Like a majority of people who are on this website, I used to come on here and write bullshit about a life partly my own, partly fantasy. I'm now going to uncloak the anonymous man and tell you my story.
My name is Stephen Ridley. I graduated from a top tier British University with a First Class Honours Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 2010 and went straight into IBD at a top tier European Investment Bank, after interning there in 2009. I worked in the top team (on a revenue basis) for 16 months, before quitting in October 2011. I want to tell you about that experience, and about what has happened since then, about how I left the green to chase my dream. This will be blunt and honest. I do not mean to offend, quite the opposite, I hope to inspire! Again, this isn't an attack on those who choose to be bankers, it's just me sharing my experience together with the lessons I've learnt, and hopefully it speaks to a few people. If you look at the picture above you'll see a picture of what I do now. It's a little different from where I was 6 months ago!
Banking is fucking brutal
I knew this after my internship, but I didn't care. I wanted money. I wanted respect. I wanted to be a somebody in the eyes of myself and others. But most of all, I wanted money. Why? Because money is freedom. Money means I can wear what I want, live where I want, go where I want, eat what I want, be who I want. Money would make me happy. Right? Well... not exactly I'm afraid. In fact, money didn't seem to make any of the bankers happy. Not one person in the roughly 200 I got to know in banking were happy. Yet all earned multiples of the national average salary.
The reality of banking is this. Like everyone there, I worked my ass to the bone, working mind numbingly boring work. My life was emails, excel, powerpoint, meetings, endless drafts and markups about shit I couldn't give less of a fuck about, edits, drafts, edits, drafts, edits, send to printers, pick up, courier, meetings, more work, multitasking, boredom, boredom, tired, boredom, avoiding the staffer on a friday, more work, depression, tired, tired, tired, fucking miserable. 15 hour days were a minimum, 16-17 were normal, 20+ were frequent and once or twice a month there would be the dreaded all nighter. I worked around 2 out of every 4 weekends in some form. I was never free, I always had my blackberry with me, and thus I could never truly dettach myself from the job. These are the objective facts, contrary to what any 'baller' wants to tell you. The only models were excel models, the only bottles were coca cola, which I drank a lot of to stay awake.
Though I managed to maintain relationships with certain friends (testament to how good these friends were), I never was really 'there' and never really relaxed to enjoy their company, I was either pre-occupied, exhausted, or too self-centred to really have a 2 way conversation. I was constantly tired, constantly stressed, and I had this constant reoccurring thought. The thought went like this. I'm not happy. These are my golden years, my 20s, the years I want to look back on and talk about with fondness and pride. I should be making interesting stories, having the time of my life whilst I have no dependents. I'm richer than I've ever been, yet I'm not as happy as I was backpacking around South America on a shoestring. This is bullshit.
The work isn't interesting
That placed me in the 95% majority. Your not golfing with CEOs, talking about strategy, then driving your lambo home at 3.30pm to have sex with your hot girlfriend. No, your sat at your computer, haven't spent more than 5 minutes in the sun in weeks, your out of shape, bad skin, tired, overworked, and your facing yet another office dinner before calling yourself a cab somewhere between 1am and 5am to take your lonely ass to your empty bed. In those rare moments you do get out your tie to go talk to a client, you're not having a nice interesting chat with an interesting person, you talking finance to some other depressed office drone in some corporate office, who either pretends to give a shit or, more often than not, doesn't pretend. Of course, every now and then, I did meet that rare breed who got their kicks from debt-restructuring or endless levels of back-solved pseudoscientific analysis, but this only depressed me as it reminded me how little I cared about this nonsense, and thus made me further question why I was spending every waking moment - and half the ones I should have been asleep - devoted to it.
You're never going to get as rich as the superstars you admire on the TV and watch in films
Even though I got paid well, I wasn't going out buying a different coloured helicopters every weekend, rolling in designer threads, splashing £30k on a night out and holidaying every other week in some exotic location whenever I can be bothered to charter my private jet. You'll be above average, but still pretty average. Sure, you can buy an macbook air without really thinking about it, and you can take taxis instead of the bus. But that's it. I was amazed how modestly people lived in banking given all the hype that surrounds it. They were just sad middle class bland people, with unexciting lives, and unexciting prospects. A bunch of nerds who got caught up in a cage made of money and dreams and greed, and never got out. There had to be more to life than this.
Eventually, I thought fuck this
I got to the point where I wasn't buying myself nice things anymore because doing so only reinforced my dependency on a job which I hated, a job which was taking over every aspect of my shortening life. I had worked hard at university to have a good life, a happy life, a 'successful' life. And I wasn't finding it in IBD. And nobody above me was either. Even the 'baller' MDs were really just miserable, uninteresting, and often pathetic old farts. I didn't want to be them. I wanted to be a colourful, shinny person with love in my heart. Someone with passion, happiness, laughter lines, someone who has taken life by the horns and lived on the edge, taken risks, had love and loss and seen the world.
I made my plan to leave in baby steps
First I started interviewing at other city jobs - everything from hedge fund analyst to private equity analyst to inter dealer broker to insurance to wealth management to sales to trading and even equity research. These all looked boring, these all involved wasting away the majority of my life at a desk. These all involved long working hours, even if a little better. None of these lit the fire I once had before being crushed by banking. So I looked at jobs in corporates, in their M&A team, their finance team. Again, I went to a few interviews, got offers, but it was just the same shit. I didn't want to be a drone in a suit and tie. Fuck that Stephen, fuck that!
Eventually I snapped
Despite being staffed up to my eye balls, I left the office at 7pm to prepare for an interview I had the next morning at 8.30am. The AD I was working with (5 years my senior) consequently had to work until 5am. The next morning, I wasn't at my desk at 8am as I should have been. I was at my interview. Just another mind numbing 'opportunity' to work in debt refinancing team at Tesco's head office. Fuck that. I'd had enough. There was nothing for me in any spectrum of finance. I'd had enough. I walked into work at 11am, and by 11.01, the AD had dragged me into a side room to rip me a new asshole (she'd got a little cranky after 90 minutes sleep and a lot of stress). She said that she was going to go and talk to our team head about this and stood up. I told her to sit her ass down, I'd do it for her. I walked over to his desk, and I respectfully told him I'd had enough. I thanked him for his time, he did the same, we shook hands, and I packed my shit together and sent my bye bye email around the team.
Within 20 minutes of quitting, I was out of the front door. Bye bye blackberry, bye bye security pass, bye bye banking. The sun has never shone so bright, the air has never tasted so sweet, I have never felt lighter, than that moment. I was free. I was free. I was so fucking free I could taste it!
Now, oddly, I chose this moment to go to a shopping centre (long story) with a friend. Upon walking around in a slight state of shock I saw a piano in a suit shop, and this was exactly what I needed. To play a little tune and unwind. I didn't even ask if I could play, I just went in and started playing. A man quickly came up to me, paid me a compliment and then asked me what I did. I responded 'I'm a musician' (why not?!). He asked how much? I said £100 for 2 hours. He hired me 5 days a week. Just like that I'd become a musician, working around a ninth of the hours for about the same money.
Now I'm going to speed up the story a little. I quit this in a couple of weeks because I realised I didn't want to be a background musician in a shop, I wanted to be in the limelight. I wanted to entertain the world. I wanted to try and make it in music. I rolled a piano onto one of the busiest streets in London, and I started playing. Within 1 month I had 9 management contract offers and had started recording my first album. It's now been 6 months. I've travelled around the world, I've got an album on iTunes, named 'Butterfly In A Hurricane'. I've played to literally tens of thousands of people. I've felt all the love and beauty of the world. I've laughed until I've cried. I've enjoyed more female attention than I thought a guy with my face could get! This is the most alive I've ever felt.
I used to do something I hated all day everyday, I used to hate myself for doing that. I was bad company around people and nobody really liked me. Now I do something that I love, that makes me bubble with excitement daily. In return for doing the thing I love the most, people are made happy, people are overhwelmingly kind to me, people open their hearts to me, and I do the same to them. I roll my piano around the world sharing this love which grows inside in the soil of my happiness and fulfilment. I never ever thought I'd be this happy.
Okay, I can't afford the Prada suit right now, but I can't wait to wake up tomorrow, I've got a singing lesson in the morning and I'm meeting Coca Cola in the afternoon to talk about being in an advert for them. My future is unpredictable (which I love), but I know that it will be fine because I'm the one in control. I spent 23 years developing my brain, and now I'm using it.
I just wanted to reach out to all those people who are in banking and miserable but too scared to leave, I want to reach out to all the nerdy kids with the great CVs who want to go into banking, I want to reach out to everyone who has got this far reading and I'm telling you to take a leap and do something you love. You might not know what that is, but you sure as hell aren't going to find it sat unhappily at your desk trying to multitask all day long. You only progress by taking a leap of faith, not in God necessarily, but in yourself. Know that you have all the tools within you already. You can do and be whoever you want to be, and you deserve to be so much more than a tired suit in an office. Of course if that's where you get real happiness, then that's fantastic. I'm just saying that wasn't my experience, nor was it for the majority of those I met.
Life is short - you're young, you're old, you're dead. React to that knowledge. You have nothing to lose!
With all my love,
Stephen Ridley
In the interests of proof (and self promotion), here are the links to some YouTube videos and my Facebook/twitter.
www.facebook.com/stephenridley.official
https://twitter.com/ThisIsRidley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikMKtok0pm8
Mod Note: Throwback Thursday: this post originally went up 4/25/12
Cool story bro
At a loss for words, but this was epic in that it was well written and hit the spot. I guess I'll have to check out the album too.
this thread is going to be interesting. front page this andy!
How did you keep your piano skills sharp while working banking hours?
Oddly enough the bank I worked at had a grand piano in the foyer (just for show), and I would used to play that every day, even if just one song, before jumping in the taxi home!
He obviously kept up the dexterity by using excel without a mouse..
Man, looking through this guys thread history you can see how banking basically wore him down progressively.
OP, best of luck to you. If I ever see you in concert I expect back stage VIP shiz and bishes, I'll say "WSO represent muddafucka!", and you'll tell security to let me through.
Aight? Respect.
Reminds me of the novel Bank by David Bleden. Awesome story dude! I'd say that banking was necessary for you though, you needed the misery to drive you and the money to make it all happen.
I would agree.
I think about it this way: lets say you got a banking offer but decided instead to pursue music. As you met the initial frustrations that I'm sure arise when trying to make money from music you could have had the constant nagging feeling that maybe you were foolish not to take the banking offers that your hard work in school had earned. You wouldn't have come to the hard earned realization that the realities of banking were not anything like the stereotype perpetuated by the media and would have instead been contrasting the hard facts of your reality against a fantasy world that could have seemed much more appealing. Now, you have two sets of real life experience to compare one another to and can make a much more informed decision about what you value in life!
But great story - gave me chills - and best of luck!!
This is a great story, but I wouldn't sell short the "importance" of banking--I'd argue that the drones do a lot more important work than a pianist. After all, high finance is basically the blood that makes the organs [edit: no pun intended! haha] of society work. Pianists are just pianists.
I no longer work in high finance--I work in "branch level" finance--but I work devastating hours and what I do is really hard. The intellectual challenge keeps me interested and I'd argue that a lot of people genuinely find finance interesting--in fact, I'd argue that most people in this business find finance more interesting than piano.
In any event, to each his own. If you're not happy doing what you're doing then it makes no sense to continue doing it. I mean, when I quit a job I hated I gave 6 weeks notice, but it doesn't seem like your boss gave a damn anyway.
please go
GJDM OP! Welcome to my world - I turned down my banking offer to work at a non0-tech startup
Best decision ever
Cool, why don't I go to a tech forum, tell people I hate tech jobs, and then when someone politely disputes that I'll ask them to leave the tech forum. That makes a lot of sense.
I think we are just different peas in different pods my man. I can only speak from my own experience, but I was adding no value to the world whatsoever. In banking, I was either making pitchbooks or making mostly fictional pseudoanalysis to fit the stories and answers that either the client or MD wanted. In music, I've connected to people, given and received love, and hopefully made quite a few people's days a little better. Hopefully I'll make quite a few more people's days a little better in the future. Best of luck to you man.
p.s. As an FYI, when you quit your job in IBD, you're out of the door as fast as possible, due to the confidential and sensitive nature of what your doing, but thanks for the snide insult.
You are missing the point of this post. Don't fucking rain on his parade. I would pay WSO to dump King Kong shit on you if I could, nerd.
so as a musician how many girls do u b... meet
You still do. This is why you're 'sharing' your story here. You want to read all of the 'good for you' replies and feel special. Now you've switched your focus from money to fame/attention.
Banking was just too hard for you. Good for you if you're happier and doing something you love, but the last bit was a little condescending. Most analysts don't need a knight in shining armor to help liberate them from the banks because we're "miserable but too scared to leave". Come on man.
Don't get me wrong, of course money and respect are important, most people (myself included) feel indignified without them. I'm just saying that I've come to understand the true nature and value of them, and before I placed (what I now see as) a ridiculously high value on them (I valued them more than fulfilment and happiness). And yeah, of course, I want to be 'a somebody'. But how I have come to define what 'being a somebody' is has radically changed and is much less vacuous now.
As for the 'you didn't have the stones' thing... Banking wasn't 'too hard' (I've been through worse and made it), but I didn't have anything to prove to anyone sticking myself to a life which brought me unhappiness.
And I certainly don't want to patronise or condescend, and I apologise if I have done. I just met a lot of miserable people when I was there, and I just wanted to extend the same push I've personally given them to other people in their situation.
As for my motivation to post this, it isn't for attention. Though I can readily admit that I like attention and don't shy from that, I just wanted to put something on here that offers a different point of view to the 'banking or die' baller baller shot caller posts on this website, and share the blunt realities from my experience, and yeah, hopefully inspire some other people who are maybe a bit lost to go on and hopefully find happiness!
I think i should pack my bags and head out to Vegas to the adult industry. I mean i'm endowed with a really giant member.
All kidding aside, this is a really inspiring story. People can hate on you and say that you have talent and they don't have it but it takes balls to go out and follow your passion. As that can be seen in your performances.. I'm actually going home in 2 months and will evaluate if i want to spend the rest of my life in the corporate world. I really miss goofing around and having a ball. Goof luck OP and don't forget WSO.
Congratulations! Very glad you shared your story. Quite inspiring. There are a million paths to happiness in life and very few of them require a massive bank account.
My advice would be to travel if at all possible. The more you move, the more you move. When you take yourself away from the daily routine (whatever that may be for you), you find yourself challenged whilst being exposed to new people who live completely alien ways of life to what you might have ever imagined, have different value systems, see different traits in you than perhaps your friends and family see in you. You'll learn a lot about yourself and moreover, it's a hell of a lot of fun and you'll blow your mind! You got nothing to lose bro, life is short. Your young, your old, your dead!
Just want to fill in here and debunk the universal myth that is "travel to find yourself". It doesn't work that way, at least not for me. I travelled, I saw different cultures, maybe I wasn't immersed in them enough, but nothing changed for me. Look at the people in Vietnam, they struggle hard to just get by. Do you want to travel so you can feel better for your slightly less shit life in the west? If so, by all means, but don't go thinking you're gonna find your passion jetsetting (relatively speaking) around poor countries. Read books.
We've seen a lot of miserable musicians, too--Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston and the list goes on. Joy isn't conditional, or at least it shouldn't be. If you're a miserable person, playing music isn't going to change that for anything more than the immediate future. Long-term joy isn't found in your work.
Long term joy IS found in your work!! (amongst other places). I'm not saying music is right for everyone, and maybe it was or wasn't right for them. I'm just saying that when you find something you do like, it's infectious, and all of a sudden you'll never 'work' another day in your life. Everything just feels like play. That might be writing, horse riding, being a rafting guide, being a politician, a lawyer, a doctor, a tennis player, a poet, whatever. But when you find what you love and find a way to make a living from it, it's a very lovely feeling. Of course, family, friends, travel, are all constituents (in my case at least) to happiness. But as you have to spend the majority of your life at work, it seems to me a completely ridiculous concept to do something which doesn't completely light a fire in your heart!
With all due respect, you threw the entire industry under the bus in your original post. Obviously you're clarifying your position now, but you made it out as if nobody likes their job in finance, which is a transparently false assertion. Other than politics there's nothing else on this planet that I'd rather do.
You also made it out as if your new gig--piano--is somehow of greater importance than finance, which is a matter of opinion, at the very least, and at the most outright un-true.
Virginia Tech, I'm not sure what your problem is. I'm a guy who lives and breathes the markets, couldn't imagine doing anything else, but still would put the creation of culture as being much more important than finance. Even if that wasn't true, the ability of one man to have an impact is so much greater in cultural realms than in finance where we are all just cogs in a machine. More than anything, your bitter line of criticism juxtaposed against the OP's non-defensive and disarming responses make a compelling case that a life of culture is a happier one.
If you didn't pick up on the OP's condescension toward the rest of us in the original post then I don't know what to say. The entire post was condescending. It honestly sounds like the college version of me who looked down on the people who were trying real hard in school. The difference is, ya know, I was a late teens/early 20s college student.
There's nothing at all "bitter" in my line of reasoning other than a point of view that differs with the majority of the people here. So sue me.
Mr. virginia football enthusiast never misses a chance to come off like a thin-skinned, illiterate hayseed with anger issues.
and yeah, john law > mozart. LOL shower us with more of your wisdom, dumb-dumb
which piano brands are the most prestigious?
VirginiaTech4ever has not posted one untrue statement, I love how everyone is congratulating this dude but most of the posters on here are not going to heed his advice. You still want to be in finance if you aren't already in it, that is why you are on this site. OP's reasoning for getting into finance (the money) failed from the get go, most experienced posters on this site will tell you not to go into IB if you are only in it for the money because you will be miserable, and you were, as expected. I appreciate music and musicians but I also know that is not the type of individual who should strive for IB in the first place.I fully support the "follow your dreams" sentiment in your post but it did come with a condescending under-tone, you essentially said no one could possibly consider banking an enjoyable occupation and criticized all who are going through the misery instead of being a hero and adventurer like yourself and following their dreams.
I think you hit the nail on the head--if you're a "liberal arts" type of person and are getting into finance for the money then you are setting yourself up for failure. I LOVE finance, for whatever or no reason at all--I'm just passionate about it. I wouldn't work the job for free, but I'm not intrinsically motivated by the money.
mr. eternal virginia technology has trouble with basic logic. OP never said all people in finance are miserable and/or go into it for the wrong reasons. anyone reading at above the third grade level has figured that out. as the technological virginian usually does, he reads carelessly and reacts emotionally, resulting in his typical embarassing shit-show. this is a nice post and will be useful to some of the young monkeys in the bullpens, and virgintech should rightly be mocked and humiliated as the sneering dullard that he is.
Congratulations on escaping wage slavery! SB to you for the inspiring post.
Most people I know who are employees in finance are pretty miserable... In finance (as in most corporate jobs) you are mostly passive, a cog in the wheel with little autonomy or control over your life... Most finance/banking/investment types don't even have that much autonomy over their work!
The most fulfilled people I know are active. They have autonomy and decide what they want in life and pursue it, not just what kind of Audi or BMW they are going to buy. They also have control over their time, the only resource that matters. Very few of these people are in finance and the ones that are, are either people who have set up their own little firms or who are owners / principals of their companies, i.e. no longer wage slaves. The exception are the ones who aren't putting in ridiculously long hours and are using their their jobs simply as a means to fund their lifestyles during their free time (weekend trips, lots of hobbies & sport, side projects/interests, etc...)
The idea that a higher paying career is the route to happiness or fulfilment is rubbish... Freedom matters.
I think the takeaway here (aside from the usual dick measuring contest these counter-finance threads always incite) is that it's always best to follow your heart, pursue your passion. If money is your passion, you're doing it wrong. If prestige is your passion, you're doing it wrong. Find something that actually matters to you within your heart of hearts and throw yourself into it completely. You'll enjoy far more success doing something that you love, you won't care how many hours you devote to it, you'll be healthier mentally and physically, and you'll be a better person to be around.
Congratulations on your new-found success, OP. While your message is good, I do agree with some of the previous posters that you come off as a bit condescending. Just because you're happy in your new career doesn't mean you should "extend your push" to people here. You post should be neutral, for people to read on judge on their own, but it sounds more like a promotion of how shitty banking is vs. how amazingly awesome your music career is. To be fair, I think that many people on this forum understand that they won't be in banking forever and they're doing it as a means to an end. And some people probably honestly do like banking. Also, with a note to some of the other posts, a debate regarding what banking/music contributes to society is moot. They both contribute to the society in different ways.
OP, you're lucky to have found success so quickly. At one point in my life I was seriously considering spending the rest of my life as a musician; I've studied at Manhattan School of Music and have personally done a lot of freelance work. I've met a shitload of people in the music industry; and it's extremely rare that someone finds success like you did. Props to you for doing so; I really admire that. But 95% of the musicians that I've met, even so they are so amazingly talented, understand that being a musician is a job and has its pros and cons just like everything else. Yes, they may be following their passions, but they are not ecstatically happy about their lives. They understand that there's a distinct payoff for following their chosen path and not everything's going to be daisies and roses. Many musicians have very real worries about keeping their jobs and having enough money to go around.
In my case, I'm not in IB but I don't mind working in finance. I like investing and trading; and working in finance gives me the resources to pursue things on the side that in no way would I have been able to afford as a musician. And I'm fine with this compromise.
It's the rare lucky person who gets to follow their exact passion without many barriers in their path and lead a successful life doing exactly what they want to do. Perhaps you're one of them. But for the rest of us, things don't work out as perfectly as you make your life after banking seem. Most people don't suddenly end up with 9 management contracts after quitting their job playing on the street. (An interesting side-note: I knew a musician who played on the streets like you did. She did this for a LONG time, shedding a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in the process, probably more than anyone ever would in banking, until she finally caught a break.)
Most people have to make trade-off's - that's just the nature of things.
Again: I'm not shitting on OP's success - in fact, quite the opposite. Huge props to you for ending up where you are. But in reality, that kind of transition is very rare.
WTF? When did banker's suddenly turn into such pussies?!
Stephen,
Don't apologise for ridiculing finance or offending people because of your own career / life choices... I'm surprised that people on WSO don't have a thicker skin about this stuff. Maybe they have too much of their self-worth wrapped up in their jobs / titles. Maybe this will change after they spend a few years in the industry and mature a little.
In real life (i.e. non-WSO) people in finance ridicule finance all the time. Even MDs / Partners in IBD & PE.
Why are people even answering this muppet? Pretty boy who couldn't handle the long hours, left soon and now thinks is a finance guru, seriously people!
1) Most jobs suck. You aren't a janitor, or a coal miner who has black lung, or a single mom struggling paycheck to paycheck working 3 jobs worrying about how she is going to pay for her kid's education and healthcare. You're not coming home from a war to your young wife and kids missing your legs. There are plenty of people worse off than you that don't FUCKING COMPLAIN LIKE A LITTLE BITCH, or moan about how "unhappy" they are all the time. Cry me a fucking river about working long hours and being "bored".
2) There aren't enough jobs out there for people to just "follow their dreams". How many street piano players do we need? Sure, I'd love to be an undersea explorer, or a writer, or a movie star, or any number of things. But, in the real world we get the best jobs we can that pay well and allow for the best options for future employment down the road. If we're lucky we can eventually get to a point in life where we are a little more comfortable, work a little less, and have the financial flexibility to pursue some of our passions. But certainly no one is "entitled" to a life like that.
3) That said, sounds like you are pretty lucky. If you hit the jackpot and are able to hang out all day doing something you like, I guess that's cool. But I'm certainly not going to feel sorry for myself because I have to work.
It is great that you've found something to do that is fulfilling, that you enjoy and that you can continue to earn a living from. That is incredible and should be everyone's goal.
I've worked in banking for quite some time and have a lot of conversations with junior bankers about the job / life / etc. a few things that come to mind to me after reading your post, to share: - you have to be interested in business / capital markets to thrive in investment banking, unless your desire to be perceived as overachieving and your love of money is incredibly strong. If you don't care about these topics, you're going to hate it. - a lot of analysts focus on the work they're doing rather than what they're learning. You can certainly go through two years, do a good job, and not learn that much. That, however, is your fault. Paying attention to what you're doing, thinking about the bigger picture, having conversations with those more experienced, etc reveals an incredible opportunity to leap years ahead. Doing 3 years in an M&A group gives you more knowledge on that topic than a 45 year old guy who just got promoted to CEO and has limited experience working with a board - banking / high finance won't necessarily be your thing even if you like businesses / capital markets. That's fine. If you come to that conclusion early in your 2 years, try to view it as a learning experience and finish out your time. 2 years feels like a long time when you're 22 - it's not in the context of a career / your life - communication is the most important thing in IB, at all levels. Probably the most important thing regardless - your health, mental well being, etc is your responsibility. Stand up for yourself. Request time off for vacation. Go to the gym. Don't order the cheese steak every night. No one will remember if you don't take a vacation for 2 years, and you won't get any credit for it - getting negative in a banking job is a downward spiral. It's fine to bitch some every now and then, but doing so constantly just reinforces negativity and it quickly becomes a downward spiral. I cannot reinforce how important this is, and even with that I find myself from time to time getting in funks. Also, I personally get frustrated when people refer to themselves as drones, monkeys, etc as analysts. It's unnecessarily negative thinking and it's degrading to yourself and others. It's also not true. Have some pride. - the job doesn't get easier as you get older, it just changes. I did not anticipate how having a girlfriend become a wife, aging parents, etc would all impact things too. There surely are some lazy / POS VPs, but spending time worrying about that doesn't make any sense. It's further to the negativity point. However.. - street smarts is pretty important in this job. I've done a good job at avoiding the nightmare MDs / VPs that create work, turn things incessantly, degrade people, etc. Here's a tip - you can't avoid them by saying "no", you avoid them by already being busy with other people doing other things.
Any person that gets a job in investment banking should be proud of what they've accomplished. You've worked hard to get that job.
Next Steps After Banking (Originally Posted: 08/08/2015)
I am currently in my third year as an analyst at a small investment bank in the Mid-Atlantic. Its a small firm but the two senior guys each did times at much larger banks and I have gotten what I believe to be I solid lower middle market deal experience. Today, I had a discussion about what I would like to do next come May when my third year is up (there is no possibility of promotion upwards due to our the firm's size). They told me to think about what may interest me next so that they can help by reaching out to their network to find my next job. Due to lifestyle, I would prefer to stay in my current city. It isn't huge but it has a pretty solid finance community; however, I am having trouble thinking of what I could or should do next. There are about 8 or 9 fortune 500 companies I could look at, a bunch of other investment banks that are bigger, commercial banks, asset/investment management firms, etc.
What else am I missing? What are some good opportunities for an analyst from a small investment bank? I am not expecting nor do I want to move up to a bulge bracket or a huge PEG, but just need some help thinking through what my potential opportunities might be.
Thanks for any and all help.
I think you have to ask yourself what you want to do and develop a career plan. If the guys you work for are willing to help you out and assuming that they have a good network and can open the door for you at multiple places you can probably get into most careers within reason. And Mid-Atlantic to me probably means Philly or maybe Baltimore (I'd assume if you were in DC you'd have listed some government related options) and at least in Philly the finance community is relatively small but really tight nit so a recommendation/intro from a senior guy that you work for will go a long way.
Would you want to stay in IB just at a bigger place? Or PE? You already know the work and general lifestyle (PE, contrary to what everyone on WSO thinks, doesn't offer a much greater work/life balance-a little better, maybe, but you're not putting in 45 hour weeks and the stress is high with an up or out attitude) so that's at least a known quantity but if you don't feel like grinding as many hours as you currently are that may be a factor in not doing it. There aren't too many hedge funds in Philly or Baltimore but there are a decent amount of traditional asset management firms or the investment side of an insurance company you could look into. You probably won't make as much as IB/PE/HF's but traditional AM or insurance offers a more stable career and typically a better lifestyle and there are more jobs in those fields so if you need to switch again in a few years you'll have more options without having to move. You may also be able to make the leap to real estate investment if that's interesting at all. You can make great money and the life is better than IB.
Like others have stated, the typical move to corporate roles is in corp development (internal M&A) but you're young enough that you could probably get into another functional area like ops if you want to one day run a company. Is there something you really like-boats, or sporting equipment or manufacturing widgets? Try to find companies that do that and get into one. And I'd broaden your range of companies beyond F500's unless you have a real hard-on for a big name.
Or you could go the startup route. If you don't want the risk of too early stage check out ones that have gone through an A round and are still going strong. There's not as much reward if you get in around a B round but it'll give you a taste of that world. There's an ok startup community in Philly at least (Safeguard seems to still spins stuff out, Josh Kopelman likes to invest locally and Wharton grads spawn a decent amount), DC is strong and I have no idea about Baltimore.