Investment bankers had a technique known as the stress interview. If you were invited to Lehman’s New York offices, your first interview might begin with the interviewer asking you to open the window. You were on the 43rd floor overlooking Water Street. The window was sealed shut. That was, of course, the point. The interviewer just wanted to see whether your inability to comply with his request led you to yank, pull and sweat until finally you melted into a puddle of foiled ambition. Or, as one sad applicant was rumoured to have done, throw a chair through the window.
