Is Chicago IB Pay Lower than NYC?
Apologies for a terrible question, but is investment banking pay any different between Chicago and New York?
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Not really, in some cases it can be more, and has significantly more take-home pay considering much lower rent expenses.
Besides worse exit opps, are there any downsides to Chicago?
It's cold asf
Guggenheim grabbed 2 tech MDs from Blair to build out an office in Chicago, was just reached out to the other day about joining them.
Work life balance is definitely dependent on firm culture and the group you work in not so much based on location. PE opportunities are available across the board, you may see more people come from NY than Chicago but that is more based on the fact that the pool of bankers to choose from is larger in NY. I've seen much of the same where people will post how NY is the place to be if you want to go PE but in reality it's more sector specific. For example, if I'm a PE firm that focuses on tech I'm probably going to be recruiting more from offices out in SF or silicon valley than NY. I cover FinTech here in Chicago and I have people reaching out to me for opportunities at least once a week, if you're good at what you do there will always be demand. To answer your question on the difficulty of recruiting for an NY job, probably half of the opportunities that are presented to me are for jobs in NY so the options are there and definitely not limiting being in Chicago. Market volatility is having an impact on deals right now. Being a global firm we have been in conversation with our teams in China, Korea, Italy, etc. and deals are being impacted especially cross-border. Deals aren't necessarily being cancelled but some are being put on hold, repriced for the more impacted markets and even seeing more mention of including MAC clauses during negotiations. We'll just have to wait and see what the long-term impact will be at this point.
A lot of the individual recognition comes from interacting with the PE firms directly during your normal course of business. Anytime you make a touch point with a PE firm, that is an opportunity for you to network and begin to establish relationships with those individuals that will not only benefit you in the short-term if you do decide to go PE but also in the long-term if you stay in banking. Other points of recognition just come from closing deals and people finding out that you were a part of a certain transaction, more firm and group reputation based.
The most most important skill as an Analyst is time management, it's the difference between working 70 hours a week and 100+. One of the biggest pitfalls I see is people spinning their wheels on a slide because they just can't visualize what they want to do and get nothing done for 3 hours. If I'm not able to make meaningful progress on something that I'm working on I will shift gears and move on to something else after 10 minutes, often times the inspiration will come later. Creating a list of to-dos and prioritizing tasks at the beginning of each day will add so much structure to your day. Often times your day will blow up from random things that pop up but having a priority list will keep you on point and it makes a world of difference.
Also Lincoln, Baird, Houlihan, Piper for some notable MMs