Finance-hate is so common, that almost anything related to the ills of the finance industry passes as news these days, whether or not it makes any sense whatsoever. People are very influenced by the stories they hear. People seem to assume that my peers are Patrick Bateman, Leonardo di Caprio, or some character out of a Michael Lewis novel, but frankly those people are fairly rare in real life. I see very little resemblance between what I do in IBD and these fictitious characters.
I also see very little relationship between what I do and any possibility of harm done to others. I've thought and reflected about it a great deal, and I simply think these people are just plain wrong most of the time. So much of what is said about finance is just so off base that it irks me. People I meet (including my roommates in college) make all sorts of negative, untrue assumptions simply because of what I do for a living.
Examples in the last month:
- My uncle to me: "Don't you feel like what you do is kind of heartless?"
- My doctor to me: "Why don't you be a doctor rather than stressing out about this finance stuff? You'd make a great doctor."
- Startup friend to me: "You should probably start practicing your cocaine game before you start work."
- My roommate to me were discussing what would happen to our career if we got caught cheating in school. I said that if I got caught, I might lose my job and it'd significantly worsen my chance of future work. My roommate says, "Really? I thought finance people liked that kind of thing."
- etc, etc,
Sometimes, I assume these people are joking, but I feel like most of the time they're being serious and it just pisses me off. Sometimes I react with "It's natural for people to be envious of those who are more wealthy, especially if the wealth is self-made." Sometimes, I feel like my reaction should be just to think to myself "He's just uneducated about finance, I can't blame him." Other times, I react with "people can't help but believe this given what they read in the news." But I feel like all of these responses are kind of arrogant and condescending. Sometimes I react to news with "That's just clickbait, it's what he's paid to write." Of course, we all read and hear the opinions of people with different views and most of the time it doesn't bother me much. It doesn't bother me when people express different religious or political views, but I guess this is different because I perceive it as an attack on who I am fundamentally as a person. Maybe this is because I'm still young and need to get used to it.
Do you guys have similar experiences? How do you guys internalize this? What is a healthy reaction to this?
