Incoming BB IB Analyst: Why are we actually doing this?

Hi everyone,

I’m an incoming analyst at a BB IB coverage group, and as I’ve started getting the headhunter emails and looking ahead, I’ve been thinking deeply about the life I actually want.

Why do people care so much about prestige? At the end of the day, none of this matters. When you’re 85 years old, you’re not going to measure your life by whether you made PE partner or I have xyz net worth; you’re going to measure it by your relationships and your actual lived experiences.

What is the innate reason for the fantasy of becoming a mega-fund PE partner? Is leaving banking for anything with real equity upside not the fundamentally higher-leverage play? You’ll still have the brand name and safety net of your pedigree, but for the first time, you’ll actually be grinding for yourself.

When you look at the trajectory: Target School to BB IB to MF PE to HBS—it starts to look like a loop where people are outsourcing their self-worth to institutions just to have someone tell them they are worth something.

If you have the intellect and work ethic to grind through that entire pipeline, is it not vastly higher upside to pursue a startup or build something with your own equity? To a lot of people currently in MF Partner or BB MDs or other seats people grind towards: If you jumped into a startup or entrepreneurial venture when you were younger with the exact same amount of vigor, wouldn't you have equally have killed it.

Even if you look at day to day: If you look at the math: what is the actual point of the $400k associate salary vs. $150k? Once your baseline needs are covered, your life is fundamentally no different. The startup money is just to cover essential needs—the difference is you are playing to win (have a shot at vastly beating the avg ideal WSO path, whereas everyone in PE is playing not to lose. You don't own actual equity upside on the traditional track, and by the time you finally get a sliver after a hyper-competitive meat grinder along with many things not in your control (fund performance, politics, PE as an industry) ... isn't the bigger risk the wasted time actually not taking a shot on yourself?

Also if you left target school to BB IB to startup is your market value of career not raised: You maximized IB financial learning but you also pick up operating skills. The initial brand never leaves your resume. Does the incremental "I got to HBS or partner at a fund" really do anything that makes you more objectively credible then to rationalize the wait. Not even considering then that you likely get trapped in golden handcuffs not going to take a risk. Is the time not optimal right now. Putting compensation aside what do you actually get in PE in terms of learning or actual assets for you (network I suppose). Would you not pick up much more tangible useful skills in a startup.

I think I'm pretty set on leaving banking for something with either equity upside or something entrepreneurial. Curious how others here think about this or if everyone is just running on autopilot.