What was the lowest moment of your professional career?

Interviewed for a new role and felt like i crushed the interview. The recruiter never got back to me, and I only found out I didn't get the job because my incompetent, lazy, idiot, weirdo co-worker got the job over me. Didn't even know he interviewed there until he gave his two week notice and I asked him where his new job was. I was staring into the abyss of misery wondering wtf am i doing with my life for a week or two. Ended up getting my current role a few weeks later, which is a much better opportunity, but man that was rough. 

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Being unemployed for over 6 months during the Great Recession earlier in my career.  I went from an “important” job with an office in Financial District in San Francisco to wearing pajamas during mid-day in my apartment unit living room.  I would get the “none of our friends are unemployed” bit from my wife (normally she’s very encouraging but even that has limits).  And then I lose $10,000 of my savings to a fraudster.  Because I wanted to make deals and feel important (I was 27 and trying to make moves).  The guy claimed to be buying limousines at auction and reselling and I visited his office which was a transportation company.  The guy never gave my money back and kept making excuses and delay.  I don’t think he even bought any limos with my money.  It took a while for my wife to forget that mistake.

1) the character of who you do business with is as important as what kind of business or investment it is; and could be even more important.  I’ve seen this theme again and again.  The guy ended up in jail for something else.

2) stop comparing to friends with steady jobs who hate their work - but at least it’s steady.  Know that you have your own game that you’re playing.  Emulate them if their path is so much better and easier.  But don’t compare apples with oranges.  I like my work and upside of it.  
 

3) I developed a “busy is good” mindset during the Recession; I always had a strong work ethic, but I appreciated work more (after having no work).

4) I developed more resilience and a feeling that I can get back on my feet.  
 

5) getting back to #1, I stopped caring about image and marketing, and became very stoic when it came to investing.  Probably changed me for the better.

Currently in it now and it is exhausting, I actually understand why some people hurt themselves over financial hardships, had to leave my MSF due to financial issues and work in a bodega for the past couple of months to not become literally homeless. 

I do have a return offer from an Investment Bank so hopefully this is only temporary but after being on my feet for 8hrs a day and cleaning people's shit and piss I honestly think I might need therapy when this is over, I am not myself mentally anymore, I am just so beyond tired all the time physically and mentally.

The only relief I get is when I day dream about working FT and actually getting paid a living wage despite late nights at the office. Also culture wise at my bank people usually leave at 7 and incoming analysis just got a pay bump to 100k. When I see people here working in banks with similar culture and saying things like they "have no purpose and don't know what to do with their money", I immediately know they must have had a really cushy upbringing. This job, especially if you're in a bank with great culture like mine is one of the best jobs anyone can work outside of being a movie star or famous athlete.

My start date of August seems so far away, so for now my schedule is to just wake up, suffer from exhausting tasks at work, get abused by the general public then go home.

Graduated college with a bad GPA and no internship experience. Had to struggle to get hired in a back office somewhere, used them to pay for a MBA. Switched to banking role for regional bank which turned out to really be more of a corporate banking role because the MD 4xed our portfolio size and now bank is being acquired by TD bank so it will be a very good role.

At least from what I can see id consider it corporate banking, our clients recently have been Facebook and Amazon any many other publicly traded companies although I think under the current structure we fall under commercial banking. 

Got fired from my first job 1.5 months into the job. Writing was on the wall and it was a relief for me because I was very ill-adjusted to both the type of work and the specific manager I had. The company subsequently fired 4/5 of the analysts in my class. Anyway, I job searched for 3 months while work authorization was going to expire in 6 months (international student here). Got a job through a connection. Got fired again at the 1 month mark. This time for no reason at all. Got pulled very suddenly to HR and they refused to tell me why even though I asked them for a reason. I was confused. But the hiring manager/my manager never liked me even from the interview and probably only agreed to have me on the team because of my connection. Oh btw this was also a company I did a good internship at in my sophomore year. And this was March 2020. 8 days after they fired me Covid shut down was declared. Continued job search but obviously you know as someone 6 months out of college with no experience and two jobs that couldn’t be put on a resume trying to recruit during the first stage of Covid shut down when companies all froze hiring, I had such a great time lol. June 2020, it was super hard to get interviews but the few interviews I had I didn’t get the job; work authorization expired. But due to my specific immigration case I also had to stay in the US for petition for permanent residency to still be valid. Yet I couldn’t work. So I had to stay in the US and literally couldn’t work. Thinking back I should have tried to start a company and make good use of that time while I literally couldn’t work lol. But again 6 months out of college knowing nothing about business and having had the traumatizing experiences I had, I just tried my best to do some learning on my own. Anyway fast forward to December 2020 - after having waited for new work authorization for 6 months with no end in sight, I got a call from a company that turned me down 6 months ago after 8 rounds of interviews. I accepted the job with start date of March 2021, but realistically I didn’t know if I would get work authorization by then to be able to actually start the job. February 2021, I got work authorization and started working in my first real job when I was already 1.5 years out of college. And from there I changed job once and am looking to change again. Well anyway the rest is history. 

Being mocked by a rainmaker (non IB, think S&T) MD via an email thread. Happen to connect with them through a family member of theirs (the family member insisted to introduce me to him, I didn't ask but as a courtesy - the family member thought the MD could give some insight). Sent a passive aggressive email pretty much saying my resume was garbage. Won't go into details but I still hold a grudge against this MD and his family member. If I was ever asked to do a favor for them, I would definitely say no.

I was fuming after the above happened. I think I deleted that email thread permanently because it felt so embarrassing to read again and again.

I've bounced back since with some great corporate opportunities/getting into a top MBA program.

haven't really had a low point so far, I guess the low points I've had I don't really pay too much attention to because they're soft. Immigrated from a third world country so everything by comparison looks like a meme lol. I've been betrayed by colleagues and stuff like that, but I just permanently cut them off, never give second chances on trust, best lesson I've ever learned.

I was unemployed after graduation, couldn't land a job after 90 days of leaving college. Everyone had an offer for some kind of role, both in my family and among friends. People started giving me weird looks, assuming I had some superiority complex and said I should work at McDonald's (they were trying to be funny, but I don't think there is anything wrong with working in a quick service restaurant).

Then landed my BB gig, but had to move countries for it.

Working at setter capital briefly

I feel like this thread has popped up before..

In my mid 20’s I was let go from an upstart real estate / credit firm which has gone on to reach $40 billion in AUM. I was struggling with a substance abuse problem that I just couldn’t handle at the time and stopped showing up to work so I could start drinking in the morning. I spent the following 9 months getting sober and walking dogs to pay rent. As much as it hurts to say this, it really was a blessing in disguise despite the setback and blown opportunity at my prior employer.

Getting this off my chest!

During my freshman year orientation time, where people from the same faculty just hang around to meet new friends and meet with seniors, I came to learn that two random people in my group had bad mouthed me saying that I was going to fail in life and achieve nothing. This affected me greatly as we barely know each other yet, so why would anyone (not 1 but 2!) bad mouth me. It's almost like an omen and as if there are signs written all over my face that I am doomed to fail.

While I soon forget about that episode of my life, it came back haunting me again with full force when I bombed my penultimate SAs interview, landing with no offers at all. It was really depressing and scary for me at that time as it feels like my failures are making those random people prophecy a reality.

Through God's grace and luck, I am now working at top BB IB while those people are working some mediocre job getting paid probably 1/4th of my TC yearly. It's great to know that I have succeeded in landing such coveted job and that I am much more succesful than my haters. It was crazy how dark of a place I was in when things don't go my way and I got reminded and haunted of what those haters say about me, glad I am over it now.

I didn't get a return offer at my MBA Summer Associate internship, had zero warning that I wasn't going to get an offer (I was expecting it) and it was one of the last banks to give out offers so by the time I knew about it I wasn't able to recruit for other banks filling Associate 0 slots.  I spent the entire second year of my MBA recruiting and ended up at a horrible small investment bank after about 10 months of recruiting.  I spent about 6 more months recruiting after that before getting an offer at an actual bank and things worked out.  Probably the worst time of my life because it's not fun to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt looming without any means for paying it back.  It worked out though and things have been great ever since.

Moral of the story for me was to just be extremely persistent in working towards your goals, network constantly to almost an annoying degree and don't take it personally (which is very hard to do).  Everyone goes through ups and downs in their careers and it's important to remember when you're in a rut that it's just a rut and not the end of the world.

I'm working at Tentacion Clothing and rising as time goes on since I don't dwell on my failures. I learn always from my mistakes.

I got my boss likely terminated after I made a mistake. Stocked I didn't get sacked myself. 

Fellow analyst told me to help with a note about South American companies, and I took part. Boss had asked that I take part as well. My work was divided into three parts based on location, I delivered only on one part when it came time to publish the note. Didn't delay the note since boss wanted it done, but two huge pieces were not done even though I made it look like it was. Think of this as like using a company from Uruguay and using that company's fundamentals to give a buy-or-sell rating to Panamanian company to save time. That kind of thing. The note covered like 5 companies if I recall correctly. 

I left for a few days revising and to take CFA. When I came back post-exam, group was a mess. Had no clue why until this was explained to me Turns out, the PM we delivered the note to invested in one of the companies that we used the wrong fundamental data for, and his account went down. My boss defended the note as maintaining "reasonable basis" until the issue of using the wrong fundamentals was revealed to him by the PM. Turns out that PM investigated the note himself and figured out what had happened. 

My boss, who had been with the firm for over a decade, was asked to take 3 months off by the company a few weeks after this incidence, and I am pretty sure he will not be coming back based on how the good-byes went with him from the group.

I myself had a midyear review after publishing this note, and lost out on a bonus for the year. I'm currently in the process of switching to a different group within the company. I was told by company higher-ups that I wouldn't get sacked for this. Still shocked I was allowed to stay on.

If there is any lesson here, I would say it is that you can always come back from mistakes that affect yourself. Mistakes that affect others massively will always sting though. You truly might not be able to overcome those.

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This also beats out losing my return offer at an EB after uni. The above mistake really really hurts.

Thinking public accounting was an actual career

Pre-covid fired from first job in a new city, end up living out of my car and crashing on couches. Eventually move in with friend. 4 months late on rent, no income. Covid happens and i decide to pursue finance. Take a fat loan out (on top of my debt from first degree) and re-enrolled for a second undergrad at a non-target. Knew the only way this would work is if i landed something front office and “high finance” otherwise debt would consume me. Recruited for IBD over the last 2ish years grinding my ass off barely making ends meet.

Landed off cycle FT offer a couple months ago. Feels fuckin good to end the year like this.

Probably getting countless rejections when I tried to career pivot pre-MBA so I can create a stronger B school profile long-term. Maybe sent out like 200 apps just to get a phone screen - this was during a very hot job market (pre-COVID, 2018-2019). With my current resume, I probably could have gotten a boutique consulting job (which was what I was going for at the time). Eventually got my next job through a job referral (was a pretty crappy job honestly but got a lot better with raises/promotions). Had a sizable job gap from this. Coupled with some personal problems/issues and being unemployed for quite a few months, I really doubted if I'll be able to succeed. It was a dark time and I completely isolated myself from some friends due to feeling inadequate.

Now as a first year MBA student, life is looking up. ~50-60% of my applications thus far have converted to interviews. Granted, a few 2nd years completely fixed up my resume and I've gotten very good at constructing new cover letters within 15 minutes for new companies from a template I created. My resume format pre-MBA is very cringeworthy now that I think about it.