Underpaid (Severely)
Hi, currently working as an equity analyst at a fund that is around $4-6bn Aum so fairly decent scale.
Just feeling a bit shit lately as I've been doing okay, but suddenly ive been told I wont get payrise. My pay is absolute shit and below industry standards I'm talking $35k PA. I thought as my first job, id accept it and it would scale pretty fast, but a year on nothing has gotten better.
I spoke to my boss who told me that I'll need to make alot of improvements ( which I have, I mean... where do they expect me to be with only a year experience? , I've passed my CFA L1, hoping to take L2 soon, and I've been working my ass off for the past year).
I've been left with two options, suck it up and continue to work my ass off, and apply for other positions which I've not been having luck on.
Or just leave the industry and go work for the less hours for way more pay. I like doing my job but holy fuck the way i feel like I'm being shafted is seriously stressing me out. I'm just so tired.
Stop focusing on “being shafted”, isn’t going to help and is only going to exhaust you. Not saying you can’t be upset, especially if what they “promised” (or at least hinted at) has been pretty different from reality.
A few questions: are you in the US? In a major market? How many hours do you work? What type of work do you do? Do you have any sense of what the pay is across the firm (is it a low paying company? Or do they underpay juniors? Etc).
Then my advice would be to do what you are passionate about. If you really enjoy this type of work, you probably won’t be happy at a totally different job that pays more. Maybe at the beginning you will (have more money, spend more, etc), but that’ll quickly go away.
Have you been networking? (I would definitely do this). How have you been applying to jobs? Which jobs? Then maybe I can give some better advice.
Thanks for the response man.
Im based on the UK, I'd say its a pretty major market. My role is an Investment Analyst so researching buyside securities, pitching investment recomendations, writing stock notes, portfolio monitoring, meeting companies etc. I'd say i really enjoy the job, although I've struggled to have direction which I think where my issues arise from.
Nobody has really told me what my job is, just figured out doing all the above over the last year. Its taken me a year and only very recently to figure out how to really do things. So I'm really just getting started.
I feel its unfair as I've had friends have much more structured training and get told how to work things out and when. I haven't been told any of it, and only figured out where my issues are after my performence review.
Ive been applying to simmilar roles to as above.
So a few things:
1) I don’t know pay in UK very well, so unsure how much upside there is in an AM role there (or how underpaid you are). Definitely underpaid relative to US
2) Good firms and good managers will be developmental and “build you up” rather than let you figure it out on your own. I know some people in finance like to say “back in my day I figured it all out myself”, that’s great, but it’s a bad mentality and not a place where you want to work. That being said, I wouldn’t use the word “unfair”, you chose this place. This is a lesson for you and others looking for jobs, you NEED to be interviewing the firm and asking questions about development, etc to get a sense of what is being offered.
3) Related to the above, you need to make the most out of this opportunity. Ok, your manager and your firm don’t have a plan for you, but DO NOT sit around waiting for your performance review to figure out if you are doing well. You said your manager said there are many things to work on, ok great. Ask your manager what they are, how you work on them, who may be able to help you, etc. Take the initiative to force the development and to give them a chance, maybe they don’t know they aren’t being developmental, see if you can push them in that direction. You can either live with the situation or try and change it
4) Network, network, network. You said you have friends with structured programs, etc. Applying to these jobs is step 1 but don’t do the lazy thing, build the connections and make a path for yourself.
Is your fund part of a larger organization (an insurance company for example)? If so, bear in mind that your peers in graduate programs in similar institutions in London are taking home £35k on average.
I didn't know AM in the UK paid this low tbh.
I keep seeing my American counterparts even in T2-3 cities posting about taking home $60-100k as graduates.
You can’t compare UK and US salaries for any job. They’re completely different. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing.
As Blue9 said, you can't compare US salaries with UK ones for many reasons, the first one being healthcare. For example, in UK employers must pay the so called "National Insurance" for each employee, which is used to contribute to the National Healthcare System. In the US there is nothing similar because, as I'm sure you already know, the healthcare sector is almost entirely private.
To add another benchmark, the biggest assets managers in London (think about Fidelity or Blackrock) pay their first year front office analysts around £55k all in, which is substantially less than what an A1 in a bulge bracket takes.
It doesn't, I have a friend at a BB doing AM who made c.GBP 60k in his first year. There are some shitty firms that pay like 24k tho
Pay sucks, which is why so many people in UK have fucked up teeth
I understand what you are going through because I am experiencing the same (London as well). I work in finance (think PE/IB) and my salary is less than what I see advertised for Amazon warehouse workers. The only difference is the hours. I can't log off at 5pm like guys at Amazon... Currently pulling 85h per week on average.
My advices are:
- network every day. Add people on LinkedIn, ask your friends in bigger banks for help. Do whatever it takes to just move on from your firm.
- your current job becomes a second priority. I am not suggesting to suck at your job but it seems you really gave your best in the recent months. Well, start giving your best on the job hunt. Apply every day.
- Behave well. These people may have treated you badly in the past, I am not here to judge, but finance is a very small world. You don't want to leave a bad taste.
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