[bruce511]

You miss the point. why the low view exists is irrelevant.

Frankly, while I acknowledge their necessity, I have a poor (default) view of both bankers and lawyers. I don't see them as bad people, but people in their professions do many bad things.

If my son brings a banker home as a prospective mate, well, let's say they're not earning status points from their profession.

You (may have) and I (do) have respect for people in tough jobs like see workers. Doesn't mean my mom wouldn't prefer I date a nice doctor. My point being that social respect does not come with your personal respect.

[throwaway2037]

One thing to consider about investment bankers: Many of them do pretty mundane work, like work on non-national/federal gov't and corporate bond issuance. (In most countries, national/federal gov't can directly issue bonds without investment bankers.) There is literally trillions of dollars of these bonds issued each year (usually to roll-over maturing debt) across all highly developed nations. It is fundamental to modern capitalism. I would estimate that 99.5% of these bond deals use "vanilla term sheets" (my term) -- literally copy and modify from the last deal. And, the buyers of these bonds are 99% institutional: our pension funds, mutual funds, and bond ETFs.

Also, secondary equity issuance is pretty non-controversial, and an important fund raising option for publicly-listed corporations.

[Dylan16807]

> You miss the point. why the low view exists is irrelevant.

It's very much relevant to this conversation. Without specific negative factors like a "predatory" aspect, increasing earnings will increase prestige. ATC doesn't have those factors.

[swores]

They brought up bankers and lawyers in response to someone asking "Which very highly paid job does not command respect in society? I can’t think of any"

So yes it is irrelevant in the specific context of that sub-conversation. Which isn't to say that your point arguing why that might not be applicable to ATCs isn't also a relevant thing to say to being the conversation back to the main topic of this thread.

[Dylan16807]

It's not directly relevant to that preceeding comment, but it's relevant to the reason those were being brought up a couple commments higher.

Being relevant to either of those is enough to make it overall be: relevant.