"I couldn't finish watching the movie because it reminded me too much of work..." -  Friend commenting on Office Space

I wonder if finance people feel the same way about a book another friend recommended called Monkey Business: Swinging through the Wall Street Jungle by John Rolfe and Peter Troobe (who are both recovering investment bankers). This was a really interesting read as it gives you a candid look at the American financial system with all of its lofty dreams and dashed hopes. As with all of the great professions, finance has its own rites of initiation/hazing that each newbie has to go through and they have all sorts of this crap coming at them from literally all directions. From this point on, I'll just itemize what i've learned about the industry from this book:

1. Finance capitalizes on innate human greed from not just its employees, but its customers as well
2. Bankers are ruthless bullshitters at least and blatant liars at most
3. Brown-nosing and ass-kissing are their next greatest talents
4. Crap always rains downwards in the following direction: Managing Director>Senior VP>JuniorVPs>Associates>Analysts
5. Tempers are short and patience is thin as everyone is irritated from the crap raining down on them
6. There is very little independent thought in finance
7. When talking to a superior, any word coming out of an analyst's or associate's mouth better be "yes".
8. Learn to nod inanely
9. Foul language with every iteration and combination of expletives and curse words  are used to address all colleagues and subordinates, but not superiors(at least not to their faces).
10. From the beginning, everyone is sold the dream of fortune and lavish excess  in exchange for their hard work and loyalty when in reality only a very select few will ever get a piece of that pie, but everyone thinks they are the chosen one
11. Being diligent and finishing things before deadlines only entitles your superiors to heap more work upon you
12. Mixing bribery with harmonious connections to the media team and the printing team are essential  to survival with furious arrogance dooming anyone who dares to cross their paths.
13. Travelling to foreign countries on business trips not as glamorous as advertised when you have to cross several time zones while sleep-deprived and carrying tons of documents without checking any bags because there's no time to wait at the baggage carousel.
14. There is no vacation because there is always work waiting for you on voicemail or your inbox when you get back or wake up
15. Work typically consists of writing/plagiarizing/editing over and over again with each iteration changing less and less as it ascends the seniority ladder
16. For all of the verbal abuse and hours toiled over what was written, absolutely no one else is going to read the whole thing.

This is obviously only one book that is told from a very biased perspective, but if true it actually explains a lot of the behaviors i've noticed in my finance friends. I thought some were just sick and twisted, but they're just a product of their environment. Well, maybe they are sick for staying in there all these years, but they made the initial honest mistake of getting hooked by the dream. I wonder what these guys will be like later on with prolonged exposure...