Career Bankers: Is Lifestyle and Culture More Important to You Than Prestige/Money?
Kind of just curious how people that are in banking for the long-haul feel about this. Obviously we're all competitive here and many of us are just using IB as a stepping stone to begin with and thus want to be as effective in that as possible. But, I'm curious, for those that really want to do banking for the long haul, is there a preference towards lifestyle and group culture over just targeting the most prestigious bank? I feel like I see a good amount of Senior Associates/VPs/Directors at mid-tier banks that used to work at BBs and EBs. I'm curious if this is just because it's hard to get to that level at the most competitive banks or is there a conscious choice many career bankers make towards working somewhere with a sustainable lifestyle at the expense of cash and prestige?
Imagine this.
You already made a tidy sum of money during your 5 years (or so) in Banking/PE. You have a nice house, cars, and pretty much set for the rest of your life materially. Now 2 things might've happen :
1. You feel empty and unfulfilled
You started to feel like you miss a lot more in life than just money nor superficial things. You sacrificed your relationships and health (mentally and physically) that you can't fix by just throwing money at it. You realize that money does gives you freedom and to some extent, time. But definitely not enough time since your job consumes about 90% of your waking hours. You wanted to explore more in life and you simply cannot do that if you are staying at the highest level of competition since it requires absolute commitment of yours to do it properly. So you decide that you can afford making less so you can have the ability to do more in life.
This is the reason most of people i know to "drop-down" to a lesser organization/firm since most of the time the level of competition decreases and therefore the time commitment it takes for a person to keep up with their peers.
...or you could feel the opposite and wanted the challenge yourself even more. Which brings us to..
2. You crave the sense of challenge
You started to get bored and unsatisfied with your current position either because the learning curve has plateaued and/or the chances of moving up is too slim/far for your own goals. You dropped down to a lesser firm but you command a premium price for those firm to hire you. So you are given the position of Director/MD and also the opportunity to build your own team. These new challenges interests you and you might even be paid better in the long run if you did well enough.
That's basically what i have to say about your inquiry, taken from many that has come before me and had the same experiences as you described above.
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