4min chapter

The Examined Life cover image

Does the dream job exist? [Jack Purdy]

The Examined Life

CHAPTER

Navigating the Crypto Crossroads

This chapter explores the speaker's journey from traditional finance to the burgeoning world of cryptocurrency, marked by early experiences and conflicting perspectives on job satisfaction. It highlights the influence of family, the speaker's evolving interests, and the challenges of balancing personal passion with professional obligations in a skeptical environment.

00:00
Speaker 1
That's
Speaker 2
wild because you were two months in. So you were, you know, 21, 22 years old. And so people 10 years older are 30, 31, you know, they might not even have kids at that point. Right. So you're looking, I'm 45. I left the industry when I was 35. I wasn't in I was only in banking for two years. But it's fun. It's wild to think of looking at a 31-year and being like, that's not the life that I want. When I left at 35, I looked at the 45-year and I said, that's not the life that I want. And now I'm 45. So it's just no statement there other than just kind of observing of the relativeness of time. It doesn't matter whether you're 21 and two months old or in your 30s. And for those who aren't familiar, pulling comps is a glorified way of saying copy and pasting numbers from a 10K or 10Q document into an Excel spreadsheet to come up with some multiples like PE or PE ratio and price to sales, things like that. Okay, so you're two months. Let me take you back though. In high school, did you grow up in an environment where people talked about becoming bankers or joining Wall? Like, was that part of your, your, uh, your, your parental peer group or your, your cultural, cultural
Speaker 1
peer group? Um, in a sense, I'd say, you know, it wasn't like hyper-focused on finance necessarily. I mean, my dad's a financial advisor. Um, so always kind of had it as, you know, Hey, that's a good path to go down and, you know, I'm 50% of my dad. So, right. A lot of those skillsets probably transfer, but yeah, it's, I had a very sort of average, just middle-class American, right. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, um, wouldn't say there was a ton of like direction given, uh, from a career path. It's mostly like, Hey, you know, study, get good grades, go to school. And that's when you figure it out. Yeah. Got it. And so you're, you're in month two of this two year program. What are the hours like? Long, um, you know, working, working nights and weekends. And, you know, I think a lot of what led to this inner turmoil was also like the juxtaposition of starting to find something that did light me up. And, you know, I was starting to just become like more interested in the Web3 crypto world. Yeah. What year was this around? So this would have been 2017. 2017. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So seven years. It started that fall, right? Like, I the mainstream media was starting to pick up on crypto, be like, oh, right. Prices are rising. People are talking about it. Even people in the office. Where was Bitcoin at 2017? I can look it up, but roughly. So when I joined, it would have been probably sub 10K and
Speaker 2
then had like a run up to 20K. Got it. At the peak there. Wow. Okay. So yeah, early crypto days. And when you're there with these Wall Street peers, are you sharing with them that you have this like passion, this side interest? Are you talking about it to whoever wants to listen? Are you kind of keeping it, you know, closed off because you want to kind of cross that that barrier yeah so i'm smirking because uh at first like i was
Speaker 1
almost becoming known as like the crypto guy because i would always be be talking about it curious to hear people's thoughts if there was you know any future overlapping kind of you know traditional finance kind of credit markets and a lot of what's being created in like the crypto defi world and you know some people were interested i think most people kind of poo-pooed it at the time but i started uh this was actually the beginning of my writing journey was um just writing research with my general thoughts on crypto right framing like you know bitcoin as kind of a decentralized gold you know macro inflation resistant hedge. And so I started publishing these first on Medium and then, you know, I'd share on Twitter and LinkedIn. And at one point, my boss called me in and like, was like, Jack, you work at a bank. This is a financial institution. You can't be posting this stuff. It could be construed as investment advice and pretty much say like, full stop, you can't do that. So I just stopped posting on LinkedIn now and he's not going to see it on
Speaker 2
Twitter.

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