Investment banking is a career only for people who do not want to have a life long partner and/or children. It is for people who only want to work and make money. Agree or disagree?
I don’t understand why anyone would make a career out of this if they also wanted a work-life balance. It doesn’t make sense to work in this field because you’re never going to get that balance, so why even go for it. Why think about it? The way I see it, if you want a lifelong career in IB, PE, VC, etc, even big law, you should take a really good look at yourself, examine yourself and your priorities before taking that big step.
I hear that a lot of families aren’t that great because their investment banker mother or father is always at work. That scares the hell out of me. I wouldn’t want to do that to my wife and children. Miss birthdays and births for a video call with a client who only wants to make money? Are you kidding me? I know this sounds like I’m bashing the field (apologies to anyone offended), but I’m simply examining myself and trying to figure out if this is really what I want.
Yes, pretty much. And the "golden" exit of PE is more or less the same doesn't matter how you slice it. At the end of the day, many see IB as a launching pad to more chill careers.
I personally disagree, but my path is very different than most on WSO. I'm older with a wife and kid who is transitioning into IB. Granted, I'm not in NY and wlb will be better than most of you who are analysts there.
I see it as a much quicker way to financial freedom while performing work that affects entire companies vs my current corporate job where I am a small cog in a giant machine. This new financial freedom in a lcol area will allow my wife to quit her job, spend more time with our son, allow us to have more kids, send them all to a nice school, be debt-free, pay off our house in a few years… the list goes on. Will I have to sacrifice more time? Yes, but anything in life that pays you well will cost time. Even tech, and especially entrepreneurship. With that being said, even though analysts make a lot of money out of school and can have great exit ops, it is a hard, hard road starting out, especially in the sweatier groups/companies.
Edit: wanted to add some more context. I’ve worked for seven years and have never made more than a first year analyst. First two years were at 45k and I worked 55-85 hours a week. Second two years, I was paid 55k and traveled overnight 3-5 days a week, and worked 45-65 hours. The last three years have been much easier hours/travel, and making 65-75k.
I mean if I do plan on staying in IB until the MD level, which I doubt, I'd probably just go to a LMM that has good WLB. And when I mean good WLB I mean like less than 65 hours. I know of a couple already that I could target since I've interned at in the past, that have solid deal flow. Analyst come in at 8:30 and leave at 7ish - associates 8:30 -6:30 VP and above come in 2-3 times a week. HARDLY any weekend work and they do about 15-20 M&A deals a year Idc about BB prestige and the pay scale is solid at some of these shops anyways.
Plus, honestly i most of the work I do in IB at what WSO calls a MM is seriously not that hard. So I mean after Covid everyone at my office simply goes home at 6pm and works from home. I still have work but I eat at home, watch TV with my gf and make edits. Then we go to the gym after I'm done the edits and come back and I'll do more work and watch together or do our own thing. So like I think it really depends on the group. My group is chill and we all all have the same idea of WLB so it makes this job pretty nice. People go into IB with the idea that they need to go BB no matter what group and they get put in a sweaty group and burn out. My point is the culture and group you are in makes a much bigger difference then people think. You can be a hardo anywhere you want and miss birthdays etc. or just push back a little.
Not sure if I agree with this based on anecdotal evidence. My wife is an ED at a BB, and we have three children. All the MDs in my wife's group are married and 2/3 of them have children, and about a third of the principals and about 3/4 of the partners at my UMM fund are married. Raising a family is more than available if you're willing to make sacrifices. The people I know in finance who are parents know what their priorities are, and are willing to make the choices that match with their priorities.
What do you think WLB is like for a C-level exec at a top 1000 company? Or a partner at a consultancy / law firm? Or the head of neurosurgery at a top hospital? Let's get real, none of these jobs are low-stress / low-hours.
Doubt head of neurosurgery is an actual job, but I assure you, neurosurgeons at top hospitals have low-hour jobs. Can easily choose to work "part time" or only come in a couple days a week. On the stress side, I don't think the stress of accidentally killing someone is comparable to a deal/project. I'm sure its a completely different feeling and one that doctors and surgeons learn to get used to or circumvent,
I think the emotional trauma of accidentally killing someone with your own hands (or even worse, making them a human vegetable) is significantly more emotionally taxing than losing a pitch or M&A deal going bust, even if you see death all the time in the hospital.
As an MD, my wife and family would disagree with OP.
Honestly sounds like a college kid who has spent too much time on this board. A missed birth for a video call? Common. I'm sure that has happened (and probably happened in a lot of professions), but in 10+ years in industry I have never met someone who missed their kids birth. To imply its common is farcical.
imagine your mom missing your own birth
faulty statement bro, I'm in banking SPECIFICALLY because I want to make enough money to support like 10 kids (not a meme nor a mormon).
Many reasons anon, for one, this world needs more strong willed men who have faith in God and want to grow their family. Main one is because I owe it to my mother.
i cannot fathom how expensive it is to raise that many kids but each to their own ig
Your sole function as a human is to reproduce, that's another one. If you can't do that you have quite literally failed your life's evolutionary purpose.
Am a liberal. I'm gonna go with an extremely hot take here (for a liberal) but based on some stuff, including the fact that 41% of trans people commit suicide, I personally don't believe that someone can be transgender scientifically. I think that it is likely a mental disease / illness or trauma/abuse growing up that gives them identity disorder where they can't figure out who they are or who they want to be because they just aren't accepted how they were initially. Evolutionarily, it just doesn't make sense for 5.6% of our population (latest numbers) to be LGTBQ. That's also likely why so many of them end up committing suicide. First thing we were taught in biology is that bad traits breed out extremely quickly and good traits end up staying in the gene pool extremely often. Our bodies have evolved to fucking perfection because anyone not perfect ended up not surviving. 5.6% of people being LGBTQ is probabilistically impossible because it's a fucking massive defect. However, I still vote liberal because LGBTQ is not really a big issue to me. It's 5.6% of our population. Who gives a fuck what weirdos want to do. There are other things that matter to me more.
Banking is definitely a career that requires more hours than a typical 9-5 job; however, it also confers much greater benefits. It's a very predictable way to earn a significant amount of money if not create generational wealth.
The early years are always brutal, but after the first 5 years or so, I believe there are paths in banking that allow folks to have more free time, enough to have a family and kids, but again, it kind of depends on your definition of work life balance and what type of life you want to lead. If you want to take your kids to school everyday, make every sporting event, tuck them in every night, and spend a lot of time with your significant other, you could easy hop off the banking path early, take a F500 finance job in a tier 3 city, make 120k/year and have a great life. I think some of the MM banks are much more WLB friendly, again, perhaps you're not closing your laptop at 5pm everyday, but you have enough space in your life to be home at 6, take a couple hours off, and then get back online later at night. Weekends are maybe more predictable, perhaps not enough to not check your phone all day, but enough to be able to push back and carve out a few hours to watch little Timmy's soccer game and grab lunch. Work life balance is by definition, the balance between work and life and you have to decide how much you like working and how much you like doing life stuff.
I think people idealize work life balance and want to be happy, rich, and only work 9-5 or whenever they feel like it. In reality, most jobs aren't that pleasant, so you need to find what works for you. You're either working more to make more money, but then you sacrifice time, or you have time, but sacrifice worldly pleasures such as nice vacations, private schools, fancy cars/meals etc.
Edit: I think some of the above posts shed light on how the WLB can change if you move into a better group. Again, banking will never be a 9-5, but if you find good MDs to work with, ones who manage work well and have their own lives to worry about, you can find that travel is limited, hours will be long, but flexible, and the combo of those combined with pay of a few hundred grand a year if not more, generally make it a pretty solid job all around.