Post MBA Corp-Dev/Strat
After an M7 MBA, what level of corporate development or strategy would you enter into? What salary could you expect, and from that point, how high do most people advance? (Assume an impressive background, BB/EB, MBB consulting, PE, ect.)
Let's say you worked in IB for 2 years, then PE for two years, but failed/didn't want to get back into PE. Or something equivalent in consulting.
My guess is likely as a manager. Total comp would be in the neighborhood of 180k-240k. However, some companies might have a position between associate and manager such as a senior associate that they would slot you into.
That total comp range is too high, unless it's including signing bonus. Just do a sanity check against the following benchmark:
MBB consulting pay post-MBA is ~$185k ($165k base, bonus up to $41k but most get ~50% of max bonus)
Corporate salaries are generally substantially lower than consulting/IB salaries. A range of $180k-$240k would imply that corporates pay at the least as much as MBB does, which is just wrong. Check MBA employment reports - Corp Strat is often broken out as a separate function (Booth has median salary for that function at $127,500).
I want to reiterate my post supporting the anonymous comment about total comp $180-$240K.
I joined Corp Dev post-MBA (at Senior Manager) at the higher end of that range ($225K, although I work in Tech in Bay Area). I think any post-MBA Corp Dev role should pay at least $180K in total comp (likely $140K base + $40K bonus/stock), unless you're in a low COL area. If you're in SF or NY, you should be asking for at least $200K.
The Corp Dev folks here seem really willing to accept what I see as low comp, and I want to discourage it. If you're working on deals and your team allows the company to forgo bankers (who easily charge $1M+ per deal), then you should be bringing enough value to warrant at least $180K post-MBA.
EarlLoeb - You are working in Tech within the Mecca of Tech so your comp is most definitely going to be on the high end of the range. I know starting post-MBA salaries for Product/Finance roles at FAANG companies are now ~200k all-in so not surprising that yours is a bit higher than that.
If you were to look at a non-tech company but still in a high COL area, I bet their starting all-in comp for a post-MBA CD/CS Manager/SM would be quite a bit lower and prob within the $140k-160k range mentioned earlier
I think one important distinction that should be made in this thread is whether you join your post-MBA role in CD/CS through a formal on-campus recruiting process or not. Companies that have formal OCR where they take a 'class' of incoming graduates tend to have a standardized comp structure for all of those coming regardless of pre-MBA experience or job function (although those going into more technical roles could get a premium). I know this is the case at Amazon where everyone entering their post-MBA programs (Retail, Finance, Ops, Program Mgmt, non-technical Product) all receive the same compensation, but they do pay a premium for those in Tech Product roles.
I would imagine that if you are entering a company's CD/CS team through a standardized recruiting process as the one described above, you would get paid more of a 'normal' corporate compensation amount for a post-MBA role as there is little/no room for negotiation since they pay everyone the same. If you were entering the same team outside of the above process, you would have room to negotiate and would be able to get a comp figure of ~220k as EarlLoeb described if you can point to relevant pre-MBA experience (IB/MC)