The TikTok generation is clashing with old-school Wall Street culture

• The "finest boys in finance" may have overstepped the rules of their storied industry.
• Their case is the extreme, but other young Wall Streeters said social media itself can feel like a gamble.
• Still, Wall Street is clear about its limits, and insiders said it's the price you pay for a foot in the door.

When four "finance boys" went viral last week for their Loro Piana- and Hermés-studded photo shoot, they violated more than the sacrosanct rule of not outdressing your boss. They brought Wall Street banks into the memeosphere, attracting publicity that has clashed with the hush-hush world of high finance.

Demarre Johnson, a financial services data and AI consultant at Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the only fine boy of finance speaking publicly, gets it.

"If I built the multibillion-dollar bank business, I would hate if one of my associates formed my company's image with one video," he told Business Insider. That's why he's been careful about the regular TikTok videos he started posting about his job before the Interview magazine spread. Sometimes he's even asked senior mentors at the firm for their opinions.

Johnson is the only interviewee who doesn't work at a bank. The others — Tommy Doherty, Mason Clarke, and Clay Nelson — are at Barclays and Goldman Sachs, two industry titans that, like their peers, have long prioritized hierarchy and restraint. Street cred at these banks is earned over years, if not decades.

This longstanding culture is butting up against the many young professionals who have grown up in a different age, where the norm is curating a public identity and the veneer of success. Current and former Wall Streeters told Business Insider they know the rules, which can make posting anything feel like a gamble.

Allison Sheehan, a former analyst for private wealth advisors at Goldman Sachs, rolled the dice when she started posting her elaborate cake creations under the handle "investment__baker" in 2023. Even though she said she was careful to avoid mentions of the firm or her work, she was eventually dinged by the compliance department because her username alluded too clearly to her employer, she said. It could reflect poorly on the firm if she were ever in the press, or if clients discovered that she was baking cakes instead of working, she recalled them saying.

"I felt hindered by the rules," Sheehan, who left the bank last summer and is now building a small baking business, told Business Insider.

"On one hand, they are expected to appear successful and interesting online," Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist, told Business Insider. "On the other hand, their employers expect discretion and strict compliance rules. That tension creates anxiety, especially for younger professionals trying to navigate both worlds at once."

The internet does not reward quiet success

For Gen Zers who have long lived under the motto "Instagram or it didn't happen," social media platforms have turned lifestyle into performance art. It's as easy to find a "day in the life" video for almost every profession as it is to stumble across posts flaunting four-figure dinners or candid clips from a luxury vacation.

Pew Research reported last year that roughly 80% of Americans aged 18 to 29 use Instagram, and about half use TikTok daily. Even within finance, social media saturation is high: Morgan Stanley said 83% of its interns last year used Instagram.

Alpert describes the divide as generational. Previous cohorts had clearer boundaries between their professional and personal identities. Now, he said, "the same device used for work is the one used to broadcast personal identity to the world — across social media and dating apps, you can find people posting where they work. The idea that a prestigious job should remain private feels unnatural."

That logic, however, collides with Wall Street's internal culture. Alpert calls finance "one of the most conformist professional cultures in America," where status is hierarchical and visibility tightly managed.

"Online, visibility is the currency," he said. "You are expected to cultivate an identity, attract attention, and project success."

In that sense, the Interview photoshoot backfired because it was seemingly intended for the wrong audience: a panel of online spectators rather than those who oversee the financial institutions where the men work.

Dr. Greg Kushnick, a psychologist with offices near Wall Street and who works with young professionals, said the episode was "bound to happen at some point, where these two worlds collide."

Old Wall Street culture

The four young men in the now-viral piece have dominated finance social media accounts this past week, though Johnson told Business Insider he thought it would "fly under the radar."

The group caught flak for not having built up reputational currency — or more simply, the right to make a mistake of this magnitude — said a person familiar with the compliance policies of the biggest Wall Street banks.

"If you've been there for 10 years and you're a successful banker, you have built up institutional capital," they said, adding that, by seeking digital approval, these young people had harmed their professional standing before they had much of a chance to prove their skill at their firm. "There's your one strike for your career. These people are in the early days of their career, so they have no built-up equity with anyone."

Meridith Dennes, a Wall Street recruiter who runs the firm Prospect Rock Partners, said when you join a financial institution, "you are no longer a 'me.'"

"You are an 'us,'" she said. "And it's really important to understand, 'What is my impact on the global brand reputation of Goldman Sachs?'" An analyst who presents "sleek New York fashion" might actually be a liability or source of friction if the bank is courting clients who value discretion.

For a generation that's grown up online, what they might read as harmless self-expression or personal branding can register to their employer as brand risk. One private equity analyst told Business Insider that she used to post her free office lunches for her meager TikTok following, sure to crop out any identifying details about the firm, until a coworker recognized a tiny detail on her desk and mentioned the videos.

She deleted them from the account, which lists only her first name, and said she's "scared" about the company seeing any content. Both Sheehan and the analyst said they also worried that peers or random followers would get them into trouble. "People do crazy things," the analyst said. "They could email your firm. They could ruin things for you."

'Zero' for upholding firm values

Whatever happens to finance's finest boys now, the knowledgeable banking source predicted that those who break company policies could suffer in performance reviews on team culture and adherence to the rules. That, in turn, could lead to a lower bonus at year's end, the source said.

"It's not a slap on the wrist. All of these things cascade down into other areas," he said. "There's a line item you get rated on for upholding the values of the firm. They're going to get a zero for that."

Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communications at Dartmouth who previously consulted for Goldman Sachs, said that younger professionals may feel a different set of pressures than previous generations.

"The young generation wants to be seen differently at work today, I would say, than in the past," he said. "Times have changed. Values have changed." But it's no excuse — financial institutions are explicit about their expectations and enforce "very, very clear" regulations around social media use, Argenti said. Junior employees understand the culture they are entering.

"That's just one of the costs of wanting to work in an industry like this," Argenti said. "In a battle of culture versus your values versus the organization's values, you always lose to the organization — unless you're running it."