When Naeche Vincent's employer told her she had to start coming to the office last year, she decided to make a
The 24-year-old, whose videos have garnered more than 2.4 million likes, had been working from home since she started as an analyst in 2020 and wanted to make a good first impression. She needed to buy new work clothes, get her eyebrows done and switch to a less dramatic manicure.
"I cannot have claws, like in the corporate world claws just aren't happening, not with the people I work with," she said in the
One thing Vincent didn't mention in the video? Where she works. And in future videos, including one about pulling a
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"The banking world is very strict about what you can share online," Vincent said in an interview. "If you're online posting about a specific company, then you basically become a spokesperson. I just don't say where I work." Vincent also asked Bloomberg not to disclose her employer, which she has since left.
Gen Z Americans have grown up sharing their lives on social media and see no reason to stop just because they've entered the corporate world. For Wall Street, where confidentiality is bred in the bone, this poses a conundrum. Unfiltered day-in-the-life videos like Vincent's can serve as a recruitment tool for an industry that is struggling to attract young, diverse talent. But the content can also shed a less-than-ideal light on New York's biggest banks by capturing the "work hard, play hard" ethos of Wall Street.
There are TikTok videos that show JPMorgan Chase interns partying on a boat cruise around Manhattan, Goldman Sachs employees lining up for food trucks outside the office and the food served at Morgan Stanley's summer internship orientation. There are also recent videos that show employees in the office early enough to watch the sun rise over the Hudson River, or analysts working past midnight.
So far, the firms are navigating this new reality cautiously. Some banks are encouraging social media use, while others are taking control of their own narrative. Goldman plans to launch a TikTok account soon that will share glimpses of a typical day from some of its junior employees.
At the same time, Goldman and Bank of America employees have removed videos that the companies say violated their guidelines. Most of the young people posting across social media don't disclose where they work to shield themselves from potential backlash and to separate their content from their employer.
Financial firms have long faced questions about the punishing work culture on Wall Street, an old debate that flared up anew last year when a presentation from first-year Goldman analysts complaining about 105-hour workweeks went viral. It came as workers whose lives were upended by the pandemic left their jobs in droves, a movement dubbed the Great Resignation, and raised concerns in the banking world about the industry's ability to attract a new generation of employees concerned about work-life balance. These potential new employees also commonly consider their online personas inseparable from their real-life identity.
All the big banks have some form of social media policy. Filming on trading floors is usually forbidden, and content that shares confidential information about clients, salaries or bonuses can raise a red flag. So can alluding to the notoriously long hours that entry-level workers face. While Goldman employees are allowed to post, the bank reminds them that they're "not anonymous online" and that their "actions can reflect negatively on the firm," according to a document outlining the firm's code of conduct seen by Bloomberg. Goldman declined to comment.
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At Bank of America earlier this year, one day-in-the-life video that showed what it's like to be an investment-banking analyst went viral. It showed a group of employees working in the office past midnight. Shortly after the video was posted on the social media platform, it was taken down. Bank of America declined to comment.
"Most firms would say you shouldn't really talk about your firm online," said Alan Johnson, managing director of Wall Street consulting group Johnson Associates. "They're not posting about individual employees online and employees shouldn't post about them either."
Other banks are embracing the generational shift as long as the posts stay within their social media policies and codes of conduct. Morgan Stanley offered this summer's intern class a ring light for shooting content with their phones and encouraged them to use the hashtag #MyMSSummer on their posts.
"Our employees are the best representatives of our company culture and values, which is why we've encouraged our interns to share about their summer experience over the last few years," a Morgan Stanley spokesperson said.
Some Wall Street firms are attempting to control the narrative by producing their own social-media content, which has to comply with industry regulations. BlackRock joined TikTok early this year, and has since produced Gen Z-targeted videos comparing the similarities between active investing and
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Brian Hanly, chief executive officer of Bullish Studio, an agency for content creators, says highly edited videos aren't going to woo a generation that's looking for unfiltered content.
"The way the younger generation can promote these banks is far superior than what banks can do for themselves," Hanly said.
Wall Street, like much of corporate America, is actively recruiting diverse candidates but has struggled to convince people that it's no longer an old boys' club. One obstacle to building a more diverse workforce is the commonly held view that the big banks are largely run by white men. If candidates don't see people who look like them, it can be difficult to convince them they'll fit in at the company.
"It's critical for women and women of color to see what it's like to work at an investment management firm, for them to feel like they can have a sense of belonging at work," said Katherine Jollon Colsher, CEO of Girls Who Invest, an organization that helps college women find career opportunities in finance.
The sense that these videos provide a glimpse into what real life is like on Wall Street, as opposed to a glossy version presented by the firms' PR departments, is what appeals most to the young people who watch them.
"Our generation really values transparency," said Brian Ariyo, a 20-year-old Black college student who interned for one of the major Wall Street investment banks this summer and posted a YouTube video about a typical day at his firm, which he asked Bloomberg not to identify. "If I was interested in a potential career, I would want to know the ins and outs — the business, the culture, and the hard parts — if I'm going to dedicate a lot of my time preparing for interviews and pursuing a career long term."
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Ridha Mirza, 21, interned at one Wall Street bank's wealth management team this summer and has gotten 3.2 million likes on her TikToks documenting what her days in New York City are like. She also requested that her employer not be disclosed.
She's received several messages asking how to get a job at a bank, especially if you're a woman of color. The magnitude of the response has surprised her.
"I just wanted to show other women that this is an industry that we can tap into and that there is a place for all of us," Mirza said.
In any field, peers can be the most effective recruiters. Vincent said she uses her TikTok to teach Black women how to navigate the idiosyncrasies of Wall Street culture — a resource she felt she lacked when she started on Wall Street. With only White women as mentors, she had to learn the dos and don'ts of being a Black woman in the corporate world on her own.
"We have interns and young analysts who come in and put time on my calendar to meet me," Vincent said. "They're like, 'I've seen your videos and it's made me excited to work here.'"
