It’s 5:30 a.m. Allison Sheehan switches on the sunshine within the rest room of her New York Metropolis condominium and stretches in entrance of the mirror. “Welcome again to a different morning within the lifetime of an ‘funding baker,’ which suggests somebody who works at an funding financial institution but in addition makes truffles,” she says originally of the video, which she uploaded to TikTok in early 2025.
Tying an apron over her pajamas, Ms. Sheehan, now 26, proceeds to pipe lilac buttercream ruffles on a heart-shaped funfetti cake she had baked the night time earlier than.
At 6:50, she heads to the fitness center, filming herself doing crunches earlier than heading house to bathe, placed on make-up and pick an outfit. By 8:20, Ms. Sheehan heads to her wealth administration job, at Goldman Sachs (she didn’t reveal the title of the financial institution in her movies whereas employed there).
In 2023, Ms. Sheehan, who has since made truffles for manufacturers together with Goop and LoveShackFancy in addition to the mannequin Gigi Hadid, was posting on social media as “The Funding Baker,” a persona she created for her custom-cake enterprise, Alleycat.
On her Funding Baker Instagram and TikTok pages, Ms. Sheehan posted acquainted influencer content material like “What I eat in every week” and day-in-the-life movies, together with breakdowns of her company wardrobe. On the time, her DMs had been inundated each with cake orders and with younger girls looking for recommendation on how you can break into finance.
The finance business stays one of the crucial sought-after sectors for school graduates. In 2025, Goldman Sachs noticed 360,000 college students competing for simply 2,600 internships — up 15 p.c from the earlier yr. It has additionally traditionally insisted that workers keep a low profile on the web. Ms. Sheehan was cautious by no means to reveal the financial institution at which she labored in her movies, and she or he by no means filmed herself within the workplace, per her employer’s guidelines. In truth, she by no means mentioned finance a lot in any respect. Nonetheless, the strain between the “two worlds of baking and being a financier was the entire attract,” Ms. Sheehan mentioned.
But Ms. Sheehan was knowledgeable that her baking content material was seen as a “reputational danger” for the agency. She was instructed to delete each submit on her TikTok and Instagram and to alter her deal with in order that it made no reference to the phrase “funding.” When Ms. Sheehan drew comparisons to the agency’s chief govt, David Solomon, who moonlights as a D.J., she was advised she couldn’t examine herself to him. She pushed again, saying that the agency’s coverage ought to apply to everybody. “It doesn’t work like that,” she mentioned she was advised.
Like Ms. Sheehan, Sahilee Waitman, 28, used the actual fact of her employment at an funding financial institution as a hook for her TikTok movies. Ms. Waitman moved to New York Metropolis from Amsterdam to work in compliance at an funding financial institution in 2023. She quickly began posting day-in-the-life content material, detailing every little thing from her exercises to what she ate for lunch, with the purpose of constructing monetary autonomy exterior her company position. Each girls had been clear that whereas they labored at funding banks, they weren’t funding bankers, typically a degree of competition or confusion within the feedback part.
The New York Instances reached out to most of the funding financial institution workers on TikTok, however they declined to remark for this text, fearing the danger to their status. The New York Instances additionally reached out to 14 totally different banks, amongst them Goldman Sachs, however none responded to requests for remark concerning the matter of social media use amongst workers.
Regardless of these fears, funding banking content material goes viral throughout social media. Almost 60,400 movies tagged #investmentbanking have appeared on TikTok lately. Time-stamped 100-hour work weeks and late-night keyboard A.S.M.R. commonly draw a whole bunch of 1000’s of views on TikTok. A part of the attraction is that influencers supply a extra lifelike depiction of the world of labor than might be gleaned from exhibits like “Trade” on HBO or from precise recruitment occasions.
Ms. Sheehan was decided to point out that even bankers may have a life exterior work. In October 2024, a yr after posting her first video, a gathering along with her supervisor appeared unexpectedly on Ms. Sheehan’s calendar. At first, she thought it may be excellent news. However the pleasure was short-lived when she was greeted by three compliance officers. “We see you’ve a web based persona known as ‘The Funding Baker,’” she recalled them saying.
At current, there is no such thing as a extensively agreed-upon coverage concerning workers’ private social media use. The Monetary Trade Regulatory Authority, the biggest impartial regulator for brokerage corporations in the US, and the Securities and Alternate Fee, a authorities company that regulates the complete U.S. securities business, have guidelines and steering dictating that workers can’t share any data that’s deemed confidential or in any approach delicate. However how corporations apply their very own inside coverage is at their discretion.
Hannah Awonuga, the previous head of colleague engagement at Barclays U.Ok. and a cultural transformation and inclusion marketing consultant, sees each events as in danger. Staff would possibly discover themselves on the unsuitable facet of human sources. For employers, “when you enable employees to submit freely,” she mentioned, “you run the danger that they could specific an opinion on a Saturday that goes towards your values.”
For many years, “workism” — the assumption that work is central to 1’s id — has infiltrated the American ethos, notably for a lot of metropolis dwellers, whose hobbies and leisure actions can fall by the wayside. More and more, youthful employees are pushing again, demanding a more healthy work-life stability and actively working to decouple their id from their careers.
The world of excessive finance is without doubt one of the final sectors to catch up. “As soon as you’re employed in these industries,” Ms. Waitman mentioned, “you’re primarily taught to decide on one lane.” You might be both a “critical skilled,” she mentioned, or a “inventive.” “I simply don’t imagine these issues are mutually unique,” she added.
Ms. Waitman, who’s Black, hoped that by posting on TikTok, she could be selling range within the business. She obtained the occasional detrimental remark, insisting she have to be a “secretary,” however a majority of her messages had been constructive, she mentioned, and got here from different girls looking for her recommendation about pursuing careers in finance.
On the time, Ms. Waitman didn’t obtain pushback from her employer on her movies, although she made positive to declare any exterior enterprise exercise to compliance and her director. “I believe corporations are simply now catching on to this,” Ms. Waitman mentioned. “As soon as they discover out, you’ve compliance in your neck.”
A latest shiny vogue unfold in Interview Journal entitled “Meet the Best Boys in Finance” highlighted what can occur when younger finance professionals appeal to the unsuitable sort of publicity. The designer-heavy photograph shoot was mocked and meme-ified on-line for violating Wall Avenue’s sacrosanct rule towards flashiness.
Throughout social media, some girls had been fast to level out the double commonplace at play. “However girls get fired from Goldman for being influencers …” learn one remark left on a TikTok video concerning the unfold.
In truth, most of the folks posting influencer-like content material are younger girls, which is at odds with the historically male-dominated world of excessive finance.
A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs advised Bloomberg that the interviews in Interview Journal weren’t accredited by the agency.
After the compliance assembly, Ms. Sheehan did as she was instructed and archived all her social media posts. Three months later, although, she put them again up. “I didn’t see my posts as a violation of the bylaws,” she mentioned. Instantly, one other assembly with compliance landed on her calendar. This time, her cake enterprise was taking off, and Ms. Sheehan determined handy in her resignation. (Goldman Sachs didn’t reply to requests for remark.)
As banks are pressured to iron out their insurance policies in an ever extra on-line world, employees sharing the trivia of their days is more likely to turn into an growing headache for compliance. “When you have 5 followers, there’s no have to make anybody conscious,” Ms. Awonuga mentioned. However, she added, “as extra Gen Z’s come into the office and develop of their roles, I simply don’t understand how possible it turns into to say you’re not allowed a social media presence.”
Ms. Sheehan, in the meantime, has no regrets. “I can’t imagine,” she mentioned, “that they had been involved about me making pink truffles when individuals are insider buying and selling.”
