Tech vs Finance. How do I decide?
Hear me out.
I'm a first year in college and I'm trying to figure out which to pick. I'm not asking which is the better option, as I know this is an exhausted topic on this forum. I'm wondering something else. How would I go about figuring out which of the two I like?
I'm struggling because there's so much involved in recruiting for either job. Recruiting for finance has been moved up to sophomore spring/summer and I'm assuming tech is pretty early as well. I've learned a bit about valuation and accounting, and I know nothing about coding. On top of that, there's the networking factor which I know is a big thing in finance and maybe less so in tech.
As a first year student, how should I spend these first two years of college to get enough experience and figure out what I should recruit for? I feel like there's too much to do and not enough time. Has anyone been in this position? Advice?
The industries are so different, and if you want to figure out which you like, you're going to have to start putting in some work. If you dont take further finance classes, computer science classes, etc, you're not going to learn which subjects you enjoy most. And what about beyond courses, would you enjoy working on your personal coding projects in your free time? Stock pitch competitions? Hackathons? Case comps? Also, talk to upperclassman and professionals in the industry and ask them about their experiences in college and at work.
It takes some time but it's up to you to actually explore your options
Please do tech
Why?
Neither since you can't even bother to search up prior posts on the most over fucking done topic on this goddamn site
Did you even read the post? It’s about the time crunch due to recruiting being pushed earlier and how to decide/plan quickly.
It depends what "track" you're on.
If you're on the generalist / business track and looking for a post-college "launchpad" gig that'll keep your doors open then the decision basically boils down to IB / Consulting vs one of those top tier APM programs / roles. Both are pretty similar skillset wise. PM role is kind of where the mile wide, inch deep guys who want visibility / responsibilty end up in tech. Might need a bit more context in how technology products work conceptually (plenty of resources out there to learn the basics) but for the most part it's a commercial gig thinking about strategy, roadmap planning, new features, competitive analysis etc. Fair warning though that IB / Consulting have way more spots (easily 3-4k between them vs ~100-200) and are less forgiving than these elite APM programs / roles. Would almost encourage you to index on IB / C vs APM as the second one is not a given.
If you're more on the geeky / technical side then it's a question of quant finance (realistically quant trading, probably not getting quant research out of undergrad) vs software engineering or data science / analytics. This path is for more technically minded folks. If you like solving puzzles, enjoy math, like esoteric concepts like algorithms / data structures, enjoy playing with data, enjoy building stuff etc. Then this is probably the route you want to take.
Finance / Consulting vs APM - boils down to:
For QF vs DS / A or SWE - it's more:
Those are some of the break points I could think of. Feel free to dig in, search, talk to people in these fields to get more of a sense of where you should aim your sights.
Easy: do you like wearing black turtlenecks, wearing Allbirds, and saving the turtles? Tech. Are you a greedy capitalist who loves Patagonia vests? Finance.
That's really all you need to take into account.
In all actuality though, just spend some time figuring out what interests you more. Take a coding class this semester, take a finance class this semester along with it, and compare which one was more interesting. Get a useful internship (from as big of a company as possible) in either field for this summer and see if you genuinely like it. Take internships during school your sophomore year in the field you've decided you liked more (internships during both Fall and Spring on top of your classes) and you'll have plenty of experience for either field.
Everyone has a moment in their lives when they need to decide what they want to make of themselves. Everyone feels this lost at some point - the people who don't (the people who picked a path for arbitrary reasons and never really questioned it) often have a mid-life crisis where they realize they hate their job and regret chasing prestige/money. Almost everyone ends up feeling extremely pressed for time when recruiting down this path because you really don't have much time to figure it out and start getting experience.
Keep in mind though, you don't have to stress out too much at the end of the day. Many people end up taking extra time to get through college. I didn't even hear about investment banking until the fall semester of my 3rd year of college - I lit a fire under my butt, switched my major, extended my graduation by a year, took on two internships that fall (with 15 credits of classes)/one the following spring (with 14 credits of classes and while networking)/one the following summer (while continuing to recruit) and this summer I'm going to GS/MS/JPM.
Believe in yourself and decide quick, and you'll end up surprising yourself at the end of the day.
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