Dark thoughts

Been in this spot before albeit in the more junior level. You are most definitely not alone in feeling this way. 

The way I got out of it was leaving the firm. Tried therapy, drugs, and unnecessary relationships to help put a band-aid over the feeling. None worked out until I finally left the actual firm. So take that how you may. Hope things get better and keep going.

What exactly is the cause of your misery? Abusive seniors? Do you enjoy the work at all, even if say the volume was manageable? 

Yup agreed with advice above, just get a few nuts 🥜 

Stuff like this reminds me that we're all going to die soon 

Look into Private Credit

Heard hours are better and comp is solid

Thanks for the shout out above. To the original poster: What level are you??

There are two important things to remember:

1 - Things get better with seniority. One of the hardest things to cope with in this industry is being low on the totem pole, and that includes being a VP reporting to demanding senior colleagues. This becomes even more acute when you start to gain a lot of confidence and develop strong conviction for your ideas or your way of doing something only to have it rejected by someone more senior. Fortunately with seniority comes autonomy and, for many people, the soul crushing part of this job is actually the unpredictability and lack of control — be it in their schedule or the deal decision making. The work itself is far more interesting than almost any other office job and the pay is obviously top notch.

2 - It is the people / individuals that make or break the job. Given it isn’t necessarily the work itself that is awful, sometimes the best solution is simply changing firms and culture. I’ve seen some people go from extreme underperformers at one PE firm to a top performer at another with literally the same exact strategy — the difference was simply the culture and what the firm valued. If you find your current job intolerable, the answer isn’t necessarily just leave the industry. Sometimes it is just to lateral to another shop and heavily diligence the firm beforehand to ensure they place value on your key strengths and care less about the areas you’re weak or uninterested in.

One such example: Some PE firms live and die by the financial model. They can be extremely fixated on it and force the junior deal team members to analyze every last line item to the nth degree. Other firms use the model as a ‘guidepost’ and just want it to sanity check their assumptions wherein their conviction stems instead from backing a strong management team.

The solution to your woes could be very simple and you should explore if this is the true root of your problem.

Seeing in the news this week Toby Keith dead at 65 has been a little jarring for me. I want to do way more before I turn 40 or 50 just in case my time comes before ‘retirement’ age…

I think the obvious advice is to coast while interviewing for a shop with better culture.

I highly encourage you to also do whatever it takes to have two fully unplugged days in a row. If you need to take vacation on a weekend to make it happen, then do that. But take those days and turn your phone off / leave it at home and get out in nature. Can be Central Park just go and see multiple trees somewhere you can’t see any buildings (eg north woods). Think about what you aspired to do as a kid, teen, young adult. Recognize what you’ve accomplished and think about who you still want to become. What troubled you years ago that now seems inconsequential? Who do you care about? Call them and tell them about a memory of you two together. Any one of those could be helpful while you search for a better situation.

Rooting for you man. I have strongly considered ending it all multiple times while struggling to fix a complex medical issue. Anything can be changed for the better.

Felt like you did and just straight up quit. I have zero obligations and in this market, the financial opportunity cost to being unemployed may not be as bad (career will ofc take a hit, but do you even want to stay in finance?)

It’s not the work; the work’s really not tough at all even on the hairiest of deals, it’s always the people. It’s not my first rodeo with a bad firm and I’ve realised by now that people are their own worst enemies. Take comfort that unless you’re in a MF or smth, when the hiring market does picks up and becomes hot, smaller, less established firms are going to live and die by their reputation.

I joined (and left) a fairly small but fast growing firm for promises of faster growth / development and it was complete BS. Enough colleagues are also leaving that half of the execution team are probably going to be gone in the next few months. They’re probably not more than 5 years old but I already see allegations of toxic culture and shit progression on WSO. No way to hide a shitty, favourites-only culture.

Take a break for a little bit, rent a cabin in the woods for a week, no technology. Read a book. Go fishing. Write. Think. Breathe. I have learned over time that the secret to life is detatchment. Detatchment from trivial things, from trivial people, and trivial thoughts. You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but know that you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Do the deed, without expecting ANYTHING in return and do it as if your life depends on it BUT AGAIN do not expect anything in return. Be a horse with blinders on. Be steadfast. Have faith that you're on a path greater than what you want, a path you will be on regardless of your actions. We work in finance, right. We understand probabilities. Now, think about the probability of you being where you are right now. Everything that happened in past, the probability of each of those mutually exclusive events turning out the way they did for you to be where you are. Very very skim. You change one of those events - where you went to school, what you said in an interview, where you submitted your application for an internship, you spelling the name of the MD wrong in an intro email, etc - and you may not be where you are OR how I like to think of it - you are exactly where you are and would be there regardless of any outcome. All roads would have led you to where you are now. Some things are much much greater than us. Happiness comes from within man. Feel sorry for people (ie your bosses) who wake up with obscene amounts of hate in them. I pity them. Keep moving. Action in inaction, and inaction in action. Hope this helps. Be there for yourself.

Every firm should hire enough juniors so that everyone's fairly busy but not completely overworked. That way you don't just feel like every hour of your day is dedicated to constant work, or even if it is, that you can log out at a reasonable time like 9-10pm every evening

play some dark souls then

which firm is this?