> but they're not casually making $2M bonuses like the investment banker types over at Goldman Sachs are
These days, a junior MD in Goldman IB is probably close to 1M USD in total comp (base + bonus). You need to be many years into MD to get paid 2M USD total comp (or have a single, wildly lucky, outlier year). And it takes 20 solid years of outperformance (and soul crushing hours) to get there. The days of "young MDs" in IB divisions is basically over.
I started reading chapter 1 of American Psycho last night. The characters are all M&A Wall St types in the mid 80s. Their personalities and obsessions and materialism strike me as EXACTLY what the 20-somethings I knew in San Francisco mid-2010s were like.
