MS vs McKinsey vs Meta SWE
I was an IB SA at MS this summer. Have an offer to return which I accepted. However, I also landed a McKinsey BA offer, and a Meta SWE new grad offer (I did previous internships in SWE and had ongoing research at my university, so I was surprisingly able to land this). Curious to get this forum's take on the most promising opportunity moving forward? I know I want to do something technical in the future, whether that's creating a tech startup, working in VC, or joining a tech company, but unsure whether I want to join the technical or product/business side.
I'm going to be honest - I was easily leaning MS at first, but seeing all the sky-is-falling FUD on this forum about how PE is dying, fewer seats at the top, no carry payouts, and even posts like "would rather be middle class than work in PE" is what lit a fire under my ass to recruit for MBB and tech. Even with those offers, I'm still don't truly know where the opportunity is and where I should go. I feel like my Ivy college which heavily emphasizes traditional finance roles has conditioned me into thinking I can't go wrong with MS IB, but everyone I've talked to has told me to do Meta SWE based on the WLB, exit opps, and starting pay, and thinks I'm crazy for even considering the others. Any thoughts appreciated.
What group? huge differentiation across the board. Regardless, big tech is over glazed – my friends hate their lives and feel like absolute tools there. If you have a cool startup idea or AI adjacent role, could be a different story. Corporate exits from IB are prob similar between MS IB and MBB key difference maker is
a) pay MS > M
b) WLB M >> MS
c) corporate exit M >= MS
d) buyside exit MS > M with the exception of a couple groups
long-term, risk-adjusted, would say MS >>. Unless you take some insane risk, your not going to ball-out in SWE. In my view you are either the type to ride or a die a startup with a ~10% chance to exit and be rich AF or your not that guy and you are way better of risk-adjusted wise to stay in MS and run the PE/SM HF track.
Thanks. Group was M&C.
Role at Meta is in a niche infra space that's relevant to AI which I would definitely want to align myself career-wise. I probably wouldn't be considering Meta if it were in a more saturated space like full-stack or ads role.
First, congrats on all the really great offers.
As someone who's been at Mckinsey, SWE, Infra Architecture, and spent my career as a product leader - I would highly highly recommend picking MS (my recommendation) or McKinsey
First, you need to know that SWE is exciting to study but really a terrible career. You can work very hard as a SWE and it's just super hard to stand out or have outsized outcomes. SWE's are highly paid labor units.
Occassionally you will see a SWE or engineer become CEO but that's the exception not the rule - and all of them will have moved out of SWE 3 years into their career.
MS/McKinsey will create a 'beacon' for you. Do it for a few years and you can interview on that for the rest of your career. It says hard work, polish, and smarts
I would have personally found McKinsey much more fun that MS, but I worry that in the last few years they have gone excrutiatingly downmarket . So unless there's a specific interest you are pursuing at McKinsey then I'd do MS for the higher pay, prestiage and reps.
Remember you can always move from MS to SWE, product, entrepreunership, HR, marketing, or really anything... but it's much harder to go vice versa.
So my advice start there... see how it goes and you can always pivot.
I agree with a lot of what you said especially what you said about a career as a big tech swe. Even then I would say its not entirely true as there are always landscape changing tech companies which pop up. If you join these companies as a staff engineer even at series C or D, your equity will make it more than worth it. Think openai in 2023 uber in 2015 facebook in 2010 google in 2003. The leader in a field which is all but guaranteed to take off. Occasionally there will be a flop like dropbox but with upside like this you can't expect 0 risk.
My real gripe is your last statement lacks nuance. SWE will have an easier time moving to product entrepreneurship HR marketing in tech. Of course the door shuts for you if you want to go into certain finance exit ops. I'm only saying your post makes it seem like the option for all those others things is there from MS but not from swe. If anything, it is almost impossible for you to break into good product roles from outside of tech. You have to know this too if you worked in tech and mckinsey. 10-15 years ago there was a legitimate pipeline from mckinsey to the most desirable product roles in tech. Not anymore. And for entrepreneurship, it is both much easier to raise early rounds if you have a prolific engineering background and much easier to recruit people for your team.
Anyways what I'm trying to say is MS and Mck don't provide as much in the realm of exit ops to tech as what people are lead on to believe. If OP is risk averse and wants a straightforward high earning career, then avoid tech and pick MS. But for any dreams of making it in tech, do not assume that the "MS banker Mckinsey consultant" label will gain you any brownie points. Go in to tech right away and embrace both the technical and non technical aspects.
If you want to do the hot things in tech in any way. Entrepreneurship or seed - series A vc I would encourage you to take meta and then go to a real startup. The meta brand itself does not hold as much weight as you might think unless you are a sought after researcher or you want to spend your career in faang+
Otherwise choose ms or mck based on whether you want to go deep in finance or want to stay a generalist consultant. Tech nowadays leans more technical especially in AI. So if you want to make it far then do not assume that going mck to whatever tech exit op you have in mind will go smoothly.
Would a late-stage private company (eg Stripe/Notion/Ramp) be more beneficial than Meta for those kinds of tech opportunities? I feel more confident in my team at Meta than that of my offer for a smaller company (one of those).
Ramp would be borderline beneficial. Ideally you would join something even earlier. Notion would be borderline too but within the industry their reputation is lower than ramp's. Stripe is too big/late.
If I was in your shoes, I'd go Meta for the fundamentals and branding, then to one of the hottest Series A startups in the Bay (think OpenRouter, Superpower, World Labs, etc.) to learn how to grow a startup, then Founder. Could get great looks at YC and a16z with that track record.
Eh, VC is inherently unstructured but I see a lot of senior investors coming from IB adjacent backgrounds. Also, very common for startups to hire ex-bankers, albeit mainly tmt heads; too many case studies to list. Will say risk-adjusted deep finance from MS M&C will likely play out best. That said, if your in love with the idea of joining a startup or making your own just company SWE could make sense.
Also grass is certainly greener on the other side. Have friends at palantir, meta, top startups in the bay, they like SWE but they’re not printing generational wealth.
VC is a very broad term which can refer to extremely late stage growth or seed. Two completely different games which favor people of different backgrounds.
Of course startups hire ex bankers for gtm, biz dev, strategy, growth, chief of staff roles. Doesn't change the fact that there are more opportunities, better pay packages, and higher growth curve in startups if you are in engineering or research.
"Will say risk-adjusted deep finance from MS M&C will likely play out best"
I never denied this. Of course this is the best risk adjusted path
"Have friends at palantir, meta, top startups in the bay.....". I agree and I explicitly recommended against going down this road. Nonetheless OP's only choice in tech right now is meta. If they're deeply interested in the outlier tech outcomes then it would be more beneficial to at least start at meta as an engineer rather than any role in ms or mck.
Hot take but PE is legit dying and MBB is imo far superior currently. Being a life long consultant isn't a thing but doing a few years there would be my preference. Then again it is MS which would also set you up well to go wherever.
Why is MBB far superior?
On a competitive level, everyone I know that applied for MBB full-time (literally everyone I know, 10+ people) got an offer. It's incredibly saturated across the board and the brand name has certainly diminished over time.
On a exit level, a top BB will do just as well on the corporate side but be significantly better for PE, GE, and HF roles. Even though a couple funds take consultants (H&F, WP, Bain Cap), consultants typically perform worse and get churned out and have to compete much much harder to land the jobs. Objectively, a top BB will set you up better since those seats are less saturated (again, only comparing top BB groups and a couple EBs over the MCK, not all of banking).
Finally, there's a comp vs lifestyle tradeoff, but accounting for the significant traveling and long hours monday-friday, consulting is not that much better.
Not sure why you commented twice backing MBB, but I want to question your personal bias. From my experience (significant other and a couple friends was in between MBB vs EB for FT), most people will chose banking over a MBB. My guess is that you either churned out from a MM bank to MBB and giving your strong take or have an especially bad experience in IB.
One last thing, from what I see, people often "fall" into MBB (weak resumes, mid GPA, no real relevant experience and still land a MCK offer). On the other hand, people that get top EBs and top BBs are very much the top notch candidates in their given school – I'm sure a lot of people have a similar experience as me.
edit: accross LAZ, EVR, PJT, and MOE and the top 1-2 groups for JPM, MS, and GS, there are probably conservatively ~200 seats per year. Bain (smaller MBB) hired ~400 in NA alone lol
Edit: MBB stay hating LOL, everything I said was true and y’all will realize soon enough when they leave college.
Think I only commented once backing MBB. You might be confusing me with someone else. Also you're wrong I didn't "churn out" of a MM bank for MBB. I went to a non-target on a full ride and still managed to break into IB. I can just see the writing on the wall that PE is dying, HFs are already dead, etc.
Fully acknowledge that breaking into IB is more impressive than breaking into MBB. I just don't think buyside exits are worth much. I also think that McKinsey is equally recognized as GS/MS/JPM in the corporate world, except you'll have way more fun at McKinsey.
Only thing you got right is that my experience in banking is miserable. I'm in a sweaty group and am losing passion for this job. Just trying to advise a prospect that if they also agree that buyside careers are dying, then they should do McKinsey for a better experience and equal name-brand recognition. As someone who knows ppl in corporate, all of these high flying jobs sound basically the same to them, and they won't know that MS is like 10x harder to break into than McKinsey.
You’re on a finance forum, of course you’re going to get pro MS answers. No one can answer this but yourself
in super similar pposition, dm me.
Ignore title. But I think it all depends on what you want.
Tech in AI specifically is hot, and I think you'd be able to pivot from Meta SWE to AI native company in 1-2 years and easily make 250-400k total TC. Don't think we'll ever be in a place where the AI winter hits such that smart people will be out of jobs.
FWIW, I've done top target, top BB IBD (not MS so you can guess which one), MF PE, and tech. The jobs in each are very different but they all kind of get you the same outcome in terms of total comp. And in all likelihood you won't be a MF PE partner. I'm in tech now, getting paid 1.2mm+ TC with heavy emphasis on stock that has a chance to 10x in the next few years. I'm happier right now than in BB IBD and happier now than in MF PE but life is still hard, and NYC is cooler than SF.
I'm still young and growing a lot in my role, and I feel like I am learning much more transferable skills now as an operator + angel investor than I did while in BB IB or MF PE. Anyways totally unstructured message. But if I were in your shoes, I'd either do McKinsey or Meta SWE (assuming both job functions you'd like). No one really likes banking and the job is getting increasingly commodified.
Do you think MBB or SWE would set you up better than the IB --> PE --> Startup role you chose? And are you giving that recommendation using the benefit of hindsight, thinking you would of ended up at the seat regardless of the IB/PE experience? What do you think is the best choice for a 20-year old undergrad, wanting to maximize for long-term career optionality, brand value, and future risk-adjusted NW.
Yea I think MBB or SWE would probably set you up better. The way I'm thinking about it is if you're social + smart + strategic, you can go anywhere. Just think about how BB IB --> MF PE is 3-4 years. Whereas MBB or SWE is 1-2 years --> startup.
Another note is that I'm very bearish on almost every startup. You definitely have to choose well. I'd say the tides are turning (FUD you mentioned above). A lot of BB --> MF PE are heavily considering their paths now given the increased interest in tech.
This is all to say, I'm still kinda bullish on finance being a good career. I'm also bullish on consulting being a good career. SWE is a fine career and I'm bullish if you're particularly top talent in SWE. I guess this is all to say if you're smart, you can find your way almost anywhere.
Lastly, super super tangential side note (recognize my brain is going a million directions), not having good quality sleep sucks. Regular 2-3AMs will harm your health no doubt about it. I know people who have developed long term insomnia or anxiety from their jobs (mostly in banking but also happens in consulting + tech (especially startups!!)). And the commonality between all of these people is that if they had the chance to choose all over again, they would prioritize so many different things in their lives (family, happiness, health, etc.). Insomnia is not good, and it leads to long-term depression + anxiety passing it down to your kids, etc etc.
Anyways, tldr, all these career paths are good. Don't kill yourself when you're young and burn yourself out. I was burnt out for about 8 months, and now maybe I'm more prone to burning out. Life is too short to optimize on everything too, and sometimes you'll land backwards into a job that you mostly enjoy! MBB, SWE, BB are all good. Prioritize the one you'd learn most in, meet the best people in, and feel most motivated by the work.
Also, I think the BB IB analyst class thing is overrated. Most people didn't leave BB IB with best friends, and I certainly didn't! My high school and college friends are some of the best people in the world, and I thought my BB IB friends were all losers (besides maybe 1-2 who I snap every day). But that depends on your class. Also I think you mentioned MS MC, I have 1 friend there and am close with 3 others who have since left. Have heard that it's been getting increasingly worse.
Anyways, this is some long soliloquy that you should probably choose what makes you happiest and where you would learn the most. And also prioritize sleep and happiness (both short and long term).
What role did you land in tech? $1m+ comp and better hours it sounds almost too good to be true
Presumably at big tech (not startup) at that comp level?
With MFPE, he could've landed at close to director level or senior manager? Probably 500k cash and bonus and the rest in stock. Just guessing though
You should take the Meta SWE role first, reason is tech moves way faster than in finance, especially now with AI, and if you are behind on your tech skills you will be behind, whereas for ibd the 2 years are just excel and ppt anyways, and you can always pivot into it and start over like mba associates especially given you already have an MS offer.
Also, most ibd analysts/pe associates pivot into tech in strategic finance anyways so might as well have a head start in tech and accumulate stocks. Worst case you can pivot into VC.
Meta, no question. If you actually wanna do something technical or entrepreneurial, that's gonna be the best route there. I find that the strongest founders are those who developed a great technical skill set early on in their careers (engineering, product, any STEM really) then became managers and business people later. You can always go to a great MBA after being a SWE at Meta and it would make a ton of sense, get you well rounded, and set with a first principles skill set ready to tackle any tech role afterwards.
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