AN1 at a middle market bank. Seeing all these new interns come in all excited makes me kinda sad. THIS IS NOT WORTH IT. Don't get me wrong this isn't one of those I am not social and perform poorly at work rants. I've consistently performed well and have a PE exit lined up im doing alr. I don't say it to brag I say it to explain i have tens of friends outside of IB who make triple what I make hourly doing things like sales, startups, wealth management even accounting they make more hourly. This career genuinely erases 2 years off your life. You work at least 10 hours a weekend and miss weekend trips, weddings, etc. If you work in a different city than your hometown like me it's almost impossible to see your parents / hometown friends. The time you guys are planning on putting into recruiting can be put into mastering so many other skills that will reward you with a much better career AND life post grad. Hard to say I regret entering IB because it's taught me so much internally, but I definitely can say it is not worth a name on your resume and a girl to try to impress at a bar.
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I’m sure it felt good to type this and post it….
With that being said, this is terrible advice. You are like 22 years old and viewing life through a straw right now because you missed out on banging some 5 at a hometown wedding last weekend. Things in this industry generally improve with experience. If you don’t want to stick it out, just quit, nobody cares either way.
This is wrong. Of course any banker that has bought into the career is going to say it’s worth it, but that is objectively just cope and we are all lying to ourselves. I have been doing this for 7 years and OP is right. This job does provide you with above average comp, but at the cost of pretty much everything else in your life. Also, it does not really get that much better. VPs still work crazy hours and have to cancel plans. So directors. MDs maybe not, but it comes with an entirely different set of problems. If you want to be a money grubbing little troll with no life, that is fine, but you will literally have NO LIFE outside of work. The pay really isn’t THAT good either, and is only getting worse on a relative basis. Banking / PE is not what it was even 10 years ago. I truly wish I did something else.
How is it wrong? Staying in banking is a choice…if you don’t like it / regret it, leave. You won’t though because you probably like sitting around for half the day waiting for OP to send you some work product, reviewing it, and then getting paid just enough in February to refuel you for another year of mediocrity. I don’t see a single avenue to long term success without 1) being bought in 2) actually somewhat liking what you do / having desire to learn and get better everyday. If you aren’t an idiot with money, you should have 7 figure net worth with your experience, literally go do something else.
Agreed. Bad advice.
Did 2 awful years at sweaty BB, 2 years at PE fund. Now work at FO doing 500-600k at 40-50 hours a week no weekends living in LCOL hometown.
I have friends who didn’t hustle and got to do the things you’re wishing for who are now 30 and broke, won’t be living the lifestyle they grew up living.
2-4 years is not a bad trade for the rest of your life.
What's FO?
Survivorship bias.
are you still in PE?
I earned my undergrad degree from a top school and my MBA from a target school (HBS) so life has been on autopilot lately
Who is making more at a startup straight out of college? I would have assumed hourly it's about the same or worse
Unless you mean CS or something
Both hourly and total it's far worse. You only "make" more if you're a founding member AND you end up a unicorn.
tech can get pretty crazy, i am between switching to tech sales and banking, this one startup is close to offering me and the pay is $200k. I only have one year of experience. I assume from research I could probably make $400-500k after 9-10 years.
Agreed, I’m an AN2. This industry really doesn’t get better with time. Have worked with VP’s / Directors who are still pulling 1-2AM nights
You definitely can be successful long term but don’t expect to be having much fun in your 20s. Also, a lot of kids end up in the resume building rat race. IB, PE, MBA, back to PE. And realistically are you going to make partner at a fund? Likely no.
Again, I’ll stress that you can be successful long term but there are much better careers that don’t require you to give up your entire life
If your VP's and Directors are really working until 1-2am that is something wrong with your bank. Maybe associates are pulling late nights here and there, but it generally should not be the case for VPs+
An old VP I worked for told me his best working hours were 1-3 AM, as "he finally had time to be his most productive"
Friend of mine just made VP at a MM bank, not even in one of their sweatiest groups. No change in hours. He cancels plans with me on Saturday nights due to not being able to step away.
You can say that its a firm issue but when it is common at enough banks it starts to become an industry-wide problem. I realize I only listed a few anecdotal examples, but surely others can chime in.
.
Oh no, the job that works people to death is working me to death
Lmao think you might have missed the point. Yes I’m getting worked to death and yes I expected that as an analyst
I do think there’s a misconception that IBD gets better with time. And that’s not necessarily true. I have seen associates and VPs at banks working more than analysts. And my MD still sends comments at midnight lol
You have an expectations issue which probably comes from your general naivety. If you expect to make millions of dollars per year, you will likely not achieve that working a normal 9-5. Investment banking is a grueling career that is not for the faint of heart. The deal business in general is not for the faint of heart. A good MD who makes $3-5M on average (this can scale quite quickly I’m just using averages) takes literally zero risk. That is unbelievable money relative to the lack of required risk. Do you think the founder of a business (who maybe doesn’t work until midnight) but has real equity risk, doesn’t spend an outsized portion of time working, thinking, breathing their business? A PE partner gets paid for sourcing good deals and generating returns (i.e, risk taking). These aren’t 9-5, go home and forget about what you did that day jobs. I would argue a good banker (being a good banker is really really hard) understands this dynamic, and aims to exploit it to no end…. That’s not to say there aren’t 1000s of absolutely useless Wall Street people who make work their identity and are shit at their chosen path…the trick is to just avoid working for these types of people.
People who expect free lunch when there’s no free lunch 😱😱😱
You're mischaracterizing their argument. Try again
I’d take your spot in a heartbeat.
And you are the exact type of person who should be very careful thinking about doing this job. The banks love people like you who are young, dumb, and ignorant. The ones who fall the hardest because they truly do not know what’s coming
no offense boomer, but the grind of IB is what I find attractive. so speak for yourself. He’s complaining about something some of us really love. I’m still trying to find analyst roles
They see cool finance lifestyle content by some girl or some corporate banking guy pretending to work in IB and think thats what they want to do. Thats how all the random majors get there too. Its hard to convince someone finance is your passion while studying international relations or history. Thats the people you will see posting in 3 years how miserable everything is... weill, except for the women... they will be chilling in topbucket with work from home at 8pm.
"This career genuinely erases 2 years off your life"
Okay boomer.
"...i have tens of friends outside of IB who make triple what I make hourly doing things like sales, startups, wealth management even accounting they make more hourly."
Remind me, how much in salary-per-hour do I have to pay to buy a ticket to the Knicks game?
Under your logic, most people should become construction workers, work 80 hours a week, and make slightly more than a college educated office worker doing 40 hours a week. Don’t act as if there isn’t an opportunity cost for the extra hours.
“PE exit lined up”
bro your solution to escaping a burning building is by jumping into another burning building
Yeah I take your point, and I left banking for some of the things you called out. I think there is alot of entitlement at the JR levels (which seemed to be exacerbated by COVID) around work expectations and compensation expectations… this seems to also echo through the mid levels. My point is more if you want to get “rich” (I don’t think anyone is doing these jobs out of some moral obligation or intellectual pursuit) you have to work for it, and YMMV on what you deem “worth it”…
Regarding entrepreneurship, it’s the purest form of capitalism… if everyone could pursue it / have their capital compounding up and to the right they would, but that isn’t feasible for the vast majority. And for those that do pursue it, I’d argue the vast majority would be better off from a wealth creation standpoint not pursuing it… but wealth isn’t everything and there is something to be said for pursuing that path.
Well said.
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