Fintech PM better than IB?

I recently accepted a product management position at a Fintech company. This role requires 40-50 hours per week, and comes with a TC of $82K base, $7.5K signing bonus and 40-60% target bonus.

In terms of shit like retirement and bonus, I’ll have a lower benchmark with my $82K base in contrast to ppl in IB with their $85K base. Furthermore, my SB is only $7.5K and I know most IB juniors get a $10K bonus.

Is this role worse than IB, comparable, or better? Would love to hear some insight, thanks!

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These questions keep being asked and you aren’t going to find your answer on a message board. Not to offend you, but this is a bad question. 

Better in what way? These are completely different jobs. They require different interests, backgrounds, passions, personalities, etc. 

Figure out what’s important to you (money? Work life balance? Intellectual challenge?) and make sure you find the career that lines up with that. But my advice is to make sure you are passionate about whatever you go into, if not you won’t make it very far. 

 

The whole tech (especially tech sales) vs high finance discussion has definitely been done before - you are not crazy to choose the role in fintech. Your pay/future earnings will be more variable than IB and your career advancement may be less steady. If you successfully hop between high comp & trendy tech/fintech companies, you may out-earn a similar career in high-finance. Your fintech company could also go tits up in 9 months. The main advantage of IB is everyone knows it. Your resume will always benefit. If you work at some random fintech company, future employers outside the industry may have trouble understanding your experience. It is not worth saying one career is "better" than the other, however this is an IB forum....

 

I mean it really depends. If we are talking like Paypal/Mastercard/Chime you can 100% make north of $500k+ at the MD equivalent level. Still, the ceiling is almost always lower than it would be in Investment Banking. But the tradeoff is that it will be unusual for you to work 80+ hours a week if you are at one of the mentioned firms, or one of their rivals.

The career paths are totally different. Again, compensation ceiling is lower but still extraordinarily high compared to 95% of jobs out there. 

 

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