Banking to Software Engineering? All advice appreciated.

Hey guys,

Posting on a throwaway here. Firstly, I don’t intend for this post to come of as overly negative or critical of investment banking—I’ve had my fair share of positive experiences and things I like about this industry which I’ve written about before; the below is simply a reflection of my recent personal experience.

With that said, though, I feel Iike I’ve recently reached a tipping point regarding my job—I’m currently a first year analyst at a BB (hit the desk in August 2019) on the west coast, and I majored in business at a top 20 school. Initially, I liked my job and the summer internship before it, but it’s recently gotten to the point where I’ve been pulling multiple long nights for weeks on end, and I feel like the work I’m doing isn’t intellectually stimulating anymore. A lot of my work still involves formatting, data entry, and PowerPoint work, and while I do get opportunities to work on deals/models, I feel as if I’ve lost the intellectual curiosity I had when I first started the job, and 80% of my job still involves this menial “grunt” work, which I dislike. Don’t get me wrong, I still know very little about my industry coverage group and I’m sure my technical understanding of M&A and LBO models could be improved, but I no longer have the passion to explore either interest further. Perhaps it’s the long hours, the unpredictable and urgent demands from my senior bankers, or the grunt work that I’ve had to go through, but I simply don’t like my job anymore. Every day I come into work (physically and virtually, given COVID-19), I have a sense of dread and despair.

I’m considering on what to do next, and some options I’ve considered include trying to recruit for PE, which to be frank, I don’t know will be much better than banking in terms of lifestyle/work, studying for the LSAT in the hopes of going to law school, which again seems equivalent to banking in terms of work/lifestyle, or software engineering. I realize that software engineering is probably the furthest thing from my expertise or experience that I could have selected, especially since I took zero math/cs courses during my time in college, but it’s the one idea that I thought about recently that has sparked some excitement in me and reignited my desire to learn. I did, however, take a AP Computer Science course in high school that taught Java, and I did enjoy that a lot. On top of that, the work/life balance of CS is something that really stands out to me and something I highly value.

I wanted to ask you all if you thought switching from banking to CS would first of all be feasible and secondly, if it would be a good idea. My fear is that leaving banking for software engineering is too rash of a decision (after all, I don’t know if I’d truly enjoy the work in software engineering either and all I have to base my expectation of SWE is one high school course I took) and that I’m not cut out for it—I consider myself a guy with above-average intelligence and a willingness to work hard, and by no means am I a genius or super math-savvy.

Secondly, I’m afraid that my current feelings regarding my banking job are simply fleeting, as in my current feelings are “just a phase”. I guess there’s really no way to know unless I stick it out, but I honestly don’t know how much more of this job I can take—I’m planning on trying to leave this job at the end of this summer, once my bonus hits, and if I can find something else that will enable me to pursue CS. I hope that’s either through a coding boot camp, maybe even a post-bacc in CS, or perhaps even a masters in finance (I’ve heard those are quite quantitative and focused on math/CS, especially a program like MIT MFin).

Does anyone have any advice, have made the transition from finance to CS, know people who did, or might know the best way of going into CS, whether that be through a boot camp/degree/self study? Any advice would be tremendously appreciated; I honestly feel so lost and conflicted on what to do right now.

Although I no longer might be the best person for this, I’m still happy to continue to offer advice on banking, including how to prepare, how to break in, and just reflect on my overall experience, etc., so for those looking to break in, feel free to shoot me a PM or post a question below.

Thanks so much guys!