The COVID Effect - Positive or Negative Banking Experience?
For those of you who have just started banking or planned to just do 2-3 years and exit, how do you feel about COVID and its effect on your banking experience? Obviously it's terrible for many reasons related to health, but putting that aside, I feel that being able to work from home for what will be most likely be a minimum of 50-60% of my (planned) banking career has made the experience much more tolerable. Below I put just a few of the pros/cons and in my opinion, the pros outweighs the cons by a fair margin if you were just planning on putting your couple years and bouncing. On the other hand, if you were trying to build a career off of banking, i can see how WFH may be more detrimental long-term.
Pros:
- Working from home in comfort
- More sleep
- Less facetime
- Less pressure
- No longer needing to appear busy when you're not (compared to office)
- Easier to make personal calls / keep in touch with friends
- Health can be prioritized (flexibility for working out, walks, etc)
- Ability to run errands mid-day when there is downtime
- Interviewing / networking is much easier
Cons:
- Not as much time to build bonds with fellow juniors (no spontaneous coffee runs / lunches & dinners / drinks)
- Less exposure to seniors (less long-term career development)
- For first years, most likely less exposure to modeling due to trust not being built
- No separation from work and home, often causing the feeling of "living at work"
- Seniors "living to work", causing much more ad-hoc, late night requests
What are your thoughts? Is banking ever going to back to what it was pre-COVID?
In general - 'd say it's better for 2nd years but worse for 1st years.
I'd generally agree with the comment above. I think many 2nd years I know across the street had pretty bad summers though, like brutally bad. Combination of a crazy market, lack of proper intern support due to shorter internships and wfh conditions, and depending on the firm a delayed start for new analysts.
also think its better for 2nd years and worse for 1st years - they don't get very much responsibility now
Who said? I’m getting crushed in live deals.
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