The reason this industry is shit
To preface, this is mostly a rant post instead of a well-thought out essaylike post.
What I have observed in banking is that, the industry is not just bad for one specific thing, but rather a mix of at least 10 shitty aspects that make the job unbearable outside of the time you get your bonus.
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Obviously the hours. in bb 16 hours a day for 6 days, EB 18 * 6.5 days, plus it does not get "better" when you climb up the ladder. As analysts you obviously smell death every day at 3am, as ASOs you are just a sucker that cannot exit / not getting promoted to VP so you work extra hard to get impressions. As VPs / Ds you are tied to your work anyway so you "work" 24/7. These hours are soul crushing, have physical and mental tolls on you, and ruin your social life.
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Nature of the work / workstream. Of course IB is not rocket science, but it could also be at least not so retarded. Copy and pasting and formatting text in word, aligning objects in ppt, changing 10 to 10.5% in your excel model - any highschooler can do this. Sure you get exposure to mnpi / c suites but then what? You are just facilitating the deal, and you get a fee for that. Nothing you do matter beyond that sum of money. Oh also your VP would text you on teams at 2am telling you to global change all oxford commas and font to arial revert by tmr morning thx, then give further instructions at 04:30 so you could deliver your 100-page deck v5 at 0630 and you can sleep peacefully with birds chipping for 2 hours. This point echoes with (1) and tbh I dont see why the downtime between comments during work hours cannot be shortened / put off to next day so at least ppl can sleep for 8 hours instead of 1.5.
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The people. This is by FAR the worst out of the 3 mentioned till now. The work is boring? sure after finishing the deal there at least would be something new to look at. The hours are long? Cool I'll just call in sick every other day to simulate normal people's work schedule. But the people you see 18 hours every day in the office are, tbh, the only social interaction you get. Lets talk about seniors first - we all know how shitty it is for you to get staffed with a cunt MD / clueless VP etc. But as a lowly AN / ASO you also have to navigate politics between the Ds/MDs. From the ordering of their headshot in the bakeoff deck to priority and delivery of their workstreams, these get tiring very quick on top of the hours and effort you have to put in to get it done. For your fellow colleagues, it all depends on luck whether your class / team are assholes or your best buddies. But the thing is, the % of assholes, arrogant, bitchy, and superfluous ppl in this industry is FAR higher then in any other, probably b/c the comp make them associate themselves to a higher social status. Office politics outside of IB floor is nursery level compared to here. Once I have a colleague said that he and I were the best working duo on the floor and 20 mins later I overheard him talking about I leave so early at night (2am to WFH xd). Another time I have a guy that says he just dreamt about a model in his sleep so he woke up at 5am to model it out - ofc no one belived and the model was in the bin by 930. These people are the pinnacle of "live to work" , and have no substance outside mentioning themselves as an investment banker. Imagine seeing them F2F for 110+ hours per week.
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The jargon / lingo. Circle back, touch base, revert, kimono, align, bandwidth / capacity, below bar, vintage, milk the cow, massage the numbers. Cant you guys just honestly speak like a normal person?
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No life outside work. This is more like an extension of (1-2) but I just wanna highlight that ever since I joined banking I only got 3 friends that I could only catch up with facetime, could only see my family once in 2 weeks (we live in the same neighbourhood btw), let alone romantic relationships. I would rather be a priest than to marry a female banker.
- Some ppl say that the Comp / exit warrants all these. Well yea we make good moeny for sure, but any people with a calculaator can figure out that post tax, rent, your 5th daily coffee, lunch and dinner with no expense reimbursements, your hourly rates probably equal to a janitor on your floor and working in private / corporate banking probably net you greater income and also time / social life / etc. For exits, unless you truly enjoy banking, then I dont see the point going into PE. PE is just the extension of IB beyond the two years stint and you wont last long if you get there to escape IB. Leaving to Corpdev / startups? well IB is not a must, your 2 years make you a similar candidate than someone went to a nontarget, went to big 4 then did an Masters / MBA.
Thats it, pls feel free to add anything - to hate this industry more. For prospects, reconsider. Now I am going to work on my v6 FINAL of my deck at 12am till 6am maybe after posting this. GL all.
You’re not wrong. I complained like this for a year while in IB, and yet stayed, only recently moving into corporate. It’ll make you feel powerless and impotent to hate what you’re doing so passionately and yet remain where you are. I felt like a prisoner. The key is to just take a step, any step, even if it’s one application in the morning before work, to slowly move towards your goal. You’ve got to resist, like a prisoner slowly scratching a hole in the cell floor, and in a couple months, you’ll be free, and most of all, you’ll be sane in the meantime because you are trying your best to change your circumstances.
How's the new role?
the point numbers are not ordered correctly (1 instead of 6) pls fix
Hilarious
It’s crazy that this is largely the only sub industry within finance that has these types of ridiculous requirements
I didn't read any of that, tldrs?
I haven't commented on this site in years, but I do recall plenty of posts like this. Your job probably really sucks at times.mI wouldn't know, because I come from audit (which sucks in other ways), and I've been in industry for over 10 years.
I won't speak out of place, but I will say this to you and any banking/consulting folks - you will ALWAYS be given the benefit of the doubt over someone with my background, even with a third of the work experience. Am I being salty? Maybe, but I don't say that in a bitter way. All I mean is that you're going to have a great opportunity from the folks who understand all the s*** you're eating now, and while your 40s seem like a lifetime away, the future you will be happy you grinded it out, most likely. Best of luck.
Lmao the way you mentioned you wouldn't date a female banker reminds me of that one YouTube short/video where the interviewer asks what professions people don't wanna date and bankers get mentioned a lot. I guess this is one of the reasons why.
please can anyone just get into an MBA programme and writing a fucking paper of 200-300 pages worth reading on how IBanking should change so it can (i) still fulfill clients requests, (ii) management can be more aware of the analysts/associates needs. But don't put some shitty HBR ideas, I would want to read about management topics, competitiveness, business strategy, incentives, what type of people should HR recruit, etc. etc. and preferably some data backed by hard facts
because the solution is not just reduce the hours, that's just recipe for disaster when another bank will outwork their analysts meanwhile yours has their analyst sleeping 8-9 hours a day. So how do you make your bank remain competitive while also cutting back on precisely those things that make you remain competitive when you're selling a commoditized product?
Write a fucking paper on how you can remain competitive while also reducing the grind/psychopathic culture and I'll gladly read it. Otherwise, that's nothing new and I see critique without solutions.
Currently in Corp banking, hours are better, still kinda shitty in its own way. Used to want to break into IB and that was my goal but since joining this site i have made a hard pivot. Have no interest in IB anymore
Agreed. Left after a year and it was the best choice ever
What do you do now? I also left in my second (FT) year and I always regretted it a little…
Investment banking is the definition of “live to work”.
My experience, having started as associate, has been super different but if I had experiences like you're describing, I'd have left. Not at an EB though, nor a top bulge. Get paid street but not EB money.
Working in ibanking gives empty-headed teenager an opportunity to closely observe & learn complex transactions at the cost of doing the grunt work. It’s the price you pay for getting exposure to multi-billion-dollar transactions. These type of learning experiences will lay solid foundations for your entire career. It will elevate you to be an investor. Many people dream of this but cannot get such opportunity.
It’s the cost you pay for a big fat paycheck and nothing more. Everyone knows this. We can stop pretending there are these incredible intangibles that come with it.
The exit opps are good. Ibanking is one of the few places that you can directly exit to an investing role. Same can not be said for 90% of corporate roles.
Honestly very few industries where you can make 500k in mid-20s and several millions by simply climbing corporate ladders. Some grinding is no big deal. Be grateful for what you have
I agree with everything but the problem is that besides the working hours, it’s all also true for basically every other job as well. At least in IB, you get paid and the sky is the limit. Still, most people should try it and then leave. They should just leave for something better, and most jobs aren’t. I made the mistake of leaving without having a clear path to something better in mind and that was a mistake. My hope is analysts won’t make the same mistake.
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