IB is Brutal? Requirements?

Greetings;

I have heard that investment banking is such a brutal life. Is it only the hours or is it that the people who do it just get so tired of it that they do not want to do it anymore? Does someone start out enjoying it and then get sick of it? Because I enjoy it now, but should I go into it if I know I will become restless and want to work in another field of finance? Also, what tests will I need to take in order to work in the industry? I'm pretty sure that I would have to take the series 7 and 79 tests, but are there any others I would need to take?

NK

4 Comments
 
Best Response

The hours are generally 70-90+/week that’s brutal in and of itself. The work at a junior level isn’t intellectually stimulating, formatting Excel or PowerPoint. Also, the personalities at the top can be shitty although that is group/firm dependent. I’d suggest reading Monkey Business to get a sense of what life in IB is really like and recognize it’s only gotten worse since that book was published. However, if you love truly Love finance IB, PE and the like offer you a great way to see finance at its most interesting even a vanilla bond issuance still usually means the treasurer and potentially CFO give you their attention. M&A can really be a bet the farm moment for a company and you get to be a part of it.

 

It's brutal because it's technically a "merit-based" job; you're expected to come prepared with an A-type, succeed through anything personality before you even start. Then on top of that the people turn around and proactively expect you to meet this archetype even when they're feeding you bullshit work to do, while the corporate overhead restricts your balls to avoid any compliance/client issues.

 

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N.J.K.

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