I don't do that by saying "yes sir", and I'm pretty sure that being fat and old none of them talk to me with a view to getting me into bed.
One "ingratiates" by being interesting and useful, because powerful people in a (flawed) meritocracy wants stuff to happen (or not happen), if you're on the right side of that, you're in.

Some men go to strip joints. I don't.
Not for moral reasons, I just see it as bit pointless to arrange for a woman to take off her clothes and then do nothing about it.
At my last firm, the CEO put a bounty on my head that he'd pay for the evening of any group that got me to a girlie bar.
They lost.

Some men talk about girlie bars, big deal. Some women talk about art, I don't do art, my firm may sponsor some art, but I don't really give a toss. Do I write books about how my life is crap because I work with people who like art and/or soccer ?
No I do not.

Is there more a "benefit of the doubt" for men ?
Don't see it really, not out of any belief that there is no sexism, but because men are the vast majority in this line of work, so it would be too hard to give all of them extra benefit.

Note that this woman has some dafffy bimbo degree in "creative writing". Hand up all those who would seriously respect a man or woman because they did that ?
Don't see many hands.
My own wife did Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford and is a scary lawyer, maybe Nina would like to be her secretary ?

So is there sexism ?
Yes of course there is, some behaviours of women are interpreted differently to exactly the same in men, and there is some evidence that their bonuses are lower, for the same performance.

But I shall share something that is a secret known only to the 20,000 or so people who like myself recruit for banks.
Women are more likely to get a given job, if equally qualified as men.

Yes, really, as we pimps would put it "they are easier to sell", this is something I would not joke about since it concerns my money.

 

[bob]

Note that this woman has some dafffy bimbo degree in "creative writing". Hand up all those who would seriously respect a man or woman because they did that ?
Don't see many hands.

As a holder of this particular daffy bimbo degree (fortunately not the only one I hold), I can tell you that whatever respect you may or may not afford it...
(a) It is a surprisingly difficult degree to get from a program that's any good. Most classes are on the order of 10 or less, with many hundreds applying for those spots.
(b) The degree of soul-destroying paranoia, elaborate meanness, and unrelenting rejection that such programs--to say nothing of the industry itself--can inflict upon participants make many if not most parts of finance look fairly inviting by comparison.

In any case, I might suggest that if the main substance of your argument is essentially, "Why can't she perceive and respond to these things as I do?" then you might be exemplifying her thesis rather than rebutting it.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Wait, so she worked at MS for only two years and she is writing a book about the industry? Maybe she worked somewhere else, but if she was only in banking for hardly two years I dont think she is qualified to talk about anything.

Where is the book about male nurses and the abuse they suffer? Naaaa, men are supposed to suck it up and deal with it.


+1 for DC.

 

[DominiConnor]

Anthony is entirely correct that two years, working in only one bank is pathetically myopic.

Bob, I agree about the nature of many writers, you may have seen that I worked for a while as a mildly senior journalist, and I will share that publishing shares the sort of behaviours you cite, and media in general is sexist, racist and class-ist to a degree that would astonish anyone who has only worked in banking.

You are also right that I am saying that her behaviour is unlike mine, and therefore suboptimal, and let me defend that...

I accept that other behaviours are at least as valid, indeed since many people have been more successful in banking than me, that is an inevitable conclusion. Bob, you've seen my other writings on QN, and perhaps you've seen my disclaimer that I give advice not only from a position of expertise, but also because I wish others to learn from my mistakes, some of which are quite gruesome, a few are so really awful that they almost sound like bragging.
They key here is that they are my mistakes, I own them, and have drilled down through my defective thought processes to debug them and share the results.

Many so-called 'male' behaviours are actually rational responses to competitive situations.
Some success is attained by superior performance, some by luck and the rest by screwing with the competition.

Excluding competitors from social interactions is a classic example of this; you see it in children of both sexes in playgrounds just as much as trading floors. That combines with a need in competitions to form alliances; building trust through shared experiences and the discussion of them is a reasonable way of doing that. I date from a time when there were no proper girlie bars in London, and all it meant was more discussion of football, drinking cars and TV, it did not increase the discussion of Art.

A problem many women have with 'male environments' is that they don't adjust to the idea that the men aren't really trying to sleep with them, at least not very much. Our culture puts the onus upon men to start that process, and women get into the habit of deflecting such moves, which makes them poor at initiating conversations with men they don't know well and often one observes frustration that they can't elbow their way into a conversation. Although I'm male, I don't have that talent at all, I've had to build the skill, and enough work has been expended that everyone thinks it is natural, but is actually artifice. Hence my scorn for anyone who hasn't bothered their pretty little heads.

Working women often act like lone wolves, the sport/beer/breasts behaviours above mean that men's social networks are vastly superior, and that combines with the dysfunctional aversion to such activities exhibited by the majority of women in banking. As an example, think back to the last time it was a woman who initiated some ad-hoc social event of the form "let's go down the pub".

Thus we understand the line that Andy cites right at the start of this thread.
I can't look into the heart of the CEO, but like me he may have learned that many women and that girl in particular sigh, roll their eyes and frump whenever a conversation outside their sphere of interest goes on. Indeed women use all sorts of words that men don't use, about 'sad' men who actually are intersted in stuff.

Also a CEO is a leader, and part of that craft is making sure that the led have the right relationshp with him. A common technique is to take one aside and say 'this is the thing between you and me' making the minion feel special, and that requires exclusion of others, so it's a mistake to believe in any of his partitions whether sex, race, job function or sports team supported, they exist to help divide and conquer.

Also he may not have liked this chippy bimbo, I don't know her as a person at all and can't tell whether I'd like her, but can state as a fact that she'd hate me, a lot. Not because I'm sexist, but quite the reverse, I treat pretty much everyone the same, but she wants to be treated as special, the only woman that gets that is my wife.

Or he may be sexist, seeing women as inherently inferior and/or preferring the company of men.

The point here is that human motivations are not expressed in the VBA level thinking this girl suggests.
People don't say to themselves
If Sex==Female then respect = respect * 0.5

They think in spreadsheets
They sum up a variety of factors from self interest, boredom, prejudice, laziness, et al and do whatever feels right at the time, aided by a mediocre random number generator.

 

[bob]

I'm actually inclined to agree with a good bit of what you say, but at the same time I'm suspicious of that impulse. After all, it's easy for people to say they treat everyone equally in a professional context, but what they really mean to say is that they treat people fairly as they judge the matter. In a leadership position, treating people equally is a mistake that can range anywhere from folly to malfeasance.

I would argue, elaborating on one of your points above, that your ability to get ahead in virtually any business is predicated yes on how "useful" one is, but in the context of advancement the primary utility of an employee consists of how trustworthy the one conferring advancement considers the person, within the scope of the work. Inevitably, that decision is predicated to some degree upon a perception of similarity in how one assesses ambiguous or difficult situations and reacts to them. And the one making the advancement decision is far more likely to find that similarity in one who comes from the same cultural context.

This isn't intended as an apologia for institutional inequality, just to be clear, but as an effort to see the practical roots of its existence.

 

[amanda.jayne]

Having been on the receiving end for the better of 10 years (half in engineering/manufacturing and half in finance) I can relate to, and in many cases, one-up Godiwalla's stories.

There are few situations where I can truly say I was treated equally. To look back and overlay my experiences I would tend to agree with bob's statement "they treat people fairly as they judge the matter".

For every story I can tell of brick walls encountered, inequitable tasks assigned, invites passed up, awkward looks, comments and inappropriate advances, I can tell a story of someone who went out of their way to help, mentor and, at times coddle me. For better or for worse, you take what the gift-horse hands you.

To go and play in any realm where you are a minority, whether that realm be academic, industrial, sports or otherwise and whether the minority status be due to age, sex, race, religion, orientation or otherwise such things are to be expected. As holds true on my hockey team: "If you're going to play with the big boys, expect to be treated like one".

One area most people tend to overlook is female-to-female interactions in male dominated fields, which I would argue are truer to their raw form.

I would love to read a females perspective of "My Life as a Quant", more intriguing would be to hear the dark, through the looking glass stories - As John Dollar is to Lord of the Flies, it would be an interesting read!