[Comment removed by mod team]
 

No such thing. Maybe some dead end junior FP&A/reporting job at large corp as part of a bloated team. I’ve seen people report 10-20 hour work weeks (they managed to automate the repetitive reporting BS they do) with ~$115k pay or something. But obviously the job is dead end and you have no hope of career advancement / increasing that comp for the foreseeable future. Probably fine if you don’t plan on marrying/having kids and just move to the Eastern Europe/Latin America or just live in an RV in the Mojave Desert or something. Satellite internet is a thing with Starlink so can literally Zoom call in middle of desert…

The other thing I’ve thought of is joining finance team at tech startup. A lot of the times they’re WFH and while the WLB won’t be amazing, would still be better than banking and you retain some career upside.

 

i'm at a tech startup as a SFA, 100% remote, great WLB (probably pulling 45-55 hours/week) and def career upside. only downside is the risk of industry and company size. just went through a round of layoffs and it was never clear who was gonna get cut, which was worrisome for months until it finally happened (wasn't affected thankfully). i'd actually also add that as you progress in your career, you will start limiting yourself based around revenue band of company. you can't be CFO at a $100M ARR tech startup then expect to jump to $2B+ at same level, completely different environments.

 

Consider long-only asset management. Great pay and fairly reasonable hours in many places. However, there are very few spots open as few people leave their roles.

Alternatively, some regional boutique or regional middle market shops can pay well and you work better hours (50-60 per week) if you are willing to move to a different city and work at a less recognized group - you would need to find a firm that has this optimal mix however.

You can develop relevant skills in these roles and have the flexibility to move to other functions later if you want.

 

I disagree with the regional boutique take. Those "opportunities" typically suck for one of the following reasons: 

  • You may find yourself still working IB hours with IB level stress but getting paid half of what your old I-Banker friends at a namebrand make. Sooner or later the idea will pop into your head of "fuck this shit, if I'm going to deal with this I want to get paid"
  • Working with christ awful MDs who staff you on sub-scale, shit-ass baby deals that require tons of work/hand-holding but never close (or do close and only make a few hundred thousand in fees) 
  • They typically aren't long-term, viable career paths. There are very few people who become rainmaker MDs after going from Analyst to MD at a regional boutique. Typically the business model is to have just enough juniors to crank out bitch work while keeping overhead low. Ie, goodluck being promoted to VP. And if you do get there, you won't be a real VP, you'll be a glorified Senior Associate, looking after two or so other Analysts 
  • They shut down all of the time, as they're typically ran by just one or two old boomer farts who may decide to mail it in at any time
  • Though nobody buys in to all the "culture of caring" bullshit that HR at big banks talk about, institutional IBs at least have some standard of what freaks they let represent the bank, or at least what they let said freaks get away with in the office, on the clock. The characters at boutiques are totally random. Could be harmless, nice dudes. Could be creepy old dudes who ask you to run personal errands for them, want you to come have dinner at their house, hit on the male/female interns, play favorites, have mental health issues, etc. This last one may seem like a stretch but believe me, I've heard stories from a friend that worked at a boutique where the Managing Partner was Bi-Polar, and the stories he tells me about the guy going off the rails while in office are insane. 
 

+1 to this. Person in my close circle works here and likes the exposure he's getting but he doesn't enjoy working with ~20-30% of his clients who are very unsophisticated.

Biggest perk he's had is having access to regional PE / VC / family offices and an option to co-invest in most deals he advises.

 

Dude, you work in finance and thus probs also studied finance and understand finance, you should know that no low-hanging fruit exists. Markets are mostly efficient, if such a job existed everyone would crowd into it and arb out the riskless profit. 

 

Exactly, hes asking whats the arbitrage opp atm. Being an ofans model is one thing, althought even that career path has still not been leveled out after several years, but a shortage of SWEs? Ye good luck filling that gap with very intelligent people with CS degrees in even one decade. Also, enjoyment plays a role in career choice, some careers will simply always be in high demand and since, as you say, we all study finance you know what it means for equilibrium when supply is low and demand is high.

Sure, such opportunities are few but Im sure they exist, bureu of labor and others make reports on this stuff all the time.

 

That's like saying the best income to hours ratio is sitting around collecting interest off your $20MM nest egg. Sure, low effort and high income, but the only way to get there is through hard work. Not going to just brush up your resume and send some cold emails to "break into the public company board world". You need a long successful career behind you.

Or maybe we should get a WSO board dedicated to that? "How I broke into public company boards coming from a non-target after 200 rejections"

 
rickle

Anything sales but you have to be good. That's the tradeoff. 

Not really - just attractive - or attractive for whatever region you cover 

aka big hair and fake boobs means you’ll be the #1 salesperson in Dallas metro

 

Dude I've been at it over 30 yrs. Your comment may seem like reality, but trust me that is very short lived. I've heard every excuse in the book as to why someone isn't a good rep, can't close, missed numbers, etc. The truth is you're good as your results, nothing more nothing less. In addition to selling (personal production - corporate, retail, tangible, intangible, tech, financial services, hardware, software, consulting, RIA, etc.), I've recruited and developed sales reps for most of my 35 yrs. 3 or 4 yrs selling then the rest selling while recruiting and mentoring (and having to maintain numbers). 

At the end of the day, you can sell or you can't. You can close or you can't. All different styles (personally I'm a soft cell, consultative advisor - long before that was popular). What I'm not is a pu--y. All the excuses any rep makes, including I lost the sale to a knockout who was sleeping with my client, are just that, excuses. They didn't have the stones to close the deal. That's ok. Learn from it. Develop your skills and make your natural ability the best realized ability it can be. 

Know plenty of guys/gals with great skills who are lazy and they do pretty well. Know plenty with few skills and work like dogs and they can do pretty well too. Lots of burn out there though. The killers are the ones with great skills and refined systems that have them focusing on what really matters for a decent amount of time. Everything else is meaningless (as in doesn't need to be done or can be done by someone else).

Since I went back to focusing almost entirely on my personal book (still have some legacy supervisory / mentoring responsibilities), I probably work 20 hours per week, produce new impactful revenue (lots of 5 figure paydays), and earn a very comfortable living. This can happen to good sales lifers. Just don't get caught up in the excuse world or you'll never make it.

 

+1 on LO asset management. One of my parents was a PM at one of the big funds (Fidelity, Wellington, etc) and they have awesome WLB (probably worked 30 hours a week as a senior PM, unlimited PTO, don’t think they missed a family dinner my entire childhood) and comp is awesome - no one makes $100M a year in that field but the top performers can pull $20M+ a year which is in line with most HF/PE roles and the job is so much more stable and honestly easier.

 

Wealth Management, if you're successful and only once you make it, has got to be the cushiest gig in the world. Tons of pavement pounding when you're first just building out your book, but successful wealth managers have easily the best lifestyle of any finance professional. 

It's an even cushier gig if Daddy owns his own practice in Charlotte/Atlanta/Lauderdale/etc. and you never even have to bust your ass starting out.

 
Most Helpful

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Nobody makes money down south, they just inherit it from generation to generation and move it around into different accounts or assets. The reality is most people who grew up rich in the south did so because their great-great grand-daddies owned land & slaves. One day when they're old enough, they'll take a big old chunk of the family trust and use it to own a chain of Zaxby's, where African Americans sweat over stoves, for $7.50 an hour. 

No new money, no new ideas, no new wealth. Just the same old money funneled into a slightly different asset. Buncha assholes.  

 

Oh the daddy thing is a thing? I know a couple of these guys, thought it was cute they left a trad track (one law; one banking) to do this with their dads - both sit at different solid banks doing this with their established dads. albeit in NY.

 

Wealth Management can be actually pretty stressful…not from the hours but by the fact you are handling unsophisticated peoples money. Unless you are working with UNHW, people can be extremely irrational and these are people you know personally too. When I was in the industry, which was recently, I saw many FAs stress out so badly. Something just different managing money for retail clients..but for the most part it’s a good WLB but almost impossible to build your own book solo these days. 

 

Since we're defining effort by total hours worked, i would go with Deep sea diver technician.

Got a friend who's got their certification for deep sea welding and assembly. He said one of his first job was for an global o&g company to assemble their offshore rigs, worked around 4-5 hours diving per days for a week or so, got paid close to 80k USD gross. In total, you worked 30 hours for 80k. or around USD 2,6k/hour, which is insane.. And you could go up to 150k per contract which usually only takes 1 week at sea and a month or so of prep.

 

ASEANalyst

Deep sea diver technician.

Got a friend who's got their certification for deep sea welding and assembly. He said one of his first job was for an global o&g company to assemble their offshore rigs, worked around 4-5 hours diving per days for a week or so, got paid close to 80k USD gross. In total, you worked 30 hours for 80k. or around USD 2,6k/hour, which is insane..

I’ve met a few divers when I did shipyard work in the past. They made doctor salaries, it’s insane.

 

Even supermodels make less than MDs or PMs. Unless you are in the top 0.1% of models, you will have a hard time making more than a second-year analyst even at your peak. Maybe you did mean 0.1% by supermodel, but the term is used very loosely to describe a lot of models now so wasn't sure. It's a lot like the acting and music industry in terms of the gap in income. Another issue is that it can get really miserable, sometimes they make you stand in line for 12 hrs during castings or make you take back-to-back overnight flights to meet your job quotas for the agency. And if you do manage to reach the top 0.1%, you would have had to eat shit for at least 5 years to get there unless you are a nepo baby. 

 
Rainmakah

Title pretty much says it. What do you guys think gives the most financial output with the least work input.

In IB? Most likely Financial sponsors.

PE also seems to be a joke nowadays - most PE junior gremlins seems to outsource 90% of their role. 

London Sponsors M&A - EB
 

Tenured full professor of finance at R1 school who has slowed down on research. Base salary ~$300k. Teach all off you classes (3) in one semester, ~10hrs a week of face time + a few hours a month of committee work. For 4 months a year. Rest of time off. 4-5 conferences a year at cool places where work pays. Summer support of 2/9th (22%) or $66k. So, close to $400k for 4 months of a part-time job hanging out with perky undergrads.

 

You can’t slow down on research though. Most profs are cranking out 4-5 papers a year (and at an R1 they have to be nontrivial, meaningful papers). Plus they have to mentor the research of PhD/Masters students. 
 

Tenure means you won’t get fired over petty things and will have time to find a new gig, but it doesn’t mean you can’t get fired. A professor doing 0 research will get shown the door in a few years. 

Array
 

IncomingIBDreject

You can't slow down on research though. Most profs are cranking out 4-5 papers a year (and at an R1 they have to be nontrivial, meaningful papers). Plus they have to mentor the research of PhD/Masters students. 

 

Tenure means you won't get fired over petty things and will have time to find a new gig, but it doesn't mean you can't get fired. A professor doing 0 research will get shown the door in a few years. 

No. It’s called going deadwood. Plenty of R1 fulls stop. Yes, you need one paper every 5 years to remain AQ. You’ll lose summer support and won’t get a meaningful raise…you won’t get fired. That’s the point. Worst thing they can do is not give you a raise and cut discretionary (summer support and travel), you can teach in summer…which can pay more than research support and is often more than summer support and over by end of June for summer 1…just in time for kiddos vacation.

 

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