Quitting Before 1 Year Mark
Hi everyone, wanted to get some advice and see if anyone has been in a similar situation.
I started at an EB in July and am currently considering quitting altogether. I realized pretty quickly that I was not going to stay past one year but initially thought I would stay until August when bonuses hit. As dramatic as it sounds, I really do not feel like I can do it anymore. I've realized the money does not matter to me anymore and I am fine passing up the bonus if I can feel happy and like a normal person again. I would not quit before having a job secured but feel I could find a business ops / strategy role at a start-up within the next month. Has anyone quit prior to the one year mark? Did your new company cover the clawback on the signing bonus?
Thanks everyone.
Fuck the noise get your freedom. People are making money in all kinds of ways these day doing jack shit don't limit yourself to another job. Best of luck.
Truly the worst feeling described here and in the comments is not feeling like yourself anymore.
I used to be funny, happy-go-lucky, could carry a conversation easily, had lots of interesting recent life experiences to share.
Then after I entered IB this past fall as a 1st year, anxiety set in for the first time in my life, and now I find it hard to hold a basic conversation
Lot's of small things and decreases in quality of life that I never experienced before in my entire life
And I can't tell if this it simply is in the adult world or if I'm the only one who can't take it
I just really can't do it anymore. I need to quit, but I've been finding it hard to find a job that I'd actually enjoy next. I don't want to be unemployed either. It's a lot and I just feel like it's breaking me. Easy for me to say because I'm anon here but I'd never say this to anyone IRL. It makes me feel insanely weak. I wish I was more strong, mentally
As Someone in the same situatiom. You will come back pretty quickly after some time off. The things u are experiencing are mainly because of lack of sleep, you caring too much, and not enjoying the work enough. Leave ASAP
Really happy to hear I am not alone in feeling like this. How are you guys all feeling about leaving the bonus behind? That is definitely the hardest part for me. Although ~8 months really is not that long in the picture, it it pretty terrible to think about the fact that I might have to continue feeling like this for 8 months.
I think I'm going to learn to let it go
8 months is a pretty insane amount of time to continue feeling this way, I agree
But I'm also trying my hardest to try to come to accept the fact that if I can't find a better job, and that I do have to do this for another 8 months (1 year is my hard stop - I will quit post-bonus with or without a job in tow), that I'll probably look back on this year as the worst year of my life but nothing more than that. Just a really, really bad year.
^ I try to tell myself this but saying it is harder than believing it deep inside
Does anyone else feel really polarized about the job? Like when I have downtime or a moment to think about my experience from a high level, I'm proud of my experience and feel like it's been worth it for the amount I'm paid- like I've learned an incredible amount and the exposure I've got is really unique. On the other hand, anytime I'm actually working, I just hate it to no end. Deals don't feel like they're going anywhere and the amount of bullshit work generated on a whim is really discouraging.
On a separate note, I'm also finding it difficult to tell if what I hate about banking is actually about banking or if it'd be the same with a 'normal' job. As this is most of our first jobs ever, I think it's really hard for me to tell if there are any jobs out there that I'd actually like or if it's turtles all the way down.
Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I quit after 6-7 months - recruited for another job a few months ago and was able to ride it out until my bonus (stub). My primary project when I first joined was absolutely brutal, which pushed me to feel like I had to leave. The work was nonstop (worked about 100 hours a week every week for months and I was siloed). My next one wasn’t so bad, and honestly I liked it enough that I’d stay if others were that way, but in my mind I was already committed to leaving. On the off chance I’d ever have to go back to that first environment, leaving felt far more worth it.
Culture is probably the primary reason I decided to leave. While recruiting, I was made to believe culture was specifically a huge part of this bank and group in particular but I quickly learned this was not the case. I was spoken to in ways I would never expect to be spoken to by a person, let alone in a professional environment, I was given little guidance if I made a mistake and only criticized (given I was very new it would have made sense to at least try to provide some guidance) and I was forced to crank on deals with low probability of closing. The stress and anxiety I felt during this time was so insane that I genuinely don’t know how I made it past this. I completely understand the sentiment of not feeling like myself. There was a lot of top down stress and the narrative that the bank was actively trying to retain us did not add up - it was pretty well known that moving to PE was frowned upon and there was very little support there so you’d expect there to at least be measures in place to make the junior team feel valued. Also, I was under the impression Sundays were only work days if absolutely necessary, but found that we were expected to work morning to night on Sundays. This didn’t at all feel necessary given clients were hardly online and didn’t expect anything but was the case.
The work was also far from interesting in the beginning - it got better towards the end of my time when I got more responsibility. In the beginning, I really couldn’t bring myself to care about the super menial details and justify working so much on such meaningless work. Of course, meaningless work exists everywhere and is inevitable, but spending nearly 17 hours a day on it became hard to justify for me.
All of these things in tandem showed to me that it wasn’t a fit for me. There were positives - I had the opportunity to lead some calls on one project and had a lot of client interactions. I got to meet some very intelligent, savvy people, and ultimately the way banking is structured enables so much learning that I wouldn’t have been able to get elsewhere. There is a huge opportunity cost to me leaving, but I’m excited to have a life again that isn’t dictated by anxiety and stress.