The Case for Taking a Banking Attitude to Other Industries
Hi WSO,
Long-time reader and first-time poster here.
First off, I really appreciate the wisdom that many of you provide. There have been nuggets of your guidance over the years that have shaped my career path and set me down a better track. Thank you.
Now for the thesis: taking an IB attitude to other industries makes you a superstar while taking an IB attitude to IB or PE is the expectation; the average. We’ve all heard the big fish small pond analogy.
That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t pursue IB or PE, in fact, I think if you’re interested in being successful and wealthy, most of you should work in finance to get a sense of the expectation and work ethic required to execute on a tight timeline and deliver great work product. My point instead is that if you can transfer the IB mindset of work ethic, attention-to-detail, and networking to another industry, you may find yourself happier and very successful without the burden of 100-hour weeks and crazy MDs.
Now for my own personal story. Please take this with a grain of salt as N=1, and as much I like to think my success is a function of my work ethic, I’ve also been very, very lucky.
I went to an Ivy and did internships in S&T and IB during my sophomore and junior summers – I ended up securing the ever-coveted FT return offer.
While I enjoyed the IB work, even though it was mostly formatting slides, and was friends with many of my coworkers, IB, and even S&T to an extent, were pressure-cooker environments that weren’t right for me. It wasn’t the hours that got to me, it was more the fear of not living up to expectations. I saw how VPs treated the associates and analysts that grinded away, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle that full-time. And frankly, I found myself incredibly relieved when my IB summer came to an end.
I was an economics major and loved my coursework and research throughout college. When I got back to my school for my senior year, I ended up recruiting for economic consulting, which, at the time, seemed like a major diversion of my career path with worse overall prospects. I got a FT position and have been working at the same firm for about 6 years.
When I started full-time, frankly I was pretty far ahead of my analyst class. IB had prepared me well to 1) be organized and do the little things right (e.g., take detailed call notes, keep a running punchlist, etc.), 2) had given me some reps with formatting slides, building simple Excels, writing professional emails, 3) network to build relationships, and, most importantly, 4) had set the bar for work product expectations extremely high.
When I started, I networked onto a strategically important case that included daily interaction with a partner.
Coming from IB, I hit the ground running. I immediately took ownership of an analysis and got to work. At this point, I still only had the skills of an intern, so in my first couple weeks, I was slow as hell as compared to the 2nd year analysts and made some mistakes, but on balance, I think did two things right. First, net of my mistakes, I actually provided value. Most analysts aren’t expected to actually be useful until 3-6 months in. Second, I worked my ass off. Coming from IB, I felt lucky to be in an environment where people appreciated the work ethic and thanked me for it, instead of expecting it and yelling when something wasn’t 100% perfect.
This ultimately led to a positive feedback loop where the partner would take notice and give encouragement, and I’d be more motivated to continue performing. He’d see me in the office late at night and would invite me to come chat and review my work product.
6 years later and I love my job and am on track to be a partner. I’m not making as much as I would in IB / PE for the equivalent stage of my career, but I’m not as far as off as you might think (especially now that IB bonuses are lower). Also, from what I know about what partners at my firm make, I don’t think it’s all that materially different from the average IB MD. What I lose in “prestige” and monetary compensation, I believe is more than made up for in the lifestyle and challenging problem-solving that I get to do. I have plenty of time to spend with my wife and parents and have time for hobbies.
The moral of this story is that for the many of you that come to this forum to vent about how IB may not be right for you, there is an alternative to be wealthy and successful. You haven’t failed.
Taking an IB attitude of work ethic, attention to detail, and ambition to another industry will likely make you a standout among many who are, by definition, just average for that industry.
In summary, I believe the benefits of this approach are
- Appreciation: IB VPs may get upset about a typo on slide 87 while most industries are shocked that you were able to make 15 decent slides at all; and crucially if they’re a good manager, they’ll thank you for it
- Perspective: working a 60-hour week seems excessive for many non-IB or non-finance analysts while that’s a light week for many of you analysts reading
- Gratitude: following from perspective, you’ll find yourself thankful that you have the time to enjoy other pursuits whether that be a hobby, religion, spending time with family, etc.
- Accelerated career growth: this one is more firm-dependent, but given the right circumstances you may find yourself mentored and on an accelerated path relative to your peers in your industry
There’s plenty of caveats to my personal story and to this general approach that I could list in detail – for example, finding a firm with seniors that care about junior development is probably a real challenge (as I said, I’ve been very lucky). But overall, I believe this approach is sound and can potentially lead to better outcomes for a select group of you that don’t love working in finance.
Much of this may seem obvious to the more seasoned of you but hopefully my personal story helps a few people find a more fulfilling and successful career as a result.
I’m surprised to see that you gained portable skills and habits from IB after only spending a few months in an internship. Most people generally say it takes 1-2 years on the job full-time to really extract max value from the experience. I agree that you were very lucky to find a firm outside IB/PE that actually values and rewards outsized effort and work product.
How much do you make 6 years in? Do you often have people exit from your company to private equity or other buy side roles? How long does it take to make Partner at your firm? Would you be open to hiring IB analysts, or do they not have the skillset given economic consulting is different and probably more rigorous in many ways than M&A? The path you described sounds amazing but so many things to consider after you’ve sunk a couple years (aka 5 biological years) into IB lol.
Thanks for the comment. Happy to share more.
I wouldn’t say I gained portable skills in the sense that I could build a financial model or even make a decent slide. Most of the skills were the auxiliary items you need to even break into the industry. For example, being organized and sending networking emails is a good practice on its own that other industries don’t require or expect. Other skills I learned were very simple, such as good notetaking, keeping a list of what my analysts asked me to do, etc.
The biggest skill of all was definitely the mindset. Applying even a fraction of the discipline and work ethic required in IB in economic consulting puts you in a very advantageous position.
To your specific questions:
If you’re interested in pursuing another path, economic consulting is a great opportunity if it’s something you can see yourself doing long-term. If not, I would urge you to chat with your network to see if there are other niche industries, or even people, that reward the outsized effort.
I suppose my optimistic view is that in most serious firms, there are a select set of very driven and honest managers who will promote great work they see from juniors. Taking your IB skillset and work ethic to that role may just unlock a whole new career opportunity.
I’ll leave with what might be a helpful anecdote.
I remember when I was recruiting out of undergrad, I interviewed for an investment analyst position at a big insurance asset management firm. In my second round, I was interviewed by two guys running a niche advisory group within the firm in their mid-to-late 30s. During the interview, they came clean to me and the group was on the decline under previous leadership, but they were “hungry” and looking for an equally hungry analyst to join them in rebuilding. They’d negotiated a favorable comp structure with the firm where they got some % of new AUM fees and were willing to share with an exceptional analyst. I almost took that role.
Hope this helps and best of luck!
Great question, although I’ll note this is very firm-dependent. I’ll try to speak broadly but this is largely based on my personal experience.
The typical progression of roles isn’t all too different from typical strategy consulting roles:
Hours are highly variable. 40-45 hours per week is about average, but note that there will be times when you’re working 80+ hours, although infrequently.
Personally, across my analyst and consultant stints I worked much more (avg. 55+ hours), because I was interested in the work, wanted to learn more, and was highly driven (the IB work ethic) to overperform (e.g., produce better slides, deliver better results, etc.).
Just recently made the switch from IB to corporate and I feel like I can back this up. You’re 100% right that most people can’t even make 1 decent slide, yet you can put together a good looking deck in an afternoon. People see you as this super skilled asset that’s crazy smart (yet I feel like I’m nothing special, bc I’m kinda dumb). But the bar in corporate is a lot lower. People expect a very low output on a day to day basis, but with IB skills you easily triple that output without much extra work, since you just do what you always did. Personally I feel like I put in 75% effort but I am seen as a rockstar because it’s nothing like they have ever experienced before. It would take them two weeks to put together an ok looking board deck, while I can make a perfectly looking deck in 3 days with an excel backup that actually makes sense. I work with great and super smart people, they just never went through IB bootcamp, so it’s definitely an advantage.
I agree with the above positive. Nonetheless a real point to consider in being seen as an outlier has both upsides and downsides.
A clear downside is the difference in involvement with peers who may not get this work ethic.
Another one is one’s efforts may be seen as just a way to progress and climb vs clear ethics.
Lastly, it can feel really lonely / burdening when you are the only hardo cranking models, pitch, in an empty room with little recognition on the above par work.
In the end, IB is still a rewarding culture although at the junior level it’s hard to see. It’s pretty rare elsewhere to have competent peers challenging a lot of your output - apart from former fellow IBs - like someone going through your model and checking most of it, checking your slides and making you a feedback on it.
Not saying it’s perfect don’t get me wrong, but both views need to be nuanced.
Top marks all around. Just want to add my 2c here,
IB Analysts/Associates makes amazing execution-based hires, but the higher up you go the more difficulties transitioning from IB to industry/consulting/etc. What i see from my experience that IB teaches you to be great at details, tenacity, and technical skills. It does next to zero in developing proper leadership / social skills.
I have seen time to time that more senior ex-IB hires struggles mightily in creating cohesive team/group especially building a rapport with their junior team members. Almost always they bring this 24/7 availability and "perfection is the baseline" culture/expectation from their IB days. This will not work well unless your junior team members comes from a similar background (client-facing project based type of work, ie. lawyers, consultants, etc). The VP/D/MD will thought of their junior team member as inadequate, the team will thought of their boss as "insane/unrealistic/hard to work for". This creates a infinite negative feedback loop that more often than not will be a thorn to the VP/D/MD, the execs will almost always put the blame on them while they (the new senior hires) will put the blame of the junior team, while again the junior team will put the blame on them.
One key advice to ex-IB's/Consultants/PE's/Lawyers transitioning to the industry is to set your expectation of your team to 0, and build a rapport first with them then execute your vision of transforming your team into something you wanted.
Exactly, well said ASEANalyst. Also, one other thing to call out is everyone hates to work for the ex-IB try hard. While working for ex-IB folks has many inherent benefits, and OP outlined them extremely well, you must be cognizant that most people who work in IB-adjacent industries (but not IB itself) did so to avoid working banking hours and putting in a banking level of effort. This means that footnote errors, small typos, and other rather trivial mistakes should not result in any more than a quick fix from you, the ex-IB team lead, and not a condescending discussion.
The ex-IB folks I work for have been great, because they brought a banker's work ethic and not a banker's attitude. They come in with a desire to achieve perfection but also with the desire to educate their team and to explain rather than ridicule. I would argue that the latter is far more important, and is critical to developing strong team comradery and trust.
Sorry but is your summer intern experience in a bank 6+ years ago really impacting your day to day work now?
Sure - you are a hard worker and have high attention to detail or whatever but claiming you’re ‘ex-IB’ and that’s what has contributed to your success seems like a bit of a stretch.
I'm certainly not claiming to be ex-IB, and I don't think any of the hard skills I learned now contribute to my day-to-day success. I was someone that had the IB mindset coming out of college, and that attitude contributed to my success through perspective. That conceptual lesson, at least for me, is timeless.
My internships were formative experiences as they gave me that perspective on what work could be like. It also kept me in touch with peers still in the industry who would tell me their hours and the constant stress they were under. I also regularly read WSO which tells stories of many extremes within IB.
I took a very different perspective to work everyday knowing that others were facing much more challenging environments than my own. Manager asks me to work the weekend - no big deal; it's 8pm and my practice group needs a short deck for a client pitch by tomorrow morning - not a problem. These are things many juniors in my industry might be outraged by but for me seemed like much more of a reasonable ask.