IB Sucks. I'm out
- Mind-numbing work
- Hours that frankly, are insane. This is your life.
- Exit ops include other finance jobs where either the hours are just as high, the work is more stressful, or other finance jobs you will take a pay cut and you could've obtained without killing yourself in your low 20s
- Most girls literally don't know the difference between investment banking and operations analyst at Goldman
- Who gives a fuck about "prestige" when the only people you interact with 95% of the time are people who rank above you and tell you what to do? You are chasing a false idea of prestige while ironically spending your short life as an office bitch. How much is this so-called prestige materially increasing your quality of life?
- The hours to pay ratio is not good
- Getting to watch everyone around you live happier more fulfilling lives
- The potential upside is nowhere near what it used to be
- Very few people take this job for the right reasons. Almost all are motivated by a combination of money, perceived prestige, and social pressure
TLDR: I'm leaving banking. I can make a good living elsewhere without all the bullshit. I would bet the average happiness of someone making 40k a year is far better than the happiness of an analyst living alone working 100 hours a week remotely at a BB.
What a unique POV.
More differentiated than any piece of Wall Street equity research report
Congrats! good for you.
I 100% agree with you, and I did the same as you’re doing. I quit in December without much of a backup plan. IB sucks, and it’s just not worth it at all if you’re a decently smart college graduate. I have no regrets of quitting and urge my friends to reconsider what’s best for them as well.
Honestly getting tired of this view that I'm seeing. Even today, in no other profession can you find the upward mobility and high starting salary that IB provides. Law and medicine require years and years of schooling (absolutely gargantuan opportunity cost) to start at only an ingratiating income that has similar levels of stress and hours once you hit the ground running - only at that point, it'll be in your 30's and you'll have to reconcile the high hours in your career along with a family life. Tech? Sure, enjoy 70%+ of your bonus being stock compensation that vests, ensuring that you'll be anchored to 1 company for the rest of your life.
Look at some of your reasons. Most girls don't know the difference between IB and operations analyst at GS? So a motivator for you at your job is how impressive it seems to girls? That seems like you care about the prestige, and yet the point directly after that is "who the fuck cares about prestige?" Well, it seems like you do, actually, which is why you don't have the balls and mental fortitude to push through when it gets hard. It's extremely fucking ironic for you to say "very few people take the job for the right reasons" when it doesn't seem like you even resonate with what those reasons are.
Of course everyone around you is getting to live more fulfilling lives - you work double their hours but when you're 30 and they're 30, you can be working at a LMM as a VP working 65 hours cleaning 400k+ a year while they're on the corporate ladder in a marketing job paying them 110. You don't like your firm? Then leave, go to a different city with a different COL, go try HFs, go corporate, do whatever the fuck you want. The profile and reputation you've built in your career are inelastic.
As someone who probably worked one of the hardest hours on the Street last year, I wanted to quit at least 30 times last year. Every week in Q1 I dreamt of quitting. Not just every week, almost damn near every day. And looking back at it now, I am so glad I made the decision to push through as I personally feel extremely grateful that I have a cushy office job when tons of people's lives and incomes got erased by COVID.
It's brave for you to value your immediate happiness and take the initiative to quit IB. It's not easy to make that move - I couldn't - and I am not shitting on you for that. I am however criticizing you for shitting on the industry as a whole. You say "if you like banking then more power to you" and yet your post implies significant disdain for those who are still in, or prospectively entering, the industry. That seems pretty hypocritical to me and IMO an overly biased message that can negatively influence the more malleable who have yet to have conviction in what they want to do
the thing about girls caring was just a joke to show how much of the prestige doesnt really exist, no need to read into it. I don't think you're realizing how many different ways there are to create wealth. it isn't just law, medicine, banking or you're gonna be below 100k your entire life. I know people in PWM pulling 600k+ a year working 40 hour weeks, people who have franchised restaurants making even more, the list really goes on. If you like banking then more power to you, but imo there are better ways to achieve my goals.
There are surely many ways to create wealth - absolutely no argument here - but there are very few ways that are as defined and virtually risk-free as IB is IMMEDIATELY after undergrad. You're citing people in PWM pulling 600K+ a year working 40 hour work weeks - but what type of comparison is that? They are for sure at least in their mid 30s, had some sort of nepotistic leverage to get that pull and/or worked their ass off to build those relationships. And for every PWM killing it like that, there's 100,000 that are making significantly, significantly less. And for every 1 IB Analyst 1 who is top-bucket at a Tier 0 firm who pulled in ~$200K, 90% of IB Analyst 1s (excluding the ones that got fired or quit...) made between 120-200.
An entrepreneur who makes it big and got bought out no doubt had to hustle for years, bootstrapped and stressed for hours on end taking a risk, etc.
The fact is - if you want to be successful in anything, you have to work hard. The question is - do you want to work hard now or later? I am personally attracted to a job where the payoff for hard work is essentially "locked in" via a bonus and/or promotion/lateral opportunities. If you want to make a killing day trading or investing in crypto, or taking the risk franchising a string of restaurants together like you mentioned, then that's fine. But let's not conflate doing so as being any easier mentally than getting pushed straightforward work onto you by a VP/MD
PWM is the biggest survivorship bias of all time. What you should be asking is what % of people that start in IB make that vs PWM. PWM churn rate at all the BBs is ~97%...
Second this, I personally know someone pulling in 2.5 mil a year in PWM. People can say this is bullshit but I know it for a fact as I’m very close to this person. Granted they’ve been in the business for 30 years and built a very large client base, but work at one of the bullshit life insurance firms everyone here shits on (NWM, Mass mutual, etc) and have never worked an 80 hour week in their life and are making more than what the majority of anyone in IB will ever make in a year. Plenty of ways to make money in this world, fuck prestige. All this being said I’m still in IB now lol but definitely plenty of other ways to make great money in finance outside IB
You're wrong to think that a VP at a LMM will still be clearing 400k+ gross a year with the given trend in finance bro, maybe if they're doing super niche shit but even then that takes years and a specific type of person. In fact there are way better sales jobs that are far more fun than working as a IB VP. Tech Sales by far. Literally same job except you're selling a different service/product.
Also it's total bullshit with respect to painting a negative picture of finance to those who don't know what to do because how are you gonna post that shit when banks are literally recruiting SOPHOMORES and targeting FRESHMAN. GTFOH with that bullshit when they're trying to rush the best and the brightest and trying to make banking an awesome job when it's one of the most boring and miserable jobs on this planet that they try to justify with high compensation and supposed prestige.
That's... not how tech comp works..
Your annual comp in tech is a combo of 2-3 factors: base salary, annual bonus and annual vesting stock. Nobody counts unvested stock in any year but the current as part of your yearly comp. It's not like banking where you get a bonus for a given year which then gets deferred. Nope. Your stock component of your yearly compensation is designed to be the combination of all tranches of stock set to vest in that year. So it doesn't matter how much you were granted only how much is vesting.
When you move from one company to another they will design any offers to match or exceed the yearly comp figure you are currently getting (sans stock appreciation - i.e. only the target $ figure) from base + bonus + vesting stock. That is to say, you're never truly tied down to any tech company. Stock comp that you haven't been paid yet is just like a salary that hasn't been paid as opposed to a bonus that you were awarded that has been witheld from you.
A lot of folks on here don't seem to get this.
Disagree with the take on tech. FANG companies are paying $200K+ to new grad software engineers and there are plenty of opportunities to switch to other tech companies as well. That said, tech does have higher barriers to entry (e.g. knowing how to code) vs. banking.
The discussion between these two people really sums it up.
There's a "type" of person who thrives in IB. And plenty of people who join, and realize it's not for them. Guess who's who here. And they're both right - for people like them.
The person who thrives in IB is aware that there's plenty of nonsense in it, and consistently reevaluates whether it's worth staying, while - and this is important - simultaneously still playing the game, to move up the ladder. Very smart move; speaks really well of their ability to juggle conflicting sentiments/priorities. Often, they're a natural born fit for IB: 3rd year Analysts/1st year Associates who already have the body language of an MD; a little taller than average, keep their shirts and suits clean and well-pressed; don't seem to gain weight no matter how many hours they work; and have fully mastered the art of the crisp, soulless email that deflects work efficiently. And they deliver. Ultimately, this kind of person is primarily money-oriented; very, very few jobs provide a better 20 year NPV than IB (massive projected cashflows, and the discount rate is moderate). And awareness of this basic calculation, and a significant personal attachment to financial growth and security, keeps this person in banking, year after year.
The person who realizes it's not for them would be wise to leave within 2-5 years. Any more, and you start to become too expensive for the portion of your IB skills that are transferable at your seniority level. Any less, and you come off as flaky (this is especially true for UG analysts; if you're an MBA Associate, your pre-MBA longevity/loyalty can somewhat balance out the equation for you). This kind of person has more of a "life's too short for this shit" POV; they're aware of the NPV proposition, but value other things. Some are buyside/Corp Dev material, others are better suited for a career outside finance. They tend to struggle with maintaining appearances in IB; unlike their "lifer" counterpart, the physical and psychological toll is much more acute for them. They gain weight, struggle to wake up in the morning, have terrible hangovers when they actually manage to get a night out, always find themselves unable to make time for friends, etc. Except for the star analysts exiting to PE/HF, or rich-family MBA associates with a massive safety net, most of them are suffering some kind of career angst. We get it: get out of IB already.
On a 2nd order insight level, since IB usually selects for high achievers with some decent pre-IB prestige on their resumes, and IB also selects, the average incoming class has a pretty high sense of self. I won't go as far as to call it inflated, but it's fair to say that as a class, they have lofty ambitions of what they're meant to accomplish. And since IB itself does the Hogwarts sorting hat thing for the above two categories on a very, very frequent basis (most infrequent: every bonus season to most frequent: every day), and for 95%+ of bankers, it's always a personal decision, I find that bankers end up heavily justifying why they stay, or why they quit.
My advice to both camps, as a matter of personal dignity, is to just carry on with your decision and don't make such a big deal out of it.
You quit banking and still have your youth ahead of you? Great, join a massive alumni network of ex-bankers glad to be out. Among us, we can have a beer and a laugh about the bullshit we put up with for some spare change. But when sharing our stories with people who don't know us well, keep it short and sweet. My blurb is simply "I enjoyed the modeling experience the first few months, and I made some friends, but very soon I found it about as interesting as watching paint dry, and only stayed for the easy money, until even that wasn't enough anymore." Chuckle. Wink. Move on. Not much else to say. Any more and you come off as a brat who is clamoring for recognition as a special snowflake for quitting IB, which is a pretty well trod path. The sooner you move on, the sooner you'll actually be doing all those things you felt IB didn't allow you to do: travel to Argentina, learn a language, lose 20lbs, get laid, see your family and friends, ski in the Pyrenees/Alps for New Years, etc.
You've stayed in banking and made VP/Director etc? Great. You can stomach some serious work volume. You've got great attention to detail, and have found a sponsor internally. You're making more money than almost all of us do. If you've done particularly well, you even have some time and friends to enjoy it too. But please, don't actually start drinking the Kool-Aid. We all know the guy who actually starts to love the job. The one who points to deals reported in the papers/Bloomberg and says "we were on that" with a shit-eating grin. The one who thinks the models actually mean something. The one who talks about "adding value" while merely redistributing it and then taking a cut. The one who wishes younger people had more "attention to detail/stamina/sense of perspective" etc. Don't be that guy. No one likes you. The pool boy's probably giving your wife a foot massage after getting head from her.
What’s the point of this post? You made your decision. Good for you. IB was not your thing. No need to be bitter about it, or call it dumb. It’s just a job.
warning the college kids on this site (of which there are a ton), to reevaluate if they actually want to pursue IB before making the same mistake I and tons of other people have made. seems like a good reason to post something to me
A job that college kids fawn over and make the sole focus of their lives - which it shouldn’t be. “It’s just a job.” I think what OP is saying is very fair. In my opinion it definitely does not deserve all the hype and admiration in most cases
"most girls literally don't know the difference between investment banking and operations analyst at Goldman"
LOL. I bet every BO/MO guy plays up the impact they have at the firm on Tinder, "I'm an analyst at GS" "I work on projects that are critical to the firms future"
Most girls don't know what a bulge bracket is bruh. I hate to break it to you but the clout they be chasing now is if you work in big tech.
you tell a girl that you are at Google, and her sahara dessert will morph into the indian ocean lmao
Girl: So what do you do?
Me: I work on Wall St (Oasis)
At the end of the day, I think all of us realized we were selling time for money - but when we signed the contract, we didn't realize the extent of what that contract meant.
As other users have said, its a risk-free career path which pays very well. For me, these are the main benefits which are completely valid and its clear why some people want them. Personally, I've realized I want my career path to be a bit more exciting and unpredictable. I want to fail trying new things and succeed doing others. I want to carve out a path thats unique to me and has meaning. More meaning than facilitating transactions - I want to build something that makes me proud. I also want some semblance of balance in my life. Time to sit back and relax. Time to think without being stressed. Time to enjoy a coffee with my S/O in the morning. Frankly, I just want time that's mine. I'm glad banking (worsened through COVID) has led to this realization because finding out what I want early will allow me to make career decisions and life choices with less regret.
At the end of the day, banking isn't for everyone. The people that stay in it will make out very well financially. The people that don't will have other opportunities. End of the discussion.
I think this is the correct take. Everyone knows going into banking, consulting, etc. that they're trading time for money and/or career acceleration. Besides the fact that these careers are objectively a grind/difficult in terms of lifestyle, I think the other reason people complain a lot about them is they realize how painful the trading for time for money can be and that it frankly isn't for them. For example, I went into Big 4 audit knowing I'd be working crazy hours for shit pay. The plan was to do Audit --> TS --> IB, since I desperately wanted to do PE at that time.
I successfully transitioned from Audit --> TS, but after seeing how much Bankers/PE guys work to earn their keep and how much I hated constantly being on-call while on deals, despite working less than they did most likely, I decided to bail from that path because it just isn't a trade-off I'm willing to make personally. Instead, I'm looking to pivot into operational finance for fast-growing, venture-backed companies or PE portfolio companies because they offer the right balance for me between career challenge, pay, and lifestyle. Just as I'm not cut out for IB/MBB/PE hours, I also know that I'd personally get bored being a middle manager at a cushy F500 company with little upward mobility or actual say in how things ought to be done at a company.
It took years for me to realize this and frankly, I'd probably still have more options had I started off in IB/MBB right away, which is why I think this forum still errs toward those paths if at all possible. Even if you realize it's not for you, which is fine, those jobs open a ton of doors and at least pay you quite well for your misery till you mature and figure out exactly what you're willing and not willing to do. Not all jobs do that, which is also why it's still so coveted, despite people knowing how much it can suck.
College kids -- take this dudes post with a grain of salt. COVID makes the experience a lot shittier than it was pre-covid. Not saying it was great but once COVID is over, you'll see less "I quit" threads on here.
I feel like this post is actually true but it's the classic WSO bs where analysts shit on prospects or interns "cuz they don't know anything" and already regret their own choices for being in this shitty industry. Then they proceed to say how we don't deserve to complain about IB hours and shit like that cuz we're ungrateful. Then they say how tech is insanely hard to break into and it doesn't make sense to compare IB to it. Quite honestly, as an incoming IB analyst next summer, I'm already preparing for SWE/PM interviews. I feel like a lot of us are easily smart enough to break into FAANG if we grinded for IB. It's acutally not rocket science albiet takes a few more braincells than the braindead shit u do in IB. I don't know what upward mobility these guys are talking about but i'll take 375k at year 4 at FB as a SWE any day over IB. I'm ready for the monkey shit from these IB analysts that have spent the last 2 years working 90hours and not doing anything fun but while we have the chance, us ppl in college need to get the fuck out
As a banker currently in the industry, I commend this post. We need more individuals to start sending this message across so waves of juniors / post-covid millennials start re-evaluating what really matters in life given this last year we went through a brutal gauntlet of no social activities or outlet, depriving us of memorable life experiences in our 20’s and 30’s.
This gives me hope that the lack of labor supply will cause banks to start focusing on work-life balance or bumping comp to pre-2008 recession levels.
These cheap ass fucking banks just need to hire a ton more associates and analysts and take the hit on their margins. So the P&L suffers a little bit...but you don't need to recruit for half of your junior work force every 2 months. These boomers are fucking retarded. I'll take 30-40% less bonus if there are humane working expectations and hard senior to junior boundaries implemented.
Sounds like OP is struggling to trying to convince himself of his decision.
Sounds like OP is very convinced of his decision and is ranting to our forum bc there is no one else around to release the stress to.
You sound like a shit VP
Love how the only pushback on this post is some form of "BuT yOu MaKe So MuCh MoNeY". Newsflash, there is more to life than money. I will likely be leaving after 1 year on the job because I value family and friends more than money. Seniors in this job have had to make sacrifices with friends / family that I am not willing to make. People don't realize the amount of paths out there that can lead to a cushy life (making mid six figures without killing yourself).
Yup IB is trash. After 5 years, I'll be out at the soonest chance I get. Will probably exit finance entirely to do something completely unrelated. People working in finance are at the bottom of the human barrel and are generally unhappy people.
It sucks because I think all of this has been exacerbated by WFH. Whereas there used to be some realization that you couldn't live in the office 24x7, shitty senior bankers view is you now live in the office so you should be productive and available 24x7. Honestly think it may create a lack of supply for buyside if it gets bad enough. Then you have shitty senior bankers saying "well how do we make it better?". Here's a hint, absolutely none of your bs corporate initiatives and fuckspeak will mean anything until you start valuing junior staff as humans. Humans who you owe career development to as part of the implicit employer/employee contract. Humans, not disposable pieces of equipment like laptops. Pre-covid, I think the trend was whinier spoiled candidates, but now the issue has flipped. For the OP, I think you are making the right decision. Who knows when this toxic death spiral will begin to reverse itself. If this becomes the new normal due to WFH...this career doesn't really make sense.
Been in this industry over a decade and COVID is the absolute worse thing to happen.
Banking was always a time sacrifice but the expectations now are psychotic
Its funny how everyone is trying to defend IB and finance...! Why would you defend it? Sign of insecurity imo. Let the guy quit, no need to add any comments.
1) Are you actually leaving?
2) Do you think there is a reason to be surprised by these dynamics after navigating the recruiting process, presumably going through an internship, having even peeked at this website / talked to a person in finance and noticed how miserable they are?
I've noticed, and no attack to you OP the items you listed are all very valid and understandable, that people who decide to quit / get really really annoyed at banking are annoyed at the value of banking in terms of ratios/opportunity costs (hourly pay, lost social life, external acknowledgement of prestige). I personally was fine with it, but I looked at everything in its entirety so, total comp, long term NPV (if you wanted a good hourly wage right now, then maybe take a 85k/yr consulting gig and find a way to stay on the bench, otherwise there's no denying the "hours to pay ratio" gets substantially better as you move up), and a personal sense of accomplishment (personal prestige?).
Is the upside not as good as it is? Perhaps not from that relative sense, but talk to anyone who grew up broke and ask them if they wont take a $150k job out of college because in the past you could make tens of millions a year if you survived to the top and now you can only make millions and cause the hourly isnt good and cause a VP with an MBA is going to yell at them while that same kid gets yelled at Karens before their coffee every morning at 6:30am on the weekends at their job.
So I think it's all relative, all things you listed are true, but from a different POV they arent drawbacks to many, so it's all personal. I did it for the money, got the money, am still doing it for the money, and it all went according to my expectations in my book, just happy to have money and an actual professional future now, dont worry much about prestige, grew up working class so my parents and I just happy to not be there anymore lol thats my "prestige" I assign to myself." Just my $0.02.