It’s absolutely silly to argue that high-paying finance jobs are the be-all and end-all. Many students who would be competitive for such jobs do not compete for them because they don’t want them. Many students who take them leave after a few years and accept lower compensation doing something else or working for different firms because they don’t find the jobs satisfying. In fact, virtually every person I have known who has gone into that world has done so with a lot of trepidation and an exit strategy at hand. That was true 30 years ago, and it was true last year when I listened to a Wharton undergraduate agonize about whether to accept a permanent job offer from his summer employer, a specialized investment bank with a solid-platinum reputation for quality and intelligence (which he said it deserved).
Ditto for consulting, too. I met a McKinsey partner who was in his early 50s a few weeks ago, and he confirmed that he is one of the very oldest people still working at the firm. People there make enormous sums of money and walk away from it once they’ve had enough, not once they can’t earn that much anymore.
Sixty years ago, my mother dropped out of Harvard Law School to teach high school, because she hated Harvard Law School and she liked teaching adolescents. She taught high school for 25 years, then got a PhD and taught college students for another 20. When she returned to Harvard for what would have been her 25th reunion, she was thrilled to realize how glad she was not to spend her days surrounded by people like her classmates (my father excepted, of course . . . but really not). At least three of my law school classmates are also teaching high school now. And none of my law school classmates who took the highest-paying jobs on Wall Street remained with those firms. I have a set of post-law-school friends who could write their own ticket anywhere, and every one of them – every single one, no exception – has made career decisions to walk away from money. Some have chosen leisure, or less pressure, some more prestige, some more passion and satisfaction, but it’s fair to say that not one of them is maximizing his or her earnings today.
I believe everyone wants “enough,” but very few people want “as much as it’s humanly possible to get.” People differ wildly in their definitions of “enough,” and they differ with themselves over time, too. But it’s just not true that everyone is insatiable.