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Career Resources
The post cut off the back half of my post. But it wasn’t that important anyway, I guess.
How/why would someone studying business or finance in college end up in a technical role like one at anthropic
Lol what? Not everyone at Anthropic is a fucking ai researcher or SWE. Plenty of people I know that went down the business route ended up in strategy&ops, sales, chief of staff, even product roles...
A lot of people who study maths/sciences eventually get bored and want to switch to a less technical path at the end of their degree or after their first job. IB/PE offer good money, broad exits, and smart people (given that you work at a good firm, but since we're talking about anthropic here, I shall compare it to equivalent firms in IB). The job is still interesting and the possibilities after 2-3 years are extremely vast.
It's also very difficult to land a strong machine learning engineer/researcher role at a top lab like anthropic, openAI, or such. You usually need an outstanding PhD and to get very lucky on the timing, as very few roles are open. I'm not saying that a comp sci. grad that doesn't land a role in AI/quant will immediatly switch to IB, but I think it's more about the fact that people studying in very technical fields may lose interest in their degree, hence switching their career paths.
2. Not “broad exits” as few value IB skills outside of PE/HF, which are getting harder to recruit into after IB stint.
3. Not “smart people,” but really just hard working grinders smart enough to do a DCF, but not smart enough to study or go into STEM.
If I ignore the flaws of your critique for a min, what's your point here? What should these "not smart people" do instead?
IB still gives you amazing skills and a great stamp on your CV that you can pull off tough pressured environments and bad hours and people chaos. Depending on what you would want to do in those type of tech companies, if it is finance or finance adjacent, the most interesting roles from my pod are usually related to strategy / corp dev / product and you are very well positioned for those post IB - since usually those teams are full of ex IB ex MBB people. I wrote an article on this actually in my substack "off track by design". So i can still see people wanting to go to IB and then exit to tech companies, i see les the point for IB > PE > Tech company that for sure
People keep overblowing these “exit opps,” I can’ imagine how much harm it’s done to naive college students not knowing how little lies on the other side of the grind. Also, what “valuable skills” does it teach? Editing PowerPoints and Excel?
IB is still a springboard to traditionally high paying careers. For the past 10-15 years tech has been an alternative path, but young devs are probably seeing the writing on the wall about future prospects, with AI making junior roles less relevant.
Some of those kids are now going all-inn on quant roles. There's a reason quant influencers have exploded in popularity for the past couple of years. But getting into quant dev or trading is extremely difficult. Same with getting into some top AI company or AI lab.
IB is still a somewhat safe path for young people, and frankly a piece of cake to land compared to the roles I mentioned above.
But we'll have to see for how long. I think IB (and finance in general) will encounter the same things as tech is - AI will become good enough to replace junior workers mostly doing the non-client facing stuff, an there will be less junior positions.
People keep overblowing these “exit opps,” I can’ imagine how much harm it’s done to naive college students not knowing how little lies on the other side of the grind.
What exactly makes losing your health and sanity working 100 hours a week a “piece of cake”?
I was talking about the interviewing process for roles in IB vs more tech/science heavy jobs like AI researcher at top lab, quant dev or trader at trading firms.
As for the career prospects - ever since "FIRE" (Financial independence, retire early) movement became mainstream and started trending, lots of ambitious young people have discovered that the exit opportunity for extremely prestigious tech (say top AI companies) or quant trading firms is basically retirement. That's what made big tech companies so attractive 10 years ago, kids basically went into it thinking they'd work 5-10 years in tech on a 250k-500k salary, and retire by 30. But now there are layoffs and hiring freezes left and right, so they've set their sights on the even more lucrative (albeit competitive) careers. Their dream is basically to work 5 years as a top tier researcher or trader, and retire to do whatever they want.
But the problem is of course that not everyone has a advanced degree from top tier universities, or has the technical chops to get past the brainteasers / quizzes, or the coding questions, if you at all get interviewed.
On the other hand, landing some IB analyst interview is within reach for most good students. And if you're willing to do the work, doors can definitely open - if you don't want to work in IB anymore.
In that sense, IB is still attractive. You work sweatshop hours the first years, sure.
But in the end, all these careers attract ambitious people that are willing to trade their life for good money now, or great money in the near future.
IB, PE and MBB are still the entry level jobs that give you the broadest perspective on the business world and the platform to build a real business career. It’s a totally different path being a quant - remunerative but complete pigeonhole. Same with doing anything of note in tech. Life is long and there is value to broad horizons at the outset.
depends on your options and how much u value money
a recently arrived immigrant on a boat would do it, some upper middle class guy probably wouldn't
Lol this forum really does make people go insane - I have been on this forum for close to a decade now and the topics de jure have literally never changed.
I totally get how looking at the tech / quant guys might make you feel, but in real life - not the college campus bubble nor the clock app nor reels - this is still a stable, very high paying job...
Check the stats - if you work in IB, you are in 95%+ for income for your age bracket, maybe even 99%... the job outlook is also not as negative as people make it seems b/c who do you think will sell all of PE's shitty overheld assets?
I mean this with the same sincerity that a father tells his son who rather do drugs than study in middle school - please get a grip and look around you... 3/5 of the human population (China and India) live horrifically and if you are in the other 2/5 you are only moderately above them. Get into IB in the U.S. or Europe and you are in the top 1% of humanity in terms of income and lifestyle - not saying all-nighters are easy, but would you rather work in construction?
I get the purpose of this post is more to check the directionality of this industry, but from the other comments, I see this shifting into the classic "no one wants to be a slave" - guys, humanity has spent more time in slavery than out of it and I don't think typing ideas on a keyboard can really be compared to Roman slavery... and for what it's worth there is still literal slavery today.
Most of you really, really, really need a reality check - and no, I'm not bringing up the slavery comparison because "it's the only way to make this job look less worse" - I say it because you guys need to start learning to count your blessings.
Stop calling it a “high paying job.” Normalized for hours worked, it’s not high paying compared to most other regular corporate jobs that anyone could get. This isn’t pre-GFC anymore.
Yes, but you're still making 2X the average corporate salary right out of the gate, and then 3, 4, and even 5X by year 5. You're not allowed to have two corporate jobs, if you wanted to argue that a corporate employee could just work 2 jobs to make the same pay. You will make the "normal" corporate employee's lifetime earnings by early to mid 30s. On an hourly basis, yea, you're not making shit for the first few years, but at VP level +, that is definitely not the case, and the reality is that most corporate jobs require far more than 40 hour weeks. So yes, I would absolutely call it a high paying job.
Cool?
So I pay rent in dollars per hour worked then? The restaurant on the corner I can pay based on my per-hour income? My mortgage gets paid in dollars per hour worked?
If you want to be intellectually dishonest about income that's fine. But don't expect others to be dishonest like you.
Once you stick it out to VP+ it’s worth it. I work 50 hours/week and make 600k+
Investment banking is the only job where you can be 10th percentile at your job (MD) and make seven figures.
So is the NBA. That doesn’t mean that it’s likely. The vast vast majority starting on the IB career path, assuming they get in out of undergrad, will never make it there.
i'm starting to think your interviews just didn't go that well bud...
Good option if you’re dimwitted but friendly. Forest Gump would have been a rainmaker. Not everyone is born with the entrepreneurial talent of Lieutenant Dan.
Sorry you didn’t get the offer bro
Of course I received an IB offer long ago. Back when you could still have a beer at your desk.. now I get in trouble with the firm for creating a "boyish atmosphere" if I do that.
Honestly as someone who grew up solidly middle class, albeit with a very privileged background (full financial aid package to top day school as parents valued education) and a LAC degree, banking has catapulted me up a social class. I’m 26 making 2x what my parents ever made combined and I literally spend my day aligning logos. I think the risk / reward is not there for me in tech / AI and I don’t find it interesting nor have the skills.
Sure, I’ll never be filthy rich like many on this site aspire to be, but I’ll be a millionaire at 27 with the financial independence my parents never got to have. If I get fired tomorrow, I have enough money to float for a long time.
Similar story / upbringing for me. love it - rooting for ya
Incoming analyst but my entire reason for choosing finance over something STEM when applying to college was literally two things:
1) I am p good looking and I like being around people who are also pretty/handsome
2) hot chicks like finance (asian ABGs in SF aren’t really my thing)
Grew up in a major tech hub and I am an incoming analyst now. So far my reasons have played out p well. Worst case scenario if AI does end up taking my job I will just go back to school and do math or sum. I have always been p smart and agile so it’s chill. I can adapt myself to a changing job environment but AI incels can’t get handsome/charismatic even with plastic. Plus shit farming would also be p dope.
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