Genre and Sub Genre — Verbal Folklore: Finance Stereotypes

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States

 

Informant Data: Matthew Kang is a senior at Dartmouth College and an Economics major. Matt is from Tallahassee, Florida, where his parents work for the state government. He has participated in numerous rounds of finance recruiting interviews here at Dartmouth, and he has had finance internships ranging from venture capital to investment banking. He will also begin his career in the finance industry after graduation in New York City. On campus, Matt is part of Dartmouth Business Journal and Dartmouth Finance Society.  

Social Context: Given prevalence of notions surrounding the type of character that pursues Finance, the folklore in question here is shared amongst people of all interests, all of years, and of all sexes.

Cultural Context: It is often said that those who pursue Finance exhibit certain behaviors and characteristics. And given how often people are inclined to construe professionals in Finance or those aspiring to positions in Finance in a specific way, we might characterize these deeply entrenched ideas about Finance more generally as stereotypes. We were therefore interested in exploring the stereotypes people generally ascribe to “Finance people”, be they positive or negative. Towards that end, Joseph Wang interviewed Matthew Kang one-on-one in a quiet area in the library.

 

Item: Matthew noted a host of different stereotypes within Finance. For example, he noted that people who go into Finance are often construed as being greedy and prestige-hungry. He also noted it is generally believed that people who pursue careers in Finance tend to be good with numbers, driven, hard working, intelligent, and ambitious. He also noted that Finance is generally construed as being very cut-throat and hyper-competitive. Another one of the the stereotypes he noted is that networking and connections sometimes beats out meritocracy.

 

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Relevant Portion: 2:01 — 3:10

Transcript of Associated File:

• Joseph Wang: What are the kind of general positive and negative stereotypes about the Finance Industry as a whole?

 

• Matthew Kang: …So I’ll start with positives.. Surrounded by a ton of smart people.. So I think the general stereotype of a Finance person would be like very intelligent..you know good with numbers… very driven .. hardworking.. These are all positive stereotypes… in terms of negative stereotypes I think.. greedy.. you  know corporate.. Doesn’t really care about social issues or humanitarian issues.. More focused on actually making money … sort of cut-throat .. very competitive. Another potential negative thing about it would be .. you know like the idea that networking sometimes beats out meritocracy.. you  know smart people don’t always necessarily get the best jobs.. I think that counts as a negative

 

• Joseph Wang: Awesome!

General Comments:

• We generally heard the same stereotypes about Finance people echoed among all our informants. We heard them described as being, ambitious, greedy smart, snakes, and a host of other adjectives, some good and some rather unsavory. There were no meaningful variances in the accounts we received.

Collector’s Name:

• Joseph Wang

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Folklore, Finance Stereotypes, Good & Bad