How Tech Beat Wall Street

In last Friday's Bonus Bananas one article stood out: it was the piece written by Bryan Goldberg entitled, "Young people are screwed… Here’s how to survive". The WSO community was split pretty much down the middle as to whether or not this was a valid (and/or valuable) addition to the debate on the problems facing young people today. What caught many people's attention is that Bryan described himself as a "failed investment banker".

So I've decided to highlight his next piece entitled, "Finance lost. Tech won. Here’s why…" because in it he describes exactly what he means by "failed" investment banker and he goes on to describe the different attributes it takes to survive on Wall Street vs. almost any other career path and why finance careers are increasingly unpopular with Generation Y.

Some of you are not going to like what he has to say. And it certainly doesn't apply to everyone on Wall Street (some finance jobs actually do require a modicum of creativity). But for the most part he's spot on. And he should be: he was the only SA out of a class of 100 not to receive a full time offer from CSFB in 2004. So he definitely knows what it takes to fail on the Street.

He also brings up the point that a career in banking is flagging in popularity among young people. In 2005, investment banks represented 9 of the 30 most desired employers. Today they only represent 3. So why the big shift in sentiment?

It’s not because of money. Those who want to get rich will find that Finance is still a great way to make big bucks. Have bonuses been reduced? Great, so now you will make a million dollars in a big year, instead of two million. Hedge Fund managers still make a fortune.


The reason is because people — especially smart and ambitious people — have determined that the skills which make you a great banker are not the skills that they want to develop or manifest.

He goes on to list the four attributes that make a successful banker and outlines how pretty much the polar opposite of those is a recipe for success in the start-up world.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this piece since you've presumably chosen to stay the Wall Street path, which makes you a bit of an outlier at least relative to your peers. Will Wall Street make a comeback? Or will it be relegated to the esoteric pursuit that it was considered prior to 1985? Before you get into a huff, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Imagine a scenario where you only had to work with people who actually wanted to be in finance and not just to make a six-figure salary right out of college. Is the shift in Gen Y's priorities a good or a bad thing?

Mod note: Best of Eddie, this was originally posted on 1/15/13.

 

He's talking about the differences between a small tech company and a large 100+ year old financial company, but the title is 'Finance won, Tech lost' (oops, Freudian slip). The experience at Credit Suisse would probably be pretty similar to working at Intel or Microsoft now, in terms of bureaucracy/hierarchy levels.

The first article contains a lot of truth to it though. As the number of college grads proliferates, the average degree is worth less. Let's be honest, a degree from the University of Phoenix isn't going to open many doord and almost certainly is not worth the money.

 
SirTradesaLot:
He's talking about the differences between a small tech company and a large 100+ year old financial company, but the title is 'Finance won, Tech lost' (oops, Freudian slip). The experience at Credit Suisse would probably be pretty similar to working at Intel or Microsoft now, in terms of bureaucracy/hierarchy levels.

The first article contains a lot of truth to it though. As the number of college grads proliferates, the average degree is worth less. Let's be honest, a degree from the University of Phoenix isn't going to open many doord and almost certainly is not worth the money.

Not just a small tech company, but a start-up. Start-ups are unproven, which also seems to be his point in contrasting the two industries. I’d like to know what he was doing at Credit Swiss to begin with…

 

I interned at a top tech company. And I went into finance. I preferred the life of an IB analyst to the tech company. And ER is vastly preferable to both.

His analysis is pretty accurate. You need a certain disposition and outlook to tolerate finance. Thankfully, most people who are willing to run the recruiting gauntlet have this personality type. It might be just be my impression, but a lot of the guys hired during "boom" times seem to be a poor fit long term - they took banking jobs because, hey, bankers made a lot of money.

In my case, I am reasonably well suited to finance. I respect the hierarchy. I would address my analyst as "sir" if he preferred it. I am also completely comfortable paying my dues. Still working on attention to detail, but that's what I get for covering an industry with bizarre accounting practices.

Tech and social media are sexy. Young people use their products. And since FB/GOOG/AAPL usage is so ubiquitous, they get positive social feedback. And that's really what young people have always cared about. Money is just a way to buy that status - even in the bubble, hardly anybody understood what bankers did.

 

Pretty funny that there are mirror articles on the tech/entrepreneur forums complaining about how much their industry sucks.

There's pros/cons to every industry, the only truth behind most of these "complainer" articles is that you should do what you're genuinely interested in. That way you're not pissed when your bonus is down 30% or when the start-up capital dries up and you're out on your butt looking for a new job.

Constantly whining and comparing other industries against each other is apparently the one thing our generation is good at versus actually going out there and doing something.

 
Scott Irish:
This is still more encouraging for you guys than what I see recent law grads saying.

How sad that even at my age, I'd still go into banking given the chance...

a friend of mine studied law at Oxford, got a 1st, speaks english, french, dutch, korean and ancient greek, has para-legal work experience and she's stunning and still had to settle with credit suisse legal dept.....seems rough out there for law guys and gals.
"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
Oreos:
Scott Irish:
This is still more encouraging for you guys than what I see recent law grads saying.

How sad that even at my age, I'd still go into banking given the chance...

a friend of mine studied law at Oxford, got a 1st, speaks english, french, dutch, korean and ancient greek, has para-legal work experience and she's stunning and still had to settle with credit suisse legal dept.....seems rough out there for law guys and gals.

I'd sooner jerk off buffalo for a nickel a herd than go to law school.

 
Oreos:
Scott Irish:
This is still more encouraging for you guys than what I see recent law grads saying.

How sad that even at my age, I'd still go into banking given the chance...

a friend of mine studied law at Oxford, got a 1st, speaks english, french, dutch, korean and ancient greek, has para-legal work experience and she's stunning and still had to settle with credit suisse legal dept.....seems rough out there for law guys and gals.

I know someone who studied law at Cambridge and now works in a bar. So it could be worse...

 
Best Response

Honestly, even if there is some high level truth to this article, it just reeks of a combination of entrepreneur-porn and failure-fetishizing. The kind of articles that seemingly only come from people who have already found great success in their chosen field. Had this guy not sold Bleacher Report for $200 million, I doubt he'd be as quick to mentally masturbate to his previous failure. Nor would he pretend to be such an expert on what it takes to succeed in the field. Nor would he be as quick to dismiss the role money plays in decision making. It's very easy to say "money doesn't matter" when you've already had a gigantic payday.

And let's be clear, he has turned a junior investment banker into such a caricature, it's a bit silly. His whole "A banker does not speak up for three years and knows his place...an entrepreneur is bold and takes action blah blah blah" is crap. You'd be a real dickhead Analyst if you couldn't step up and take initiative and go above and beyond the role of quiet processer. No, you can't start running meetings from day one, but that's because it takes experience and relationships that no 22 year old is going to bring to the table. That doesn't mean that you can't contribute and take leadership roles in different ways.

And not every single person who starts a business is some wild west cowboy, despite what people involved with internet startups would have you believe. Additionally, let's not discount the skills and knowledge one gains from starting a career in finance, or any field for that matter. Not every business can be started through hard work and bold decisiveness alone, many require some combination of specialized knowledge and capital. This point is abundantly clear if you've ever worked in M&A or PE as you would have worked with founders and managers from an incredibly diverse set of backgrounds.

Here's the deal: if you are a super creative type, then finance might not be for you. On the flip side, let's not romanticize life at some random web 2.0 startup. Spending 10 hours a day coding the back-end of your brownie-recommendation signup page might not be as fulfilling as he makes it out to be. I doubt throwing together endless streams of sports-centric slideshow countdowns would be as fulfilling to the author if it didn't make him a boat load of cash.

If anyone has read my posts or followed me at all on WSO, they know I am not some finance loving nut. I have big issues with the industry, but I also have big issues with this sort of stuff. At the end of the day, everyone should focus on doing things that they like and that they are good at, and living within their means so as to allow them to do this responsibly. If that means working in finance, good for you. If that means working in tech, good for you. If that means opening a small business, good for you. If that means being a butcher, good for you. Just do you and be a decent human being. But, of course, that sort of advice isn't exactly sexy enough to get page views on some misc. tech blog.

::end rant::

 

The article's downplay on the pay is a bit bs stating in finance you can still earn millions. Well ya sure if you make it to the end, but fresh bankers didn't come in with their only goals to make to PE/HF. A lot of them like my friends just did it because they had no idea what they wanted to do (back in 06/07) so they got into banking since it was paying 200k+ a year, and had fantastic a MBA exit op. The goal was to boost resume, hurry the fuck up into B School and find an actual job that you enjoyed that also paid well. But now with shittier pay, same hours, less job security, over-enrolled B schools makes sense for people to op out to other fields such as tech which pays well still and a lot better hours.

 

The level of denial on WSO is inane.

It is okay to be vying for IBD/PE positions but a lot of people here seem to forgot or not noticed that tech already killed or displaced thousands of financial professionals with machines and programmers over the past decades.

Tech is a better place to be; its either a huge call options at startups for either IPO lottery or VC, or a decent compensated position at an existing company with good hours with chances of going startup/VC/ER. Downturn and exit path for tech is brutal and narrow, but nothing beats the lifestyle of rest and vest.

 

It seems like once every two months there is some form of "banking sucks and people don't want to do it" article posted. I am 100% happy that finance is dropping in the list of jobs people want from college. Because college kids are fucking morons (present company excluded of course).

If you don't like the hours, don't do it. This idea that every clown in San Fran is creating the next Twitter is comical. Reminds me of all the bro's starting their own breweries thinking they will be the next Sam Adams or some shit. Most of these dudes jerking off to tech are creating free Iphone apps and playing 360 in a 9 man apartment or something.

And comparing a junior banker, in essence a foot soldier, to some innovative tech guy is completely unfair. Compare a banker to a guy writing code all day or something. The vast majority of people in tech aren't inventing anything, just helping someone with their idea

Tech hasn't won. Finance hasn't won. No one gives a fuck and there is no contest. And if anyone came up to me unsolicited blabbing on about their sweet tech gig I'd pour a beer on their head and tell them to fuck off.

Can we all just stop with the dick measuring already? No one career is perfect and all of them have elements that suck.

 

The article was sensationalist but it naturally leads to the truth that finance is in significant cyclical decline. 2007 was a high watermark that will not be reached for a long time. The run-up in leverage from the 1970s through today, the most significant driver of the boom in the finance industry, has yet to really unwind and will not be repeated for a very long time. There are always rotations within an industry, and so certain areas in finance are growing, such as hedge funds or PWM, but even for hedge funds things are not like the halcyon days by any means. Competition is simply getting more fierce and returns are progressively harder to come by. I'm not trying to say that finance is dead, or that no one will get rich, but we do have to face the fact that we are in a shrinking industry. Every day I see headlines on my Bloomberg about how some bank is cutting 10,000 more bodies, how 100% of compensation will be deferred, whole business lines are getting shut down, etc. Yes these are all part of the healing process, and there will be smaller ups and downs, but it feels like a classic bear market. Listen, I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said numerous times before, but reality must be faced.

In terms of technology, don't get me started. The whole start-up wave has been a massive bubble in my view. I subscribe to the Peter Thiel thesis that innovation has actually massively slowed down and what passes for technological advancements these days are little more than amusing sleights of hand. Having Ivy graduates working at start-ups making mobile apps is probably more beneficial for society than shuffling paper at Goldman but not by much.

Hot sectors of the economy go in waves, and whenever someone younger asks me what field they should go into, it makes me think about what might come next. I've held the view for some time that we are due for a major boom in the pharmaceutical industry, as computation power and big data analysis capabilities are finally getting to a point where genome-based diagnosis and drugs are a reality. The small molecule paradigm has been dying for years and the lack of innovation coming out of the pharma industry is indicative of this. I believe that we have been at a trough for some time, and will likely start accelerating upwards within the next 5 years (from a technological perspective). I think that highly personalized medicine can lead to massive improvements in the quality of life for patients, and while it will initially be very expensive, there is an inherent cost-saving component as well (since there is less trial and error).

 
couchy:
http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/dont-waste-your-time-in-…

startups aren't that great either. read above for a more realistic view of the startup world.

it seems obvious, but it's still useful to say: no career path will guarantee greatness

I have no SBs to give you, but everyone should read this blog post. It's long but very interesting and hits home for me. I had an offer once where a startup gave me a terrible package where I would've taken a massive pay cut and receive no equity until X months into my tenure, which I took to mean I would receive no equity, period. I obviously turned down immediately, and the company acted as if I should be lucky to even have the opportunity to work there.

The reason I mention this is that this indicated to me that either this company was delusional, which is entirely possible, or there are people out there willing to work at way below their market rate in order to have the privilege of being an employee "at a startup." Which is exactly the kind of logic Michael Church is arguing is ridiculous and detrimental to everyone but founders and VCs.

Hi, Eric Stratton, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you.
 

All I'm going to say is that I have friends in VC and it is just as brutal out there for the startup guys right now. Think ramen diets, 5 guys crammed into a living room worrying everyday that you're insolvent, etc.

If you think every kid in Silicon Valley is balling out of control with his shitty app or product idea then you are clearly not in tune with what's actually going on out there. Those days are over for the tech guys as well.

 

Tech beat Wall Street? I know both pretty well. I don't think it's that simple.

First of all, VC-funded tech-- at least in this consumer web space where the only bit that's actually technological is "scaling" something that's otherwise cute and trivial-- is full of slimeballs at the top levels. The low-level engineers buy the "change the world" shit and tend to be good people (too good for their own good) but the executives of most of these build-to-flip concerns are incredibly unethical. I've seen people forced under extortion (threat of bad referral and future inability to get funding) into giving up equity, just to name one example. I hate that set of people because they are ruining technology. Those companies aren't even real tech companies. They're marketing experiments hoping to get "acq-hired" by large companies that have lost the ability to innovate.

Finance gets a bad name, but people on Wall Street generally don't fuck with others' careers in long-lasting ways. You might get laid off at some point-- big deal, you get a severance-- but you're not going to have someone call 20 other people and tell them not to invest in you. You won't have some douchebag middle manager try to fuck your next job because you left before he could fire you. Wall Street has greedy sharks, but few of the narcissists who are just going to blow up the rules outright. The greedy ones are too busy making money to pursue grudges. The cliquey world of VC-funded so-called "technology" is different.

There's a whole world of technology that is decent (mostly in R&D at blue-chip companies, or mid-sized firms that few people know about but have excellent people) but VC-istan, by and large, is not it. I don't know if the VCs themselves are that bad, but I've seen them invest in some rotten people, so they seem to be awful judges of character.

Second, it helps if you can go back and forth between technology and finance. If you rule one or the other out, you're hamstringing yourself. You work in tech to level up on autonomy, interesting work, and exposure to the newest ways of doing things, because most financial jobs want people who already have the skills they're seeking. You work in finance to improve compensation and social status, and later you can get better tech jobs. Sometimes the work is interesting, but it's not the draw.

Occasionally, you get both interesting work and strong compensation in one gig, but it's not the norm for young people. Any programmer who rules out one or the other is making a mistake, in my opinion.

Also, one thing you learn about IT and programmers is that, as a group, we're shitty negotiators. This is why startups can get away with offers that involve a one-year cliff (period of no vesting) and compensate a $50k drop (from market salary) with 0.0x percent equity/option slices that you can't even evaluate anyway because most of the relevant information is hidden from you. People will take those offers because, "This is a rocket ship" and "We're going to change the world". By the way, a note on "cliffs": in order to prevent this from being an incentive to fire you, make sure to negotiate a term that if you're fired before the cliff, it turns into a cash severance (at valuation) due on the date of termination. Many startups will tell you to go fuck yourself, but those are the ones that exist to take advantage of idealistic mid-20s idiots (I use "idiot" affectionately, I was one once) who don't know what they're worth.

One other note: perversely, to become a great programmer, you generally have to do something other than programming as well and become an "X Who Programs" (XWP) instead of Just A Programmer (JAP). X might be a quant, a startup founder, a designer, or a product manager. It's an independent credibility that gets you the best projects and to choose your own tools and work. This happens because it's impossible for business people (and even quite hard for programmers) to tell who's good or not among programmers, so evaluation process that (because individual programmers are impossible to measure) becomes extremely political. Having an X puts you above the fray of JAPs and makes sure you don't get stuck on some project with no upside or opportunity to perform. There's now a startup-quant track called "data science" that provides such an X for mathematically adept people. Finance is a great way to become an X Who Programs, if you play the experience right.

If you look at who actually gets funded, for that, it's mostly ex-finance guys. If you were at a bank or hedge fund, you can exploit VCs' "just like me, 10 years younger" bias.

 
MichaelOChurch:
One other note: perversely, to become a great programmer, you generally have to do something other than programming as well and become an "X Who Programs" (XWP) instead of Just A Programmer (JAP). X might be a quant, a startup founder, a designer, or a product manager. It's an independent credibility that gets you the best projects and to choose your own tools and work. This happens because it's impossible for business people (and even quite hard for programmers) to tell who's good or not among programmers, so evaluation process that (because individual programmers are impossible to measure) becomes extremely political. Having an X puts you above the fray of JAPs and makes sure you don't get stuck on some project with no upside or opportunity to perform. There's now a startup-quant track called "data science" that provides such an X for mathematically adept people. Finance is a great way to become an X Who Programs, if you play the experience right.

Excellent post, man. +1

What you're talking about in the paragraph I quoted is what was recently described in the tech press as a "unicorn"; that mythical start-up founder who eats, breathes, and shits business acumen but also knows how to code. These are the guys in highest demand today. If you know what you're doing business-wise and know enough code to cob together an MVP, you're probably golden right now.

 

i think people here are forgetting that there are other jobs at startups besides programming. obviously programming is not that exciting, but based on my experience, the jobs in business development/sales/marketing are. maybe i'm a bit biased because i am currently working in biz dev at a tech startup in nyc, and have never worked in banking, but the thought of launching and working to scale our business to profitability is very exciting for me. this obviously wouldn't be attractive to those on this site who shit on sales type jobs, and if you don't like going out and meeting with prospects and building relationships, then it isn't for you. is pretty cool to meet with prospects to show them why our business can help them, or to meet with investors who guide us on how to improve this product. my role may be on the business development team, but we work with the product development team with the information we get from our meetings. the transparency across departments is awesome. like i said, i never worked in banking and was very lucky to stumble into this opportunity, but it has been worth the decent paycut thus far because i feel like i am learning a lot about a lot of different things. my compensation is not even close to banking, but i'm living comfortably in new york, i have great hours, and i am happy. hopefully it all works out, and if it doesn't then i'm shit out of luck.

 

"obviously programming is not that exciting"

Then you're doing it wrong.

However, most companies (including most "tech" startups) are. Programming is very rewarding if the development environment is set up and engineers are properly rewarded. It's terrible in the typical subordinate code-monkey job that characterizes 90% of what professional programmers do.

 

fair enough. it just isn't something that i would be interested in/very good at. i'm more of an extrovert, but i really do admire the work the guys at my company do to build our product.

 

Most companies do not get technology, much less programming, which is its lifeblood. Coding isn't the only important thing, but it is damn important.

There are a zillion multiplier effects involved in software development: quality of engineers, choice of tools, integration with the rest of the organization, deciding what problems to solve and how to solve them. Each of these is at least a 5x swing in productivity. It's also hard to get these right if you don't understand the problem. For example, which programming languages are best depends on what is being done. If you're writing high-performance or low-latency code, C is your best bet and possibly your only option. For most software, something more "high-level" (but, because of abstraction, less performant) like Python or Clojure is better. If you're trying to build a typical web app and develop in a flexible manner, you don't want to use C.

This is why most good programmers know 5 or 6 languages. There really isn't one all-purpose language that's best for all of them. (However, if you're just getting into programming, start with Python. Python is not great for much of anything but very good for almost everything.) In fact, the most common enterprise language (Java) is probably the worst. The best Java programmers are all moving to Scala and Clojure, which can use all the same libraries.

The best way to manage programmers is not to. This is what Valve does with the open allocation model. People choose their projects and work on what they want, because the best programmers will move to what interests them (and leave if blocked from doing so) anyway. However, this is at odds with the traditional financial company, and there are obvious regulatory and informational reasons why finance can't use open allocation (although some hedge funds are moving in that direction). But that is what it is going to take to be great in technology in the 2010s to '20s. Financial companies that want a chance to compete for top programmers are going to have to start playing them like top quants and traders.

 
MichaelOChurch:
This is why most good programmers know 5 or 6 languages. There really isn't one all-purpose language that's best for all of them. (However, if you're just getting into programming, start with Python. Python is not great for much of anything but very good for almost everything.) In fact, the most common enterprise language (Java) is probably the worst. The best Java programmers are all moving to Scala and Clojure, which can use all the same libraries.

This is an interesting observation because, now that I'm proficient in the front end languages (HTML/CSS/Javascript), I've begun concentrating on back end languages and it was a real toss-up for me between Python and Rails. Which do you think is more useful in the web app space? If you had to compare Django with Rails, which framework is more robust? I'll be the first to admit that I am a LAZY coder and I want a framework that's gonna do a lot of the heavy lifting for me.

I've been playing with both the past couple weeks, and so far I'm leaning towards Rails. But Python seems easy enough to work with and both have really extensive developer communities.

 
TheKing:

Honestly, even if there is some high level truth to this article, it just reeks of a combination of entrepreneur-porn and failure-fetishizing. The kind of articles that seemingly only come from people who have already found great success in their chosen field. Had this guy not sold Bleacher Report for $200 million, I doubt he'd be as quick to mentally masturbate to his previous failure. Nor would he pretend to be such an expert on what it takes to succeed in the field. Nor would he be as quick to dismiss the role money plays in decision making. It's very easy to say "money doesn't matter" when you've already had a gigantic payday.

And let's be clear, he has turned a junior investment banker into such a caricature, it's a bit silly. His whole "A banker does not speak up for three years and knows his place...an entrepreneur is bold and takes action blah blah blah" is crap. You'd be a real dickhead Analyst if you couldn't step up and take initiative and go above and beyond the role of quiet processer. No, you can't start running meetings from day one, but that's because it takes experience and relationships that no 22 year old is going to bring to the table. That doesn't mean that you can't contribute and take leadership roles in different ways.

And not every single person who starts a business is some wild west cowboy, despite what people involved with internet startups would have you believe. Additionally, let's not discount the skills and knowledge one gains from starting a career in finance, or any field for that matter. Not every business can be started through hard work and bold decisiveness alone, many require some combination of specialized knowledge and capital. This point is abundantly clear if you've ever worked in M&A or PE as you would have worked with founders and managers from an incredibly diverse set of backgrounds.

Here's the deal: if you are a super creative type, then finance might not be for you. On the flip side, let's not romanticize life at some random web 2.0 startup. Spending 10 hours a day coding the back-end of your brownie-recommendation signup page might not be as fulfilling as he makes it out to be. I doubt throwing together endless streams of sports-centric slideshow countdowns would be as fulfilling to the author if it didn't make him a boat load of cash.

If anyone has read my posts or followed me at all on WSO, they know I am not some finance loving nut. I have big issues with the industry, but I also have big issues with this sort of stuff. At the end of the day, everyone should focus on doing things that they like and that they are good at, and living within their means so as to allow them to do this responsibly. If that means working in finance, good for you. If that means working in tech, good for you. If that means opening a small business, good for you. If that means being a butcher, good for you. Just do you and be a decent human being. But, of course, that sort of advice isn't exactly sexy enough to get page views on some misc. tech blog.

::end rant::

Agree with this. It is easy to lose perspective when you've had a massive payday. His ego is as inflated as that of any douchebag banker.

 
Edmundo Braverman:
Oreos:
Scott Irish:

This is still more encouraging for you guys than what I see recent law grads saying.

How sad that even at my age, I'd still go into banking given the chance...

a friend of mine studied law at Oxford, got a 1st, speaks english, french, dutch, korean and ancient greek, has para-legal work experience and she's stunning and still had to settle with credit suisse legal dept.....seems rough out there for law guys and gals.

I'd sooner jerk off buffalo for a nickel a herd than go to law school.

i thought i knew u eddie

 

Quia est rem ipsa molestiae est provident. Quia optio velit perferendis fuga et est nihil. Corporis qui quis dolor.

Sit quas amet pariatur. At minima id optio consequatur id voluptatem. Ea molestias fugit hic praesentium est esse voluptas non. Vel sint error aspernatur reprehenderit. Eos eveniet corrupti cupiditate iste labore. Ex nam quia expedita.

Sunt error sed in quasi impedit voluptatem. Architecto ducimus fugiat quam minima quo eaque accusantium.

 

Dolores in voluptate sint et veritatis. Qui est possimus libero assumenda. Molestias et est id et adipisci maiores non.

Vel labore sequi harum esse quia. Laborum sint quae vel quia sed. Necessitatibus dolores ut autem. Optio tempore officia ullam. Assumenda sed ipsum voluptas omnis rerum sunt rem optio.

Ducimus totam dolorem pariatur modi. Placeat doloremque sint molestiae libero ab sint dolores aut. Commodi voluptas veritatis enim odio. Nihil et sit porro veritatis. Ipsum architecto harum dicta libero.

Architecto quaerat nihil porro et error. Sint non eos autem ipsam. Aliquam pariatur laborum ipsa voluptatem voluptatum excepturi at.

Career Advancement Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Jefferies & Company 02 99.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 19 98.8%
  • Harris Williams & Co. (++) 98.3%
  • Lazard Freres 02 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 03 97.1%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Harris Williams & Co. 18 99.4%
  • JPMorgan Chase 10 98.8%
  • Lazard Freres 05 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 97.7%
  • William Blair 03 97.1%

Professional Growth Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Lazard Freres 01 99.4%
  • Jefferies & Company 02 98.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 17 98.3%
  • Moelis & Company 07 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 05 97.1%

Total Avg Compensation

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Director/MD (5) $648
  • Vice President (19) $385
  • Associates (86) $261
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (13) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (33) $170
  • 2nd Year Analyst (66) $168
  • 1st Year Analyst (202) $159
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (144) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

1
redever's picture
redever
99.2
2
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
3
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
99.0
4
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
5
kanon's picture
kanon
98.9
6
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
7
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
8
DrApeman's picture
DrApeman
98.9
9
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
10
bolo up's picture
bolo up
98.8
success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”