I just finished reading James Kwak’s thoughts on Why Do Harvard Kids Go to Wall Street. The author makes some great point about how some smart Ivy League kids can get lured into careers they didn’t have intentions of pursuing.  

In my opinion, students genuinely passionate about finance (or management theory?) of course should go join a bank or some prestigious consulting firm.  Students who don’t know or couldn’t care less about what they want to do with their lives will not surprisingly choose the safe choice of interviewing for these sorts of jobs — it’s so easy since they come to campus to recruit you.  

However, students who came to college with the desire to change the world or be the sort of person that will effect change have a different choice entirely — so why do these socially-conscious Ivy League Kids choose to go to Wall Street?  

With all their other peers choosing these prestigious jobs, they feel the need to at least consider these choices and so ask themselves: 

“Should I start off at the bottom of a cause I’m passionate about or do something that will be good on my resume and allow me to jump ahead possibly and be better prepared?” 

Unfortunately, they don’t consider how they will be a different person in the future with different ambition and expectations.  I believe people have a mental bias to overlook the effects of experiences between the present and the future on their future mindset.  Basically, people think their future self thinks the same as the current self.  I call it “the future-self nonrecognition bias.”

They won’t realize that 4-5 years from now after their analyst program and business school (or associate program), they will be different.  Kwak states the problem well:

It’s just human nature. Your expenses grow to match your income. As the decades pass and you realize that no, you’re not going to save the world, the money becomes a more and more important part of the justification. And when you have kids, you’re stuck; it’s much easier to deprive yourself of money (and what it buys) than to deprive your children of money.

You may not want to go back to changing the world.  You may even convince yourself that the best thing you could do is donate money and serve on the board of directors for a cause.  You may tell yourself that you can create bigger change from within the system than by trying to disrupt it.  However, you are forgetting that your interests may change and you may no longer care about the same things.

I’m worried about how many of these talented kids fall victim to this mental bias and not realize they won’t necessarily feel the same in the future as they do now.  Storing a state of mind is difficulty — just try to feel the same happiness you did at some other point in life.  You just remember you felt that way but you don’t feel that exact same way anymore.  And so, many of these kids may just remember one day how they once wanted to change the world but now things have come up and the world can wait.

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