How & When did you realise that IB was the true calling of your life?

Hello to all the seasoned professionals and students trying to break in

I have a question for all of you. What is it about IB that got you determined to break into it? What aspects of the work check the boxes for you that you gladly trade your bedsheets for spreadsheets?

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Not smart enough to code? No disrespect to engineers but I know countless software developers with bachelors or even associates degrees in completely non technical fields who took a six month coding bootcamp and immediately found six figure jobs writing software. And they've progressed upwards (title, $) from there. If you want to do quantum computing or machine learning you might be out of luck, but the majority of coding (and coding jobs) don't require an off the charts IQ or years of training.

 

I really just want to use all of the concepts that I learned in my undergrad in the real world. Valuation/modeling/marketing are always going to be sought after skills for large investors/banks. It is also super interesting to help out entrepreneurs and boards of companies that need help restructuring or searching for a target firm or entrepreneurs that are looking for exit ops. It is satisfying to help others through your hard earned skills, and the compensation keeps you comfortable. I like to think about it like every tombstone is a company that is growing EPS through M+A, someone possibly just retired off of the sale of the business, and more jobs are created/kept. Money is not a huge motivator once you make it in IB, therefore it is important to remember other why's. 

 

Very few, but the vast majority will self-select out to do PE/HF/Corp or a completly diff course in life (eg. law school / wind turbine engineer / NGO work in Africa). If an analyst wants to continue and is not a complete moron, he/she will make VP somewhere.

 

This one's tough as I seriously doubt anyone goes into IB thinking it's their true calling. They may think it after reading about stories in it and getting peer pressured by their classmates etc but I seriously doubt anyone goes into IB thinking it's the holy job they were called to from the beginning. From my end, having worked in both IB and PE I definitely realized I loved financial services but not in the nitty gritty role of being on a deal team so I took a more high-level role after which I am happy to discuss over PM.

 

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