Flaming Out - What have Others Experienced?
Monkeys,
Currently mid way through my VP years. Throughout my career (spent a few years in various roles before breaking into IB) I have always been the hard charging overachiever. Once I entered IB I approached the job with the same care / intensity through the years. Always very highly rated and well regarded.
If you had asked me a few years ago what I saw in my future, I’d have told you that I wanted to be a career banker. Climb the ladder to MD, grind that out for a while, etc.. while this wouldn’t be easy, I do think I could achieve this.
Lately I’ve found it very hard to get motivated to do the job. I really don’t know if this is what I want to do anymore. I do have the talent and capability to be successful on this path if I put the work in, but I just don’t know if it’s the life I want. I dislike the travel required, nights in hotels away from my family, constantly being in a rush and always stressed about something or another, getting 500 emails a day and being on calls back to back from 8 am to late into the night.
I kinda just want a simple life. To slow down. Relax and enjoy the fruits of my labor of the last decade plus. I pursued this path, like many others, for money. I am not in NYC and have always been diligent about saving / investing and have squirreled away $2.5mm, which honestly is probably enough of a foundation for me to have a very nice life. I grew up very, very middle class and this is more money than I ever expected to have, let alone at 31.
Have others who at one point thought they’d be career bankers changed their minds and exit around this level? Did you ever regret it?
I’m a very pragmatic person, and try not to make decisions based on emotion. But the desire to walk away is something that has been surfacing for a while now, and really hasn’t gone away.
Bump, curious to hear
I had that moment as a VP. Totally flamed out. But realized that it wasn’t IB that was the problem but the firm / environment (I quite liked and still like the work of IB). Some time off and a change of scenery and I’ve been a happy MD for over a decade.
Not OP and only midway thru associate years (sorry to hijack this post) - how did you manage time off and still keep door open to re-enter IB and how did you know IB was still the right path without trying other roles (e.g., corp dev, start-ups, etc.).
OP - I'm in a similar boat except younger, although wonder how you didn't hit his wall sooner. In my case, IB has gotten much less lucrative (weighing in the diminishing purchasing power) and hours continue to be so punishing - it would be great to achieve the NW you got to but wondering if it's worth the grind if it just lands me in the same spot with ALL (instead of just some) of my 20s melted away
Is there not something you're more interested in doing now that money is not an issue?
Honestly, I feel like this is a question everyone I know in IB grapples with and I don’t have a good answer.
Most of the people I know that left banking don’t regret it and are happy. A small few, who happen to be very risk averse, lost other aspects of their lives in banking like hobbies and are very money focused end up constantly looking backwards. The other reality however is that in a HCOL city, there really aren’t many great alternatives to make enough money to be very comfortable without incurring risk.
As I think about it more, I feel like the right play is to probably move to a LCOL or MCOL city with a well paying but more balanced role. But who knows. It’s honestly a weird time and the macro factors, AI fears, etc. only add to the stress.
I also want to add that I did leave banking for some time to try other roles and came back, and regretted it pretty quickly. If you do leave, make sure to not let nostalgia or rose tinted goggles cloud your judgement.
When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty.
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