This author wants to stop smart graduates getting sucked into finance and consulting jobs — the 'Bermuda Triangle of talent'
Rutger Bregman says top graduates going into finance and consulting are wasting their talents.
He advocates for morally ambitious career paths to inspire meaningful societal change.
Bregman says people can break out of the fog by starting their own "cult" of like-minded, ambitious idealists.
"It's an extraordinary waste of talent." That's what Rutger Bregman has to say about smart graduates from top universities going into careers in consulting and finance.
"In a rational society, you would expect that if you go to a jobs fair at these elite institutions where the best and brightest go, you would have one stand about preventing the next pandemic, a stand about curing malaria once and for all, and a stand about abolishing extreme poverty," he told Business Insider.
"But instead, what we have is Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Kirkland & Ellis. What the fuck is going on here?"
Bregman, a historian from the Netherlands, is the author of "Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference." In the new book, he argues that too many people go into "socially useless" professions and thus feel their chosen careers are pointless.
Many even realize this before making their decision, but don't know what else to do, he said.
"Most of them are very well-meaning and deeply care about the state of the world. They want to do better, but then somehow they get sucked into this Bermuda triangle of talent."
Bregman's previous books, "Humankind" in 2020 and "Utopia for Realists" published three years earlier, were both New York Times best-sellers. His works have sold more than 2 million copies.
Throughout Bregman's career, he has spoken and written about how the most damaging jobs to society — big tobacco, for example — tend to be the best paid. Not all consultants and bankers necessarily fall into this category, he said, but having so many of them is a problem.
"It's not all totally destructive or anything like that," he said. "But compared to what these people could do, if they would take on some of the biggest challenges, the opportunity costs are massive."
Some people are "just a little bit shallow and boring" and "care deeply about owning many cars or owning a big house or having the corner office," Bregman said. "You probably can't help those people."
But for many, money isn't the most important goal of choosing the consulting and finance route. A huge motivation is "preserving your optionality," Bregman said, because "many of these people are just terrified of the future."
"Many of these kids are spiritually a little bit lost," Bregman said. "They don't really know what to do with their lives. McKinsey is very good at tapping into that."
He said big companies offer them a continuation of what they were already doing, which is the "logical next step."
"They were going from the best primary school to the best high school, and then always doing the honors classes at university, getting the best grades," Bregman said. "It's a way of postponing the real decisions, postponing actually becoming an adult, and that's very attractive if you are an insecure overachiever who has no idea what the hell to do with your life."
Working in finance can also be intellectually challenging, which attracts people who like solving puzzles. Bregman said there needs to be more options in morally ambitious fields.
"Many of these kids, they just want to play in the Champions League," he said, in reference to the European top-flight soccer competition. "What I think we've got to do is to create the Champions League and the Olympics for do-gooders."
Some options for morally ambitious people include entering large-scale research and innovation fields and focusing on solving some of humanity's biggest problems, like hunger and the climate crisis. Bregman said it's not about following your passion, but figuring out "where your impact can be greatest."
"The right path depends on the challenge you're tackling. Some problems need cutting-edge research and innovation, others demand activism, lobbying, or bold entrepreneurship," he said. "Whether you're working to end hunger, fight climate collapse, reduce factory farming, or stop tax avoidance by the superrich — what matters is that you go where you're needed most."
Bregman hopes to inspire people who feel stuck to break out of going through the motions with the School for Moral Ambition, which he cofounded.
"We want to help as many people as possible devote their careers in their lives to some of the most pressing issues that we face as a species," Bregman said.
"When you study these moral pioneers of the past, it's not that they were good people and then started doing good things," he added. "It's the other way around, really. They started doing good things often because they were asked, and then they became good people, which is a very important difference."
Bregman likens it to Gandalf knocking on Frodo's door in "The Lord of the Rings." Frodo wasn't passionate about going on a long journey and risking his life, Bregman said. But Gandalf's perspective changed him as a person.
"Frodo was really passionate about gardening and having a really relaxed life full of second breakfasts," he said. "But when the old wise wizard explained everything, he was like, yeah, that's probably quite important."
Bregman jokingly advises those who feel like they want to do something more to start their own "cult."
"If you want to be a really ambitious idealist, it's quite hard nowadays because you're often swimming in a sea of cynicism," Bregman said. "What you need then is to surround yourself by other ambitious idealists, because then you'll be like, Hey, I'm not alone."
Ambition, he said, is energy, and what really matters is "how it's used, and how it's channeled."
"Find yourself some wise old wizard, a Gandalf who has a really good idea about what you should do with your life," Bregman said. "Then listen and do it."
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Time Magazine
an hour ago
- Time Magazine
BNY CEO Robin Vince on Embracing AI and Navigating Uncertainty
BNY has a storied history. Co-founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1784 to help New York City recover after the Revolutionary War, it is often referred to as America's oldest bank. But today, Robin Vince, who became CEO in 2022, insists, 'A bank isn't what we are, a bank is something that we have. A bank is something that we use to provide services to our clients.' Vince joined BNY, which prefers to call itself a financial services company these days, in 2020 and led its global market infrastructure unit before taking the helm. Before that, he spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs, where he held leadership roles including chief risk officer, treasurer, head of operations, and CEO of Goldman Sachs International Bank. When BNY Mellon—as it was then known, before rebranding last year—tapped Vince to join, he had been considering working in the tech industry after taking a gap year to spend time with his family. But joining another Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) made sense to him for a number of reasons, he says. 'I'd had a lot of engagement with regulators. I'd had some engagement with investors, with shareholders, but I was able to get back to one of the things that I loved, which was clients,' he told TIME during a visit to London. 'And I just liked markets.' In February, BNY signed a multi-year deal with OpenAI that gives it access to the AI company's most advanced reasoning models and tools such as Deep Research, to enhance BNY's internal AI platform, Eliza. The deal also allows OpenAI to see how well its models perform at complex tasks in the real world. TIME spoke with Vince on March 19 about how he is embracing AI, breaking down silos at BNY, and navigating uncertainty. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. BNY is the oldest bank in America, and in the last couple of years, under your leadership, the stock performance has improved markedly. Did your experiences at Goldman Sachs influence how you're leading BNY? I think we're all the product of our upbringings and experiences. As a kid, I had the opportunity to live in the U.K., but also spent a lot of time living in Paris. Then I had the opportunity to move to New York, and so that gave me a little bit of a global sensibility. With the name, 'Bank of New York'—America's oldest bank—it's very easy [to forget], but 40% of our business is outside of the U.S. It's very easy, if you're not careful, to become very centric around a region. And so that upbringing was very helpful to me. The training at Goldman Sachs, which is a terrific organization, and brought a great set of skills to me—I'm the beneficiary of all of that and everything that went before it, but I'm also the beneficiary at BNY of all of the work that my predecessors have done to assemble the set of businesses that we have today. Now, what was the thing that changed? We took a very deliberate look as a leadership team early on in my tenure and said, 'What have we got? Why have we underperformed our potential, and what changes might we need to make to what we do, how we do it, who does it, all of those things, in order to really unlock the potential that we think is in the company.' And the good news, and our good fortune as a team, is that based on everything that had been done over time, we had an amazing set of businesses, and I want to stress that, because it's not preordained that it should be that way, when you come in as a CEO. Sometimes CEOs can come into broken organizations that just don't have the right businesses and that have these huge pivots to make in the very essence of what they do. The good news for us is we had great businesses and we had a great client franchise. Clients have a lot of respect for BNY. They trust us. They do important things with us, but they were a little frustrated with us that we kind of weren't living up to our own potential. That was a client frustration, it was an employee frustration, and it was an investor frustration as well, which is: you all can do more with what you've got. That's what we've been doing for two and a half years, unlocking and realizing that opportunity. And the good news is it has been working. And our investors have noticed. The stock price has about doubled over that period of time. The clients have noticed it and really appreciated it as well, because they're very happy to do more things with us. We have all these businesses, and so when a client did one thing with us, it was frustrating in some ways, on both sides, because they were like, 'You know what? I know you've got more things that you can do to help us, and I'm not really sure how to access it.' And we were like, 'Oh, it's a bit frustrating, and we don't really know how to unlock it.' And so what we've done is we've re-engineered how we operate to be able to do that. And then, of course, our employees. When you're an employee of a firm, you want your firm to be thriving and doing well. So we made everybody a shareholder. So now, not only are employees theoretically excited about the journey. They're economically excited about the journey as well. We've re-imagined how we work and our platforms operating model as part of that strategy. We've re-imagined some of the members of the team, and we've hired new people. We've really tried to think about the culture, and how do we really accelerate the bits of the culture that we love and maybe leave behind some of the bits that we don't. [And] how we think about technology and AI, which we're very excited about. Are there any examples you can give of the bits of the culture that you liked and didn't like, and the things that you've changed? Our people were very client-centric. That is a fantastic thing to have in the culture. And they also were very proud of the company, but they were not used to working as one company, as one team. We had conditioned people to operate in their silos, and we had a lot of different businesses, so we had a lot of different silos. We just decided that we didn't want to be that way. Sometimes you can end up in a situation where the team wants to be fragmented, they like their independence. For the most part, that wasn't the case. So we were able to make the case, and people wanted to throw in for the whole journey. Clients sometimes like it that they can shop your store independently. But yet our clients didn't really like that. So the whole thesis of the fact that we want to be able to come together for clients, we want to be organized more efficiently—we had a lot of duplication of things—we used culture and coming together as a group to be able to deal with those issues. 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So thriving together means a lot of things to us, but including being one team, solving problems, creating solutions for clients, and doing it together, that is part of what I would now describe as the spirit of the company, and thriving together is a big deal for us. And so, has there been a change in how you're thinking specifically about DEI? So we have changed from a siloed, separate mentality to one of coming together as a team. That's the thing that's really changed. And so it's this sense of creating a sense of belonging in the company, where everybody can be here and belong, feel valued, feel that they can contribute to the team, but we've centered ourselves around: if we do all those things well, we will thrive together, and that's what will drive the company forward. Can you tell me about your OpenAI deal, and what you're thinking about the potential of AI? 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Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
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By integrating agentic document tools now, businesses can stay ahead of industry shifts, respond faster to compliance changes, and deliver superior service without scaling headcount. The smart shift starts with smarter documents The future of enterprise efficiency won't be built on filing cabinets or fragile templates—it will be powered by intelligent systems that truly understand the documents they process. Visual AI is more than a tech upgrade; it's a strategic shift that transforms unstructured data into a wellspring of insight and action. For leaders ready to modernize operations, reduce friction, and unlock smarter workflows, the path forward is clear: It starts by giving your documents the intelligence to work for you.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
American tourists can't quite quit Europe
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Eylon said it is possible there will be an overall decline in Americans visiting Europe this year, but it's too soon to tell the full picture. He thinks those canceling or ditching trip plans will be in the minority. "American travelers view it as a need more than a want," he said of travel, adding that many see it as a "right." Meredith Pierce, a travel content creator based in Atlanta, said that's exactly how she and many other millennials and Gen Zers view travel, including to Europe. Pierce posts a lot of popular "Euro summer" content and sees it as a persistent and lasting travel trend, even when folks have financial concerns. "Everyone loves the idea of sipping an Aperol spritz and looking at the Mediterranean," Pierce said, "especially if maybe you are stressed in your day-to-day life because of politics or the economy or budgets, or anything like that. A bit of escapism I think comes into play there as well." The hesitancy fueled by economic uncertainty could also make it a bit more affordable to travel to Europe this summer. Eylon noted the slowdown in leisure travel led to some declines in airfare prices, which may have pushed some hesitant Americans to take the plunge. When economic concerns, largely fueled by Trump's tariff policy, intensified in March and April, some airlines suspended their forecasts for the year, and flight prices declined. Rather than get spooked by the economic uncertainty, Pierce believes plenty of people pounced. Her "Euro summer" content from last year started going viral, and she was getting flooded with DMs and questions from people who found a cheap flight to Europe and were suddenly planning their trips. Pierce said some budget-conscious travelers are opting for more affordable and under-the-radar destinations in Europe, such as Albania or Poland, which feature similarly picturesque scenes but at a lower cost than Italy or Paris. More frugal spending once they get to their destination Deloitte's summer travel survey noted that many American travelers already had their big summer trips partially or even fully booked by April, when concerns around tariffs and the economy intensified. The survey also found that while consumers' sense of financial well-being was down year-over-year in April, slightly more Americans planned to take leisure vacations this summer compared to 2024. Deloitte found travelers looking to save were cutting back on in-destination spending as well as opting for more affordable lodging and flight classes. The survey also found that while some are being more frugal, many Americans are prioritizing bucket list trips and international travel, or trips that are otherwise special in some way. Deloitte found 42% of air travelers were flying internationally on their longest summer trip, compared to 38% in 2024. Those traveling internationally were also more likely to increase their travel budget compared to last year. Shim, the copywriter from Denver, also has a special reason for making her Portugal trip work this year, despite her financial concerns. Her family has been going through a tough time after her grandfather's death last year. This vacation is a way to spend quality time with and treat her mom, who has never been to Europe, and take the first trip that's just the two of them. "I also think that sometimes in these times of uncertainty and tumultuousness and a lot of tension and division, traveling and spending quality time with family who loves you is a great way to just take care of your mental and emotional health too," she said, "which I think is also very important to do."
