I had a similar experience with a similar place. At a certain point, it really becomes about preserving yourself and your soul vs. being transformed into someone certainly nobody else will like, and you yourself may not like. Its really seductive too - you feel so powerful flinging around size, and you're just some young schmuck, but you can move the market (a little, sometimes), or at least participate in doing so. BUT - its not really you. Its the seat your are sitting in & the role you are playing. And for years other dumb schmucks not even having done half as well as you in college, b-school, on the squash court, or with half the pedigree you possess have been doing the same thing. And once you are gone, someone else will do it too. Its the role you are given - the question is, do you become your role or do you retain your individuality? Its an important question, because once you are no longer in that role, if you don't have a strong sense of yourself, you will feel powerless, useless, and like an abject failure. Hence the suicides, etc... I remember colleagues with ulcers, failed relationships, addictions, and profound unhappiness bordering on depression. And all for a nicer flat? The mantra was : "Just one more year and I'll get out." But they never did - they just got older and more bitter with personal failures causing them to channel more of their energies into work and lost any sense of joy or happiness in their life. I walked away. So I'll never have a 9 figure net worth. I'll live with that. I think of what is required to succeed at the highest level of the Tier 1 places, and wonder, if at the end of their lives, those people are filled with more regret than anything else. The level of maneuvering to get to that point should turn anyone into a hardened cynic, and the secrets you must know at that level must be nothing short of terrifying. End of rant.