Do most bankers hit the big payday?
I'm a student at Stanford studying CS and I'm stuck between committing to a career as a Software Engineer or going the Finance route. I'm sure I can get a Maang job and make good money, but that salary for that career path tapers off once you hit 400k. I just wanted to ask if choosing finance would guarantee me a better career and better payday. Is PE as good as they say and do all bankers make it there? If not what ends up happening to most bankers who don't make the jump to MF PE - do they still make good money? Is it worth choosing finance over SWE?
If you don’t have a strong network but think you are top 20% at Stanford for CS, the tech path is higher EV. FAANG/Unicorn SWE > Founder/VC.
If you are well connected, look good and are sociable, go into finance you will snooze into 1m/yr eventually. Just beware that finance (IB/PE) is probably going to be painfully boring for someone with your background (I was also STEM).
Disagree on the boring point for finance - I would argue SWE is infinitely less interesting vs finance. I studied CS at an ivy so considered both paths but decided being a SWE at a big company sucks. You aren’t building new products or writing cool code - you’re maintaining some super tiny part of a giant legacy system, debugging things, or just other stupid work. I’m sure being a founder or SWE at a startup is more interesting, but all my friends in tech just work at a big firm and cash their paychecks and do fun stuff outside of work.
Bigger decision I’d say is around lifestyle - tech is similar comp as a junior but certainly hits a lower ceiling (although startup route is probably a more likely path to insane wealth vs finance, this is obviously a tiny segment of SWEs). Tech you will work 40 hours a week, maybe even less. IB/PE/etc is many years of working 80 hours a week.
If you stay in banking or go to PE it’s a pretty direct path to $500k+ pretty quickly without a ton of risk, but you’re getting your tail worked off to do so. Up to you if that is worth it
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