The vice-chancellor stood on the podium in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, her voice echoing towards the carved ceiling: Now go on the market and alter the world. Robes rustled. Cameras clicked. Rows of classmates smiled, clutching levels that may quickly ship them to McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Clifford Likelihood: the holy trinity of elite exit plans.
Simon van Teutem clapped, too, however for him, the irony was insufferable.
“I knew the place everybody was going,” he stated in an interview with Fortune. “Everybody did. Which made it worse — we had been all pretending to not see it.”
Profession paths for the elite have certainly consolidated during the last half-century. Within the Nineteen Seventies, one in twenty Harvard graduates went into careers of the likes of finance or consulting. Twenty years later, that jumped to at least one in 4. Final 12 months, half of Harvard graduates took jobs in finance, consulting or Large Tech. Salaries have equally soared: information from the senior exit survey for the Class of 2024 exhibits 40% of employed graduates accepted first-year salaries exceeding US $110,000, and amongst these getting into consulting or funding banking practically three-quarters crossed that threshold.
Months after that ceremony, van Teutem obtained two of these sorts of provides: a job at McKinsey or Morgan Stanley. As a substitute, at 22, he turned each down and spent three years working with Dutch information outlet De Correspondent writing a ebook in regards to the delicate gravitational pull that makes such choices really feel inevitable.
Van Teutem took on the mission after watching the status treadmill siphon proficient, artistic youngsters into trivial work—after which shut the door behind them. Everybody all the time says they’re simply doing their banking job simply to get their foot within the door, he famous, however they all the time find yourself staying.
“These corporations cracked the psychological code of the insecure overachiever,” Van Teutem stated, “after which constructed a self-reinforcing system.”
The Bermuda Triangle of Expertise
The ebook,, The Bermuda Triangle of Expertise, grew out of private frustration. A longtime nerd who was fascinated by economics and politics, he had arrived at Oxford as an undergraduate in 2018 decided, in his phrases, “to do one thing good with my abilities and privileges.”
Inside two years, he was interning at BNP Paribas after which Morgan Stanley, falling asleep at his desk engaged on mergers and acquisitions with the depth of “saving infants from a burning home.”
His discomfort wasn’t with the work itself — he isn’t one of many Gen-Zers who thinks all firms are “evil,” he insisted. “I simply thought that the work was pretty trivial or mundane.”
At McKinsey, the place he interned subsequent, the work appeared extra polished however no much less hole.
“I used to be surrounded by rocket scientists who might construct actually cool stuff,” he stated, “however they had been simply constructing easy Excel fashions or reverse-engineering towards conclusions we already needed.”
He declined the full-time provides and as a substitute started interviewing the individuals who hadn’t. Over three years, he spoke with 212 bankers, consultants, and company legal professionals—from interns to companions—to grasp how so many high-achieving graduates drift into jobs they privately despise. The harm, he concluded, wasn’t villainy, and even greed, however misplaced potential: “The actual hurt is within the alternative value.”
Cash, he discovered, wasn’t the magnet, not less than not at first.
“Within the preliminary pull, most elite graduates don’t determine based mostly on wage,” he stated. “It’s the phantasm of infinite selection, and the social standing.”
At Oxford, that phantasm was in every single place. Banks and consultancies dominated profession festivals; governments and NGOs appeared as afterthoughts. He remembers his first brush with the system: BNP Paribas internet hosting a dinner at a fantastic restaurant in Oxford for “high college students.” He utilized as a result of he was broke and needed a free meal—and ended up interning there.
“It’s a sport we’re skilled to play,” he stated. “You’re hardwired that means. You’re all the time on the lookout for the subsequent stage, the Harvard after Harvard, the Oxford after Oxford.”
By the point many graduates notice that there is no such thing as a gold star on the finish – that the subsequent stage is just increased pay and an extended slide deck—it’s already too late. Most individuals consider they will depart the company world after two or three years to comply with their desires, however only a few really do.
“At the least I should purchase my youngsters a home”
He tells the story of “Hunter McCoy,” a pseudonym for a person who as soon as needed to work in politics or at a assume tank, as an example the purpose. McCoy imagined a future profession in advocacy. Recent out of college, McCoy joined a white-shoe regulation agency and informed himself he’d keep two, possibly three years, simply lengthy sufficient to repay his pupil loans. He even had a reputation for the end line: his “f–okay you quantity.” That was the sum that may purchase him freedom to pursue coverage work.
However freedom, it turned out, was a shifting goal. Residing in an costly metropolis, surrounded by colleagues who billed 100 hours per week and ordered cabs house at midnight, McCoy was all the time the poorest man within the room. Every bonus, every new title, pushed his quantity a bit increased.
The entice tightened slowly. First got here the mortgage, then the renovations, then the quiet creep of what has been referred to as “way of life inflation.” You purchase a pleasant residence, you need a good kitchen. If you happen to purchase the kitchen, you need the knife set that goes with it. Each new consolation demanded one other improve, one other late evening on the workplace to maintain all of it intact.
“Excessive earnings stimulates excessive bills,” van Teutem stated. “And excessive bills breed extra excessive bills.”
By his mid-forties, McCoy was nonetheless in the identical agency, nonetheless telling himself he would go away quickly. However the years had calcified into guilt.
“As a result of I by no means noticed my youngsters, as a result of I used to be all the time working so laborious, I informed myself no, I wish to proceed for a number of extra years,” McCoy informed van Teutem. “As a result of then not less than I should purchase my youngsters a home in return for me lacking out on a lot.”
The saddest half, he stated, was McCoy’s uncertainty about what would stay if he ever walked away.
“He informed me he wasn’t positive his spouse would stick with him,” van Teutem stated quietly. “This was the life she’d signed up for.”
The confession struck him as each uncooked and deeply tragic, a glimpse of how ambition hardens into captivity.
“It made me completely happy I didn’t go into it,” he stated. “Since you assume you may belief your self with these choices. However you might not be the identical particular person three years later.”
The lengthy shadow of Reagan, Thatcher, and the Large Three
What van Teutem describes, nevertheless, is a part of a systemwide phenomenon that’s been a long time within the making.
That explosive development of what researchers name “profession funneling,” the place college students slender down solely two or three industries which can be socially deemed prestigious sufficient to work in, runs in tandem with the financialization and deregulation flip Western economies took within the second half of the twentieth century. The neoliberal revolution, pushed by former President Ronald Reagan in the USA and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK, expanded capital markets sufficient to create complete new industries out of manipulating monetary devices; thus, exploding the finance business. On the identical time, governments and firms started outsourcing experience to personal corporations underneath the banner of market effectivity, giving delivery to the fashionable consulting business. (The final of as we speak’s “Large Three” consulting corporations was based as not too long ago as 1973.)
As these corporations captured an ever higher share of the nation’s income, they grew to become synonymous with meritocracy itself: unique, data-driven, and ostensibly apolitical. They provided graduates not simply jobs, however a way of belonging and id.
There’s one other quieter entice, right here, too: the price of residing within the massive cities has by no means been increased. In cities like New York and London—the gravitational facilities of world finance—residing comfortably has turn into a luxurious good. A 2025 SmartAsset research discovered a single grownup in New York now wants about $136,000 a 12 months to reside comfortably. In London, a single particular person wants round £3,000 to £3,500 a month simply to cowl fundamental residing, transportation, and housing bills, and monetary advisers now say a £60,000 wage merely buys relative consolation – the flexibility to avoid wasting and never reside paycheck to paycheck – an quantity that solely 4% of British graduates count on to make popping out of college.
What number of early-career jobs pay greater than $136k, or £60k a 12 months? If a 22-year-old comes out of school with the pure want to discover the massive metropolis, a la Pals or Intercourse within the Metropolis, however doesn’t have the cushion of parental assist, they should be inside the slender band of roles that clear the brink. Meaning many careers solely start by chasing a wage stage slightly than pursuing mission-driven work.
Incentivizing danger taking
Van Teutem doesn’t assume the answer lies in ethical awakening a lot as in design.
“You’ll be able to gear establishments towards change or towards risk-taking,” he stated. His favourite instance is Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley accelerator that since its founding in 2004 has turned a number of dozen nerds with concepts into firms now value roughly $800 billion—“greater than the Belgian economic system,” he famous.
YC labored as a result of it lowered the price of danger: small checks, quick suggestions, and a tradition that made failure survivable.
“In Europe,” he added, “we do a extremely unhealthy job at that.”
Governments, he argues, can do the identical. Within the Nineteen Eighties, Singapore started competing straight with companies for high graduates, providing early job provides, and ultimately linking senior civil service pay to private-sector salaries. Controversial, positive, but it surely constructed a state that would maintain its greatest expertise.
The nonprofit world has realized related classes. Train First within the U.Ok. and Train for America copied consulting’s recruitment ways—selective cohorts, “management program” branding, quick duty—to lure elite college students into school rooms as a substitute of boardrooms.
“They use the precise methods from McKinsey and Morgan Stanley,” van Teutem stated, “not as charity, however as a springboard.”
Materials pressures nonetheless distort these selections. Within the U.S., unemployment is hovering for latest school grads because the labor market slackens.
He hopes that universities and employers copy the YC mannequin: decrease the draw back, elevate the status of attempting.
“We’ve made risk-taking a privilege,” he stated. “That’s the true drawback.”
