Is a stutter going to fuck me over?

Isn’t this fixable with a speech pathologist?

I've seen an MD at a middle market IB shop with a stutter. Also know of a guy at Apollo with a stutter. Not a huge deal, but would put in a reasonable effort to work through and minimize it.

Say it with me bro, "Sam sells sea shells by the sea shore". 

You are going to be fine, I used to have a stutter but I learned to say the words in my head before I spoke them, and that helped. 

It's a speech impediment, it's not your fault. Anyone that judges you for it can go f*ck themselves, genuinely. I worked with a very talented trader who had Tourette's - sure, the occasional outburst was a little bit off-putting, but the guy worked his f*cking socks off and was excellent at what he did. He was known more by his talent than by his affliction. 

Take a theatre or improv class

It ultimately depends on how severe it is. If it is mild-moderate severity, then you should be fine, but if it is high-moderate to severe severity, then you’re probably fucked. Even if it is mild-moderate severity, though, it is something you should work on fixing. 

I went through recruiting recently and have a stutter that varies in severity depending on what situation I’m in or the status of the person I’m speaking to. That means that in an interview my stutter can go all the way up to severe levels, while on networking calls it’s pretty manageable, and in casual situations it’s virtually nonexistent. I underestimated how much of an issue my stuttering would be for recruiting, since I had assumed that it would be of similar severity to situations that I’m used to, but instead I struggled with it a lot and had huge difficulty in trying to manage it. This basically caused me to have to take a step back and quit recruiting in order to spend time figuring out what was going wrong and how I could fix it. 

The issue with stuttering is that there is very little practical research on it and, although speech therapy can be successful for many people who stutter, especially children (and data suggests that 80% of children who stutter get rid of it by the time they hit puberty) it is pretty useless for most adult stutterers since they usually will either teach you fluency shaping techniques, which ignore the variability of stuttering severity depending on the speaking situation (there are studies showing that people who stutter are completely fluent when speaking by themselves or in situations considered as “safe”), or force you to accept that you will stutter for the rest of your life and try to help you live with it in a way that doesn’t affect you too much, which for client-facing roles in finance does not work. 

However, on the bright side, there are people who have overcome stuttering in adulthood, among them very famous and successful people such as Jack Welch, James Earl Jones, Emily Blunt, and Joe Biden before his recent downfall. Further, there are two such people who have written books on how they were able to overcome it and I suggest that you read them, since they are by far the most helpful material I’ve ever come across in approaching stuttering recovery by looking at the psychology of it, rather than speech mechanics or acceptance therapy. The books are Speech is a River by Ruth Mead and Redefining Stuttering by John Harrison, you can find free PDF versions of them online by looking up the titles. Both books basically argue that stuttering into adulthood is caused by a complex interaction between different elements of speech that is corrupted by underlying beliefs accumulated over numerous traumatic experiences of stuttering that cause you to become overly critical of your speech and then block when trying to say something, rather than letting your speech process naturally do its thing and direct all attention to the content of your speech. The way to fix this is pretty similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and basically entails writing down the underlying beliefs that cause you to stutter, then challenging each of them, and then gradually exposing yourself to speaking situations of greater and greater difficulty until you’re completely confident in your ability to produce fluent speech and, therefore, not stutter. 

It takes a huge amount of work to undo years of stuttering, but, like anything, with enough hard work, dedication, and practice you will be able to make significant process and probably overcome your stutter entirely. I just recently started on this journey and have made significant progress already, and I’m sure you’re capable of achieving something similar. Feel free to PM me if you would like to discuss more or have any questions, and good luck.