How Wall Street's notoriously competitive culture is making its youngest recruits feel lonelier than ever (2024)

While this image of life on Wall Street can be true for some, it wasn't for Madison. She never imagined that one year into the role she'd have yet to foster a friendship with any of her colleagues or that she'd be so desperate for connection that she'd resort to using a dating app to find people to hang out with.

"The biggest disappointment of banking for me is that I thought all of us analysts would be super close. I thought we would have this really strong camaraderie and we'd be friends for life after this," said Madison, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her identity at work. "But after I walk out of this firm, I can't say I will keep in contact with a single one."

Loneliness is not unique to the finance industry. Feelings of isolation are pervasive in modern American society, so much so that the US surgeon general in May deemed it an epidemic. The problem is especially stark for young people, many of whom must move to new cities to start their careers. In a 2021 survey commissioned by Cigna, 79% of 18- to 24-year-olds reported feeling lonely, compared with 41% of people 66 and older.

But Wall Street workers say that the nature of finance — the office politics and uniquely competitive cohort — can create a work culture that exacerbates feelings of loneliness. And thanks to the long hours, it can be harder for the young people just starting out on Wall Street to find the time to cultivate a life outside of work.

Two investment-banking analysts in their early 20s, a former derivatives-trading managing director, and two mental-health professionals with financial-industry clients spoke with Business Insider about why working on Wall Street can be particularly isolating and what, if anything, can be done about it.

The competitive, cliquey culture

The young people Business Insider interviewed acknowledged that experiences can vary — some analyst classes can be very close, depending on the group and the firm. But it's not a guarantee, they said.

"I go out with them occasionally. But I wouldn't say these people really know me as a person outside of work," Madison said of her analyst class. "I just don't feel a deeper connection with a lot of people."

Jobs at top investment banks and hedge funds can often be harder to land and more exclusive than a spot at an Ivy League school, so people in them are generally competitive by nature. Drop them into a culture obsessed with hierarchies and titles, and it can result in a toxic mix.

Madison, for example, described major tension between her analyst class and the one above it — a problem that started during her first year on the job.

"Late at night they'll do an order for bubble tea or something, and they will literally exclude every single one of us" while including everyone else in the office, she said. "It's a hostile environment between them and us. Frankly, I don't want to be here for another year dealing with these people."

Some of the pettiness seems right out of the movies.

"There's this girl in the year above me, and she's the biggest bitch of the team. You can walk by her in the hallway and say, 'Oh, hey, how's it going?' and she will just walk straight past you dead-faced and will not acknowledge you," Madison said.

It also plays out through alumni networks of prestigious schools. You're more likely to get a Wall Street job if you come from Wharton, Harvard, or Yale, because top firms tend to recruit more from such campuses, though this is changing. Those who claw their way into the industry from lesser-known "non-target schools" can often feel isolated since they don't have those built-in connections.

"It is very cliquey," said Madison, who attended a state school. "In my class, Wharton people will hang out with Wharton people, NYU people will hang out with NYU people."

Wall Street also rewards ambition through its notoriously competitive pay-for-performance structure. Whether you get a top-bucket, mid-bucket, or bottom-bucket bonus gives you — and everyone else — an idea of where you stand in the hierarchy. And the jockeying that goes into review season can turn people against each other.

Abbey, a Wall Street analyst who quit her investment-banking job in August, said she witnessed firsthand how review season could erode people's confidence in themselves and their trust in colleagues.

"The class above me, the second-year analysts, were kind of known to be one of the closest groups of people," said Abbey, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her future job prospects. "But then when the first-year review season came around, that kind of changed everything. I saw how the relationship has been torn. I started to see the lines between friendship and professional rivalry just blur, and it got really toxic."

Analysts aren't yet pulling in money for the firm or dealing directly with clients, she said. So to get ahead, some people will resort to a cutthroat game of office politics to prove they're the best and hardest-working.

"It's like even your own friends are saying small things here and there about you, just to put themselves at more of an advantage during review," Abbey said.

When vulnerable is weak

Wall Street's buttoned-up culture can also create barriers between people. Most people don't talk about their struggles, Abbey said, because it could be seen as a weakness for others to take advantage of.

"I think people still want to put on this really alpha image of being strong a lot of times," Abbey said. "They don't want to appear weak in front of their friends."

Denise Shull, a trader turned coach who helps portfolio managers and their analysts use emotions to their advantage in decision-making, said a similar issue prevails at hedge funds.

"A lot of them don't have any experience with any sort of failure. Some of the loneliness comes from this — it's all new, it feels bad, it's scary, and they don't feel like they can talk to anyone. They don't feel like they can be honest," she said.

"You might feel like you're somewhat good buddies with this other analyst that you started with, but you're not really going to tell them you doubt yourself."

Michael Sloyer, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, said that though he did connect with his coworkers, there was a certain threshold of closeness that couldn't quite be reached. That was especially true early in his 11-year career as an equity-derivatives trader.

"My experience was that there's a culture of trying to project a successful image, to feel and to be important, to have a certain status and job title and compensation," Sloyer, now an executive and life coach at Upbuild, said. "We're trying to be seen and to prove ourselves in those ways, and when we do that, we're setting ourselves up to feel less connected to other people because we're mostly thinking about ourselves."

"Looking back on it, it was my ego interacting with their ego, and a codependence that developed from 'I'll tell you how great you are, you'll tell me how great I am, then we'll all be great together,'" he said.

The long hours add to the problem

Wall Street's notoriously long hours can also contribute to the feeling of loneliness, these people said.

"You truly can never shut off," Abbey said. "You're given a work phone and you have to check it every 10 minutes. On weekends I'm still constantly checking my phone." She added, "It made things like planning dinners with my friends or going away for a weekend just impossible."

A big part of why she quit investment banking, she said, is that she had "no control of my time or my life."

When she was a banker, most of her friends didn't work in finance, and her schedule and the stress that came with it strained her relationships.

"I was so stressed all the time that I couldn't talk to my home friends," she said. "And if they ever came to me about something, either I was really busy or I was already in a negative headspace where I couldn't take the energy to speak with them or listen to their problems or even meet up with them."

Madison agreed. After realizing she wouldn't be close with her coworkers, she turned to Bumble BFF, a version of the dating app Bumble made explicitly for finding friendships.

She's had some success with it — she said she'd matched with 20 or 30 girls and met up with three.

"I think it's been productive," she said. "It's hit or miss. But it's better than nothing."

But she's been swiping right only on people in finance or adjacent industries with similarly hectic work demands. When you have to cancel a hangout at the last minute for the fifth time to make edits to a slide deck, people with 9-to-5s are bound to get annoyed.

"I can't go out for drinks on a weeknight, honestly. And my weekends are honestly so chaotic I can barely even do that half the time," Madison said. "I need to be friends with somebody who understands or has a similar schedule to me."

The same is true when it comes to dating. "The hours are literally like — nobody's going to be OK with this," Madison said.

Shull said that even financiers with partners or families may feel isolated.

"I've had analysts tell me their girlfriends will be like, why are you doing this job? You're so stressed out," Shull said. "I often hear that they don't feel understood or supported by their family or their girlfriends."

Advice from the pros

Abbey doesn't think the industry will change anytime soon.

"They're always going to be hiring the same type of people with the same type of mindset, so I don't see a huge shift, and I don't think seniors at the top have an incentive to change the way things have been," she said.

But that doesn't mean people working on Wall Street can't do anything to mitigate their loneliness. It just takes effort on their part, said Sam Glazer, the medical director at Fifth Avenue Psychiatry in New York.

"It's getting more involved in your community, leaning in more at work, reinforcing your intimate friendships and family — boring stuff," Glazer said, "but things that I think a lot of people have lost over the last few years."

Glazer acknowledged that's easier said than done. When a person feels lonely, their self-esteem can go down, and they might be less likely to put themselves out there.

"It sounds simple, but counter any desire to isolate," Glazer said. "When a person is even mildly depressed and feeling lonely, they feel nothing they do will make a difference. Even if you're thinking that, try new things; try to push yourself to be engaged with other people."

To do that, Glazer recommends starting simple, even if it feels silly.

For example, you might ask a colleague to grab lunch or coffee with you even if you think they're busy or they'd say no. Or the next time you're in an elevator with someone and feel tempted to scroll on your phone in silence, strike up a conversation.

Glazer also recommends taking every chance to speak with people in your office face to face. Don't default to emailing or instant messaging a colleague who's sitting on your floor — go up to them and have a conversation.

"Even if you don't become friends with that person, you will probably automatically form a deeper connection. Plus, it will just make your day better," said Glazer, whose clients are mostly financial-services professionals.

Glazer argued that modern loneliness is partly due to changes in how people interact due to the rise of technology and remote work. He said that even just 10 years ago there was more camaraderie in the office.

"People really underestimate how much work is a community and how much everyone needs to both contribute to the community by showing up all the time and how much they get out of being in that community," he said.

"There are so many intangibles to being in person with someone. There's so much body language we get; there's so much warmth in being with someone. There's a different level of eye contact; you are communicating in such a more intimate way," he said. "Because we are rational beings, we think that's not so important because we see them on screen."

Sloyer, the former Goldman trader, also said that putting down the phones and connecting with people openly and honestly can have a big impact.

"What I've noticed with myself is even just a five-minute conversation with someone where I show up as the real me," he said, "that can shift that feeling of loneliness."