# Every Level of a Goldman Sachs Banker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN6sBpyg6Ko

[00:00] Goldman Sachs received 300,000 applications this year.
[00:02] It hired 2,500 people.
[00:06] You are one of them.
[00:07] The rejection rate tells you what kind of machine you just walked into.
[00:11] It does not tell you what the machine costs.
[00:15] In 2024, Goldman advised on 313 mergers worth $713 billion.
[00:22] Your name appears on none of them.
[00:24] Your work is inside every number in all of them.
[00:26] That gap between credit and contribution is the architecture of what you just signed up for.
[00:32] There are seven levels.
[00:32] Each costs something different.
[00:34] None of them state the price before you pay it.
[00:38] Level one, the summer analyst.
[00:41] You are 20 years old, junior year.
[00:41] You survived a HireVue screen, two rounds of interviews, and a partner call that lasted 40 minutes and felt like 90.
[00:50] Goldman accepted fewer than 1% of applicants to this program this year.
[00:54] You were among the 2,500 who made it through.
[00:57] Now you are here, 200 West Street, 43 floors of glass.
[00:59] Your desk is
[01:02] on a floor with 79 other summer analysts
[01:05] who have the same GPA, the same leadership titles, and the same idea about what the next 10 weeks are worth.
[01:11] You are all correct about the value.
[01:11] You are all going to spend those 10 weeks trying to separate yourself from each other inside a room where separating yourself is nearly impossible.
[01:21] Your compensation is $110,000 annualized.
[01:25] For a 10-week summer, that works out to approximately $21,000 gross.
[01:33] After federal and New York state tax, closer to 12,500.
[01:35] Investment banking analysts average between 80 and 90 hours per week.
[01:37] At 90 hours over 10 weeks, the hourly math produces a number you do not repeat to anyone outside this floor.
[01:45] Your job is pitchbook assembly and financial model support.
[01:50] You build the sections that a senior analyst checks.
[01:52] You update the comparable companies table.
[01:54] You verify every data against its primary source.
[01:58] At 1:45 in the morning, you find a comment the associate sent at 11:30
[02:04] asking why your revenue assumptions sit 150 basis points above the comp set.
[02:09] You answer [music] it.
[02:10] You go to bed at 3:00.
[02:10] You are back at 7:00.
[02:13] The return offer rate is 80%.
[02:15] The firm does not tell you which 80% you belong to until week 10.
[02:18] That uncertainty is not accidental.
[02:20] It is the mechanism.
[02:22] It organizes every hour between now and then.
[02:27] Level two, the analyst.
[02:30] The offer was real.
[02:33] You are 22.
[02:33] Base salary is $110,000.
[02:35] Your first bonus arrives approximately 12 months after you start because Goldman IBD analysts are paid on a stub year cycle before converting to the calendar year.
[02:43] A top bucket first year analyst takes home around 70 to $80,000 in that first check.
[02:51] Total year one compensation lands between 150 and 190,000 dollars depending on your ranking within the class.
[02:58] [music]
[02:58] Nobody tells you your ranking.
[03:00] You infer it from the size of the check.
[03:02] Your actual work is pitchbooks and models.
[03:04] Pitchbook argues why a company should hire Goldman to run its transaction.
[03:09] You build them from templates.
[03:11] You verify every figure.
[03:13] You check that every number in the deck matches the number in the model.
[03:16] At 2:00 in the morning, when the associate messages to say the logo on the cover slide belongs to the old version of the target company, you go back into the file, pull the correct asset, rebuild the page, re-export, resend.
[03:27] The firm implemented the Saturday rule.
[03:28] No work requests from 9:00 Friday night to 9:00 Sunday morning.
[03:33] Your group honors it selectively.
[03:34] You learn which MDs respect it and which ones send questions at 10:30 Saturday framed as low priority.
[03:42] You close your first real deal at month 15, a $580 million dollar acquisition of a regional packaging company.
[03:49] Your name is on page 41, the team slide.
[03:52] You see it printed there and feel something that is not quite pride and not quite relief.
[03:56] It is recognition, [music] the feeling of being inside something real after a year of preparing for it.
[04:01] At 22 months, you learn that your associate promotion is coming.
[04:03] Not
[04:05] Directly.
[04:06] You overhear a sentence from a senior manager who miscounted the people still in the room.
[04:10] That is how Goldman communicates good news.
[04:11] Directly is for the other kind.
[04:16] Level three, the associate.
[04:19] You spent two years at Wharton and accumulated $220,000 in student loans.
[04:23] You are 26.
[04:25] Entry-level Goldman IBD associate base is $175,000.
[04:31] A solid first year brings total compensation to roughly 275 to $320,000.
[04:37] The loan payment is $2,600 a month.
[04:40] The spreadsheet absorbs it without objection.
[04:42] What the spreadsheet does not model is the Sunday feeling.
[04:44] You know the Sunday feeling.
[04:46] It starts around 4:00 in the afternoon.
[04:48] A specific weight that settles in the chest when you register that Monday already exists.
[04:54] You had it as an analyst.
[04:56] You assumed it would lift when you got promoted.
[04:58] It did not lift.
[05:01] It just acquired a name.
[05:01] You are no longer building the deck.
[05:03] You are managing the people who build it.
[05:04] Your two analysts produce the output.
[05:06] Review it.
[05:08] You catch the errors before the VP does.
[05:11] You are the filter between the work and the people who matter.
[05:13] You are also the person sending messages at midnight about the logo.
[05:15] You hear yourself doing it and recognize the sound exactly.
[05:18] Your first deal as lead associate is a $1.4 billion leveraged buyout.
[05:24] A private equity firm acquiring a specialty chemical manufacturer.
[05:28] You coordinate due diligence across six workstreams.
[05:31] The deal runs four months from mandate to close.
[05:33] You sleep lightly through most of it.
[05:36] Not from anxiety, but from the specific alertness of someone who is responsible for everything and knows it.
[05:40] Exit conversations are starting.
[05:42] A headhunter emails directly.
[05:44] Vice president of corporate development at a Fortune 500 company, total compensation $350,000.
[05:48] Real equity, actual weekends.
[05:52] You read it twice, you close it.
[05:55] You tell yourself two more years.
[05:59] 90% of the people at your level say exactly that.
[06:01] The MD pulls you into a deal debrief you were not scheduled to attend and at the very end mentions there is a
[06:07] client he wants you to start handling directly.
[06:09] He does not elaborate.
[06:11] He does not need to.
[06:13] You spend the following week figuring out it means and what it will cost you if you get it wrong.
[06:20] Level four, [music] the vice president.
[06:22] You run deals now, not pieces of them, the whole thing.
[06:27] You are 30. Base is $250,000.
[06:29] In a good year, total compensation reaches $450 to $600,000.
[06:34] The number sits inside a range your parents have no framework for.
[06:36] You take them to dinner at a restaurant with no prices on the menu.
[06:40] Your father scans the page once and orders without asking.
[06:45] Old habits do not update just because the room does.
[06:47] Your job is execution and retention.
[06:50] originates the mandate.
[06:53] You keep the client between mandates.
[06:55] You manage the team, two associates and four [music] analysts.
[06:59] You know which analyst stays until 4:00 in the morning without being asked and which one starts losing precision around 2:00.
[07:05] You deploy them accordingly.
[07:05] You call this management.
[07:07] It is also pattern recognition applied to people.
[07:11] You take your first solo client to dinner, a CFO running a company Goldman is trying to win as an advisory client.
[07:17] You talk about his sector.
[07:19] You talk about the macro environment.
[07:21] You do not discuss the pitch.
[07:23] You have learned that Goldman does not close clients with presentations.
[07:27] Goldman closes clients by making the decision feel obvious before anyone opens a slide.
[07:32] Four months later, Goldman is named lead advisor on a $2.3 billion dollar acquisition.
[07:36] You were part of the dinner that made it possible.
[07:39] Nobody credits the dinner.
[07:41] The tombstone will carry the MD's name.
[07:43] The relationship that produced the tombstone is yours.
[07:45] You have been an investment banking for 8 years.
[07:47] 9 years of executing at near perfect accuracy.
[07:52] The wall between VP and the next level is not technical.
[07:55] It is relational.
[07:56] Revenue requires relationships.
[07:59] Relationships require a kind of time you have been giving entirely to someone else's mandates.
[08:02] The firm is now asking whether you have enough of it left to build something of your own.
[08:09] If you've made it this far, you're exactly who this channel is for.
[08:12] A subscribe helps me keep making these.
[08:15] No pressure, but I'd appreciate it.
[08:18] Level five, the executive director.
[08:21] This level exists only at Goldman.
[08:23] Other bulge bracket banks call this role senior vice president or director.
[08:27] Goldman calls it executive director, and the distinction is structural.
[08:29] ED is the firm's final filter before managing director.
[08:34] You have proven you can execute at scale.
[08:36] The question Goldman is now answering is whether you can originate at scale.
[08:40] Whether CEOs call you or merely tolerate you.
[08:43] You are 34.
[08:46] Total compensation in a strong year runs between 750,000 and 1,100,000 dollars.
[08:53] For the first time, your number crosses into a range that required a conversation with a financial advisor about how to hold it correctly.
[08:59] You have a client relationship that belongs to you.
[09:00] A mid-cap industrials company with 3.1 billion in revenue and an acquisition strategy their board has been debating for 16 months.
[09:11] Relationship over 2 years.
[09:13] Quarterly calls, a breakfast at Davos where you were seated next to their CFO, a white paper your team produced on sector consolidation trends that you sent him 2 weeks after he mentioned the topic once in passing.
[09:24] [music] The engagement comes in.
[09:26] It is a 1.8 billion dollar take private mandate.
[09:28] Your name appears on the proposal as lead banker.
[09:30] The partner's name appears on the cover page.
[09:32] You understand the logic.
[09:34] You are not a partner yet.
[09:36] The client bought the firm.
[09:38] You are still in the process of becoming it.
[09:40] Your managing director review is in 14 months.
[09:42] You learn this the same way you have learned most important things at Goldman through a sentence that was not directed at you in a room where someone miscounted the people.
[09:50] [music] still present.
[09:55] Level six, the managing director.
[09:58] You originate your first major mandate as lead MD, a $3.6 billion merger between two pharmaceutical distribution companies.
[10:06] You made the call.
[10:08] You sat across from a CEO who had four other banks pitching him and chose Goldman.
[10:12] because he trusted you specifically, not the institution, but you.
[10:16] The firm understood this.
[10:16] You understood this.
[10:19] The leverage between those two understandings went permanently unspoken.
[10:22] You are 38.
[10:25] Total compensation this year is $1.4 million.
[10:28] Last year, $1.1 million.
[10:31] The variation reflects deal volume you feel personally.
[10:32] A lost mandate is not a revenue miss at this level.
[10:34] It is a verdict on a relationship you built across years of dinners you cannot individually recall anymore.
[10:40] Your name is on the tombstone now.
[10:42] The analysts who built the model appear nowhere.
[10:44] You remember being that analyst.
[10:46] You send them a thank you email.
[10:48] It takes 7 minutes to write because everything you produce reads like a term sheet.
[10:53] You manage 14 client relationships.
[10:56] The smallest generates $2.2 million in annual fees.
[10:58] The largest, $12 million.
[11:00] You are no longer an employee of Goldman Sachs in any way.
[11:02] Your mind fully understands that phrase.
[11:04] You are a revenue line with a desk and a direct dial.
[11:08] Your son had a school play on a Wednesday.
[11:10] You watched the recording on a flight to Zurich.
[11:11] He was
[11:13] the lead role.
[11:15] Your wife sent you the video with no caption.
[11:17] You know the no caption.
[11:19] The partner discussion is in four months.
[11:20] Goldman elects new partners biannually.
[11:23] You have been an MD for four years.
[11:25] The cycle says you are eligible.
[11:27] The cycle has said that before to other people without following through.
[11:32] Level seven, the partner.
[11:34] Goldman announced 95 new partners in 2024, the largest class since at least 2016.
[11:42] You are one of them.
[11:42] You are 43.
[11:45] Out of approximately 45,000 employees, fewer than 500 carry this title globally.
[11:47] Roughly 40% of Goldman's partner class started as campus analysts.
[11:52] You are part of that 40%.
[11:54] The number took 21 years to produce.
[11:56] Your compensation is now tied directly to divisional performance and the firm's overall profitability.
[12:04] Last year, $4.8 million.
[12:05] The year before, 3.3 million.
[12:07] The variation is something you feel in a way that salary never produced, because the loss is personal now, not numerical.
[12:14] sit on internal committees.
[12:15] You approve deals you did not build.
[12:18] You mentor MDs who remind you of yourself at 38,
[12:20] precise, hungry, and slightly opaque behind the eyes in a way they have not yet noticed in themselves.
[12:26] You have everything the 22-year-old on the team slide wanted, the title, [music] the number, the room where the final call is made.
[12:32] You also have a divorce finalized on a Thursday during a board call you could not exit.
[12:38] A daughter who texts you on holidays and major events, three or four sentences, then [music] silence.
[12:42] A doctor who now uses the word chronic to describe things she used to call situational.
[12:48] Goldman's partnership is not what it was before 1999.
[12:51] That is the structural fact nobody states clearly when you are running comps at 2:00 in the morning.
[12:57] [music] Before the IPO, Goldman partners owned the firm, real ownership, real equity, a stake that compounded with the institution's success and exposed them to its losses.
[13:06] After 1999, Goldman became a public company.
[13:08] The partnership continued.
[13:10] The equity transferred to the market.
[13:12] What the market did with it is the part the
[13:14] Seven levels never covered.
[13:17] Goldman Sachs Group is approximately 72% institutionally owned.
[13:20] Its three largest shareholders are Vanguard Group, holding 9.6% of shares outstanding, BlackRock holding 7.6%, State Street Global Advisors holding 6.4%.
[13:35] These three institutions together own more of Goldman Sachs than the entire active partnership class combined.
[13:40] They did not sit in the pitch book reviews.
[13:41] They did not answer messages at midnight.
[13:43] They did not miss a single school play.
[13:45] They allocated capital to a fund or to an index or to a position that included Goldman Sachs among hundreds of other holdings.
[13:53] Their analysts modeled Goldman as a line item in a portfolio.
[13:56] Their portfolio managers voted it into a waiting quarter by quarter without a deal, without a client dinner, without a single year inside the machine.
[14:04] They accumulated more of the institution than any individual banker in its history ever has or will.
[14:11] You climbed seven levels.
[14:13] You made partner.
[14:13] You are in every way that phrase
[14:15] carries meaning inside a conference room on the 43rd floor.
[14:17] The firm.
[14:20] The largest owner of the firm you represent is a company headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania that manages passive index funds for retail investors who have never heard of a tombstone.
[14:28] It does not know the client's name.
[14:30] It does not know the deal.
[14:32] It is entirely indifferent to the outcome of the merger you spent four months closing last quarter.
[14:37] The machine did not build itself for you.
[14:39] It built itself for them.
[14:42] What you received in exchange for 21 years is the most demanding and consequential career in global finance.
[14:49] Whether that was the trade you understood yourself to be making is the one question the machine was never designed to answer.
[14:55] Watch this video if you want to see what the analysts who took the exit offer built instead.
[15:00] Some of them ended up at BlackRock, the same BlackRock that owns 7.6% of Goldman Sachs.
[15:05] The machine they left is partially owned by the machine they joined.