Scott Galloway on Career Growth: Embracing Discomfort, Feedback & Resilience

Gist

Scott Galloway entered investment banking at Morgan Stanley, quickly realized he was a poor fit, and describes himself as hating the job and performing badly.
Despite the misfit, he credits the experience with teaching discipline, attention to detail, endurance under pressure, and how large organizations function.
He argues early careers should be used to “workshop” different roles, valuing experimentation, honesty about strengths and weaknesses, and self-forgiveness over passion or prestige.
The broader lesson is to avoid romanticizing elite firms or entrepreneurship and instead focus on finding environments aligned with one’s temperament, skills, and values.

Scott Galloway’s reflections on his start at Morgan Stanley reveal both deep misalignment and instrumental growth. He didn’t just dislike investment banking; he believed he was “terrible” at it and that the firm and role were ill-suited to his personality and skills. That realization—admitting he was not cut out for corporate life—prompted subsequent career pivots [2][5].

Still, Galloway argues the experience was formative. He gained rigor in work habits, an appreciation for precision under stress, and learned to operate within sizable, hierarchical institutions. These aren’t trivial learnings. For someone who would later build startups, lead faculty, and teach, they represent a foundation to build credibility and capability [2][3][5].

He emphasizes the importance of experimentation in early career. Rather than following passion or prestige blindly, Galloway advises exposing oneself to diverse roles—some uncomfortable or failing—to incrementally discover where one could excel. Crucially, he sees self-forgiveness and emotional maturity as indispensable: accepting that failure or misfit is informative—not fatal [4][6].

Strategically, this story has implications for how talent is developed and retained in investment banking and corporate settings. Firms could benefit from creating environments that lower the cost of early failure, offer rotational exposure, and promote psychological safety. For individuals, the lesson is to value growth opportunities and self-awareness over brand-name roles and immediate prestige.

Open questions linger: To what extent are modern banking firms evolving to reduce mismatch? Can education systems better prepare students for self-assessment? And how might corporate career paths need altering to allow for earlier diagnosis of fit—or misfit—without stigma?

Supporting Notes

After college, Galloway joined Morgan Stanley; he says, “I hated it; they hated me; I was terrible at it.” [2]
He learned “attention to detail,” how to “suffer,” and how large organizations operate. [2]
He realized early he didn’t have the patience or maturity for a big company, was too insecure, and couldn’t deal with promotions of those he didn’t believe were as smart as him. [2]
His advice: “Your job in your 20s is to workshop … find something you’re good at.” He rejects “follow your passion” as advice coming from people already privileged. [4][6]
He describes investment banking as “like being in the Marines”—great training, painful to endure, but not a long-term specialism unless deeply motivated. [3][5]
Galloway left because he recognized he wasn’t cut out for corporate life, not because he romanticized entrepreneurship. [5]

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