Goldman Discount
What are people's thoughts on the Goldman Discount? Do y'all think the name is worth the pay cut????
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Goldman is Goldman. The brand carries a lot of weight, even outside of finance circles. GS has the best overall brand recognition and boasts some of the best overall buyside exit opps.
For me, it wasn't. I received an offer from one of the "elite booteeks" as the kids on this website call them. GS had not yet started recruiting when I received my offer but I don't think I would have leveraged my offer even if they were.
There's a GS guy in my associate class. Over two years, he made ~$50-60k less than me. We both got absolutely rocked as analysts. We both liked the other analysts in our groups. We both learned a ton. We ended up at the same UMM PE firm (several of our colleagues went to similar caliber funds). We had relatively similar overall experiences (aside from the fact that he worked on a decent number of financings) but he got paid a lot less than I did. And trust me, that irked him.
If you know you want to leave finance soon, then maybe GS makes more sense. There's more prestige (to the average person) and optionality.
“Elite bootycheeks”
What's the pay differential at the associate level?
There’s def a discount compared to the EBs/even JPM and MS to an extent. But not that far off from so called lower tier BBs like DB / UBS
As an analyst, its 100% worth it. Maybe you'd make more at a top EB and have similar exit ops, but even as a 50 year old PE MD saying you worked at Goldman is still impactful. If I was staying on past analyst maybe it isn't worth it to stay at Goldman, but Goldman MDs jump ship to other banks all the time and I'm sure they make plenty of money in those moves.
In the long run, making $50k less over 2 years as an analyst (or even $100k less) is nothing if you land a great exit and make millions down the road.
Clarifying point, Goldman MDs looking to lateral would make money because of their pipeline and contacts, not simply because they worked at Goldman.
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