Career Mistake - Left IB too Soon
Hi guys -
Been a regular on this forum for years, and I'm hoping to get some advice regarding a recent job switch.
I recently moved to a corporate development associate role after about ~9 months in banking - previously I spent about 2 years at a boutique asset manager. I enjoyed the markets aspect of my first job and really loved the people, but it was a very small firm and I felt like I could benefit from the training and deal experience of a banking program.
Unfortunately, shortly after starting my banking role (well known boutique), I began struggling pretty badly with depression and anxiety, which led to me start applying to any corp dev, strat, and investing role I could find - basically anything that I thought would have better WLB where I could stay involved with deals. I've always had mental health issues, and I think the unpredictable hours and personalities in my group made things way worse. I had stretches where I couldn't sleep from anxiety, and started experiencing panic attacks for no reason. My long term girlfriend was basically threatening to leave given how miserable and difficult I was at the time, and I hit a low point where I felt that my only option was that I needed to exit asap.
Knowing that I wanted to exit, I started aggressively searching for the last 3 months of my tenure, and I ended up with an offer at a ~$5-10b EV company in the media space which offered good comp and the prospect of better wlb (~$160-170k all in). The team seemed like a nice group of people, and I thought it could be a good short term move that would let me get my head in a good space before looking for other opportunities in finance. I wasn't super excited about the space or the branding of the company, but I felt that I had no choice otherwise I could potentially hard quit without an offer (forfeiting my bonus and any leverage for negotiating with other employers).
I started the new gig about a month ago, and I'm feeling like this may have been a poor career move. On one hand, I'm super happy to be working more reasonable hours with a flexible schedule, but I'm really concerned about the lack of structure and training. The role is almost 100% remote, and I will be getting little to no training. I think I interview well so I came off as having more experience / training than I did, and I'm really worried that this type of role is too unstructured at this point in my career. This company is also not very acquisitive, so I have no idea if I'll even get deal exposure while I'm here.
You may have read through this and think that I have no clue what I'm doing, and frankly I would agree. I think I've dug a pretty big hole for myself by taking a gtfo banking job, and it's now creating even more stress and unhappiness than I had when I was in banking. I was just trying to make the right move so that I could focus on therapy and getting my head straight, but now I feel like I've torpedoed my finance career by taking this role.
I've been trying to think through next steps, and don't really know what the best course of action is. Do I try to ask for my old job back? Keep recruiting for other positions that are a better fit? Try to stick it out for a year and try to lateral to a brand name corp dev program where I can get better training and deal exposure?
I didn't want to be in banking long term, and frankly my group had some serious culture issues so I'd only go back to my old employer for a year max before trying to lateral out again. I have no idea if that's even feasible given the current hiring environment, and I feel like I'd probably just be unhappy going back there for different reasons. Really have no clue what to do, so hoping that some of you guys can provide some helpful input.
Any suggestions or advice would be massively appreciated. Thank you guys for the help.
No job is worth sacrificing your personal health and well being over so you made great decision by leaving and you are in a really good spot tbh. I wouldn't go back to your old firm but it doesn't hurt to recruit again for different banks. Maybe try for a more chill group like DCM or ECM.Also there are plenty of ways to make money outside of finance so don't limit your search to that. Go on Blind and look up how much non technical jobs at FAANG are paying compared to how little they work.
A month is a really short time and most roles have at least a 6 month adjustment period. Given yourself 12 months to commit to this role, reevaluate at that point and you will likely learn a lot even if you decide it's not for you. You also have had a lot of short tenures and I think leaving quickly would create a lot of questions.
I think you're overthinking how important this single role is - your career is long, even if this ends up being unsuccessful it's a tiny blip in the context of a decades-long career; you have plenty of time and options. You have good branding from your prior jobs, that will carry you even if you don't end up getting a perfect experience. Give yourself some grace, continue focusing on therapy/mental health and see where you are in a year. It's ok to take some time in a job where you just put in the hours but aren't obsessed with the work - if anything it's kind of healthy to help learn boundaries after banking.
First off, kudos to you for taking your mental health seriously. Getting out of banking sounds like it was the best thing for your emotional and mental well being.
Putting it in perspective a little bit a chill CD role making $150k / year... could be worse places to be.
I left IB after my analyst stint after similar anxiety / depression that you described above.
Long story short I went: IB -> terrible CD role -> better CD role -> PE firm
I thought the first CD role I took ruined my career - zero structure, very little deal flow and making significantly less than you. I stayed in this role for ~2 years before being recruited away for an awesome CD opportunity. While the time in that first CD role was terrible, I made the best of it and tried to learn as much as possible so that when a recruiter came calling I was ready.
As the above poster said, careers are decades long. You haven't torpedoed your career by any means. I have found that if you are ambitious and work hard the right doors will open up.
Are you the one who posted that other thread about burning out and looking to exit a few months back? Listen man, I don't know you, but I think everyone here can validate the fact that you made a great decision to prioritize your mental health and wellbeing by getting out of an abusive, toxic banking environment, that you are clearly not cut out for. It looks like you landed a terrific opportunity to keep developing a relevant M&A/strategy skillset at a more sustainable pace. However, it also sounds like you might be suffering from deeper-seated manic-emotional issues that might be worth investigating in therapy.
The unfortunate reality is that most jobs in this industry are not going to spoonfeed you of all the inputs required to generate shareholder value from day one, or even month one, or maybe even month six. If you want that type of environment, go work on an assembly line at chipotle or go back to preparing pitchbooks until 3:85am every night.
I assume you are a reasonably intelligent person capable of thoughtful, diligent, analytical work. You have the ability to learn fundamental quantitative and qualitative skills to the level of basic competence required by your role. These skills will also develop naturally over time as you progress and gain more experience on the desk. Nobody expects this to happen overnight, and nobody in corp dev is expecting you to be spinning your wheels all night figuring out deliverables on tight deadlines. Take a long, deep breath. All of these skills can be learned remotely, either via structured and organized conversations with your team and coworkers (or even bankers and consultants in the sector looking to build coverage relationships), or using this great little tool called the internet. This will require you to take the initiative, ask questions, write things down, and do independent research. And yes, it might require you to spend a few extra hours every week brushing up after work. Thankfully, you have plenty of time for that now.
None of this is rocket science, but if you can't handle it, you can always go back to banking where you'll have six layers of micro-managers holding your hand and neatly prescribing all of your tasks for you.
Your life isn't over. Your career in finance isn't over. If you aren't at the most acquisitive shop doing groundbreaking, billion-dollar deals every quarter, spend a year or two learning what you can and establishing some credibility before you run off to try and become head of M&A at Blackstone.
Have some perspective, prove you can handle interesting and meaningful work, and try and spend as much time as possible gleaning M&A (and strategy) insights from senior leadership, bankers and consultants at a chill corporate pace. This will make you a truly valuable M&A professional wherever you ultimately end up. Give it a year or two, and then move on if its not for you.
You are the only one responsible for building your brand and career. You can complain all you want about how hard things are to us, your family, your friends, and your girlfriend. We're all happy to listen and offer advice, but at the end of the day you're the one that needs to get up in the morning and do your job, and figure out how to do it well, or people are going to stop handing you lucrative opportunities like this. You just landed a well-paid, cushy, M&A role at a solid company, and I'm not sure how much more sympathy you can expect at this point.
Finally, get off WSO. Workout 3-4 days/week, go to therapy every week, surround yourself with friends and family every weekend, and I promise you will stop obsessing over every little possible career speedbump. Also, limit consumption of drugs and alcohol and read a few good books this year that aren't finance-related.
You are going to be okay.
Thanks big dawg come here and give me a hug
This doesnt sit well with me. I dont mean to intrude but if she does this shit at your lowest, she could be an unaddressed cause of feeling how you do. Even if your partner were to want the best for you and was urging you to quit for your health, “basically threatening to leave” just isnt the way to go about it if you have someones best interest. I think you might have not had the time due to work to be honest with yourself about how you feel treated. I would reflect on that and move from there.
eh idk about this. I tend to be pretty cynical about your average female's behavior these days after personally experiencing much more shitty behavior than good from women in mine and my friend's lives. However I don't really take fault with this girl in OP's life. You really expect a girl to happily stick around if you're just miserable and moping around all day for months on end? She didn't sign up to be his therapist. Not many women I know of are seeking out guys who are 'miserable and difficult.' It's fine to vent here and there to a girlfriend, but if you start using her as a quasi therapist don't be surprised when she disappears. Sounds to me like she communicated how his behavior was negatively affecting her and it seems she has still stuck around despite his moping around. To OP- if you are still feeling this miserable / anxious etc., I would advise to maybe talk with a therapist or just trying to focus on the positives and being pleasant when with your gf, otherwise don't be surprised when she leaves. Her leaving doesn't seem like it is something that will help your mental space right now to state the obvious.
You need to have a candid conversation with your manager about a more hands on training process. It's the simplest and most direct solution. Wanting to retreat back to IB even though you don't want to be there is just you avoiding a potentially awkward conversation. Go advocate for yourself and let people know how you are feeling.
I agree with everybody above saying you should spend a year or two taking maximum advantage of this job opportunity. That means learn as much as you can and also focus as much as you can on addressing some of these underlying issues that are causing your depression and anxiety.
Going back into IB or re recruiting again is a bad idea. It’s a reactive move, not a proactive move. Sometimes we all need to decouple our mental health a little from major life and career decisions. In other words; job hopping every 1-2 years won’t fix the real underlying issues here, it might just make them worse because you’re removing stability from your life and depriving yourself of any chance to actually get good at role, to build professional relationships, to gain respect of your coworkers, etc. Making a decision based off how you feel is okay if it’s a RARE thing and you can specifically say yes it was JUST the job making you unhappy, e.g. you moved out of IB and were now happy as a clam and better than ever, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
My advice; you can’t make every aspect of your life a dependent variable. That leads to more anxiety. You need to leave some things fixed. Right now, keep this job as a fixed input in your life; for 1-2 years you’re working here and you have an extra 40 hours in your week. Now start shifting from a “victim” mentality to a “hunter” mentality. Spend all of your waking hours making yourself feel strong. Not just good, strong. That way you can make these major life decisions with a clear head and be ready to succeed.
That means strengthening your friendships and relationships (only need 2-3 close people). Exercising / working out 4-5 weeks or even more (has been shown to be as or more effective than medication). Specifically lift weights and watch yourself make progress. Drink lots of water, cut down on drugs and Alc, eat healthy. Spend more time outdoors and develop some outdoor interests. Maybe get a physical hobby like boxing, or hell even dancing. Take care of your appearance. Figure out your true priorities in life. Think about and write about your long term goals every single day until you develop a real long term vision of what life you want, I’m talking a vision that makes you unshakeable. That way you specifically select a next job that you know is a step toward your long term vision, which will help you enjoy and endure it no matter how hard things get. Once your strength and resolve are back then I think you’re gonna be a great spot to take your career in amazing directions.
Dude I feel like I can run through a wall.
A lot of corpdev gigs are bullshit and can ruin your career. Especially if you get let go early. I left valuation to get into pharma corp dev at a privately held company and it almost ruined my career. Fortunately, I picked up as much industry knowledge as I could and was able to pivot back to valuation with a pharma specialization. I'm the SME in pharma at my firm and it has helped my career. I know a few people that jumped into corp dev too soon, didn't learn much and/or were fired/let go and had to restart their careers.
My advice is to stay there for at least two years and learn as much as possible about your industry. You can hop back into IB as an Associate with strong industry knowledge and get fast tracked to VP. You might be able to pivot into PE too.
I think most have commented important things above, but one thing I wanted to discuss was the unstructured nature of your role.
I myself moved out of banking to a very unstructured role that I am in today and it takes time to get ramped up into the role. It also required a ton of additional work on my end to fully understand what I needed to do and truly grasp where I could be most useful. I expected to be delegated work, but that did not happen. What did happen was I sat around trying to figure out what to do and: what could make lives of my colleagues easier and what I could do to make my boss look good to the company. From there I devised a number of other projects/pitches for myself and I find myself super-busy now, but initially I had no clue what to do with myself. I'd really encourage you to stay in the role for at least 12 months unless you really feel like ramping is impossible.
Happy to discuss more as well!
OP, I love that one of options you laid out was to ask your old group (which you described as sweaty and toxic) for your job back. Lol. C’mon dude, how clueless can you be?
I hate in this new whole world everyone throws around “mental health” as a blanket for being terrible or making dumb moves.
Newsflash, we all have problems and insecurities and shortcomings. Being depressed isn’t an excuse to be a crappy bf or for taking a job you never wanted.
I couldn’t agree more. This guy is clueless. Best of luck to em though
harsh truth
Smart move getting out. Also smart move picking a public company (at least sounds like it’s a public company) because WLB is generally better than a PE-backed company and it’s usually very hard to get fired.
Unless you straight up lied about work experience/your abilities, you can totally catch up. Even though you may not like it, try and find as much industry research and go through it. Make it your goal to understand your space as well as your coworkers within a year. Ask thoughtful questions on their view of where the market is going and what types of companies they think your group should acquire.
At the same time, learn to model. Depending on how your organization is laid out, maybe this is really important or not. Go through old deal models and projects done around your company to understand how they were constructed. If you don’t feel like those are up-to-snuff then start with the free financial modeling resources and then just get the WSO, WSP, BIWS, etc package. There used to be a free resource from a couple years called like the LeveragedSellout or something like but I’m totally blanking, but it was pretty decent, maybe someone else can come up with it.
It can really suck being in a job you don’t like. Trust me, I know. You have to at least stick it out 6 months before really starting to look, I’ve found that after 3-6 months I may feel one way about a job and then feel differently a few months later. That’s totally normal but it’s important to get through that first 6 months so you can make a more clear decision backed by a sufficient amount of time in the seat. And as long as the people are decent and the hours are good, just try and stick it out and teach yourself as much as you can. You’ll either learn to like it or you’ll become a better analyst and position yourself better for your next move.
I share your challenge of leaving IB too soon. Now I am trying to catch up on technicals by taking online courses. I am jamming on WSO and BIWS. It's difficult without having actual assignments being given by the employer that utilise the course content. And don't have colleagues to speak to about these assignments. But this must be done. DM me if you wish.
First of all - Breathe.
I have not only been in your shoes very recently, but I actually moved out of banking and overseas … twice!
A few lessons I have learned in my decade (not so) long career:
- Careers should never ever be thought of as linear. You will deviate from “the path” more than a few times but what I have found is that it ALWAYS works out in the end. Americans have a VERY linear attitude and approach to their careers, you must avoid this if you’re ever going to find what you enjoy.
- Leaving IB is actually harder than getting in. It does funny things to your head. You can barely work across from a bank at a new gig without feeling those itches to get back in there. You left because IB, like PE, like most of all finance, is miserable, has garbage culture and your health goes to hell. Ask any VP+ after a few beers if they’re really happy … keep this is mind.
- Mental health cannot be ignored. You must focus on this more than anything
- The only way to be truly happy is to work for yourself, time is the greatest asset you’ll ever own
Feel free to DM if it helps.
You will never be successful riding out a job that you hate - you can’t be. If only for the reality that if you hate something you can never put the level of effort and blood and sweat into it that somebody who loves it can. I also HATED banking.
Life is long and careers are super long. This is the time in your life to take risks. If you just grinded out an IB job because you were too afraid to make choices that were uncomfortable, then you will never be at the top of anything. I don’t think your choice was a bad one at all. I actually don’t think you should focus so much on a defined career until you’re in your mid-30’s. Use your 20’s to find what you are passionate about and then your early 30s to narrow it down to the bits of it that you’re great at. Then by the time you’re ready for your middle age you’re in a job that you both love and that you’re good at.
I wasn’t sitting in a L/S Equity HF seat until I was 32 - hell wasn’t even into finance at all until i was like 27 - just put that into perspective. Now I have a career that I love and that could pay me like 10x what any of my peers are putting down. How many 2+2+2+2 (IB>PE>MBA>PE>HF) drones interviewed for my job? A LOT. Why didn’t they get it? They had just done what they were told for 8-10 years and this job doesn’t reward ppl who think linearly and conventionally. Not to say all of those kids are conventional thinkers, some are amazing, but just making the point that big careers can be had by anybody who puts the effort in and has vision.
Go learn something about this company you’re at. What makes them special. how do they compete. How can you help them do that. Then if you wanna stay in finance.. be a banker or an investor or a researcher one day, you‘ll actually be able to look at companies and really understand what they can do. Really talk to management about their challenges and opportunities. Maybe you even get a chance to run one someday.
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