Full Time Offer: IBM Consulting vs. Houston Boutique I-Banking

I have till the end of the week to decide between a two-year leadership development / consulting program at IBM (called Consulting by Degrees) and a boutique I-Bank in Houston.

My primary concern is getting a solid grounding in finance and business as I come from a non-target school with no business or finance classes. I am definitely leaning toward the Houston I-Bank, but I would love some input from others.

 
Best Response
White Lion:
This was an undergrad SA position. At the end of the summer they did make me a full time offer (though being 2012 only 50% of our class got FT offers). I think this had as much to do with the fact that they didn't know it was me who emailed HR as anything else. At the end of the summer some of the older people realized how much we were making, and there was some grumbling. They even reprimanded one SA for "milking hours" and told us that after 2am if we were finished work we should go home (out of context it's a hilarious thing to have to be told...).

As for the email I wrote to HR, it was actually a bit of a process. I originally brought the issue up on the first day of training because I had done some research about California compensation laws and saw that I should be entitled to overtime pay. I spoke to my recruiting contact (also part of the HR division in a BB) and she referred me to someone else. Nothing happened for about a week and when we got our first pay check we were disappointed to see we were getting NYC wages. At that point none of us really wanted to write another email to HR, but I guess I went out on a limb and took a risk. My email was a courteous as possible, with lots of things like "I'm not sure if you are aware..." and "perhaps XYZ's policies are different..." but in the end I provided a link to the intern laws for California and let them make the call themselves. I didn't want to push too hard. Ultimately a huge multinational BB bank does not want to open itself up to the liability of breaking the law by not being in compliance with something as stupid as intern pay laws. Can you imagine the headlines and pay-out from a lawsuit from a SA who didn't get a full time offer but worked 130+ hours a week and wasn't even paid correctly? They could probably even sue on grounds of sleep deprivation torture or hazing haha.

Again, the beauty of this is that HR in NYC is so far removed from the people making calls about whether or not you get a full time offer, that they probably never even talk. Plus, at the end of the day in California you are entitled to that money if you are working that much.

As for OT for FT people, unfortunately in California these over time laws only apply to people working for an hourly wage (aka interns). Working as a FT analyst you go from an annualized wage of 250K+ (50K for 9 weeks * 50 weeks roughly), to making 72K plus bonus (which is certainly no guarantee of anything any more).

what happened to your FT BB offer in Cali? Couldn't handle making 30k+ a summer?

 

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