Am I Crazy To Leave a 500K Job for Consulting?
Question is in the title. Currently at a hedge fund but concerned about sustainability of career, and a bit tired of studying one market continuously. Always was interested in consulting and being engaged in multiple industries and developing a versatile skillset. Have an offer from MBB for a post-MBA level role. This has seems like as good a ticket out as any but still concerned about a few things.
Currently, I work about 50 hours a week with a young family and a great office culture. I am worried, frankly, about the 70+ hours and office politics that I have read about. Would anyone start this type of role with a young family especially with a big pay cut? Also, I am a more independent minded person who gets demoralized with busywork or things that have to be done but aren't useful. I don't know if this will mesh necessarily with being on call for a client and fulfilling project requests. Lastly, I am on the techier side of finance and am interested in exits in tech. Any views on how often big tech companies engage consultants and what value they see in them for roles afterwards 3 or 5 years in?
Yeah don’t do this
I don't know you personally, but I can confidently say you've never had a worse idea.
Well, OP could have thought about leaving for IB
I would stay put. Use the extra free time to indulge in a hobby and chill with your family. You’re literally living the dream exit op that Consultants fight to have. Just live and enjoy life outside of work.
Exactly. His colleague Associates and Engagement Managers would shiv a stranger and risk getting jailed to have his job.
$500k @ 50hrs > $200k @ 60-70hrs. Honestly $500k @ 50 hrs > almost anything in the world
Agreed with DarkKnight. If you're unhappy with your life, try focusing on relationships / hobbies / other sources of meaning
Only do this if you’re absolutely certain you want to get out of finance. And even then, it’s an 18-month pivot until you hit the eject button.
Otherwise, you’re doing this the wrong way around. People do MBB to get a shot at other things, incl what you do now.
You’re going to hate MBB. I didn’t hate it, but it’s just a means to an end.
The latter.
For me, in addition to the obvious “preftigiou resume reset (finance —> general “business”), the main I value I got from actually working at MBB was:
But the projects were lame, there was a lot of yelling and politics, and I spent most of my time making slides.
I even got good at slides. But we almost never had anything original to say. Often, you’re just helping knowledgeable but intellectually incoherent clients make sense of their own thoughts. Much more often, you’re just regurgitating the situation in a pretty chart that your client’s management uses as background to figure out what they want to do.
Anyhow, “making nice slides”…. That’s something you’ll hate yourself for. I’m much happier in my post-consulting life.
If you do end up liking consulting, there's a lot of upside. It won't take long to hit 500k again at MBB and of your comp will reach 7 figures at the partner level.
However, for most people, the idea of consulting ends up being much more enjoyable and much better than the reality. Is there the chance that you have the right attitude and interests to make partner, enjoy it, and have the decision pay off? Possibly, but it's not like that for 99% of people.
I was at Big 4 and now at a cushy corp strategy job, but the fears you have are a definite reality. One of the worst parts of the long hours (similar to IB in the absurdity), is that the longer hours are often spent doing low value activities for overly anxious over achievers. Changing the format of a whole slide deck past 5PM feels incredibly stupid when you realize your client won't notice or won't care.
Tech does hire a lot of MBB (and ex-consultants in general), but strategy is fairly low on the totem pole. A tech consultant at Big-4/Accenture who pivots into product management at Big Tech will honestly have a much better time than someone from MBB who pivots into strategy at Big Tech. It's fairly easy to break in as an MBB, relative to other positions, but strategy roles are second fiddle to the real money makers at tech firms (product/engineering and sales).
Are you actually interested in many industries/problems that consulting offers or are you more concerned about the constant grind (and risk) of a HF (and if a mix of both which ones matters more)? I’ll start off by saying that your post doesn’t sound like a person that wants to go into MBB (all the things you say you don’t like and are worried about)
If I were you, I would see if I could leverage your existing role into a long only fund, asset manager, or large pension fund. The reason I say this, is that it is usually much easier to incrementally move than to completely reset your career. If you are trying to move more into tech, but you are already a “tech like” finance person, can you do a move into a tech/tech strategy role at a large AM? That way you bring your expertise of the markets, can help them setup strategies, but you are also starting to move into a more strategic/management role yourself (or even fin tech, so at least you aren’t throwing away what you have learned). Basically you take your existing experience and expertise and couple that with the new thing you are aiming for (and try to get 50% or so of the new role to be that), those moves are usually much easier to make and will usually be closer to your current comp level. I’ve had a few friends/colleagues make the jump to AM/PF and those firms have many opportunities to be a “strategic leader” since they are so large and don’t just need to manage money, but people, infrastructure, private and public investments, etc.
As for consulting, it sounds interesting to have many projects and industries. You feel like you are going to learn a lot (and you do), but there is much less independence, a lot more “layers” of management, and what I disliked the most is you never really complete anything. You research, advise, and move on. If your client decides to implement anything that’s up to them, and if what you suggested fails in 6m it isn’t on you, you were just the advice, it isn’t “your project” to continue to build on, pivot in a new direction, or completely destroy and start over. You are long gone before any of that happens. I didn’t enjoy that part of the job.
Talk about the grass is greener syndrome. If you do make the jump, please detail what a dumpster fire you walked into.