This week we grill David Bledin, the author of the Bitter Investment Banker email as well as a new book expanding on similar themes, Bank.

WARNING: the below contains graphic and distinctly unglamorous descriptions of junior investment banking life, and may not be suitable for all readers, especially those aspiring to careers in finance.

Q: Let’s talk about the Bitter Investment Banker email – the genesis for Bank. When did you write that email?
A: I wrote the e-mail about ten months in, after a particularly bleak week of almost-all-nighters. The almost-all-nighters, when you work until 5 or 6 in the morning, are the worst of the bunch. With bonafide-all-nighters, the senior staff typically come in, see you in the same shirt you were wearing the day before, and send you home for a few precious hours of rest. But with almost-all-nighters, you’ve had an hour or two to go home, slip in a tiny stretch of comatose sleep, before the brutal ringing of your alarm clock, a quick wank and a shave, and then you’re back in your cube without anybody taking obvious pity on you, since you’re freshly groomed. So you’re stuck for another 14-hour shift.

Q: Weren’t you afraid you were going to get fired, or did you just not care at that point?
A: I didn’t care. I stopped caring about four months in. You should have seen my corporate e-mail outbox before I left, a lot of subject headers along the lines of “I’d rather gouge my eyeballs out with a paperclip than have to stick around for another six months.” Even though the “Bitter” e-mail was sent out anonymously, my firm was able to trace it back to me, and a colleague relayed that HR did eventually comb through these rather blatant and crude e-mails. But at that point I was already safely ensconced in a new city, so I didn’t care.

Q: Given that it seems there are a lot of commonalities between Bank to the Bitter I-Banker Email, I would assume your ex-bosses, co-workers/colleagues (i.e. the Sycophant) pretty much know who “their” characters are at this point. True?
A: I’m not really sure; I don’t keep in touch with any of the senior people. Good riddance to bad rubbish. But it’s a misconception that all of the characters have direct counterparts. Many of the characters in Bank are mere hybrids of real world colleagues. Not to say that there aren’t some characters that are heavily drawn from real influences. The Sycophant, for example, is a fairly accurate portrayal of a former boss, though the real world equivalent would be too dense and narcissistic to ever realize I was parodying him.

Q: Are the people who may or may not have been the basis for characters in the book still in banking?
A: The senior guys have stayed put, since they aren’t as mobile, but most of my peers have moved on. In my analyst class, there are only two—one guy, one girl—left standing. The rest have gone back to school or hit the jackpot and landed in private equity.

Q: The protagonist in Bank vows to stick with his analyst program for two years. I’ve known some people who made it just one year, some even less than that. How long did you do it for and why?
A: I was two weeks away from the one year mark when I quit. They made me stay on the extra two weeks, because I wasn’t heading to another i-bank (otherwise I would have been escorted down the elevator immediately), so I did reach the full year, though not by choice. I think with every job you reach a point when you just can’t take it anymore, when you sit down at your desk in the morning, switch on your computer, and come this close to committing hara-kiri right there with a ballpoint pen. With banking I arrived at this point after six months, and then stuck around for another six months because I was too scared to quit before lining up another job. I’ve only just arrived at this hara-kiri point with my second gig as an economic consultant, after two years.

Q: What would it take for you to go back to banking?
A: No chance of that, not with this book coming out. Nobody would hire me. Maybe in Japan, but I don’t speak the language.

Q: Is that your hand on the cover, giving the bird?
A: I’m a compulsive nail-biter, so no, it’s not me. Little Brown must keep a hand model stashed somewhere, perhaps to marvel at his excellent cuticles in order to boost office moral.

Q: Fill in the blanks: the types of people who succeed in banking are typically ________, _________ and _________.
A: Whorish, megalomaniacal, neglected as children.

Q: Were there any personality types that one often encounters in banking that were not included in your book?
A: Not really, especially at the senior level (vice presidents and up). See the preceding question: bankers, especially those that have lasted in the industry for years, don’t really cover a vast spectrum of Jungian archetypes. Whorish, megalomaniacal, neglected as children. Nice people would have enough common sense not to stick around.

Q: Why do you think investment banking is so appealing to undergraduates/people who don’t know any better?
A: When I was in college, the recruiting season became something of a contest. The cream of the crop landed in management consulting, the skim in banking, then the rest in random corporate jobs, and the bottom-of-the-barrellers skulking off to teach English in Japan (though in hindsight, these last few probably got the best deal of our lot, especially in terms of getting laid). Even if you weren’t cut out for consulting/banking, it was difficult to break loose from the tide and follow your innate destiny to round up elephants in Cambodia, or draw comic books, if that’s what really got you going.

Q: Would you say you were a good analyst or bad?
A: I was so-so. Bad in terms of the actual work (no attention to detail, no patience for properly adjusting comps for one-off events), but good in terms of telling dirty jokes, improving the scope of dinner orders (one of my main accomplishments was converting our boardroom into an Indian buffet on a weekly basis), and expanding the nocturnal music selection beyond Dave Matthews and Pink Floyd.

Q: What percentage of your time at the Bank was spent actually doing work?
A: 40% on average. 20% on Mondays and Fridays. The work came in waves, with the wave crashing at 5 or 6pm every night. So it would be 10% from the morning up until 5 or 6pm, and then 100% in the evening after the work hit, when you just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible and go to sleep.

Q: I hear you are now in economic consulting. How’s the work life balance now?
A: Consulting is billable hours, so there isn’t as much face time. I’m technically supposed to be working an average of 40 billable hours a week. Realistically, add to that another 20 hours of “business development” (read: hours at the office when I’m procrastinating, so I can’t bill to a client). But they keep San Pellegrino flavored drinks in the fridge, so I’m not complaining.

Q: What was the first thing you did after you quit?
A: I took magic mushrooms with two unemployed friends and roamed around downtown, squinting at the illuminated windows of my old office. I know that sounds contrived, but it’s true. I don’t take mushrooms all that often; the nights just get out of control. Case in point: later that night, we stumbled upon a homeless man living in a giant bowling ball. We thought it was the mushrooms, but we came back a few days later and the giant bowling ball was still there.

Q: Thanks very much for the interview. Any parting words?
A: Buy my book! Otherwise I’m going to have to figure out an alternative non-consulting, non-banking, non-writing career, and I have no clue what that would be. Save me the mental anguish, please.