Morning Coffee: Former Goldman Sachs ED recalls psychological obstacles to quitting. The Morgan Stanley banker who thinks cufflinks slow him down

efinancialcareers.com:

There are many things which keep people in the investment banking industry.  Money, forexample.  Also, the prospect of more money, and the threat of losing deferred money. There’s also interesting work and pleasant colleagues, for some lucky bankers.  But, as former Goldman Sachs banker Cassindy Chao is refreshingly honest to admit, another thing that keeps people in the industry when they might otherwise be tempted to get out is the sheer psychological trauma of seeing friends and acquaintances get much richer than you. This is especially so when those people were formerly your juniors. 

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Ms Chao had the very best of reasons to leave – she was living in Hong Kong, and quit in order to move back to San Francisco when her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  But even given that, she describes the experience as “awful”, not just because of the adjustments to her own lifestyle but because “I watched people who worked below me at the company do incredibly well. I visited friends with many Hermès bags in their closets. They'd call me and chat about their far-flung excursions and show off their homes filled with priceless art.”

While at Goldman she apparently reached the rank of Executive Director (which in the Goldman hierarchy is usually considered equivalent to a senior Vice-President, but in a non-US market), and was earning $375k in the mid-1990s.  That’s more or less exactly the point of take-off, when within a space of a few years some people will go from earning “dinner in nice restaurants” money to “actually rich” money. 

If you quit banking a few years earlier, while you’re still on the Analyst or Associate program, then you’ll do so at a point where most of