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Hate it with a passion.
1) Hate being on someone else’s time all of the time. Always need to do things when superiors ask and not a second before (turning comments, etc.)
2) So much unnecessary bullshit both with admin work or creating additional appendix pages that literally no one looks at.
#1 pointer is true for many other similar profession...
#2 - I agree..For the sake of demonstrating more work to client & demand more fees or creating complexity in the transaction, such stuff is done. But few clients and bankers have also now started focussing on only the relevant info / data given that client has limited time nowadays
Completely agree with poster. You are way way way more on someone’s time in banking than in other professions and it’s not even close
greay point on one. Things done not a second before and not a second after, if you catch my drift (need things immediately)
Every job has bullshit aspects to it. Not every thing you’re outputting is going straight to the ceo. Although yeah appendix pages are for insecure mds that need to reference page 64 in section II of the appendix
I had an MD that was always wanted me to take a stab at drafting the newsletters that he sent out (to quite a large list of recipients in the industry). It always felt like a waste of time as what is a 1st year analyst really going to say that is prolific/valuable enough for CEO and PE partners
Then quit
facts
Hate.
1.) You are at the mercy of your MD and how good they are at winning business/executing. Lots of great MDs at most of the big banks, but there are also a handful of mediocre and subpar legacy MDs that probably don’t deserve their seat. If you end up working for a bad one you have to deal with less dealflow, worse staffing a (sometimes no staffing say all) and typically very insecure attitudes.
2.) You will always be someone’s bitch in this profession. Lots of junior guys come in starry eyed viewing the senior guys as BSD titans, but in reality they are so beholden to their clients and book of business that most of these guys would drop to their knees if a PE firm told them to. The same culture just permeates down through the ranks too.
3.) Fee compression and public scrutiny has done a number on the potential long term earnings someone can achieve in this space. That may just be a fact of life, but most banks still operate with such antiquated cultural views that working for less pay with the same brutal lifestyle kind of sucks in my view
hate
Whole lot of losers in IB for sure and it just infects the entire culture
"VP in IB - Cov"
3rd point here is widely understated
Love
- opportunity of a lifetime from someone who came from middle of Montana. Yes hours are long and inflated egos but comp is very high relative to what 23 year old is making in a lot of other places
- forward projections on career. you know what spot you're aiming for next and how long (roughly) it will take to get there if you follow through. you don't have that in corp dev or F500 and you see a lot of posts from ex bankers looking to come back for that exact reason
- Purpose. Moving logos isn't going to win you a golden trophy but everyday you have the chance to prove yourself and establish yourself. More trust = more pen holding = slightly more freedom (if good culture).
Not hating, but sounds like you’re still in the honeymoon phase.
Come back in a year or once deal activity picks up again.
These are all totally fair points. Agreed on honeymoon phase. I just find it so hard not to hate the immediate job
Agreed. Some parts of being a senior banker interest me but I’m not sure that I can stick it out long enough to get there.
I love it. Analyst 2 in IB-M&A is paradise.
1) 50% of comp is discretionary and based on such factors such as firm performance (out of your control), group performance (out of your control), and highly subjective personal performance review, which itself is forced into a normalized curve (this one is within your control if you give good head).
2) Immediate seniors get paid double, triple (or more) so that they can go to sleep while we work and then review / provide feedback / get pissy when they wake up. Note this doesn’t apply to actual MDs/Ds who bring valuable relationships and business to the table.
3) Significant upfront work required to get mandates in the form of regular client meetings and bake-offs, the outcome of which is almost always per determined based on prior relationships the client has with you or other advisors. When you win the bake-offs, your reward is getting crushed via sellside process for the next 4 months.
Such great points. While sometimes I enjoy the analysis and there can be good learning experiences and you do pick up lots, the negatives so outweigh the positives. Seriously like above said some legitimate losers in this profession, serious f ing losers. Nothing to say beyond that. No critical thinking, just kool aid drinking, it's pathetic. Or no balls to leave and do something interesting and not be someones bitch. Staying for a few years and using for a better job is the only way to approach this job in my opinion. Why would you want to be straight up miserable for so many years.
Definitely a terrible job during the two+ years... but don't regret my time.
Still very close to two of my analyst buddies; one of my VPs became a mentor (and we still keep in touch long after we both left the firm). Plus, led to me getting my PE job (which also wasn't for me) which then led to a role I'm more happy to be in.
Helps with the resume, learn (by osmosis mainly) a ton about business but also how to be a good employee. Also helps with long-term job security and saving a lot at an early age.
So, while I'd never want to relive those years of my live, I'm still reaping the benefits of my analyst stint (both in and outside of work!).
Curious, what are you doing now that you're not in PE ?
I now work in Corp Dev. in the sports industry. Have wanted to work in sports since high school so pretty happy. Could be making more, but not sure that would mean I'd be happier.
Love/hate relationship.
Been in IB for ~4 years - first of all, I don't think I would still be in IB if I wasn't doing restructuring, to me its just the most interesting and you spend very little time rearranging logos etc. There is def admin work and stupid stuff but it decreases in frequency as you rise up the chain much more rapidly than M&A from my point of view. I have done healthy side M&A deals as well and I just know I prefer RX. With that being said, I do feel like I am accomplishing something everyday, which is a good feeling. There are a lot of people in this country who can't say that about their jobs, and if I'm not accomplishing something that means I have downtime, which I also don't have a problem with given how bad the sprints can be sometimes.
What others have said about having no control of your schedule is true and obviously the worst part. If a deal is busy a deal is busy and even the MD will get bombarded no matter how senior he/she is.
I think someone else on this forum put it well: I like the job from 9am-5pm, I tolerate the job from 5pm-9pm, and really dislike the job after that (and weekends). That being said, compensation ain't bad for that trade-off in my mind, as a first year associate I make double what my parents make combined during the tail end of their careers. Probably won't make it all the way up the food chain in banking but can say I'm getting out of it what I generally expected to
Given it looks like you went A2A did you ever think about recruiting for a buyside role? Just asking out of curiosity since I feel like there's not many A2As in general but particularly in Rx that I've come across.
Yeah my whole plan when I started IB was to go buyside, but every year as the HH emails and cycle came around, I just never thought any opportunities seemed that interesting (or more interesting than what I was doing in IB). I've never really cared much for the investing side of things and really had to look inward to make sure I didn't go buyside just because thats what everyone does. At the end of the day I haven't taken a single buyside interview over the years.
Why do you like RX?
How has the experience been in RX vs. M&A? Currently in a coverage group interested in moving internally to RX.
Love it.
Lateralled after navigating audit, FDD and consulting.
People here have made a lot of points regarding work-life balance, being on someone else's time and unnecessary work but I will say that literally any job in finance, accounting or consulting will include this experience with a few unicorns. I find the role to be engaging and actually requires you to learn more about particular industries, while you get to build valuable skills and (generally) avoid going on the client site to some run down town in the middle of nowhere just to talk in circles with management.
I'm sure the grass in greener somewhere else but it took experiencing the most dull positions possible to appreciate where I stand. It also helps that the pay is good incrementally through MD and my firm/team has a good culture.
Love/hate, with greater mix going to not hating it over time. Not many other careers where pay scales rapidly as lifestyle improves.
I think a lot of the hate directed at the job is warranted, but the “grass is greener” mentality is a severe over-correction and everyone on these forums massively underestimates how much all jobs blow. Grind in your 20s and maybe into 30s in IB and you are set for a good career for life. I grew up fairly poor so no denying that has had a big impact on my appreciation for it as well. Know many people stuck on a much lower point on the career ladder who jumped off the IB (or other grindy career) train early. Have noticed a good amount of people regret it who leave the fast track as well, but then come on here and shit on the job (not just true of IB either … we humans are a strange species).
There's a lot of negative viewpoints being expressed here which, although partially true, lack context. Please remember while reading these that most of the bad comments are coming from analyst and associate accounts. Bear in mind that there is a selection bias for disgruntled people within the junior ranks, as the analyst/associate roles are the first (and also last) stop on the career train for all recruits who decide quickly that they don't like it (frankly, often because there was some misperception in their pursuit of the job in the first place, e.g. only caring about money, following the crowd during recruitment season at their college/MBA, trying to "do whatever job keeps the most exit options open and lets me forestall taking an actual viewpoint on where I want my life to go", etc.) In other words, don't over-weight the negative opinions of novitiates who are going to self-select out of the game after the early innings, for reasons that have more to do with their (mis)perception of the job in the first ~two years (indeed, the worst two years) than the realities of the job over the course of a 15-30+ year career.
As someone who progressed beyond the AN/ASO years, I would recommend it. Sure, the first few years were full of drudgery but I always saw it as the reality of an apprenticeship career. No duh you're going to be doing the least appealing parts of the job as an AN/ASO - the whole idea is for you to carry around the metaphorical bags of your bosses while trying to gain their confidence and absorb some of their talent by osmosis. Do that for long enough and you will start to become a journeyman and then an artisan in your own rite. In the course of moving up you'll accumulate apprentices of your own who lighten your load. Clients will start to seek you out for your viewpoint. The boss will realize that you can solve complex issues, even do whole deals alone, and they will let you do it because it gives them more leverage and makes their life easier. Ultimately if you stick around long enough, odds are you'll become "senior" and start to focus more on strategy (both for your clients and also for your bank as a business), rather than execution. This was my experience, but only because I waited around for the investment of my time to mature.
Is it all perfect? Of course not. It's a job, but what are people expecting when they take this job out of undergrad or an MBA - that it's some kind of panacea? As long as you actually find the work of numerical/competitive/investment analysis, persuasion/negotiation and client service rewarding, it's a really good job in my opinion. Who cares whether or not it's the best job ever that will super-duper-definitely fill every hole in someone's heart? Let's not make the perfect into the enemy of the good - life is not some min/max exercise where the referee in the sky will finally affirm that you optimized your life perfectly. At some point you're going to have to stop trying to find the chimerical greener grass and instead begin to water the real grass you're standing on yourself.
I honestly think back on a younger me, and my younger peers, and see a lot of insecurity and youthful arrogance in those memories which echo in many of the comments in this thread. Nothing wrong with thinking this way in one's youth, it comes with the season of life. But people are kidding themselves if they think that serving the needs of others and working hard to get by are unreasonable things to expect in a career, or even that these requirements are unique to IB. Both me and the janitor are doing our jobs when we're at the same office at 9PM - I'm not kidding myself that we are doing something fundamentally, existentially different. I don't see myself as a bitch to my clients and I don't see him as one to his either. And I sincerely hope he enjoys his own job, in his own way, similarly to how I enjoy mine (and get's to go home soon, for goodness' sake!)
Spoken with the strong bias of someone who never left and someone who was never able to access the greener grass, of which there is a decent amount. Obviously those jobs have downsides, but just because another job has a downside does mean that downside is equivalent to that of another job.
I actually worked in other industries (a decent variety) before coming to banking later on. So while I obviously have my biases (as do we all), they’re not the ones you have me figured for (nor do I think mine are particularly strong).
Agree with your point that pros and cons will vary and would further say that each person needs to decide for themselves. Just offering a viewpoint on this particular role that is frankly lacking in the thread. All the time on WSO, people ask questions like OP, and the vast majority of people answering in this thread and others like it aren’t really bankers, in my view. They’re novices who got into this space for reasons that will eventually lead to their early exit in a year or two, which may seem like a lot to a 22 year old (it’s like, 10% of their life give or take) but is really nothing at all on a longer timescale. It’s like asking someone who washed out of basic training whether they liked being a navy seal. Not denigrating the (probably negative) opinions that subset will have, but they really aren’t the ones to seek a balanced / longitudinal viewpoint from.
Sometimes I can really hate it, but I grew up poor and being able to make six figures so early into my career is such a privilege. To put it in perspective...my first year base salary (85k) was more than what my dad made at the time (around 60k).
I love the learning and hate the culture.
I worked a few jobs before this. It's mind boggling to me how niceness is viewed as weakness and being a dick is a plus.
Almost impossible to disconnect in any time off which takes a toll.
People compete over watches/shoes/wallets and other dumb stuff which I'll never get.
But really love the learning part of it
Hate(Ed). Finally quit! :)
Can you expand a bit more on your process to move to AM? How many years were you in IB?
I started out at one of the whale asset managers and then did two years of IB in a niche group. Quit and was also fortunate to be brought in at a hf by one of my old coworkers/mentors
Hated in the wrong environment, love it in the right one.
1) Currently at a firm where while yes we have to be flexible and at some times cannot avoid canceling personal plans, everyone respects each others time;
2) At my level work gets really interesting, especially if you have a sector specific focus in which the players in the industry respect you. You really start piecing together puzzle parts of which company should join which other one and make for interesting conversation/pitch thoughts. Way better than when I was an analyst, with the disclaimer that I might have been working on the same topics or deals but may have not seen it back then due to sleep deprivation.
What firm or kind of firm are you at?
Used to be at a lower BB, now at a MM firm
AN1 - AS2 pov about the world based on comments:
- I want 200k+ at 21 yo
- I want to work 15 hours/week + WFH
- I want to be independent
- I want to do extremely strategic/intellectual things
*joins IB
I mean, are you retarded? Obviously, the economy is fckd up and you can't afford the same lifestyle as your parents thus the need to make above 6 figures. But, there are plenty of people with 50k who couldn't be happier with their lives. Raising your standards comes at a price so tf are we talkin 'bout?
what you sow you reap -- so hating your decision says more about you than IB
tl;dr - I loved it (reason: camaraderie + good pay in early 20s)
I love my role.
I use to be in an m&a role and now have worked in a financing role for over a year and cant stress the disparity in deliverables at the junior level. There are so many more deliverables to be made in m&a which takes up a lot of a juniors time.
I work very good hours with good culture that respects time off. It’s the best wlb iv seen from discussing with peers. Really no complaints with my job at all.
Can you expand on what the financing role is? Is it a capital markets (DCM, ECM) role? Is it still in IBD?
How many hours did you work before and how many hours do you work now?
M&a was around 80, project finance is around 50
Can I ask what kind of firm you are at? And in which location? Is it PF infra?
Can I ask what kind of firm you are at? And in which location? Is it PF infra?
Yes pf infa, in nyc at large global bank
Hate it with a passion. I'm leaving in the summer and it can't come soon enough; I truly regret ever choosing this path. I don't feel that I can really enjoy quality time with my loved ones when I'm on call 24/7. I've got a damn good brain and I'm wasting it on mindless tasks with unreasonable deadlines. I can't pursue my desired intellectual interests because I never know when the next month straight is going to get blocked off with deal work. The money isn't worth this level of bullshit and fire drills. I don't care to retire early either - I want to do something I enjoy. Life is too short for this.
What's next?
Not 100% sure but anything is better than this. Fortunate to have savings and a support network that could take me through the end of the year without another job. Would want something completely different - not even tangentially related - so I've been working toward that but expecting that it could take a while
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