What will the history books say about us?

CONSUME:
It’s January and 10 degrees outside so I went to the gym. The gym is in my building so it is a short 35 second elevator ride down, but being a New Yorker, I must have my airpods in at all times because the sound of silence or my own thoughts (eek) is deafening. I turned on one of my favorite podcasts, Honestly with Bari Weiss by the Free Press. The episode was about a book that just came out, “The Big Fail",” by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean.

As a note: I’m hooked on Honestly, it is part of my weekly podcast rotation.

The main reason I like Honestly is because it’s thought provoking and forces me to think critically about the world I’m most familiar with, even though I may not agree with all the guests or commentary made. So buckle up, I’ll refer to the podcast often.

The episode tonight focused on a few things that I never really thought about as a hypochondriac blue state resident who took all the COVID precautions:

• The US could not have done better during COVID due to our manufacturing offshoring, shoddy healthcare system and general American behavior (we don’t like being told to do things)

• The nature of the pandemic quickly became blue state vs red state and a moral superiority / shaming conversation

• We really disregarded the impact of the “staying safe” on lower wage workers (great you’re ordering DoorDash and hunkering down at home, but what about that delivery driver who is taking a risk to go and pick up your meal or the restaurant staff preparing your food?)

• World renowned scientists were ‘canceled’ and accused of circulating misinformation for proposing that we were misallocating resources throughout the pandemic given the fact the scientific data suggested we may not have needed such stringent protocols

• Following the science interestingly enough may have really meant:

  • Sending kids back to school much sooner (like June 2020) given the fact they seemed to be less vulnerable to getting sick than adults (unlike during the Flu of 1918)

  • Focusing on the elderly as they proved to be more vulnerable

  • Letting people attend events regardless of vaccination status

I am grateful for vaccines, the fact my family and friends had the ability to stay safe in a variety of ways and that I held my job throughout the pandemic. I must say I appreciated this episode because it really made me reflect on how I viewed the politics at the time which seemed to suggest anyone not masking up, social distancing and working remotely was '“foolish.” I suppose I knew in the back of my mind that of course there were some people who could not work from home or lost their livlihoods, but I didn’t tie it back to just how unprepared and polarized America was and is. I will definitely be thinking about this for a while.

OUTPUT:
I am interviewing undergraduate interns for the Spring semester. I’m still early days so unclear how much detail I’ll go into about my work life, but suffice it to say that I am an entrepreneur in financial services. I used to be an investment banker, am pretty open about how I hated just about every minute of it and am interviewing kids looking to go into banking or private equity when they graduate. So as any good interviewer should, I always leave time for questions at the end of interviews and the number one question is what did you hate so much about being a banker?

Answer: Having no control over my time. The older I get (and especially now that I’m married with a growing family), the more I realize time is an invaluable asset that we all take for granted until it’s threatened. I will never knock the opportunities and ‘credentials’ being a banker offered. It certainly felt fancy to walk into a swanky office every day and have car service home and free dinners. I totally got excited when the news of a deal I worked on (as a mere post-MBA associate) was in the news. I would be lying if I didn’t note that payday and bonus deposit day each winter felt damn good because I was making more money than my parents could have imagined when they were my age. BUT at what cost? I cannot tell you how many dinners with loved ones I had to abruptly leave because a Managing Director (MD) needed to reinsert that slide he hated at 6pm, but now that its 830pm he feels totally different about. I hated the seemingly permanent anxiety every vibration my iphone created even if it was just my dad checking in on me. I looked ahead at the lives of Directors and MDs who were supposed to be on family vacations in exotic locations, but instead the client called them so they were giving us slide edits over zoom while their kids screamed “daddy, come look” in the background. You never get back your time and I could never imagine a life where I gave up control of my time in that way. (Better) control over my time was one of the main motivations for me becoming an entrepreneur.

The interviewees usually nod their heads and add “yeah that makes sense,” before rushing off to their finance class.