Do many young I-Bankers pivot to F500 ladder? Seems like you sharks would dominate, yeah?
I grew up in metro Detroit and every other white collar parent is a Big Ten (if that) grad who makes a cozy $330k, 550k, even well into 7 figures after working up corporate (finance/marketing/engineering/sales) ladder at an automaker, auto supplier, etc. Mark Fields, former CEO of Ford, was raised in New Jersey, came to Ford after tech consulting at IBM then HBS, and rocketed to becoming youngest CEO in Ford history. His retirement package in his early 50s was $60M.
My point is, i-banking kids are aggressive, smart, and at the top of their class at highly competitive colleges ... then put themselves in investment banking, competing against other super aggressive, smart, top of their class peers from targets! Wouldn't rising the ladder at some flyover state F500 be child's play against the relatively duller competition?
No. You are underestimating the level of talent that exists outside of IB, and overestimating the importance of attending a target school when it comes to real-world business success.
And you may be overestimating the candlepower of management at flyover state F500s. My friend's mom laughs about being a ditz, how she only has a communications degree from state school. She's a mid-level exec making over 400k a year.
Wall Street feeder colleges are full of kids with 98-99 percentile SAT scores (IQ), 3.8-4.0 GPAs, hyper-ambitious sharks.
F500 in flyover are full of kids who scored 70-90 percentile (IQ), loafed through some state school, go with the flow types.
If you are already so sure of the answer, then why did you take the time to ask the question? To have your beliefs reaffirmed?
Also, test scores and GPAs are relatively meaningless in the real world.
So, while I don’t agree with that old thread about people with 3.9 GPAs not having people skills, there has to be some reason the non-rockstars make a good living, e.g., soft skills or some other perceived skills. Or else presumably a fry cook from White Castle could knock off the lady with the 400k salary by taking “only” 250.
This is an oversimplified debate, I don’t think there’s any doubt about bright driven people seeking banking/consulting jobs (hence the existence of WSO), but the very best in these large public organizations are not pushovers by any means. Go do what you like and kick ass wherever it is.
^This. I went to a target school but there's so many kids from my high school who opted to go to a non-target that were leagues above intelligence than me. Often times the difference in getting into a school over someone else is a connection (could be for sports, recommendation letters), an extra point on a standardized test score, or a type of profile the school is looking for. The selection process can be a crapshoot, so why do you think climbing the ladder at a F500 would not?
IB preps you very well for IB and finance but the skill set outside of those areas is limited. Consultants work very well in F500s because their background in MC or Strategy exposes them to a wider skill set to be used in the whole organisation. But besides the MC vs IB debate, when it comes to pivoting to F500s a lot of IB guys would go into their finance divisions which are 2nd tier to the main offering. Want to work for a FAANG? The CS guys and engineers are going to be in the spotlight. Want to work for Big Pharma? The scientists and market access people will be running the show. Finance is an ancillary division to the core offerings of most F500s hence why if you want to make big bucks and be a big shot post IB, pivoting to PE or HF is a better choice (IMO) than F500.
Your names DukeED23 so it sounds like you’re a high school senior. Have you ever actually worked in a company? F500 companies aren’t full of hapless idiots and it takes more than being good at excel and financial modeling to make it in a F500
What does it take? Politics and Luck?
Plenty of both of those. Have to be good at managing many teams/people. It’s incredibly difficult to become a CEO or CFO of a F500 type firm. Sure the typical person in banking is more accomplished at an early age than most, but that still doesn’t mean the odds are even decent when there are tens of thousands of employees you have to beat out. To become CEO with an IB background, you probably would have to start in Corp dev, eventually broaden your skill set to include Treasury activities, then become Treasurer, then CFO, then CEO. I’d guess there are currently no more than 6-7 former IB/Corp dev guys who rose to CEO at F500 or S&P 500 companies.
It’s impossible to become a Fortune 500 ceo without banking experience. Don’t be ridiculous
.
Ahhhh yes if you can't model or use excel like a banking analyst you can't become CEO. Who knew they gave out PE-like case studies to CEO candidates
I used to think like this. But in reality, the only true benefit by going the banking route (elite target institution --> IB SA -- > IB Analyst -->PE or Corp Dev --> elite target MBA) is within that realm. Like I think you it helps to go that path if you want to be in those social circles, but it literally means nothing if you don't succeed socially.
I don't think anyone, people in general, care about your school. If you go to Harvard and the person on the other side of the table similarly goes to a school like Harvard as you, there may be some implicit bias in whether your call will be taken. I'm sure if you want to attend similar events, it probably helps for your name to pop up in the same year book as one of those guys. But no one actually cares.
The whole "traditional path" thing, is just a complex infrastructure built up by those institutions that doesn't hold a lot of actual weight in the real world. People just want you to:
speak like them,
think like them,
act like them,
and still to this day look like them.
The folks pulling down $350k+ at F500 are mostly 50+ years old. I'd like to have some wealth while I'm young enough to enjoy it...
The grind at a F500 is ridiculous even if you're the best at your job. Because these firms aren't "up or out", and doing an average job won't necessarily get you canned, even if you're the most ambitious super employee your climb will be slow and steady. And there always ends up being a bottleneck at ~Director level; when comp hits 200K plus and perks like car allowances start to materialize no one wants to leave, and those who've made it to that point are pretty damned talented and/or politically astute. You'd better hope to get a tap on the shoulder offering to groom you for the C-level by then...or just move somewhere like Kansas to ascend at firm #4XX of the F500.
Juxtapose that with bankers pulling in 300K in their late 20s, in cities everyone wants to be in while eating what they kill come bonus time and the upside is just way more attractive.
Let’s sum up WSO user base:
User group 1: I can easily hit over $300k a year
User group 2: I know someone (who knows someone) who easily hits over $300k a year
User group 3: I can’t get interviews and my GPA is a 2.4
Corporate salaries on this site are WAY overstated.
If you make over $400k you are running your own P&L and have real stress and lots of politics and factors outside your control. And you're likely pushing 60 or you're connected like a spider web. Also those people are real VPs and part of the 0.01% of the company. If you like those stats I would actually suggest you start your own business.
The OPs assertions are terrible and from there this might be devolving into one of the worst WSO threads in a long time (and that's saying something). AndyLouis I'd honestly consider shutting this one down.
I haven't read every comment on this thread, but it seems that most have no idea what they're talking about. At the risk of running late to lunch I'll point out a few things of the top of my head: 1. Few people in F500 make "$330k, $550k, even well into 7 figures". There are certainly some, but Id guess it to be .5%-1% of most F500s clearing $500k. If you grew up in an area where this was common then you have serious selection bias. 2. Elite education and top tier backgrounds are helpful, but that benefit ends. Eventually you have to be some combination of good at your job, political, lucky, etc... To succeed at high levels in the long run, you need to produce. 3. Most F500 jobs require a certain level of intelligence. Anything above that is great, but after that certain level it becomes much more about execution, politics, luck, etc... I'm sure there is a large concentration of this board that would test higher than I do, but I'm also sure there is a small concentrations that is or will advance further in a F500 than I have. 4. I see Corp Dev/Strat on this board all the time. They are good roles, but there are VERY few of them. Also, they're fairly niche. I'd bet that the average F500 company has 1 Corp Dev or Strat person making your $330k+ (certainly some have more, many have zero).
You guys crack me up with your assumptions of what the real world makes. I'm 54 and have been around the block. Had I stayed in the corporate world I would be EVP, Head of Sales, etc. Have man, many "successful" friends my age: Partners at law firms = 1M+ Partners at regional accounting firms (350ish) F500 CFOs 2M (mainly in equity. Salary about 500k) Business owners - 500k - 10M Corporate VPs - 350 ish (200 base and 75% bonus) They likely do get another 100k in stock
These guys have worked their whole lives to get where they are. Some are HSW. Some were MBB, Some were Big4, Some were F500 FLDP. SOme likely were entry level IB and left.
It's definitely possible to make high 6 figure and even 7 figures in IB or any of these paths. NONE of them are easy. Along the way you will meet brilliant people who are doing great and. they graduated from direction state U. I know plenty of them. I'm one of them. Both of the F500 CFOs are too. Put them in the pool with a bunch of HSW guys and they'd still get the gig because there that guy! (Oh yeah - they did because they were that guy)
I question the certification function of this site sometimes.
Care to elaborate? Rickle had the most reasonable range thus far based on what I've seen
One thing i've learned from working at a hedge fund from talking to executives is that they aren't impressive. to be clear, i talk to a current or former F500 executive on a daily basis for diligence. the concept that an elite level of business acumen what differentiates the greatest successes appears to me to be untrue, except in cases of a few genuine, standout successes (like we can agree that Jeff Bezos is visionary and truly brilliant). I don't even think that they have an impressive business acumen or a phenomenal expertise in their own industries. Most of the executives I have spoken to tend to talk a certain way, but I have never felt like they possessed some "magic" set of capabilities that a mere mortal from a state school could not have. They are just normal people and there is nothing remarkable about them.
The reality is that aptitude is wholly unknowable and so the concept that it puts you ahead is just hard for me to believe. If i pitch a good investment at work, was it skill or luck? if i miss an excellent opportunity, was it that i made the percentage play by passing or did i truly miss something? the same questions arise at a company. if the division does well, is it because the industry / market was strong, or was it my doing? even if it is possible to parse out reality with the facts, the truth is nobody has the time or willingness to do this exercise. moreover, there's far too many ways of masquerading as being worthy of merit. ... Suppose you did well for your firm, but you did it by taking an unacceptable set of risks that only materialize over a long time span... were you a good employee? Probably not, but by then you are long gone and it is someone else's problem. The reality is that at the time you were there taking those risks, you probably got paid handsomely for it, because most people are simply not clever enough to know the difference.
The premise behind most of the answers in this thread is that it's intelligence and capability that help you advance. I am not sure whether this is obviously true, because the reality is that others cannot truly assess your capability nor will they ever have this ability. I think there's a far broader spectrum of traits that actually do tend to matter. In particular, an (1) ability to dedicate oneself to one important task for a long time (which requires, among other things, that you are healthy and engaged for a long time, as well as engaged in a task that was worth doing to begin... this is true of nearly every executive I speak with) with, (2) an ability and, more importantly, willingness to "act" in a certain way (every executive I speak with talks the part and are knowledgeable to the extent it allows them to avoid ever betraying this part), (3) a knowledge of where the scissors are kept (just like mom knows where she keeps the scissors, executives tend to know peculiarities of how to get things done that is idiosyncratic but that do not require brilliance) and (4) if highly successful, started their careers somewhere that is a hotbed for talent (an elite bank if a finance job, a leading oil firm if an oil company, a leading university if dropout tech startup founder, etc... the reality is we live in an unequal society too, so most successful people tended to come from elite backgrounds to begin with).