IB Burnout - Is it worth it?
*reposting it here because a mod moved it to Job Search - it would be great to hear the IB communities take on this so please leave it here if possible.
After a brutal summer with one of the lowest conversion rates in the banks history, I managed to secure a full-time offer at at a place known on here to be one of the biggest sweatshop groups in the industry.
The last thing I want to sound by making this post is ungrateful, because I'm not. I understand how hard the full-time recruiting environment is right now, but it honestly makes me sick to my stomach knowing that I'm going to be going back to that place relatively soon and working for a bunch of psychopaths. I (and all of the other summers) were in pretty dark places over the summer and given how few people were offered and that I didn't have any time to full-time recruit, it seemed like I just had to accept it.
I guess the situation I'm facing now is: 1. Keep recruiting for another role or 2. Go there and potentially face serious damage to my mental/physical health or burn out completely (It's happened quite a few times over there, I've seen it). Would reneging with nothing lined up be completely stupid? If you ask anyone, I'm one of the most hard working / disciplined people they know but this place almost broke me. Is it honestly worth it?
Would be great to hear some opinions from people who have pushed through at sweatshop groups.
IMO unless your alternative is FAANG corp dev or MFPE, even just making it through a year in banking will give you better options than anything you'd land at this point. If you burnout, go take a corp dev job. But I think you're doing yourself a disservice to renege with nothing, or to renege for a far lesser role. Don't aim to be the best analyst day 1, just get your work done and don't stay later than needed.
Try to prepare yourself as much as possible - get your mental health in a good place now, find a therapist in NYC that you like (do Zoom for now) just to get your support system laid in advance.
Yes your year or two there is going to suck, but it lays the groundwork for a much better job down the line, and the branding and experience will follow you your whole career. If you take some random FP&A job or whatever else is still recruiting right now, it'll take you years to catch up with your career.