Is 1 year in banking really equivalent to 2 elsewhere?

You definitely learn twice as much in such a short time frame, at least when it comes to technical skills. I Worked in corporate for 3 years before IB, and am now in corp dev. Working with some of our departments you can clearly see that there’s a difference between a regular 9-5 person and someone that did IB. They just take much longer to get stuff done, don’t have any presentation skill and can’t really use excel other than data entry. Every time there’s a more complex excel exercise, we get asked to help out and do it for them. This sounds like me shitting on regular employees but I was the same way before I did IB. Looking back I learned an insane amount in 2 years and am now so much more efficient and skilled with work. I could barely use excel before other than basic formulas, would just use my mouse all the time and my ppts looked like a 3rd grade school project. There might not be a crazy difference between IB and like ER but there certainly is to someone that does like an entry level credit analyst role.

Not necessarily. Many analysts are never trusted to do significant modeling or analysis. So they might spend tons of hours sending around diligence trackers and WGLs. But they’ll have learning almost nothing 

I don’t think it’s as simple as IB analyst with 1 YOE will “know” twice as much as a generic analyst with 1 YOE in a generic 9-5 business role. It’s not like they’ll have “2x the technical skills” or “2x the knowledge” of people that did less demanding roles. But that’s a pedantic way of looking it and doesn’t really capture what’s valued in the finance or corporate world. Effectiveness and reliability are what are valued and they absolutely crush 9-5ers by those standards.

They’ll have spent 2x (or honestly more) the time doing qualitative and technical work under high pressure, under tight deadlines, for demanding clients, with high accuracy requirements, on novel situations, sometimes with limited information, for bosses with very high expectations, around competitive and intelligent peers and superiors. From a general employee value point of view I think they’re getting 2x the development of people that frankly just phone it in without really learning anything new or having real pressure to perform and grow. Not to mention the exposure you get from being on hundreds of client calls and meetings hearing incredibly smart people discuss their business. I think they can easily come in and be 2x as effective, reliable, and valuable over time as someone without a comparable work ethic and level of exposure.

This isn’t just theory. The analysts in my group that exited (with promotions) to less demanding corporate roles repeatedly observe the same exact trend, they run CIRCLES around their peers, work much harder and faster, get promoted earlier, get better projects, etc. This doesn’t translate to getting paid more right away unfortunately, but I think it has a significant impact on being respected and valued as a professional, which has a significant impact on your long term trajectory. The people above shitting on IB work as easy or monotonous or “process oriented” are clowns, as if every random ass FLD or Big 4 analyst is spending 35-40 hours a week doing COMPLETELY NEW advanced particle physics for NASA with 0 processes established. Give me a damn break.