Finishing 2 years at EB, Going to Corp Dev / Strat. Peers all telling me I have "Given up".

Congrats on the new role! Ignore the noise, focus on what's best for you.

Hey man, I’m actually going through something really similar (not the exact same) and made a post about it just this week. A few days ago, I found myself struggling with my ego over leaving my current role to join a more laid-back position in business development at a tech company. My advice? Block out the noise. If you speak to anyone outside of finance, they’ll likely think your colleagues’ advice is insane. Your mental health and overall well-being are worth far more than any career, no matter how prestigious.

You’re not “settling” and definitely have not given up you’re transitioning to a sought after industry and role, which is something to be proud of. Whenever I second-guess myself, I remind myself of the stress, anxiety, and constant pressure I’ve felt in my current job. The 20 hour days, the constant headaches, the need to be constantly switched on, the anxiety when you hear your email go of, the feeling of throwing up because of all the pressure is just not worth it for me. It helps me realize that the slightly higher paycheck after taxes isn’t worth the trade-off, and the odds of making seven or eight figures in PE or at a hedge fund are so slim that they’re not worth sacrificing your quality of life for. More likely than not you’ll make more by joining this seat over your career (while preserving your mental health) than if you joined a PE firm or hedge fund and burnt out after a year.

After reflecting on it, I’ve come to realize that no amount of money or prestige is worth giving up every waking moment of your life. For some people, it might be, but for the vast majority of us, it isn’t and that’s perfectly fine. You’re still making great money, working at a respected company, and setting yourself up for future growth in your career.

Take a real look at what you want in life, for me I want a 9-5, enough money to raise a family and go on holiday 3/4 times a year. What I’ve observed is that after a certain point more money means less & less.

The people who are leaving to join HF/PE and told you this honestly sound super insecure too. Frankly 90% of them will burn out and end up in a similar role anyways, it seems like they’re projecting their insecurity onto you. Saying stuff like you’ve given up just shows they don’t give a shit about your wellbeing or really care about you man so I wouldn’t even bother listening to what they’re saying. Maybe right now it may seem difficult and I’m about to go down the same path as you but I’m 99% sure in a years time we’ll both look back and think we made the right choice.

Congrats on the new role and wishing you all the best brother, I hope I helped - it’s coming from someone facing a similar crossroads right now.

Do you mind sharing how you found your role? Was it by yourself or one of the HH (also which one if you can disclose)?

Wanting to follow similar path post-banking as you.

most who this pe shit ends up at a startupy or entrepreneurial role after anyways

I am biased as I am trying to now do the same - but I personally think this is the best choice possible. If you are not going to be a lifer in PE/HF, the quicker you can pivot, the better, IMO. It is better to start as an associate in corp dev at a company than to delay that corp exp by 2 years doing a PE assoc gig at a sweatshop to then try and pivot to corp dev at the VP? level.

It seems like a steeper hill to climb two years later as you become more expensive as a candidate/new hire. Plus, increased competition as more people will be competing for this spot in Corp Dev as PE firms offer fewer promos from associate programs these days.

Anecdotally a lot of these traditional 2+2+2 MF PE folks will tell you behind closed doors how much they second-guess themselves as well. Point is - we are all lost trying to figure this thing called life out, nobody really knows what the "best" choice is.

Separately, sorry to shift topics, but I am desperately trying to do the same - can you please make a post giving advice on how to get these roles? I.e., the process of finding spots, what the interview process looked like, contextualize if comp is market / above market, how you diligence hours & WLB of the group. 

And career-wise do you see yourself staying Corp Dev long term or how you have thought about this / seen this play out +10 year horizon?

Bankers are cucks

Lol is everyone missing the most obvious thing? 95% of your peers going the PE/HF route are going to literally end up in corporate in the next few years (unless they choose to go back to the Sell-side). Do you think you just work your way up the ladder steady every year in PE/HF? It's 2 years and out in PE and if you're lucky maybe 5 years in HF before you're forced to either go the PM-track or show real results.

No one is just clipping a coupon of ~$400k+ comp for 10 years or whatever on the buyside unless they are promoted. If anything, you may have the leg up when they have to "start over" in corporate (although I will say this more applies to HF guys having to start over due to the niche skillset).

Who cares what they have to say? Live your life man

Is the company PE backed or F500? Do you think the $175k comp is above market?

You made the right choice!

Great thread. Thinking through this same dilemma as an A2A with one of these firms.

This sounds like the dream. I thought PE would be hard but better in many ways than my EB banking experience (predictability, total hours, etc.). In ways I could’ve never imagined, it is so much worse.

My MF experience has been nightmarishly stressful, even if I somewhat set / manage my hours, the crushing workloads and incredible pressure has made my total hours and mental health worse. Whatever life I was able to slowly reclaim as an IB 2nd year Anl is gone.

Odds are I’ll probably exit to corp dev or a more lifestyle investment seat (if such a thing exists). You just got there faster and without burning away your 20s. The extra $3-400k over a couple years isn’t worth the tradeoff.

Not to say PE isn’t an incredible learning experience. It’s the foundational training and development for me that banking never was. But it’s not without cost, and only 5 months in I’m questioning how long I’ll make it.

The majority of the people giving you shit will wash out / burn out and be dying for your role in 2-3 years.

Congrats on being true to yourself!

Signed,

- Someone who has been doing this almost 2 decades

It’s your life. Everyone else can get fucked.

It’s your life. Everyone else can get fucked.

(1) I am glad you are going to a role that you think is a good fit for you. It is the people who don't follow tHe PaTh who tend to be the ones who actually "make it." 

(2) I am not surprised that EVR/MOE bankers think less than of corp dev. I understand why because you are going from a revenue generator to a cost center, but it is always funny to me when service providers think of their clients like that as a class. It is certainly not an uncommon sentiment. But in my experience it is one I find largely driven by the young bankers/college kids/etc. I simply don't hear this in the same way with senior bankers when I hear others in your position talking about this phenomenon. 

Which makes sense. Young people, as a class, are stupid.  

Going through the same situation. People look at your different in a condescending way when you tell them you’re moving to corp dev. My mentor told me that it’s a cheesy role destined for mediocrity. 

Screw em

Contemplating a similar move after my analyst stint. Do you mind sharing location (HCOL or West vs East Coast) and if it's remote / hybrid?

this is well above market comp wise so nice work getting it, to anyone else considering leaving for something in the $150-$175k all in mark —don’t do it

hey man, dont want to shift the focus of this thread, but would it be possible to DM regarding your corp dev role?

im entering FT IB in tech coverage next year, and want to know what steps I can take to prep for a tech corp dev exit instead of rushing it in a potential case of burnout. 

Not much in to add terms of messaging beyond what PavementRoad and others have said but I'll re-iterate a few comments to reinforce why you should feel good about this, based on my biased experience.

Congrats on escaping the prison of IB/PE, and don't listen to what the other prisoners are shouting at your heels. You have not given up in any sense so ignore that especially. You are on to the proverbial "bigger and better things" for yourself. Your colleagues are not wrong or misguided for staying either - different strokes and all that.

I endured the same when I left "the path" - giving up a VP promote in MM PE and opting out of a few HF roles in favor of CorpDev/CorpStrat. I struggled with the decision for many months - wondering if I made a mistake, lamenting my paycut, wanting the "rigor" of finance, missing the caliber of talent in those teams vs. outside world - but I can now confidently say I have zero regrets.

One thing I'll mention based on my experience going from 60-90 hours to 30-40 hours - you may feel a sort of Stockholm Syndrome now that you have actual free time. My unsolicited advice is to let yourself breathe and embrace it - don't stress out about feeling like you're unproductive, or that your new role is too unchallenging, or that you're wasting your talents. None of that is true, despite what the peers you're leaving behind may suggest. You may fall into a depression upon leaving (as I did) because your workload is so much lighter. The cure there is one part obvious: pick up hobbies (preferably at least one outdoor hobby), get physically healthy again, read books, travel/take holidays; and one part obscure: realize that your job/pay/title is not necessarily your worth. For some pay & title might be directly tied to self worth, and that's fine, but for me I could no longer allow it to be.

When I left, my former IB/PE colleagues were jealous or contemptuous. My friends & family were happy for me. I was hella insecure about the choice. A few years down the road it's arguably been the best decision I made in my career from both a fulfillment and trajectory perspective, but also surprisingly from a financial perspective (that sweet, sweet equity comp, baby). 

Congrats again and good luck.

I was having lunch the other day with a good friend from my analyst class. As some of you know, I like to complain, and was whining to him about how on paper I seem like a winner, but compared to many in our analyst class, I’m a loser. There are so many who are MDs or in PE making big bucks, while I am just a director making 500.

After ten mins of complaining and saying how jealous I was of the kids from our cohort who stayed in high finance and are crushing it, he just laughed.

He said it’s all a matter of perspective. A decent amount of the people I said were winners, only had money to show for it. Many were unmarried or married to ugly women who didn’t have a good job or come from money to help with the household finances, or were overweight and clearly had health issues at a young age, or had expressed they felt trapped via golden handcuffs.

He even used himself as an example. He was bald and felt it was due to stress, had a failed engagement, and wanted kids, but was already 38 and likely to be an old dad.

He then asked me to be honest, the same way you are being honest, to myself. And if I am being totally honest, I don’t have the work ethic or drive to do PE. I’m barely surviving in lev fin at bulge and I do the bare minimum as it is, there’s no way I could excel at PE at a reputable firm.

He then said while he makes 1.5mm a year, he’s felt jealous of me over the years at times. How I would goof off at work and cut corners to leave early and have fun, and my only “punishment” would be a kid bucket bonus vs a top bucket. How I got married at the age I wanted to, and married well. How I already have kids and get to actually see them.

And he made another decent point of diminishing marginal utility of every dollar earned over a certain threshold, and we settled on 750k. Each dollar over that amount is taxed at 50%, but also doesn’t bring that much more happiness. Once you have a good house and your kids education is saved for and can eat whatever you want and travel business, what more money do you really need?

So I understand why you’re peers are grilling you, but I think you’re making the right choice for yourself.

Remember, even at just 215k, you make more annual income than 90% of the human race. It’s just that you’re surrounded by winners so you don’t feel like a winner. But you will soon learn that your salary, while very important, is less important than who you marry, how you look / health, chilling with your kids, etc.

I will leave you with a final example to make you more confident in your choice. I remember one night as a teen I was pouting, and when my dad asked why, I said I hadn’t been invited to some party. When he said I never would have attended so why do I care, I said I wanted to choice to not go, and I still wanted the invite.

You've been invited to the party. You were at an EB. You just don’t think the money and long hours are worth it. It would be different if you were one of those losers who said finance is evil and for nerds and would never do it, but who also was never able to break in. But you did. So accept their criticism of your choice but be cognizant it comes from a place of not liking a person or their actions because it differs from theirs.

Am about to make this move myself. 
 

are you able to PM me some details on the modeling test? Just want to make sure I am up to snuff. 
 

thanks!

I wouldn't pay too much attention to what your Analyst classmates are telling you - frankly, with their level of inexperience, they have no idea what they're talking about. Juniors in this industry lack perspective. I'm willing to bet 90% of those who go into PE will end up leaving in 2-3 years in any case. 

Life's too short to be unhappy and you still ended up securing an IB exit that, in the grand scheme of things, is prestigious / well paid etc.

You made the right call, pal.

I interned in IB as a sophomore, then moved to an institutional investor, accepted the return, and am now 5 months into my first post-grad role. Trust me, you made the right decision. Post grad depression is hitting different and I'm looking at customer success/product marketing/marketing associate roles in order to pivot out of finance post-MBA.

IB was created as a 2 year program for Ivy League grads to build business expertise with no experience -- it was never intended to be a long term thing. Your approach shows you were paying attention and being intentional because now you're taking your knowledge to be a big fish in a small pond. They don't pay your bills. You deserve this! You have one life and this is the right time to take a risk. 

Y’all massively overstate the stress at the senior level. It looks hard as a junior because you don’t have the reps, but it’s indeed possible to be a high achiever in finance and have a quality personal life. It’s not all or nothing. I’m at that stage, most of my close friends in the industry that have made it this far are married, have kids, take vacations and are in decent health. The challenge is finding a sustainable culture in the associate-vp years when people can really wreck you and you can’t push back. 

I know a guy in corp dev that just became head of sales for one of the companies they acquired. He’s pulling in 500k-1MM now, fully remote in his mid 30s. He originally wanted to do IB after MBA but decided he wanted to focus on having a family. Seems like it worked out for him

I

Think it’s a no brainer to take this role and that comp is very far above market from what I’ve been seeing. FYIW, recently joined an earlier stage startup doing strategic finance and can’t understate how much chiller the hours and pressure day to day truly are. Minimal fake deadlines, if things need to be pushed to the next day or week, so be it. I originally was set on PE after doing my IB analyst stint, but after thinking through considerations many of the other commenters stated, no regrets

You'll likely end up happier than most of them in the end. I get your thinking, interned in IB and realized it was 100% not for me. Working in AM now, and as I've been dating someone seriously who I think I'll marry I've realized the grind is only worth it to a point. For me that is ~45hr weeks on regular times and 50-55hrs during earnings season. Now I'll put in another ~5hrs a week for cultivating my investing skillset but that's on my own time doing what I want vs. what others tell me, so I don't think of this as 'work' at all given how much I love it. 

That's it, I'm not willing to put up with more than that and I'm aiming to maximize comp within that constraint. Luckily in LO AM this is very doable as long as you stay outside NYC (where people for some reason work longer hours despite doing the same work with no measurable difference in performance) -- this works fine because I don't like NYC anyway as a place I'd want to live in.

I want to have 2-3 kids and spend meaningful time with them. I want those lazy Sundays waking up to my wife and spending time in bed with no schedule. I want to get up and decide to play golf and to be able to do it. I want to be able to take spontaneous weekend trips. I want to take 2x great vacations a year. I want my non-work hours to be non-stressful in that I'm not always thinking about work.

These are constraints -- they will limit my comp ceiling (even in LO AM I could for instance cover internet stocks working 60-65hrs a week and make ~1.5ml, but I don't want to do that) but I'm perfectly happy with that. Just figure out what will bring you LT contentment and work within that. I've got a 'soft' NW target by 60 which I feel is quite realistic at an unheroic comp progression if I stay within this industry (which is the big 'if' I suppose), but if I don't hit it exactly that's also fine. 

i would give this post and all the commenters 100s of silver bananas if i could. this sort of content is exactly what makes WSO worth browsing after all the dozens of semi-worthless posts and ranting and political toxicity.

everyone here has already wonderfully extolled your choice and provided great wisdom. i have nothing more to add other than my support for all the general sentiments shared here as someone who did 2 years in IB then pivoted to a very “non-traditional” (for IB) career. i am 10x the happier for it - have found friends, a relationship with someone i am head over heels for, and work that is much more fulfilling and joyful than any high finance work i could’ve forced myself to do for a few extra dollars. yes, you may not make the same millions of dollars as a certain colleague or two but you seem like a smart person who understands that money/work is a means to an end of a joyous and well-lived life, not the end itself. for some people, they genuinely enjoy the grind like sick sadists or perhaps they have some deeper insecurities / handcuffs guiding them into terribly stressful careers - whatever the case, i would suggest you wish them all the best but ultimately know what is best for you may not look the same for everyone. but if you ask me and any sane person it sounds like you’re making a great decision :)

feel free to DM me if you want to trade more personal details (i exited my 2 year IB analyst stint fairly recently) but i think you’re making the best decision you can for yourself, which is in itself the best decision possible!