Do finance positions pay so well because of how painful the job is?

I saw someone post something on a finance subreddit saying something along the lines of: “people don’t go into finance because they’re interested or they’re passionate about it, the entire industry is based around maximizing your earnings. Almost every other profession usually requires more passion than finance”.


Would you agree or disagree? To me it actually makes a lot of sense. Most other high paying jobs require extra schooling (like law or medicine) or usually have people that are more passionate about it (tech or engineering). Yeah some techies just care about the money but let’s be honest there’s far more people who have a genuine passion in coding than being an analyst.

 

Overly simplified view, finance is too broad a profession with a lot of different interesting roles (AM, VC, PE, Corp Dev, etc.)

That said, there are 'maximizing your earnings' roles like IB which give finance this kind of rep

 
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I think if you are going into an industry coverage group that focuses on a sector you’re interested in then it does involve more than just the comp. Obviously sometimes people don’t get their preference for groups, but if you get to work with industries you are genuinely interested in, and companies within those industries, then you can actually get a lot of enjoyment out of the job. Especially at the junior level, it’s pretty hard to find another job that has as much access to companies, and people in charge who innovate, as banking. That’s what I’m excited for at least.

 

Yeah I agree, I’m not going into more traditional finance like banking or pe, instead I’d rather do re dev. For me, money’s a big part of it, but also pushing positive change in communities by building good product. Bringing people, businesses and jobs into an area because of a development I did is an equally big part of why I want to do real estate development. 

 

The theory of compensating wage differentials (from econ) says that the more dangerous or difficult or undesirable for whatever reason, the more it'll pay. Take any high paying job, and there's a reason why it's undesirable. Banking and PE have a horrible WLB and are competitive to get into which is undesirable, so it pays well. Medicine and law have high barriers to entry because of the additional schooling required, so it pays well. It doesn't always translate over, though. Soldiers have dangerous jobs but are paid very little. Of course, the standard for undesirable jobs has changed over time; the most dangerous jobs used to be undesirable, now it's mostly the hardest to get into and the hardest to do to a certain extent.

 

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