It broke me
Hey Monkeys,
I'm going to make this my last time on WSO. after a few years in industry I think It has finally broken my will. I'm writing as I feel like it will give me good closure. Also because I hope these reflections can help the next monkeys coming up.
In a strange way, I should've never even made it to investment banking. I was an Redacted in my late teens and through a mix of hard work and luck ended up at a Redacted. I didn't even know what investment banking was until I was almost done with my education. And after lateraling in from outside industry I thought I had made it. I was proud; I was confident I could succeed.
This was only to realize down the line that I was at the bottom end of the street, where pay and brand name are not perks of the job. I did the late hours for two years and kept attempting to move up. My ambitions of ending up in a more lucrative and respectable organization, started becoming unrealistic desires. And although unrealistic is not impossible, success in finance no longer seems possible for me to accomplish without sacrificing other aspects of my life which I find too important, mainly my mental health.
The biggest problem for me is deeply personal, and it boils down to not being able to control my emotions to the degree necessary in this field. Being on the older side of my "class" it's very difficult to see others (sometimes 2-3 years younger than me) have such a stronger advantage career advantage over me, particularly when the momentum makes it so that the chasm between the winners and 'not-so-much'es exponentially grows at this stage (mid-20s early 30s, A2A, A2PE, you know the deal). Its hardest when you're at the epicenter, in Midtown/San Francisco/The City/Hong Kong, wishing you had done things better in the past, feeling like a loser, destined to hardship, and then lacerating yourself because you realize you're being ungrateful that you have so much already. It resurfaces insecurities I've faced in my own past, when I was most powerless in life.
I can no longer justify that for myself, and I require time to recompose my own mind and start learning to play to my strengths in a different field. I will say that I don't regret it, because it taught me so much about the world, business, how capital flows and impacts millions of people. I also met so many wonderful people along the way.
Farewell finance. Thanks to WSO community for teaching me so much on this journey. Good luck to you all.
