What happens if i quit
Currently a matter of months into my first year at a shitty lmm IB and its awful. I am close to getting an FP&A offer after some great interviews, and have a question on my mind.
if I leave IB after only a few months and then stay in FP&A (its a very small company), what are my options later on, such as getting an MBA?
what are all the other career paths I would even be eligible for coming out of an m7, if i would even be eligible for M7 (i have a high gpa from a t15 undergrad)?
i want to take a risk and jump to this small start up and also have the time to focus on some personal matters, but i dont know if I am setting myself up to never earn my current salary (110k) again until i am 30. Thats the only thing holding me back - the chance that ill instantly regret quitting IB and go back to being an unhireable candidate with no experience if this start up goes under
please help if anyone has advice
I wouldn’t quit.
Less than 1 year (and really, 2 years) of IB experience is pretty meaningless, and going to FP&A will significantly limit your options after. Leaving first job after a few months will also not look great for MBA admissions.
Why are you looking to leave? Bad culture, long hours, something else?
All of the above. Garbage bank that gets roasted on this forum and looked down on by everyone. Best exits here are LMM PE (if ur lucky) or FP&A eventually anyway. 80-100hr work weeks. No wfh. Braindead seniors and colleagues that I never want to be anything like.
Just say the bank
Sounds like a description of DB haha but DB has wfh so must be something else 😂
Agree with other posters - I wouldn't quit this early in the game.
I was in your shoes about a year ago and quit after 7 months on the job. Regret that shit every day. I left for a corporate role that was supposed to be M&A focused but ended up being a reporting / IR job. Huge career fuck up and now I'm stuck in this role for the foreseeable future since I left IB so quickly.
If I were you I'd try to take some 3 day weekends sporadically until you can get to the holidays. Work generally slows down over Thanksgiving and Christmas which will give you some breathing room. Once you're 6 months in, you should have some efficiency gains with your work product that will cut down your hours. You'll also start to learn which requests are urgent and what you can let sit overnight - started to figure this out right as I was leaving after about 6 months in.
I know it's hard, but really try to avoid making big career or life decisions when you're in a state of burnout or panic. You worked hard to get this spot, so don't squander it for an opportunity that isn't compelling.
Ok but assuming I ended up in your current position, what are the potential moves forward other than go back to banking? do you feel like you could get into bschool? do you think you could spin your job enough on your resume that other FP&A roles will hire you? how much do you make at this role vs banking?
What pay are you looking at for these FP&A roles and what COL city?
There is a good chance you'll end up fine- move over to CF, have a better W/L balance, get a promo or two, get into an M7, go on to hit director in your early 30s, etc etc.
But there is a better chance of achieving that level and beyond if you stay.
My experience in CF for most of my career (until recently) has been that 70% of your coworkers are lifers- they make 80k as an SFA and don't have any motivation to climb any higher. Many of them are button pushers- over a few hours they manually what a decent excel formula could do instantly. 25% are capable and could climb in their career but they are content with the slow pace of maybe getting to be a supervisor in their 40s or 50s. The last 5% are capable and hungry and actually make a strategy for their career.
Odds are you'll be siloed in a role with set responsibilities where you have no opportunity to go above and beyond. You have to refresh some templates, hunt down a few new accounts that are causing your numbers not to balance, write a formula to drop actuals into the forecast. Its like a math problem- you either do it right or do it wrong, but there isn't a "do it better"- you could do it faster, and in my experience that led to more free time (read: boredom) as opposed to more responsibility. But there simply isn't some incredible insight you're going to pull from the data- there isn't a way to be a crack FP&A guy who clairvoyantly forecasts the future.
Many times in my previous roles I would find myself thinking "is this really the path that will lead me to be a VP/CFO down the road? am I learning anything that will assist me to that goal? Am I really going to be telling my career story to a bunch of new hires one day, talking about how this role helped me get to the CFO chair?"
Not to totally shit on corporate. It took me a few jumps to find the right role with the right advocates and exposure, and I'm on a great path. It can be an enormous advantage to be a big fish in a small pond. W/L balance has been great, which is necessary for me since I have a family. But if I were to do it all over again (and didn't have a family), especially now that I have some exposure to the banking and "high finance" side of things- I would 100% have gone for IB/PE/HF etc. It just gives you better odds of success, more exit opps, better connections.
Anyway- I say stick it out. Life is about luck, all we can do is tilt the odds a bit. You might do tremendously well if you jump, but the odds are better if you stay.
What shitty LMM boutique are you at? I’d happy to take your spot. Mine pays below street
Bump
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