Value of NYC banking versus Midwest regional banking

If you had plans to stay in IB/PE for the entirety of your career, would spending time in NYC be more opportunistic for growing your career? Especially in terms of your network, trajectory, and credibility. For reference I work at a regional bank and enjoy this part of the country, but I fear that I could one day be pigeonholed to deals/networks in my state from only having work experience in one state. Is this irrational if you are somewhat well networked in your state and with other firms? What would you do in this scenario?

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I can't speak too much to career trajectory, but I'm from the midwest and have experience in NYC

Culturally, the midwest is very "clubby" and values loyalty and heritage (there's a lot of families that have spent the past 3+ generations in the same city). By contrast, megacities like NYC and SF are revolving doors and factories that churn out bankers and finance professionals. If you build your your career and earn the trust of heavy hitters in the midwest, you could very well be better off than in NYC which is filled with commoditized bankers. Likewise, the midwest is filled with businesses that are privately held and often family run, so I think they tend to prefer working with "their kind of people" rather than big shot new yorkers. 

Point is, if you specialize in the midwest you could be a lot better off, and I tend to think people vastly underestimate the amount of money/companies in the region. For instance, you probably haven't heard of Cargill or Koch Industries but both are generating $100B+ in revenue annually and intentionally remain very low profile

 

um...yes, I would wager most people on this forum wouldn't recognize cargill or koch or be able to tell you what they do

Have you seen the type of people on this forum? In case you don't know, it's mostly highschool and college kids who would probably tell you Nomura was a type of sushi

 

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