Anyone else fed up with the banking/finance industy?

I've been working in finance for almost 2 years now (graduated in 2014). I think overall, I am just fed up with having to trade my time for money. When I served for 4 years I felt the same way pretty much as I do now. Not enough freedom, essentially being a corporate slave. I just want to be free and am working on ways I can be free to pursue things I love and not have to trade my time for money. I'm pretty convinced I will be out of the corporate world within the next 2-3 years as soon as I have a nest egg. Love trading and the stock market and have for a long time and as soon as I have a big enough egg, I will trade independently. =)

All that being said, I am extremely grateful for the job I have now and am being paid a lot more than the average college grad. I just know I can't be doing this for longer than 2-3 more years and ideally, the sooner I have my egg the better.

Admittedly I'm now a student again, but more the MBA type and I've got a bit more time and life experience under my belt than most as a former combat officer.

These things do suck in a lot of ways but I would be heavily cautious of the "actually have a career" argument. I've seen people come in here romanticizing the military when it's simply not the way people think it is.

In the military, you rotate regularly. This means that you WILL go back and forth between "front office" jobs where you're leading troops and "back office" type jobs where you're managing processes or specific support functions.

Here's what I did in one job where I was the second in command of operations for a battalion (consists of four companies so about 500 people): I'd get up at about 4:30-5:00 AM to get in the office at 6:00. MOST people were here for training, I was typically in morning briefings or getting ready for work that officially started at 9:30. I'd then spend the morning reading pushing out everything from those meetings, reading new information published by higher headquarters last night, updating unit calendars, and pushing out what information I could. Then I would spend the day frantically trying to write orders, which closely followed a specific format, and even things like a single line indented wrong out of these documents would get my ass reamed by an extremely risk adverse supervisor. I was responsible for making sure EVERY mundane task assigned to my unit by higher headquarters was completed. The catch was these tasks had to be completed by units led by 9 officers who all outranked me and were busy trying to take care of more pressing matters to make sure their own asses didn't get reamed by command.

The best part? I'd usually get done around 2-3PM (with a lunch break maybe one day a week).....and then since my supervisor was both an extreme micro manager and in meetings I'd end up twiddling my thumbs until around 6PM, at which point I'd get revisions about 6:30 and have to push them all out during the evenings.

If I was lucky I'd get 6-7 hours of sleep with 5 days a week worked. Doesn't sound so bad right? Not until you take into account that this was the approximately HALF of the time that we were in our offices and not out training in the middle of nowhere with a busier pace, no running water, no cell service, shitty food, and no beds or hygiene services.

All of that would have been great if it was for a purpose(it wasn't, we were propping up corrupt local officials in Iraq and Afghanistan). Hell, all of that WAS great when I was lucky enough to be working with great teams. When neither of those is the case it starts to suck ass very much and very rapidly......and you're doing it for a fraction of what an investment banker makes, in shitty run down towns in the middle of nowhere.

OP, I'll tackle your example list because I think the way you listed them shows that you didn't get into this for the right reasons.

1. Who gives a fuck what people think about your job? The girls you're trying to impress at the bar? Seriously, going into a job for the ability to "wow" someone is so misguided it’s insane.
2. I'd disagree that pay is not improving based on my and my peers experiences over the past few years.
3. Fair point.
4. If your firm is laying off analysts, you should think about jumping ship anyways. Analysts are cheap labor, they should almost never be getting canned.
5. Is this really a bad thing? Do we really need the smartest people aligning PowerPoint shapes for 80 hours a week? Banking isn’t rocket science. Also, almost all first year analysts and interns are dumb as rocks when they start. It's just a matter of how quickly they can get up to speed and figure out how things work.
6. Buyside has always been a narrow path - people on here will have you believe that 75% of the BB analyst class is moving over to PE each year which just isn't true. In addition, there's nothing wrong with not making it to partner. You still have a great skill-set that can enable you to make mid-six figures and up in the corporate world.
7. Sounds like a culture issue.
8. No shit, did you think that working 80 hours a week wasn't going to age you? Also, I think you're romanticizing the free time that other people have. Most people I know who work 40-50 hours a week follow a work, gym, eat, watch TV, sleep schedule most work days. They don’t have a ton of money to travel, and have trouble saving money to build up a nest egg.
9. What perks or benefits did you think you were going to get? Outside of a few tech unicorns perks and benefits are largely so the company doesn’t have to pay you as much, which is the complete opposite of the investment banking business model.
10. Since when? What bank was known as a key innovator? It certainly hasn’t been that way in years.

Put simply, being an analyst was painful. You work long hours, the work eventually becomes quite repetitive, and you dont really have much freedom with your time. That being said, its definitely not that bad.

Are you continuously working 100 hours a week?

You are just inefficient. Either you are too slow, or you let yourself get shit on by your associate/senior. You have to learn to manage up. Learn to accept what work is critical in a deal and what you can push back on. You have leverage if you are a good analyst, learn to use it. Aim for a 10am-1am M-F with weekend work spread over 2 days.

Are you fat?

Learn to eat and prioritize the gym over the netflix show you watch when you get home at 2. If you go to sleep by 2, you can go to the gym from 8-9. Stop eating things that bring you think brings you joy in the day because you will stay fat if you order burgers from seamless every day.

Do you have a terrible social life?

Definitely your fault. Bars close at 4am in NY. You might not be able to have a healthy long term relationship, but you can still go out with friends and have a good time.

Feeling like work is suffocating?

Use your vacation days and dont be the pushover who just accepts all the work that comes your way when you are away. Learn to push back, shit still needs to get done and it will fall on your associate (or another analyst)

Always remember, good analysts are hard to find. If you deliver good work, your seniors will appreciate it and give you more freedom. Just dont be a pushover, or they will take advantage of you (and rightfully so)

Independent of what has already been stated above, here are some thoughts from me. For reference, I am finishing up my second year as an analyst. I do M&A at one of the top EBs and work in one of the roughest groups at my firm. I do not say this as a badge of honor but rather out of frustration -- I've had notably worse hours than most of my fellow analysts within my firm as well as friends from college working at other banks. I am heading to a PE job this summer after my two years.

There are a lot things I have grown to appreciate at my firm -- most of them have been things I have realized in the past few months as my end date has become more and more of a reality. I've boiled down my two biggest positives from my experience to two ideas, culture and learning, which each have a flipside of also being the two things I will miss the least. I'll add one more preface -- this is my reflection from my experience at a bank. You may not agree, you may think I am conceded or cocky, but I have been through plenty to make me feel the way I do. I am not here for a @#%^ measuring contest to tell you how rough I have had it (a la "bro how many times have you had to clock 140+ hours?! Have you ever stayed at work for 5 days straight?!). These are simply some thoughts from someone who has given 110% for almost two years now and is glad to be parting ways with his current firm. I don't blame you for skipping over this -- it's long and includes a lot of things you've probably heard before (both good and bad). But they are my experiences and for the most part things I have never shared.

Positives--

• Workplace culture. While culture varies at banks and even at groups within each bank, I have had the benefit of being in a group that is a close community. For instance, in my group senior bankers are relatively understanding of near-term/last-minute personal obligations (e.g., getting out to do things last minute rather than putting some wedding you need to go to on your staffer's calendar three months in advance). As a young employee, I suppose I don't have enough experience in the rest of the corporate world to say this in confidence, but my gut tells me that the close and often times "unprofessional" (I mean that in both good ways and bad) culture at a bank is very different with "regular" offices. I could see myself missing a lot of the positive qualities of that culture down the road depending where my career goes. The camaraderie among the analysts in my group during my first year is one of the few things that made my first year on the job bearable, and I doubt I could have had a similar experience outside of banking.

• Learning (first six months). "Drinking from a fire hose" or "thrown right into the fire" take whatever banker lingo you see fit -- my ramp up as an analyst was very rapid and I found myself having the same responsibilities (live projects, etc.) as the second year analysts in my group within weeks of being on the job (I think this tends to happen more at EBs where groups are much leaner on a junior level). In hindsight, the amount I learned in the first six months is something I am very proud of. The key part of this though is "first six months" -- which will come up later in my "negatives" section. As a tangential point, with learning early on also comes the skill of time management -- something else that I learned a great amount of while an analyst. When I think about what I have had to juggle in the past (or still do) at any given time it makes me a bit more judgmental of friends outside of IB as they complain about what is keeping them "busy" at work.

Negatives--

-Workplace culture. When I first started recruiting for PE during the traditional period of my first year, I had a few lengthy discussions with a close senior banker at my firm regarding what that career choice may mean for me long-term. I remember at one point he told me, in so many words, "I don't blame you for what you are doing. I will say, if you stay here you will get used and things won't get any easier." Early on it became evident to me I was getting staffed on more challenging and higher quantity of work than most of my peers. Bottom line -- I got rocked hard and regularly faced horrible sprints for some last-minute fire drills because our group's senior team knew I was reliable and could get the complicated work done quickly and accurately. Weekend plans regularly blew up on me, I lost my girlfried over my job (after trying my absolute hardest to make time for her whenever I had it; although its not like I wanted to be going to Lavo with work people on weekends :P), and I had to cancel vacation plans three times during the summer of my first year. What really irked me was I was not planning and re-planning these trips while in the middle of live projects.
When our new first years came along, things didn't lighten up at all -- and it seemed like there was no real improvement in my work-life balance. Part of this is my fault for not pushing back more -- I wasn't out chasing nightmare projects but I also wasn't speaking up when I thought I already had more than equitable amount of staffings. Was it fair for me to get stuck with much more work, spending just as many weekends in the office as my early months while our first years were never around? Probably not. Could I have done more to combat this? I'm sure I could have at least tried. Our first years' performance is very disappointing from my perspective, and their lack of dedication just makes me more confident I made the right choice a year ago deciding to look for another opportunity in PE while the window is open. I don't mean to belittle any current associates, but the last thing a good analyst wants to do is become an associate who has to deal with terrible work product from an analyst who doesn't show the same dedication to his/her job after spending 5x too long to do it. And when I read about all this jazz about the same talent not coming into analyst jobs anymore, I feel better about not staying around as an associate.

-Learning. I went into IB for three reasons: learning, comp, and future opportunities. I was not a kid who has been lurking on WSO since freshman year of college, planning out a "BB -> Mega fund -> MBA..." career before getting a SA internship, but I placed a lot of value in the fact that two solid years as an analyst could make me a viable candidate for a lot of different jobs -- which is pretty cool when you don't have an entire career mapped out in college. I was also attracted to the field by the learning curve. I have always considered myself the intellectually curious type, and thought some of the complexities of analyses conducted at an M&A advisory group at an EB would be perfect for me. This held true for awhile as I learned new things on the job. After about six to eight months though, I started realizing how similar everything I did was. I wasn't inputting numbers into model templates, but I found myself building the same types of analyses over and over again, no matter how "company specific" we thought it was. I also got jaded, thinking all the mega-deal fire drills I got staffed on had a lower likelihood of happening than me winning the lotto. Most importantly, I reached a point awhile ago where I stopped looking forward to coming into work. It wasn't from the frustration of being overworked, but rather no longer feeling excited about the possibility of learning something truly new. And while there is always something to learn at my level from listening to senior guys in meetings (tactics, etc.), it wasn't enough "new" stuff to keep me happy. The past year or so has felt like a routine of processing the same types of requests over and over again that aren't intellectually challenging. I think some people find comfort it getting good at something and sticking with it, and that's okay. But at least at my level, and for the foreseeable future if I stayed at a bank (i.e., three more years as an associate), I simply don't find the work gratifying or rewarding enough for me to stay.

You'd have to be living under a rock to not admit that there has been structural change to the industry. What is yet to catch up is the cultural change. This may take a while, and in the meantime the employees caught in that transition will be getting a raw deal (as the decline in hours worked will be slower than the decline in pay).

Another thing that is important to remember is how royally screwed the global economy is, and has been. Like not to be a massive bear, but we will see a secular decline (marked by bubbles sure) because; - The next generation of us have less wealth individually, and less potential for wealth given the state of debt (we can never leverage up proportionately), of regulation (floating of FX, rise of monetary policy etc) and overall lack of technological innovation (we have no equivalent of computers or interent - instead we are happy to prioritise making gimmicks, be it apps or random 'fintech' crap, proportional to true scientific and technological breakthroughs).

I mean the older days of excess are gone, not because of banks needing to make more money, tighter regulations etc, but because they ultimately used up all the 'excess' via giving the debt to generations further down the temporal road.

I was one of the people walking out of lehman holding everything I had in boxes in 2008. Left nyc & the industry altogether after that. Now I'm an hr consultant ~120k. I do my own vc on the side for another 100k. I work 35 hours/week from home. The grass is greener on this side. I actually know my kids now. Blood pressure back to college levels. Not constantly constipated. Liver enzymes almost back to normal. Fresher air, less noise, less taxes in Texas.