Is Investment Banking as bad as people say it is?

But yes

I know one who is conscious from the opening of the Asian markets on Sundays (our time) and doesn't chill until the NYSE closes on Fridays.

In other words he doesn't really have a life.

It was once a boring, safe job. Then the smart guys figured out you could create debt instruments that behaved like penny stocks, and things changed-for the better for the investment bankers, for the worse for everybody else.

Yes, it is. And for much longer than the first few years.

Meh, up until around the mid-eighties. They underwrote stock/bond offerings, took their percentage off the top, and walked at the bell. My finance classes didn't spend too much time on investment banking, because it was pretty simple and straightforward. Right around that time was when investment banking started transitioning from being middle men to taking positions and trading for themselves, as chronicled by Michael Lewis in Liar's Poker, and everything they were teaching us about it went right out the window.