Why this talk of "exit options" amazes me.
It strikes me as bizarre when I hear IB analysts talking about the "exit options" that justify their otherwise miserable career choices. First of all, the fact that the banking career has to advertise itself by promising advancement into other careers indicates that it must truly suck everywhere. Second, I don't see why this claim of "exit options!!!!!111 LoLZomFg" would be true at all. Why in the hell would anyone hire an ex-analyst?
Analyst programs are extremely unselective, and the people in them don't learn shit. They do all the grunt work no one wants to do, because they have no power to delegate and are seen as essentially disposable. The attitude of the bank toward the analyst is: "This dumb fucker thinks he's going to get rich; let's see how much humiliating garbage work we can pile on him before he figures out he's a loser." Why, I ask with no irony, would anyone hire an ex-analyst? If anything, analyst experience is a negative, because of its inevitable tendency to lead premature burnout, pervasive and probably uncorrectable negative attitudes about work, and the high probability of job-related permanent stress disorders.
People go into analyst programs expecting to be picked as "protégé" by some sort of a corporate finance or trading legend. This is pretty much the only way to get a pass on the dehumanizing work, shitty probabilities of advancement, and miserable hours-- you only need to please one person, and he'll ensure your career success. But "protégé", my friends, is extremely fucking rare. Very rarely does an investment banking legend wake up and decide that, out of the goodness of his heart, he's going to take a fresh young talent under his wing. You need him, but he definitely does not need you. Most often, he picks someone other than you. Since investment banking is a horrible waste of time for those not lucky enough to become protégé, well... it ends up being a massive loss for most people.
It seems the reason for the supposedly great exit options coming out of IB is roughly as follows: upon exit from an analyst program, each one claims to have been a star-- he tore up the fast track, received top bonus each year, and managed to get put on interesting (yeah, right) assignments-- when applying for jobs at private equity firms and hedge funds. Banks are often called to verify the details, but rarely contradict their alumni, knowing that it reflects well on them to have an image of having loads of interesting work and being extremely generous with bonuses. It never ceases to amuse me that 90-95% of analyst program alumni claim, in applying for future jobs, to have been in the top 5% of their analyst classes... and that they invariantly get away with it.
To me, all that an analyst stint says is: "I have loads of empty ambition, and wasted my youth doing humiliating grunt work because I thought it would make me rich." Why is that attractive at all, much less enough to command "great exit options"?
You sound like a f*cking
You sound like a f*cking idiot man. You're in college and you're jumping on these forums trying to talk down to people that are probably 10 times smarter than you. Point is hedge funds and PE firms actively recruit IB analysts, the system has worked so far, I'd like to see a young punk like yourself get a job at Carlyle after having worked at J&J's Corp Fin division.
I met with an associate and
I met with an associate and a vp from a private equity firm the other day and they both told me to suck it up and do a banking analyst program when I graduate. They said it's is so highly looked upon by almost everyone that the exit opps make it worth it, despite it sucking.
Maybe the reality is that it's bullshit, but it isn't perceived as bullshit by others. Therefore, until that perception changes, I'm still going to pursue it, then hopefully move to PE.
The people 10 times smarter
The people 10 times smarter than me are either starting their own companies, or they are going into PhD programs and hedge funds, not analyst programs, which they refuse even to consider. The same is true of those who are 20 percent smarter... or 20 percent dumber, for that matter.
I'm not saying that PE and HF don't recruit analysts, because I'm sure they do. I'm saying that there is no reason to, since analyst experience is an obvious negative in the mind of anyone who knows anything about analyst programs. The only people who think differently are people who know absolutely nothing about banking.
Hm.
Well, this is what i hear and it's all speculation on my part.
1) "Analyst programs are extremely unselective, and the people in them don't learn shit"
I would wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. It's actually very tough to get a job in IBD, especially if you want to get to a good bank. Even in the 'lesser' banks, the competition is stiff. Take for example Deutsche Bank last year. At my school, 160 kids resume dropped. They narrowed the field down to 40 or so kids for first round interviews. Then they took about 10-15 for finals. That's less than 10% of kids who made it to final rounds.
The average training program at any BB spends about $15,000 on each of their analysts. This is for about 4 or 5 weeks of just training, and doesn't include costs to recruit. I'm thinking that not all banks are retarded and just spending money on 'stupid analysts' and unqualified candidates.
The two year analyst stint is a learning experience. You learn by doing, you learn from your mistakes, and your ability is judged on how quickly you can grasp the concepts, 'add value' to a group, etc. They're not there to mold you, but you they're there to see what you can do if given limited guidance.
2) I've always been told that we should think of IBD as the Navy Seals. Sure, the work sucks, you get beaten to a pulp, and you are mentally tried over and over again, but if you survive, you're a 'navy seal'. Anyone in any other industry who sees that would be impressed by your sheer ability to withstand a grueling 2 years. Not many people cut it, and the ones who do often end up their top pick of these so called exit opportunities.
Many people who enter these IB jobs look to these exit opportunities as a possibility. Yes, IBD makes a lot of $, but PE's make more. Ultimately if your goal is to make $, having a job in IBD sets you up for bigger and better things, assuming you get through the analyst stint and you're not completely incompetent.
I think Investment Banking is a good foundation to do whatever you want to pursue later on. Having a name brand bank on your resume doesn't hurt either, and plenty of people go from the IB/Finance analyst stint to working at movie studios, fashion houses, fortune 500 companies, etc.
You may have a point but I'm
You may have a point but I'm too busy laughing at the "navy seal" comment above to post a rebuttal.
You seem bitter, and you're
You seem bitter, and you're exagerating the negatives and under-selling the positives. The firms that provide these exit opportunities to IBD analysts are not dumb.
haha
it's what i've been told. what can i say? lol. This advice was from an old MD at GS, and now the CIO of a securities firm.
"It's actually very tough to
"It's actually very tough to get a job in IBD, especially if you want to get to a good bank."
This depends entirely on where one went to school. For example, an 75th-percentile Ohio State grad is most likely going to be smarter and more competent than a 25th-percentile Ivy grad, but the mediocre Ivy kid is a walk-on for IBD and the strong OSU student has almost no chance. From a non-target school, IBD is hard to get, but from the target schools it's taken for granted... and it's not hard to get into the target schools if you're determined at a young age, and if you know how to game admissions.
"The two year analyst stint is a learning experience. You learn by doing, you learn from your mistakes, and your ability is judged on how quickly you can grasp the concepts, 'add value' to a group, etc. They're not there to mold you, but you they're there to see what you can do if given limited guidance."
Ok, but the things one learns "by doing" are the grunt work that most "business" types abhor. I don't think most CEOs need Excel hot-key combinations in order to do their jobs. You're right on your second point, though, which is that IB analyst programs provide almost no real mentoring and professional development.
"I've always been told that we should think of IBD as the Navy Seals. Sure, the work sucks, you get beaten to a pulp, and you are mentally tried over and over again, but if you survive, you're a 'navy seal'. Anyone in any other industry who sees that would be impressed by your sheer ability to withstand a grueling 2 years."
I've heard this comparison before, but comparing IBD to Navy Seal or Ranger training is ridiculous. Five days of grueling physical activity, in complete isolation, with no food other than what one can forage, is actually hard. By contrast, IBD isn't that difficult, in the sense that anyone who finishes high school can do the work and suck up the hours and conditions, which are no worse than were commonplace for working people and slaves in the 19th century. Analyst work is easy; it's just humiliating, and the people who stick with it are those who really want to get rich and see no other options. I don't know why anyone would be impressed by that.
"You seem bitter, and you're
"You seem bitter, and you're exagerating the negatives and under-selling the positives."
Positives? The only positive of the analyst program is that it pays extremely well for something that is available out of college. Beyond that, there are no positives.
"The firms that provide these exit opportunities to IBD analysts are not dumb."
Actually, they are. I'm a big fan of the behaviorist approach to assessing intelligence. One who shows dumb (by which, I mean severely and obviously suboptimal) behavior is considered dumb.
These firms would do better to hire from the large pool of under- and unemployed PhDs in the sciences and humanities. While their training is irrelevant to finance, they possess sufficient intelligence that they could acquire all the knowledge that is learned in an analyst program within two or three weeks.
I guess
your last point is correct in that "those who stick with it are only those who really want to get rich and see no other options". If you want to get rich quick, and make lots of money by the time you're 28 or 29, this is probably the best route to go. But of course, if you hate your life that much, I'm not sure making a lot of money will compensate.
I suppose your professional demeanor and ability come from your ability to be resourceful and learn on your own. With that, may come leadership, and other 'soft core' skills that inevitably mold a CEO or whatever. This is just a guess.
Are you in investment banking?
Re: haha
it's what i've been told. what can i say? lol. This advice was from an old MD at GS, and now the CIO of a securities firm.
Not trying to give you a hard time but I have a hard time picturing some of my colleagues as Navy Seals.
Lol
I know it's ridiculous. I can't picture many of my colleagues as them either. Some of them, I can definitely picture..especially the ridiculously intense, crazy ones. I guess just as a very general, loose sketch/analogy. it is what it is.
I'm not sure that many
I'm not sure that many analysts are going to "make lots of money by the time you're 28 and 29". Most of them end up becoming credit posers who waste their income on bottle service and overpriced Manhattan apartments, which they finance with (yay!) subprime mortgates. Moreover, promotion to associate is far from guaranteed.
What analyst programs sell is the ability to make, straight out of college, a salary that will impress the parents. What happens after that (usually severe burnout; NYC is full of I-bankers who become garbage collectors) is left unsaid.
"I suppose your professional demeanor and ability come from your ability to be resourceful and learn on your own. With that, may come leadership, and other 'soft core' skills that inevitably mold a CEO or whatever. This is just a guess.
Are you in investment banking?"
I'm not in IBD; I was warned away from it, and I'm very thankful for that. A lot of my friends are investment banking. The stories they tell are shocking. I'm not disgusted by the fact that these banks aren't actively mentoring their analysts, so much as by the way they stand in the way of their analysts' professional development by assigning so much shitty, pointless grunt work. Learning on one's own is certainly an important skill, but it's nigh impossible if one is doing stupid work for 80 hours a week.
Dude, you're an idiot. You
Dude, you're an idiot. You denigrate the work that IB analysts do because it's not "grunt work", but where do you think CEOs of companies started out? They certainly didn't graduate from college and enter the "CEO Development Program". Unless they started their own company, they worked themselves up by starting out at the bottom. That's not to say that all CEOs are ex-banking analysts, but it's ridiculous to criticize 1st year college graduates who know nothing about the industry for doing the lowest work available. You learn best by doing, and even though it sucks, any analyst who models for 80 hours a week is going to know his way around a balance sheet pretty well after a few months.
Haha, anyone else find the
Haha, anyone else find the ex i-bankers working as garbage collectors image funny?
Also you realize no matter what you do, no matter which industry, you will always have shitty, pointless grunt work? In consulting, they recruit hard by telling students all the glamorous, globe-trotting adventures they'll have, whispering advice to F500 CEOs, when the reality is most of the time you are doing the bullshit work...
The rest of your email/points are ridiculous btw.. thought you were a troll at first but you are too ridiculous even for that.
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Flaminary, your conclusions
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the op makes a good point
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Revisit this post in a couple of years
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There's only one thing he
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lmao i just love the
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