2 months in and I want to quit
Just started my analyst journey at one of the stronger banks, but my lack of motivation for the job is really making me doubt my decision to go into IB now. I did the internship and was super motivated for that, but now I realise that my motivation back then was solely stemming from earning the return offer, and not because I actually enjoyed the work. Tried to rationalise into the following points below. Is anyone else feeling the same? And for senior analysts / associates, did you guys feel the same when starting out? How did you get over it? Was it just a matter of enduring it out and things will start to feel better?
1. The decoupling of effort and reward. In our previous lives as students, we dictate the effort we put in; I'm sure we all worked hard - turning up to lectures, doing assignments, revision. We also reap the full reward of our efforts - good grades. As analysts however, we also work hard - get thrown loads of dumb work (next point below) with expectations that are sometimes unreasonable, but what do we get out of it? Sure.. a few extra tens of thousands at the end of the bonus cycle, but the lions share of the monetary reward goes to the partners. You can argue that 'reward' can come in the form of learning as well. Sure, some good stuff to learn on this job, but we all know - we're not learning anything when it is the kind of work in the next point...
2. I am starting to realise how crappy, mindless, menial, unnecessary a lot of the work we do as analysts are. For one, 60% of the stuff we work on dont even make it to the print shops because of the endless comments / kill this kill that. And even the stuff that do get brought to the client, most clients dont even look through the whole deck!
3. The unnecessarily long hours and expectations to be on call all the time, even on weekends. I think this is due to the high fees, high salaries and hence attracting the 'IB' personalities - high achievers, perfectionists, will do anything to be the best, even if it means sacrificing health, relationships etc. Correct me if I'm wrong but the whole industry of IB could still function very well if it were done by less high achieving people - yeah decks may be shorter, formatting may be shitty, less level of detail in the models, valuations may be slightly off, but at the end of the day, deals will still close.
What do you guys think? Am I making sense here? I really struggle to see the value we add as bankers, and the reason to stay motivated for such as job.
You're 2 months in, nobody is going to let you run the merger analysis or build the operating model alongside the CFO until you show you can handle the basic "crappy, menial, and unnecessary work". You're in a role where as a 22 year old get to learn the inner workings of companies, be apart of growth strategies and strategic initiatives, and have high visibility to what C-Suite executives do while getting overpaid to do it. The hard technical knowledge and soft skills you can pick up after 2 years of banking can't be replicated in any other job and yeah, you do tons of bullshit tasks and have to be on-call most of the time (you will learn when things are important and when they are not and be able to push back accordingly as you progress, I rarely opened my laptop on a Saturday my whole 2nd year) If you stick with it for a year or two you'll turn into a machine and be able to go do whatever you want and have more coin in your account than anyone else you know. That was my rationale for sticking with it, I'm in PE now with significantly more control over my time and love it, not sure how I would be able to end up here w/o my banking stint.
Look, I'm not usually one to defend banking, especially as someone who got burnt out and left to do something else. However, I was 6 years into my career, coming off 2 of the most brutal work years of my life, and left to do something I was actually excited about. Guess what, I'd still rather be doing absolutely anything else but working. It's a job, it's a means to support my lifestyle, provide for a burgeoning family, and fund my hobbies. Perhaps I'm negative but I was never thinking I would be bouncing out of bed, skipping to the office, and smiling all day everyday.
I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying but it's not at all profound. Banking is draining, it's not particularly stimulating, and it's difficult to see the forest through the trees as a junior. It also, for better or worse, gives you a meaningful stamp of approval in the business world that is not afforded to most 22-24 year olds. You'll gain a certain cachet that can help you in your career, credibility, and open doors for other opportunities (btw, all these other opportunities also can be monotonous, demanding, and not very emotionally rewarding).
Maybe this reaction is out of line because I've recently been annoyed at my younger brother who has quit multiple opportunities because things are not as perfect as he imagined. I'd have a different reaction if you had identified other paths forward that may align better with your interests, but otherwise you're not really saying anything here. Banking is what it is, I have to imagine you knew what you were getting into.
I sound like a hardo and I hate it, but seriously how many posts do we need from people 60 days in spewing recycled critiques of a job they signed up for?
You gotta realize a job is a job and nothing more. My parents work standard jobs and it’s just a way to pay the bills. Here I am a year out of college making more than the 2 of them combined.
Sure, the work sucks but I worked a shitty retail job when I was younger and that sucked, at least I make way more aligning logos than folding clothes and and being a cashier.
It gets easier 6 months in when you are actually capable of doing work. The stuff I give my first year is either 1. so boring that I don’t feel like doing and doesn’t need to be super accurate (call notes, internal stuff, etc) 2. stuff I would typically outsource to India/value serve but you need practice / reps (converting pdf slides from other banks into PowerPoints. Typing up a schedule in excel from a pdf) 3. stuff that isn’t actually that urgent that is easy for me to re-do. If it takes me 10 minutes, I expect it takes someone 2-3 hours because I’ve done it 100times (scheduling an internal call etc), 4. anything random side project that a senior randomly comes up with that is accompanied with some variation of “great learning opportunity” or “would love to see what else exists out there” that will 100% be forgotten about.
Would recommend saving 3-5 pages you work on this week in a as a pdf in your email / on your desktop with a note on how long they took you. Look again in 2-3 months and you’ll be amazed on how far you’ve come. It’s hard to see your progress in the weeds but when you zoom out it’s incredible.
Once you get an intern it gets sooooo much better. Gotta spend 2 weeks training them to be adequate and then you can offload your shitty work to them. They say yes to everything because they are so desperate for return offers and they believe banking is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s harder once the new first years join tho because your decently trained intern has left and the 1st years find out real quick the job isn’t so great when the firm isn’t wining and dining them and HR disappears.
TLDR: every job sucks but at least this one pays well. You 100% need to find a hobby or some friends not in finance to make it suck less tho.
Ignore every other top comment here, no c-suite exec is gonna wanna suck you off because they see you on a zoom call. No PE firm/hedgie is gonna want to hire you because you're CC'ed in the emails. If you find the menial work boring and realize soon that even the more "intellectual" work is regurgitating numbers that management/third parties provide to you, start recruiting for the buy-side STAT. Or corp fin if u find out that the buy side is more of the same. Always be closing, always maintain max optionality and progress upwards by evaluating your options. Plebs stay in a job even when they realize it's not for them. Give it 6 months and then pivot ASAP if your opinions hold. You're more likely to maximize utility over your lifetime by seeing what's out there until you find the place that's right for you. WAGMI brother
Biggest thing that helped me through the dark days was bullpen culture. In this post-COVID world there's way less of it since Analysts/Associates can just bounce for dinner and WFH - not saying this is a bad thing and tbh it always should've been like that. But seriously there is something different about being in the bullpen at night with a bunch of peers, shitting on dumbass MDs and VPs, stepping out for a drink when it's an early night, etc. My issue is that when you go to WFH, you're still grinding until 2am but probably alone in a dingy NYC apartment without as many people to talk to. I'm not trying to be a DJ DSol hardo, but I think this plays a big part. WFH offers flexibility but also takes away one of the things that was masking how shitty the job actually is.
It's like being a pledge getting hazed virtually...