Don’t go into finance unless you really like markets / deals / investing

I see way too many people who went into finance thinking it was the “prestigious” path with (1) no idea of what it’s actually like to work in the industry when they recruited and (2) no inherent deep interest in markets, deals, investing.

At the 2+2+2 mark, these people are invariably lost, encounter some career crisis, and look for “impactful” and high paying exit ops outside of finance that don’t actually exist.

They don’t have the skills or grit to do sales, customer support, product management, engineering (ie actual job functions) but instead want to do “strategy”.

For people who actually care about markets / deals, finance is still a very cool industry. Finance is capital allocation, it is infrastructure for the global economy. This is cool. And the people who think it is cool will do well and have longevity in this career.

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