Centerview Partners is paradise

Investment banking was never your passion, you felt. In fact, finance was something that was beneath you whilst you attended your super-target, Princeton. You were, and have always been destined for greatness. And thanks to your philosophy coursework and Cap and Gown eating club status, your fellow sophomore peers knew it too. In fact, you thought you had reached self-actualization on occasion when hitting the pen with gold medalist Chloe Kim, discussing the profound meaning of the phrase "shreddin".

Unfortunately, your eternal bliss fell apart when you reached home for summer break. You're only a rising junior, you profess, when your father, a Fortune 400 principal (Football, class of '86), asks "what are you going to do with a philosophy degree, Thomas". After serious contemplation, you realize you will take a short tangent on exploring the meaning of life to sustain a living. Epictetus wasn't born into royalty and you decide you'd settle for a trajectory similar to his. That and your dad threatened to cut you off if you spent the summer in Sicily again.

On Campus Recruiting

You decide you'll pursue the most prestigious and "intellectually stimulating" job you can find. However after failing understand how to navigate VSCode and stumbling on basic probability brainteasers, you realize that quantitative roles are out of reach. Nonsense, you tell yourself. These are vocational roles anyway, you were meant to think strategically. After browsing through Handshake, you land on a role titled "Investment Banking Summer Analyst - Strategic Advisory". Investing seems like a worthy challenge you think to yourself. Paired with strategy made for an enticing role.

You call your dad to tell him you found a job for next summer. That'll show him. On the phone, he is confused as to whether you've actually been accepted for the role, and after two minutes, he realizes you're hopeless. Days later, you receive an email from a Centerview analyst - "Superday Invite". You have no idea what a "superday" is but thanks to context clues, you realize this is the final round interview. Easy enough.

Interviewing - "don't appear desparate"

In the interview waiting room, much to your surprise, someone old guys named Rob Pruzan and Blair Effron show up on the screen and talk about "Centerview's founding values" and how Centerview's analyst program is "banking, consulting, and business school all in one". You're not really sure what that means but it sounds ideal. In fact, everything your interviewers told you sounded ideal. 

"We recruit in the fall because we get top talent no matter when we recruit. Our timeline is the best for finding great talent like you"

"Centerview is one half Mckinsey and one half Goldman Sachs"

"People stay here because this bank is the best to build a partner platform (evidence needed)".

After navigating your painfully easy "fit", "leadership", and "critical thinking" interviews, only one stood in your way to the job. The toughest one, in fact: a "strategy" interview with a partner.

"How many coffee shops are there in Manhattan", he asks. After laboring through a five minute explanation leveraging your extensive knowledge of shops such as Delis and Sey Coffee from your stays in your fathers UWS apartment, you finish the interview knowing the partner  felt lucky to have met a candidate with this much raw intellectual ability. Later that day he calls you and congratulates you for a job well done. The job is yours.

On the job

During your first week at the bank, you are completely stoked. You feel delighted that you now get to tell your philosophy peers that you work in strategy investing now. How stupid are they, not ever considering getting a real job on their own. You relish in joy when you get staffed on your first client - Verizon. However your joy quickly turns to anything but when the third year analyst on the account enthusiastically provides you with all of their grunt work. You read through the email chain your principal forwarded you the partner's email chain with Verizon's deputy second vice principal in corporate development. "Can you pull everything related to offshore data centers". You scoff as you read your partner submissively reply with "will do, thanks for the request". 

You spend the next few days scouring Google, capIQ, and Tegus to find disparate, useless pieces of information. You present your hard work to the senior analyst, and to your dismay, he replies with "thanks". You quickly realize you don't have to be on the email chain (you aren't) to know that you put 20 hours into no tangible product. You're too depressed to even realize you're not even investing yet.

Discouraged, you find yourself looking to feel redeemed. You check your email to see a subject line reading "Centerview Town Hall featuring Tulsi Gabbard - please provide questions". Your demur outlook immediately shutters away. This was an opportunity to rub shoulders with the elite. You excitedly open the Zoom ten minutes early and pre-type smart questions such as "From a fellow independent thinker, how does it feel to revolutionize the democratic party through independent thinking". Unfortunately, Blair misses your question and instead asks rather trivial ones like "So how does the democratic party's evolution impact the advice we are going to provide our Fortune 100 clients?". Still cool.

Scenes at the firm

As you turn the corner on your first analyst year, you realize how naïve you once were. You now proudly tell sophomores on networking calls what "strategic advisory" entails and how "Centerview doesn't have many traditional exits to buyside because the opportunity cost of staying is so high".  "They'll never make it into a firm as prestigious as Centerview" you think to yourself two minutes into hearing them discuss their boutique banking sophomore summer internship. Either way you still give them the time of day because it makes you feel good.

Meanwhile, you're consistently getting crushed. Your dumbass staffer took your request to "work with exciting high-growth consumer companies" and staffed you with discovery work with a Managing Director. When did Centerview get Managing Directors? Pitch after pitch filled with free work over the past few months has left you feeling dead. Is this place really as good as it seems? You used to tell sophomores you never pitched.

Climax

You just finished your second year at Centerview. Your social life is deteriorating. As is your health- after telling yourself you're going to exercise every day once the fancy and expensive office gym was completed, you realize you'd rather be crucified after seeing your partner change naked in the locker room. Even worse, you check LinkedIn to see many of your peers at other banks have accepted buyside offers to invest at firms such as "Blackstone". How short sighted, you think to yourself. The third year at the bank really completes your learnings.

Despite having this thought for over two years, thanks to it being frequently repeated by senior leadership, you start to question it yourself.

Frustrated, you go upstairs to get some lunch. This offers no reprieve. You overhear a fellow analyst repeat their standup comedy routine in the cafeteria for the fourth time this week. "I used to work at SVB, now I work for Santa Clara County!" Your frustration mounting, you start to understand why that one analyst from the University of Miami punched another banker at a happy hour a few years ago. 

You are now desperate. You used to be so promising, and now you have 12 more months left as a sell side analyst. You frantically begin searching graduate programs in Philosophy, your true calling. Whatever hope you briefly had evaporates when you quickly realize that you literally cannot afford to pay back your 50k signing bonus in order to quit.

Centerview Partners is paradise.