Question for Analysts/Advisors

Sophomore in college interested in M&A Question:

To all the investment bankers who constantly say they hate their jobs and feel miserable: why did you even choose this industry? Everyone knows going in that it’s 80+ hours a week. Yes, the money is great, but the lifestyle tradeoff is obvious. I’ve spoken with plenty of bankers, and many sound like they can’t stand their lives. On the other hand, I’ve also met bankers who genuinely enjoy the work, the deal-making, the fast pace, the action of M&A, and they thrive in it. So if you chose this career purely for the paycheck, without any passion for the work itself, wasn’t that just setting yourself up for misery?

What was your thought process when you were a sophomore? Did you think you were going to love it for the passion or was money only driving you?

10 Comments
 

I would advise you to first anonymize yourself. To answer your question, when I was a sophomore I just wanted the most prestige and the most money. It was enough for me and most of my peers to get through it all. 

There was a brief time where we all thought we were passionate about finance when we were recruiting, however after internship most of us realized it was all bullshit and we just wanted a shiny job and a big paycheck. There are people that genuinely enjoy this shit, but I was not one of them. 

 

There is a massive delta in hearing how 80 hours/week sucks and experiencing the suck of 80 hours/week. The second part that is the true killer is the unpredictability - if it was 9am-midnight Mon-Thurs, 9am-7pm Friday and some weekend work sprinkled in that would be tough but you could still make a consistent schedule around that in the long-term. Not knowing if your weekend will get blown up or if you'll leave at 9pm or 3am is taxing

 

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