My freshman year of college, I was obsessed with Harvard Law School boys. Not any individual person (although there was this ex-Googler who I wrote a short story about) but the idea of them. People like Harvey Specter and Mike Ross from Suits, who were smarter and slicker and more intense and better-looking than everyone else. They worked fancy jobs and ate fancy food and talked fancier than me. They had bigger and better dreams than me. It was all just so goddamn romantic.
Junior year of college, I went on a date with this blond corporate lawyer named Mark. He was 24 and fresh out of law school, having graduated two years early from undergrad. He was from Alabama and spoke with a southern drawl and loved reading Faulkner as much as I did, which was relieving to me because I had never met anyone who read for fun as much as me.
He ended up showing up 45 minutes late to our date because work was running late. It was a really, really fun date anyways. It was just so easy to talk to him, and he seemed to enjoy my outspoken nature rather than be taken aback by it. He also told me about how meaningless his job seemed. He got paid $100 an hour to pull late nights at the office while the partners at the firm charged 10x that amount. In another life, we might’ve ended up dating, but instead, a few nights later, he revealed to me how suicidal he often felt and ghosted me later.
I felt crushed at the time by Mark’s lack of a response, but I also remember feeling a deep confusion as well. Mark had everything. He graduated from Harvard Law and made $200k, and he was blonde and good-looking! What do you mean, corporate law wasn’t romantic? People actually felt suicidal and meaningless from working in law? That’s not what it looked like in movies.
Sometimes I think back about my obsession with lawyers and laugh, but then I inevitably end up feeling sheepish because that part of me is still here. Sure, I have no intention of marrying a lawyer anytime soon (Alex would never step foot in a law firm), but I still find myself craving the intensity and prestige certain jobs and titles can bring. I’m not dating a Mark, but I’m going to be the Mark, I tell myself. I’m going to be the intense career girl of my own dreams.
Intense Corporate Valerie is fearless. She’s thin and wears skin-tight leather and red lipstick. She is able to complete tasks and pull long hours and still enjoy her life. She’s fast and sharp, she’s always on. This image of Intense Corporate Valerie crystallized during college when I met Melanie, whose mother is the CTO of a well-known hedge fund. Melanie is so driven. She has always worked long, long hours, and people think she’s cool. Sure, she can be difficult to get along with, but that’s the cost to being intense.
I decided junior year of college that I wanted to be more like Melanie. She had and has qualities I really admire: she’s hard-working, ambitious, and disciplined. There’s no question that she’ll succeed because she gives herself no choice but to go at things 300%. She’s the type of person that will obsess and grind and work at a task until it’s complete, and then move onto the next.
I owe a lot to Melanie and Corporate Valerie. She’s the one helping me at my job right now, the one who manages my freak outs and tells me we can push harder and do more. She’s ambitious, put-together, and competent. She’s the one who gets shit done fast, the one who doesn’t let me give up when I encounter something I don’t immediately know how to do (every other task at the job lmao), the one who fits in at my firm.
Over the weekend, I was talking to my coach Blas, and he asked me this question: “Clearly, you get a lot from Corporate Valerie, but what does she get from you?”
I paused. I was more creative and wide-eyed and dreamy than Corporate Valerie, so maybe I offered her one of those attributes. Or maybe I was more alive or spiritual or happy than her, but neither of these answers felt right. Surely there had to be something, but at some point I realized that Corporate Valerie didn’t want to appreciate me. She was so tightly wound up that appreciating me — my desire to work less, to find meaning and identity outside of being good at my job, my desire to be more chill — would threaten her existence. She couldn’t afford to be wrong.
Over the years, I’ve started to have more complex emotions towards Melanie and Mark, but my call with Blas was the first time when I started to poke holes into the idealized version of myself. Corporate Valerie, as smart and sharp and movie-worthy as she is, is always two steps away from being incredibly empty. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to be her (let’s be real here, I still do), but it does mean I have to question the level of certainty she has.
One place I know Corporate Valerie has shaky thinking is around kids. Maybe Corporate Valerie doesn’t want kids one day, but I do. I want to be married by 27 or 28 and have a kid by the time I’m 28 or 29. It’s possible that I hit that age and decide to wait on kids, but those are my numbers as of now. And the thing is, no matter how smart or efficient or competent you are, you can’t be out-produce someone who works twice as much as you. There’s always another coder at your level who can work more than you.
Realistically, if you have kids and want to spend a decent amount of time with them, you lose out on your career. Realistically, you can’t have it all. No matter what 90’s feminism sold previous generations (she’s a career woman AND gets dinner on the table), the fact of the matter is that most women can’t have it all. And really, unless you’re a man born into wealth, no man can have it all either (even startup founders who have really good exits have to put in their years of grinding).
What makes me feel a little sad is that if I immaculately conceived a child today, Corporate Valerie would secretly resent the fuck out of that kid. And yeah, that makes sense because I am 23 and just started my career, but if I were to have a kid at 28, Corporate Valerie would still resent the kid too. There is no way to satisfy my wish to be a mom who spends lots of time with her kids and also fulfill my desire to be ambitious as fuck, and there’s no way to feel ready to have kids until I work through this tension.
Thanks to Chris Lakin and Alex for feedback and advice on this post.
I never felt ready to have my baby, neither did my wife. I've spoken to a lot of other parents (and our parents) and none of them did either. I enjoyed working really, really hard in my 20s. And I do still work hard, and so does my wife. But after a decade of it, you start to get the idea of what work is all about. And it can be great. But the life fulfillment from also building a family is wonderful as well. I think it would be difficult if a parent felt they had to give up their entire career to stay at home, but for the most part that's just not necessary if you have the resources.
I also feel like you'd see a lot more single people without families in more successful levels of the corporate hierarchy if it were that advantageous. But I think maybe not having a family might boost your productivity by 10-50% at max? And maybe that sounds like a lot, but the difference between someone who is going to be an executive, or a senior leader, and anyone else, is usually an order of magnitude. The really good people aren't just getting there because they're 30% better than average. The far right tail of human talent goes deep.
good reflections - I enjoyed reading this!