Tier 3 Cities are Paradise

You wake up in your single bedroom apartment ($1500 rent including utilities), walk into your closet (mostly Peter Millar shirts, Lulu pants, and Allbirds shoes) and put your watch (a Fossil, you don’t make enough for a Rolex). It’s Friday, just got to get through the workday until freedom for maybe 18 hours until your MD needs something ASAP.

Looking at yourself in the mirror, you say to yourself your daily affirmations:

• “I never wanted to be in New York. Think of the taxes! All in my comp is probably better than most of my friends that got analyst seats in the so-called “Tier 1 City”
• “I actually create more value for founder-owned companies at my boutique middle-market investment bank (think Stephens/Citizens/Stifel tier) than those bulge-bracket c-suite dick suckers”
• “When it comes to recruiting, PE firms will definitely recognize the fact that I wear multiple hats (you don’t just create boilerplate CIMs, you also get to print and bind them!)”

You get on your way to work (driving of course, the public transit in your city is laughable) while listening to music that you partied to when you were in college (think Villanova/Davidson/Georgia Tech), and finally get to your 10-story office. You get to your desk and start working on the CIM for the ~$3mm EBITDA manufacturer of some godforsaken industrial “mission-critical” part for the who the fuck cares industry (all of these businesses are the exact same). Is there any thinking involved? Absolutely not, it’s the same exact sell-side process your firm has done 1,000 times to a LMM PE firm with partners that went to state schools and didn’t know what a leveraged buyout was until they were 40 (you, on the other hand, were part of your school’s IB club and were cranking LBOs your sophomore summer – didn’t end up mattering come recruiting time anyways).  

You get a ping from a recruiter at Selby Jennings. You’ve read on WSO that they are to be avoided, but after messaging all of the legacy headhunters and getting ghosted you decide that they’re probably elitist just like all the other people in New York. Looking over the email from the recruiter that posts something on LinkedIn every 20 minutes, you see that the role is for a LMM firm in Detroit paying 100k base. “Well”, you think, “I heard Detroit is making a comeback these days, and the carry will eventually be worth it” (there are 4 partners over 60 that won’t retire for 20 years, much less give you any carry).

You finish up your work, and it’s time to go out. You start to text some of your friends that you’ve made in the city, but most of them are hanging out with their girlfriends (you obviously don’t have one), so you decide to go out with the other analysts in your class. As you start brainstorming your plans for the night, you come to the horrifying realization that the most exciting option for the night is an outdoor brewery in a renovated, gentrified warehouse (suuuuperrr original). You pound a few beers, flip between the weather and calculator apps on your phone, and then book an Uber and head home.

As you lay in your bed, you think to yourself - “Was I only thinking about how insecure I am the whole day today? Maybe I should really consider not putting all of my self-worth in my career, but rather take my mom’s advice and take a look at the bigger picture?”

You stop and think to yourself, drifting to sleep…

“HA! That sounds like something a Big 4 accountant would say. At least I’m not one of them”.