How to get out of IB / Middle market and go to large company ops

I'm at end of year 2 in banking for a respected but small Tech M&A shop. I realized recently a lifelong career in the middle market, especially in financial services / buy side is NOT what I want to be doing. Fuck this. It's good learning till now, but the companies are uninspiring and the people on this side of the table are dicks / the clients are nice folks but they're running small potato type companies. 

My dad made it to the C suite in the public company world & the lifestyle/comp/respect earned feels like it is the direction I want to go in. I think consulting might be a path to get diverse corporate exposure prior to delving in to corporate (I wouldn't want to be relegated to just corp dev / M&A); in finance I'd want strategy/ops/strategic finance for a company in an interesting industry (consumer/entertainment/high tech manufacturing/software); versus just going with the ocean and ending up at some random place. 

Curious if this resonates for any of you guys

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Just speaking from experience from my dad and his network, I know you are right - this is US based, and at the SVP~ level at a F500 comp is in to the  7 figures with RSUs and to the multi 7 figure level at EVP-C suite level. But prob takes till at least around 40 y/o to get to that level tbf, and that is not guaranteed that you will make it.

There are certainly a lot of politics and it is firm dependent / the path up is less clear. With a combination of luck, skill, and networking I think you can prove your way to the exec level more at a big co though, to some degree. Another issue now is the slowed growth of most sectors, which makes it harder to move up (if your whole company is growing, you can be part of that and work your way up).

 

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