I would like to get a discussion going regarding everyone's long term career plan. What's everyone's plan and whats everyone's goals? Could be money related to job related or personally.
Currently, in my head, I'm weighting whether to remain on the corporate track or bounce to another firm. Currently, I'm in real estate consulting in corporate, but I have my CPA and have a banking background so there are a lot of weight to go. Do I go to a smaller firm where I could make partner and carve out my own niche? Do I stay corporate and try to make a C-suite position? With this going on, is there a way I can also start some personal vertical of real estate investing?
Would like to hear other's thoughts or ideas.
GS IBD > MF PE > M7 MBA > Greatness
Good thread topic. Hopefully it gets more attention.
I'm in LMM PE and love-hate it. I was at a large firm prior and hated a lot about working for that large a team so joined a tiny team instead. The team is welcoming and a good cultural fit, I like our approach to investing, we're about to oversubscribe our next fund, there's a ton of room to move up... I just don't know if I care enough about deals and thus have the stamina to stay long enough. It sucks because this feels like a golden ticket but I want to go do something on my own. I don't know what my next moves are exactly but I'll either somehow find more interest in my current firm (or not) and stay long-term or pony up and go out on my own to do something else.
How big is your LMM? How do you all handle sourcing?
I think that's somewhat the hard part. We talk a lot on this forum about getting to the next thing, but what if the thing we have is the already good, already the golden ticket.
What do you think you would/could do if you left your currently job? What it still be something in PE or would you basically work until you have enough banked to go another route, say like teaching or something?
Yeah, and there's always this initial excitement with each new step or role that fades, right? I go from excited to rise to the challenge to wondering if I really want to be there. Part of it's normal (Office Space wouldn't be as good if not true) but it's tough when you wonder if there's a better fit out there, especially as you get older and more pigeonholed in your current skillset / market / firm size bracket. I've made some hasty moves running against the clock and it doesn't feel like I've gotten that much closer to my "calling."
I have 2-3 viable ideas of my own but failing to pursue any of those, I would likely look to buy a small business and operate it. PE is a relatively exciting job (key word being relatively) but it's also filled with the least fun aspects of working in business. I'm bored of constantly running analyses behind a monitor, reviewing tax and insurance diligence packets, talking to sales leaseback guys to see if our rent assumptions are accurate, keeping everyone up to speed on deals I'm leading (and knowing who to inform of what so that I don't seem unorganized / reactive or like I can't read a room and report only relevant info to the right people) and doing everything else while juggling shitty travel schedules and trying to be a good husband. I know plenty of jobs come with tasks that aren't the most fun but it's starting to feel like there are very few things I like about my day-to-day and how it'd look 2-3 rungs up the ladder.
I want to be involved in more creative efforts, like marketing and sales, but I don't want to necessarily have that be in the form of selling our next fund to investors. I also want to have more variety in my actual movement and settings too, if possible, instead of sitting / standing at the same desk for 90% of my time (e.g., running around a plant floor or bouncing around to sales calls).
I'm losing the plot here a little but to answer the question more directly, I don't think I could dissolve into a teaching role or anything similar. My current role despite my feelings above is good enough for now (most weeks are 40-50 hours and working hours are flexible) and I'll probably ride the rails until either the hours and culture somehow become nightmarish, an idea takes off or I get headhunted for an interesting non-PE role.
I definitely feel this. Currently am a sr. associate at a national dev shop, on track for director. Comp is good, lifestyle is mostly good (50 hour weeks max for the most part, WFH Fridays), coworkers are good, boss is a bit of a PITA but director promotion would mostly make that moot. Do I just stay the course for the next 20 years? I don't even know if I can, I doubt I'd get the MD role of the region's office since there are others ahead of me (and honestly, more qualified), so I'd have to jump ship to somewhere else to get a truly senior role. Do I stay in development long term? I love development and what I do but I often find myself exhausted by it, I have a dream of putting in 5-7 more years and then lateralling to a chiller position somewhere. Do I even stay in real estate long term? Should I just take my project management experience and try it in a new industry?
I have no idea.
Corporate Finance here. Director level at F200.
I was pretty semi-retired in my head because I had reached the point where I was both mentally and financially comfortable, with my brain on full autopilot. But with some of the recent opportunities that have continued to come my way, I now wonder whether I should make one big push to get on the CFO track before I settle into the back 9 of my career. On the one hand, it would be a nice feather in the cap, on the other I'm not certain I want to remain in perpetual grind mode.
I've never been overly ambitious - I prefer to sit in a corner, knock stuff out, and clock out. I also don't know how I'd take it if I were to expend all that effort and come up short when I could have been out just enjoying life.
I'll assess in another year and see what the landscape reveals.
That's something I think about too, mainly because its levels. For example, do I stay what I'm doing, probably live a good live with easy work, or I do push it a little more to get where I want to be. Or, do I try to push it extremely hard and get big returns for it. Basically, stay in an easy job, get a job that pays more or requires a little more effort, or get a job that requires a lot of effort with big rewards/potentially open my own firm?
Similar level to you. Really dont see reason to climb higher. Past director level your free time really gets eaten into, and responsibility grows. I live in low to medium COL area, dual income professional HH, so am fine financially.
Not to say dont want to challenge myself. But IMO this can be done in other ways than professionally (community engagement, physical feats like an iron man, etc.), or take a stab at starting a business
Dont envy my bosses life at all
I did an Ironman race a couple years ago and it was one of the greatest moments of my life. My time wasn't that great and wasn't close to my goal, but I finished - and at altitude in Boulder, CO. I was definitely in the greatest shape of my life and the training to get there (the journey) was an amazing experience. But, I like half-ironman races better and have some good times at that distance.
Good to see you around- I must not look at the threads you are in since I feel like it's been a while since I've seen you. That, and they removed the banner link to our CF board (ahem AndyLouis)
Anyway- Can you elaborate a bit on where you are currently (FP&A director? or finance opps? years of experience/age etc), what the new opportunities are that have come your way, and the path from director to VP to CFO?
I just interested in your thoughts because I'm on the verge of director- I've mostly just stumbled into it. Seems like future promotions and opportunities after that will be a function of timing and relationships..
I transitioned to Data Analytics and Business Intelligence, but I did get my start in FP&A and did that for the bulk of my career. I had managed some sizable P&Ls before going into BI. Lots of interesting opportunities have been coming my way the past year - mostly Senior Director and VP roles in FP&A, and even a CFO role for a startup. All came from executive headhunters. I've not been at my current gig long enough to seriously consider jumping ship, and I'm also content to have found a great manager. I once walked away from a TERRIFIC boss for a shiny new opportunity and it backfired tremendously. Swore I'd never do it again.
I withdrew from final rounds with a major multinational last month. I wanted to hear them out to gauge the market and they kept turning our discussions into interview situations. Next thing I know we're talking comp and relo. I'm still kicking myself for walking away and I hope that I didn't torch that relationship, but the timing didn't make sense considering that I'm barely tenured in my current role. I would have owned a Biz unit in a country I really wanted to live in (I also learned the language so it was a great fit). But I just got comfortable where I am.
Opportunities like that don't fall from trees and I don't assume I'll be targeted for any others, so I'm seriously contemplating my next move a year from now - do I go all in and make a final desperate push to see how far I can get? Is it even worth the aggravation? Losing an awesome boss? As it stands, my best part of the day- by far - is just clocking out.
I would say once you hit Director and start getting looks - the perks get crazy. Stock Options, Car allowances, Rent assistance; the works. So go for it if you're the least bit close.
Also Director-level at F200, having similar thoughts about the future. My company has a pretty great W/L balance but it actually tends to get worse as you go up. Director was a significant jump from previous roles, and it's mostly driven by the fact that your team is much larger so you're pulled into a lot more meetings and don't have as much time to do your own work. I work closely with some of our VPs and it just gets worse at that level. Granted, no one is working 70 hours a week but night-time emails, chats, calls from the airport/car are much more common.
I'd probably be happy chilling at Director, but the issue is we do have a bit of an up-or-out structure. It's not explicit but if you stall out at a given level for let's call it 200% of normal progression time (let's say Director to Senior Director is 3 years and you are still a Director at 6), you become a huge target in the next round of restructuring. I've seen 3 restructurings in 8 years and each time the people who go are overwhelmingly senior, expensive people without a growth runway at the company.
One of our portfolio companies is looking like a massive outcome for my cofounder and I. We bought back the majority of our cap table, and only ~2% of the co is externally owned now by some old friends which we will buy back in Q1.
I definitely want to keep working because I love it, and I always have more fun as a company scales because we can afford to hire better people that I enjoy working with. I think this particular port co has a lot of room to run yet too.
But, I am getting kind of bored of this company and consumer in general. Have been doing consumer in some form or another since I was 19 or 20...and I turn 30 this month.
I've always wanted to try making a videogame, so I am thinking of giving that a shot for ~2 years. Either that or leaning into the PE thing at larger scale and putting up ~$40m - $50m GP commit to raise our first traditional fund. I have run dev as a shitty CTO for our companies before, and overall do not like working with devs that much, so maybe the videogame thing isn't a great idea lol.
The pure investing side is less interesting to me as I've aged so not 100% on the PE end. Operating comes with a lot of bullshit, but I love the variety of things I get to work on and seeing initiatives come to fruition. I didn't appreciate this enough when I was young, but it really is fun being able to switch between the tech side of the business to product dev to physical manufacturing in the same week or day. If I was running a fund with decent scale, I would not be able to be tactical in the weeds as much...if at all. Dislike the idea of raising capital without preferential terms, so prefer to wait and do things with a larger commit to get those terms
So, yeah, not really sure. Current path is fine but thinking a lot about what will bring me the most enjoyment to work on over the next 20 years now that I can factor money out.
Honestly, I have no clue what my long term career plan is and that bothers me tremendously as I'm 33 and not 18.
I also have my CPA but I absolutely loathe anything to do with accounting. I work in my parents businesses (an accounting firm and real estate firm) and in both, the majority of our time is spent on tasks you can very easily hire someone to do but my parents refuse to. Much of our processes are outdated and my parents don't want to change. As such, I don't feel like I've cultivated any legitimate money-making skills that I can apply long term and I'm not sure which field to pivot to.
I also have no idea how inheritance is going to work but I have a very messed up family so I'm going to assume that even though a sizeable inheritance could be coming my way in the long term, I'm also expecting a substantial amount of hardship from other siblings so to just sit tight now and wait until I get a bunch of money and assets is not an option.
I need to leave my family behind and start my own thing but in all honesty, I don't know what I want to do which sucks as I have long term plans established for all other areas of my life.
what type of services do you do for the accounting and the real estate?
For accounting we do payroll, sales tax, income tax, license renewals, business entity formation, financial statements, etc.
The real estate is just for us, not others, but we manage the commercial and residential properties.
I definitely could and I have a few clients who only work with me and not my dad, I just hate accounting. I don't necessarily regard most of what I listed as "skills". It's literally just plugging in numbers into a software and then pressing enter. It's very mindless work with no creativity involved and we're have to suffer through dealing with the government often.
I have a few rental properties myself and thankfully I have some great tenants in them so it's not too bad managing those but the other properties are a hassle to manage since there are so many. I'd take property management over accounting but ultimately I'd like to build a portfolio of completely passive income streams
Make VP by 25, and MD by 30. Hopefully work in another country or on the US West Coast for a year. Dream is to build a house, plan to buy the land within 3-4 years.
whats the plan if you don't make MD or VP by those dates?
I’d be a disappointment, and papa would send me to work in the family office
Same plan minus the VP/MD part, yet to start school lol.
How are you going to go about financing your house?
I need to secure 1-2 promotions and meaningfully scale comp (2x).
I used to think like this in my 20s and it ended up backfiring in my professional and personal life.
Now in my 30s, I like to keep an open mind and see where that takes me. Similar to some other posters on here, I'm more of a behind the scenes type of guy, I do not think I really would want to be a C-suite level person. I do like the idea of strategy / internal consultant for a company / industry I'm passionate about. Would like to be paid to be "curious" post MBA and then reassess in 2-3 years after school.
what the hell does that mean
It means he wants to be like a cat and dress up in furry cat costumes and stuff for money. "Curious like a cat" is what they say in the industry.
I should hit director (at F500) this fall or next fall- trying to make it this fall, but we'll see. For these next few (2-3) years my goal is to get really proficient at my role. I'm definitely swinging above my weight and am not as high on the learning curve as I should be, so I'll be focusing on that- not anything else.
After that, it's branching out a bit for the next promo. To get to the VP level I will likely have to add another department under me, so I'll position for that. I think I can get there 5-6 years from now. From there I'll have to decide if I want to gun for CFO- I think I have fair odds of getting there eventually. If I go for it then I'd shape my experiences to be competent in treasury, FP&A, IR, CorpDev, Accounting/reporting (at a high level- I am not a CPA). I expect that to be a multi-year effort involving rotating to different roles.. which will be need-based and hard to plan.
At this point I want to get there- big step up in pay and prestige. Can build generational wealth and also live very comfortably (at the Director level and below it feels like either/or).
take over the practice - grow at inflation +5% in perpetuity - be able to retire early (may or may not do) - raise the next generation of my team - write a book (I know the world doesn't need another personal finance book, but what the hell) and be my own translator - give pro bono advice in my later years in impoverished communities here and all over the world
there's no way to know what you want to do now, so you have to set goals and try working on them to see what actually makes sense. also think in terms of optionality, unless you've got a large safety net don't get too narrowly focused. also talk to people in various stages in life and ask them not just how they got there but what their life is like, how much travel do they do, how much stress do they have, how vulnerable are they, etc., because you'll find life is just tradeoffs. there is not a single job without volatility or risk, has high income, great WLB, opportunity for advancement, autonomy, and complete flexibility, so you have to figure out what you're willing to give up and the only way to do that is to ask people who've been there before
TLDR - write out a narrative of your life in X years, then get specific with what it'd take to get there, and get to work
more on this here about how I set goals, it's worked so far: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/off-topic/personal-development-bo…
At MBB for now, hoping to land Gaming Co C-suite within the next couple of decades :) #dream
That would be awesome. I’m at a broadly TMT fund right now and whenever a gaming deal comes across I get excited. As a gamer it would be awesome to have a portco doing something cool in the industry. Ten or twenty years down the line it would be fun to end up in gaming / media corporate.
On track to purchase my forever home in cash, within 3 years
Afterwards, likely will quit the day job and do part time, or full time remote jobs that allow my brain to “shut off” at 5pm but still pay 70-80k salary if possible. You guys have any suggestions on this?
Have zero desire to continue climbing past mid-level, and honestly don’t really give a shit about this job or industry. Just here for the paycheck
My wife works like 5 - 6 hours a day for a large bank in underwriting making 6 fig. Tons of these corporate jobs floating around.
I'm really torn between multiple things and I'd love to do them all, but at the end of the day I have to sit down and actually decide.
Option 1: transition into infra PE and slave away cranking models in excruciating detail and wondering why I don't make as much as regular PE folks
Option 2: transition into infra at a pension fund/non-hardo role in the space and have more of a life outside of work
Option 3: become an urban planner and either join/start a consulting group in that space and eventually work at a higher level role for a city for a bit, or vice versa
Option 4: work at/found a credit union that does adaptive re-use/ADUs/new urbanist housing/commercial projects, or work at a developer in that space. Would love to volunteer on a credit union board
Option 5: say fuck it to finance and become a permanent deacon after getting married and also open a bakery/butchery/neighborhood market (don't steal my idea)
EDIT: lmao why would someone throw MS at this
Reason for MS:
”they hate us cause they ain’t us”
I’ve gone to law school and I am a CPA. I am currently in an… analyst/associate level corp dev role at a major utility. My plan is to join a non-LMM PE firm or VC in the next 18 months to 3 years (the timing largely depends on specific dynamics within my group). I want to be in Chicago and would take basically any non-LMM PE or VC there. But if not in Chicago, I would look at infra PE or more clean tech type VCs.
Longer term, I basically want to do a PE-style rollup of the political consulting industry (which requires a ton of… unique considerations because, well, laws would change real quick if I am too good at it and if people know)
Currently mid-20s, solid LMM/MM seat, have sourced a couple of smaller deals through to execution one of which is looking it it'll be a great outcome and have some big ones in the pipeline I'm hoping move down the funnel over the next couple of years. I'd like to have $500m-$1b equity deployed into deals I've sourced by the time I'm ~30 so I have a solid track record, then I have 3 potential routes over the subsequent 4-5 years into my mid/late-30s that I'd like to explore.
The latter two are much more appealing to me than moving into a more institutionalized PE or HF role where I have to dress up and come to an office every day, but at the same time I want some degree of stability so I can explore starting a family. I've been blessed to have success in personal trading so I've got a sizeable nest egg I'm working with and don't need to be worried about anything I do try failing and leaving me destitute. Still, it's always tough to figure out the proper trade offs.
Richest person I've met did #3 from an engineering background (unique financing structure when he brought the company, a lot of loans from family and friends. He honestly fleeced some of his investors with paying just interest rather than giving equity). First company he flipped, he sold in the late 90s I think. Purchased his current company after the dot-com boom and has done well for himself (owns ridiculous real estate properties specifically his main home which is worth $30+M).
Also networked with a search fund and one of their senior employees said their first searcher made $20M+ on exit (wasn't even 40 but was post MBA).
You are insane not to do #3 if you already have a deal together!
Put a CIM together and send it to a few of the firms providing institutional capital on tap for ETA guys. You have a PE background and will have no trouble getting the deal funded even if it's not "great". You don't even need to quit your job until the deal is closed.
The bigger the deal, the easier it will be to fund BTW.
Sort of random but I have a question, do you think operators (think general management roles at corporates) transition well to search funds? I don't want to pursue a search fund right away after school but I do want to revisit the idea in my mid 30s. Would appreciate any advice / anecdotes you're aware of.
I'm aware of someone who had an 8 figure exit as a searcher and he had a consulting / marketing background pre-MBA. Not sure if he was an anomaly. I come solely from an operational background but will be pursuing business development / strategy post MBA.
Wtf is this bot? Every comment turns into this word diahhrea.
Okay, glad someone has the same perspective as me, I couldn't tell whether that was a 50 IQ comment or a 200 IQ comment
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