Taking the other side - the junior was out to lunch with a bunch of coworkers.

In the office setting the CEO would never been seen anywhere near the same floor that such junior people are working or eating, never having the opportunity to introduce themselves. One bank famously had a special CEO elevator so the guy could seamlessly get from the garage to his high-rise executive suite without bumping into a single soul.

I recently found myself out to dinner a table over from a C-suite exec at my company. I did not introduce myself because I'm a socially damaged introvert.

It's a pretty easy bet that the kid was a major extrovert on the other hand, more than some assumption they must already be upper class.

You'd be surprised about the class mobility on Wall St vs other industries. When I graduated, Google famously did not even recruit from anything other than a small handful of schools and screened out a pretty high GPA minimum like 3.75 or so. Meanwhile every bank came to my college and I had like 5 offers. A good number of my coworkers spent some time at community college, had parents without college degrees, are first gen immigrants, etc.

Outside of glad-handing networking roles that lean on peoples connections like in IB, "already rich" is the exception rather than the rule. Bear was famous for saying they didn't hire MBAs, but instead PSDs — poor, smart and had a deep desire to be rich

Finance is kind of unique is that it’s a weird mix of a strict meritocracy and a deeply seated upper crust that’s incredibly nepotistic.

The meritocrats are the ones that work the jobs where they actually have to make money and profits. Nepos are shunted to roles where that isn’t as direct.

I like to believe the analyst likely came from money. The son of another executive possibly? Which would explain why he was at this restaurant in the Hamptons. And likely why he didn’t flinch to introduce himself.