I HATE MBB. Need advice for emotions management!!

Let me preface this post by saying that I know I’m privileged to be shitting on a role/company that many people would fight to have. Logically, I know very well that I’m not in a bad place at all, but it’s the emotional aspect that I can’t deal with. Telling myself a story is one thing, believing it is another and is the part I struggle with. The point of this post is to get your perspective on my situation and advice for what I can do, both professionally and emotionally, in my current situation. Feel free to Jim to the end for the specific questions I have. But here goes my rant for some background context - 

My background:

I work at an MBB but on a knowledge team, not on the consulting team. I joined recently and lateraled from industry, and I already have 2 years of experience post college (which is partially why I don’t have enough patience for bullshit computer desk work anymore.) I never intended to lateral to a consulting firm and would not have actively sought out a role on the consulting team when I was doing my job search/trying to get out of my last job. I stumbled upon my current role purely by chance, and the job description for my current role seemed to not involve the aspects of consulting that I didn’t like, and seemed to involve a lot of finance, which I thought I’d be interested, so I took the job.

What I do in my current role: 

I was under the impression that this would be a specialized finance-focused consulting, more like investment research type of role. However, now it has turned out that I’m just on the knowledge team, literally doing support tickets for consulting project teams. I’m literally just pulling EV EBITDA figures for them, retrieving data items or list of companies from CapIQ and Bloomberg. I’ve never done anything more customer-service-like. I don’t get to see any context around the case or any big picture. This is just like, if not worse than, my old job, where what I was doing was really just pulling data from SQL despite the glorified strategy analyst title. And this is not going to change as I get more tenure, because of the way that my team/function is structured to fit in the firm/support the consulting staff. I gain zero transferrable skills.

why I hate this job:

Logically, I know I can’t just quit/the brand name helps a lot for my future role(s) and potentially B-school/I could browse past casework to gain business knowledge/I could leverage the brand name to build my network, etc… Emotionally though, I HATE every minute that I have to do a stupid data pull, knowing that in the best scenario the data points would just end up on a PowerPoint page in the appendix of a 50-page deck that nobody will actually look at, because that’s precisely what happened when I was on the client side and my company engaged an MBB. Nobody gives a damn about their bullshit format, dense slides, obvious conclusions that took me 20min to figure out with a simple pivot table analysis but took them 50 slides to explain by using language that made things look really vague, deep, unfathomable and therefore  sophisticated. The more ridiculous thing is I now have to work in the back office as support staff to people who produce work that I disdain.
Every time I have to work on a freaking request I literally become livid, thinking about how I’m 3 years out of college and doing a support ticket for a consulting team member one year out of college, barely clearing 100k/paying half my paycheck to expensive city rent/saving literally nothing. I’m accumulating zero social, financial, or intellectual capital. And this is 3 years out of college. I know to a lot of you who are far more ahead in your career, 3 years is nothing, but my problem is that I look at my peers from college and high school who are way more ahead than me (even if just financially through high-earning jobs and savings) and I just get really pissed off that I’m still doing this shit work/not earning or saving anything when I’m closer to 30yo than to 20. 
My emotions tell me to find another job asap so I could quit, because all the menial work is killing me, despite all the seemingly logical talk about “a year is nothing”. I know a lot of you went through much harder stuff in IB, but I’m just not the type of person who could have stomached/would have chosen IB anyway. Say that I’m spoiled brat all you want, I just can’t deal with bullshit work or people the way that some people can. Don’t have the patience or character or personality for that. 

My plan for next steps:

I don’t plan to stay here more than one year, but lasting even just a few more months is killing me. logically, I know my next steps should be

1) try to lateral to the consulting team. They work 60-70 hours while I work 30 hours in a good week and 50hrs in a bad one, but burnout is not just from the volume of work but more from the nature of the work, at least for me. I’ve never had a 40hr or 50hr week yet, but it will come fast enough, and I can’t even imaging doing these stupid requests for 8 hrs straight every day. At least in consulting I’d learn something 30-50% of the hours I work whereas on the knowledge team it’s 0%. If I could work 10 hours a week (which is what I did in my last job, but still HATEd that job) I would use the spare time to learn stuff on my own that’s more relevant to my long-term career goals, but if this becomes a full 40hr job (and it will become that very fast) then it’s not worth it.
2) find out how much quitting at 6months (rather than doing 1 whole year) is going to impact my B-school application this or next year. 

3) network like hell to have new opportunities lined up so I can say bye whenever rather than having to stay when mindless work starts rolling in and things get REALLY unpleasant.

My questions for you:

1) what do you think of my next steps/to-dos?

2) Do you have any suggestions for dealing with the emotional aspect of it so I don’t waste energy being frustrated all the time? 

3) is there a material difference to quitting at the 6-month mark, 9-month mark, or the full-year mark (provided I find a satisfactory role by the 6-month mark or 9-month mark and have the luxury to quit)? A main reason for taking and staying in this job is the brand name that supposedly opens door down the road. What do you think is the impact on my future exit options (not just the immediate next one, but perhaps years ahead, just having MBB on my resume). On LinkedIn I’ve seen people quit within 4-8 months of starting a new job at some random or brand name company, but I’ve never seen anyone do that at an MBB

4) What is the impact on B-school application if I quit in less than one year, especially considering that I’ve already had 2 jobs before this and my last job lasting only 9 months. MBB really works magic for b-school applications, and my role could probably be twisted to be specialized consulting rather than request fulfiller. I don’t think the admissions officer would be able to tell exactly what I did, and I could always read up on casework and list those as examples if asked about cases I’ve worked on. But the recommendation letter - seriously, I don’t even know what my manager would write about, given that all I do is standard request fulfillment and there’s zero material for a strong recommendation letter. Or does it not matter as long as the MBB name is there?
Thanks for reading this long ass post and listening to me bitch about life.

 
I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

Make a plan and execute it. Continue in the current role for now, while maximising the learnings and network. Not every job, role, stepping stone is going to be you doing the sexiest work ever, I think you need to get some perspective in that regard. 3 yrs out of college is nothing - I think there's very very few people that are 3 yrs out and are getting high pay, "intellectual capital", WLB, and all the above you listed. Stop being emotional and be pragmatic. You have Mckinsey on your CV right now and valuable industry experience - you're already miles ahead of most 20 something year olds. Play to your advantages.

 

Et distinctio sed qui impedit voluptates qui magnam sunt. Earum exercitationem occaecati maxime quo. Qui aliquid vitae alias et voluptatem. Quae at saepe dolorem sint voluptatem. Ut et neque quia aperiam. Ullam quia fugiat omnis temporibus itaque quasi vero. Eius voluptas odit non rerum.

Illum facilis veritatis voluptatem voluptatem ipsum. Sapiente delectus nemo et quia dolorem omnis magnam. Eos facilis accusantium et error odio voluptatum.

Voluptates est mollitia ad. Tempora asperiores itaque voluptatem exercitationem fugiat quibusdam architecto occaecati. Fuga amet occaecati dolores velit. In et vitae sunt ipsam aut.

Perspiciatis sapiente accusamus aut dolores quos. Recusandae ratione est et tempora est. Sed possimus vero eum velit cumque mollitia cum. Quia alias tempora est veritatis modi est odio quia.

Career Advancement Opportunities

May 2024 Consulting

  • Bain & Company 99.4%
  • McKinsey and Co 98.9%
  • Boston Consulting Group (BCG) 98.3%
  • Oliver Wyman 97.7%
  • LEK Consulting 97.2%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

May 2024 Consulting

  • Bain & Company 99.4%
  • Cornerstone Research 98.9%
  • Boston Consulting Group (BCG) 98.3%
  • McKinsey and Co 97.7%
  • Oliver Wyman 97.2%

Professional Growth Opportunities

May 2024 Consulting

  • Bain & Company 99.4%
  • McKinsey and Co 98.9%
  • Boston Consulting Group (BCG) 98.3%
  • Oliver Wyman 97.7%
  • LEK Consulting 97.2%

Total Avg Compensation

May 2024 Consulting

  • Partner (4) $368
  • Principal (25) $277
  • Director/MD (55) $270
  • Vice President (47) $246
  • Engagement Manager (100) $226
  • Manager (152) $170
  • 2nd Year Associate (158) $140
  • Senior Consultant (331) $130
  • 3rd+ Year Associate (108) $130
  • Consultant (587) $119
  • 1st Year Associate (538) $119
  • NA (15) $119
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (146) $115
  • Engineer (6) $114
  • 2nd Year Analyst (344) $103
  • Associate Consultant (166) $98
  • 1st Year Analyst (1048) $87
  • Intern/Summer Associate (189) $84
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (552) $67
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
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
99.0
3
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
4
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
5
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
6
kanon's picture
kanon
98.9
7
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
8
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
9
Linda Abraham's picture
Linda Abraham
98.8
10
Jamoldo's picture
Jamoldo
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...”