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The Hardworking Immigrant Who Made Good | The New Yorker

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There was no reason for the investment bankers who interviewed me to hire me. I knew nothing about finance and wasn’t even really clear as to what bankers did; all I knew was that they wore snazzy suits and looked coolly impatient. My reason for wanting to be a banker was simple: I was a student at Harvard Law School, and I figured that, instead of working very hard as a corporate lawyer, I might as well work the same amount in finance and make even more money. Many of my fellow-students appeared to be thinking the same thing; as I remember, almost a third of the people I knew who were graduating in my year applied to become bankers. To interview with the less prosperous investment banks, we waited in the then mangy hallways of the Sheraton Commander Hotel, in Cambridge. For the bulge-bracket firms, like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, we met in hospitality suites at the Charles and tried to hide our anxiety. When I am nervous, I become giddy and happily talkative. In the hospitality

Save this story Save this story Illustration by Christoph Niemann There was no reason for the investment bankers who interviewed me to hire me. I knew nothing about finance and wasn’t even really clear as to what bankers did; all I knew was that they wore snazzy suits and looked coolly impatient. My reason for wanting to be a banker was simple: I was a student at Harvard Law School, and I figured that, instead of working very hard as a corporate lawyer, I might as well work the same amount in finance and make even more money. Many of my fellow-students appeared to be thinking the same thing; a

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