For those who are clueless on this: the primary work of "investment bankers" is providing advice to corporate clients on raising capital (through market offerings like bonds and stocks), mergers and acquisitions, and also by underwriting transactions where they act as a middleman between the client and the market - classic case is the IPO.

This is distinct from market making, which is buying and selling securities in the market, albeit that investment banks often have strong market making operations as well.

It's also distinct from asset management, which is the business of taking money from people and investing it for them through e.g. funds.

This article is about the first kind of investment banking, which is legendary for ludicrous overloads for analysts (hires direct from school) during their first few years. Those that survive often go to B school, get their MBAs and come back as associates; but this is also a pipeline that leads into other finance careers like private equity.

> Those that survive often go to B school, get their MBAs and come back as associates

If you're already an analyst and not (completely) burned out by 70-90 hour weeks you are becoming an associate within 2-3 years.

You use the MBA to exit out of IB into VC, PE, PM, CorpDev, etc.

This is also why tech became so popular over the past decade - new grads are earning IB level compensation with significantly better WLB and less barrier to entry, and most analysts are now STEM or STEM Adjacent majors.

This is essentially the route my brother took, sans the MBA. A couple years spent surviving as an IB analyst, after which he was promoted to associate. Stayed on for another year after the promotion, before being headhunted by a PE firm he ended up joining.

Whatever it is, the end result for the worker is the same if not better via stocks and derivatives. There is no relative benefit for an intelligent individual to being an investment banker.

Investment banking associates aren't performing the job of a wealth manager or financial planner. They spend much of their time performing research on businesses, creating presentations on businesses, and working with other businesses. They're not working with retail level individuals looking to have their wealth managed.

Until tech took off, investment banking was the only profession that competed with big law and medicine, compensation and prestige wise. It still is highly difficult and selective to break into, even for those coming from high ranking schools. Arguably much more difficult to break into than most big tech, and unlike with tech, if you miss the internship to investment banking sliding door out of college, it can be near impossible to break into later.

No, a boiler room operation is typically a brokerage, which is a completely different kind of a business from an investment bank.