Industry: the writers of Lena Dunham’s new show spill the beans on the finance world

BBC/Bad Wolf Productions/Amanda Searle
Konrad Kay|Mickey Down21 November 2020

The most dangerous thing about being twenty-one is not knowing what you don’t know. Your twenties should be a grace period for exploration, irresponsibility and crucially, making mistakes. But when you’re twenty-one and joining an elite investment bank, you’re expected to be fully-formed and error-proof. We left Oxford in the summer of 2010 with a strong if misguided idea of what we wanted to spend our lives doing. The motivation was fear and peer pressure -  everyone either had a job at a bank or wanted one. We were  young, impressionable and insecure men armed with a misreading of American Psycho - often polemical finance art and literature serves as the industry’s biggest recruitment tool - and a festishiation of the City. We had just left the bosom of one institution and were already  looking for the next - we had no idea who we were, what we stood for and what we wanted out of life. We just knew that if we put on a suit and broke the bank for an Hermés tie and a pair of Church’s then we wouldn't have to think about it for a bit. It was very easy to outsource our personalities to the industry. Just let the job speak for you won’t have to say or think anything interesting about yourself. ‘Industry’ is an exploration of that short time at the coalface of capitalism.  

During our stints in the City, we discussed how the on-screen versions of this world had yet to capture what bizarre ecosystems these places are. Working 100 hours a week, high on caffeine; going slightly mad from sleep deprivation; staring at a unintelligible Excel spreadsheet; waiting for a free weekend that will inevitably be stolen by an overzealous superior who’ll leave you to deal with a “pitchbook” marked up in red pen by a managing director (“pls fix”).  

Or there’s the trading floor where you spend 12 hours a day sitting at your desk, next to your boss who’s close enough to spit on you when he talks. There you eat breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner in the same seat, scared to pick up the phone (even though this is literally your job), massaging the egos of your clients while trying to profit off them.  

The average grad is now paid around £80,000 in the first year, £90,000 in the second, £120,000 in the third. That makes it quite hard to leave, especially when you’ve become accustomed to a certain kind of lifestyle.  

Konrad Kay and Mickey Down wrote Industry to show the real weirdness of the finance world
Mickey Down

We both had slightly different experiences. In Mickey’s case, it took about a year for the industry to chew him up and spit him out. He left but says he would have been pushed inevitably. He says he had to work very hard to be average and wanted to do something else he had a chance of at being decent at.  

Konrad lasted three and a half years until his boss took him into his office and said, “I really like you but you’re the worst salesman we’ve ever hired”. We weren’t interested in the myths and stereotypes of that world when we were writing the show: the truth was more fun. We wanted to look at it from the point of view of its youngest recruits: why they do it, and whether it ultimately benefits or corrodes them. It’s a “people show,” before a “finance show”: the starting points were always the characters rather than some overarching plot about insider trading or banks failing.  

The show, which is directed by Lena Dunham, is about the micro-politics of corporate culture and the role mentors play in a budding career. Sit next to someone who likes you and you’ll rise fast, find yourself next to someone who you rub up the wrong way and they’ll make your life hell. These places sell a lie on entry: that they are a meritocracy, blind to gender, race and class. But these are hierarchical institutions which pretend not to be by superficially flattening the playing field — MDs sitting next to baby-faced graduates. In truth this means somebody’s always watching and assessing you. And the seniors are always fearful, wondering who’ll take their seat.  

The tension between the institution’s “happy families” public face and the individualistic ambition that the bank instils is where we thought we’d find the drama. Yes, there have been steps taken since we left to open the doors to transparency. But the underlying methodology of commodifying people, evaluating them by productivity or profit and loss and compensating them accordingly? It still exists. People still measure their status and worth by what their boss hands them in an envelope.  

The show also explores the stigma of those who complain, and how hard it can be to change a culture from within — it’s a season-long crusade for one character — and how often, when you shine a spotlight on something, it only moves underground and becomes more pernicious. Mistreatment of people along, for example, gender lines, can seem almost hereditary.  

The environment is all the more exhilarating and pressurised when you consider our lead characters are fresh out of university, like we were, shiny in their new suits and expected to perform like seasoned professionals right out of the gate. At that age, you want long nights, heady romances, experiences. You seek chaos, emotion, pyrotechnics. For good or bad, finance is a hell of a place to forge an identity and we wanted to crack open the black box of the world — much talked about, little understood — and give the viewer a peek inside.  

Industry is now on BBC iPlayer

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