When after you started have you been hit with reality?

Scary to hear. I’m right at that point of great excitement. Reading all the books, listening to all the podcasts, newsletters and WSJ, and dreaming about hitting it big after I start FT in July…

Great post OP - as someone in their early 30s with 10+ yrs now of IB/PE experience, for me personally that revelation hit about five or six years in. I think the problem is that as a college kid you can watch shows like Suits or (admittedly much better) Industry, where 21yr olds join a bank and are somehow superstars within six months. That just isn't real life sadly - as I realised over time. Unlike school or college where you have the theoretical potential if you study hard enough to be top of your year/class, in IB/PE (and the rest of the corporate world) you are ultimately just a cog in a machine - if you work harder then yes you will be a higher performing/top bucket cog and be paid accordingly, but you are still just a small part of the overall picture.

At the same time, you also realise the following (or at least I did) -

- The work isn't all it's cracked up to be - when I first started in IB, working on a live deal was such a thrill/felt like running on adrenaline 24/7. In your head you think "wow I'm part of a billion-dollar deal" and feel like you are doing amazingly important work. However after doing a few deals, they all start to look the same and you come to realise it isn't that different from any other corporate job (albeit significantly better paid). And if a massive deal does fall apart, then yes it might hurt the MD's bonus big time (and yours potentially, to a lesser degree) - but ultimately the world still keeps on turning, and nobody outside your specific segment of the finance world will really care. It isn't like we're at SpaceX building rockets to Mars.

- The people aren't as smart as you thought they were (another poster mentioned this as well). Now don't get me wrong, most people in finance are objectively very intelligent and will have come from great schools and be able to hold conversations around a wide variety of topics. But are they financial geniuses? Most really aren't. When I first went into banking, I told myself that this is where the "best of the best" are - and every time I ran across an MD, I felt like he must have a genius IQ. But that really isn't the case, at least in my experience - everyone from analysts, associates, VPs to MDs are great at following processes, networking, deal execution, but very few are actually really great at investing or understanding markets. I mean on my LinkedIn I saw a ton of VPs and MDs leave their banking jobs to go join crypto startups in late 2021/early 2022 so literally the exact top! So these are people who are very intelligent but ultimately are just good at following trends rather than really knowing investing or the markets (with a handful of exceptions). I also think people at HFs might be an exception to this in fairness (haven't ever worked at one myself). This nicely segues onto my next point:

- You realise luck is the most important thing in a career. Don't get me wrong, of course you have to work smart and work hard to do well in finance. But luck plays an enormous part. E.g. there are so many MDs at banks or Principals in PE who just got lucky by "riding the wave" of cheap money over the last decade, whereby everything went up in value. Also if you were an MD in the 2010s you probably started your career in the mid-2000s which was a boom time for comp and deals etc. Compare that to an analyst starting today - yes you can still make a lot of money and do well, but even if you follow the traditional route into PE, will you make anywhere near as much as someone less smart than you who started working a decade earlier? I'm not so sure.

- And finally, banking/PE is unlikely to make you that rich these days. Of course I know getting paid $200-500k a year consistently is an amazing salary for most Americans or Brits, and I am grateful to work in a career that is highly rewarded. Yet with the tax rates these days (especially UK) combined with property/real estate prices in New York/London, even as a VP in banking you won't be buying a mansion and a summer home with a Ferrari in the driveway. At MD-level yes you will be admittedly paid very well, but by then you'll probably have very high expenses (huge mortgage, private school fees etc) so you can forget retiring at 45-50. And yes in the past people in PE made millions in carry and yes that's still possible today, but I feel personally it will be considerably harder compared to a few years ago (which goes back to my previous point on luck).

Anyway to conclude OP, I don't mean this to be a doom-and-gloom post. As the other top-upvoted post said above, whilst it's a bit of a depressing realisation it is also quite liberating. As it means that whilst you should still work hard and do your best to advance in your career, at the end of the day it is just a job. Even if you're working long hours it shouldn't take over your whole life after the first several years when you're no longer extremely junior, and at that point hopefully you can make sure you also focus on other areas of your life too (relationships, family, friends etc). As even if you do go on to make millions by the age of 40, I'm not sure personally I would be that happy if it meant that my job was the only thing I really had going for me in my life at that point.

lol wait till you get married and realize love doesn’t exist either. That’ll really crush your spirit.

That this has never been about merit, solely based on how "cool" you are or how wealthy your family is (which translate to more future deal flow)

1. Top performer analysts getting RIF'd constantly, while the ones below par get to stay

2. Incompetent bankers making it to VP and ED because MDs like them

3. Interns nowadays don't even know how to use Excel or PowerPoint. FIG interns, for example, don't even know what are FIG technicals and industry trend

Sorry can’t relate. I was never a naive noob who thought I was the next bill ackman. In fact, I knew finance was just a cheat code to money, since you didn’t have to be smart like kids who go to med or law school had to be. You just had to get into an Ivy and pass a few technicals. I was well aware it was a means to an end. 

I’d read biggie no cheese on Substack and try to speak to the author of it. 

The reality is people are replaceable

"talent" is just a bullshit word HR uses, because there are lots of talented people that are rejected in favor for people not as deserving imo 

The big dogs in finance started when one of the biggest funds was in the 100s of millions. Sleepy boards alongside terribly run companies inefficiently priced and ripe for LBOs 

Realized when my ex’s body count exceeded 10

Specifically about MBB: I realized when I walked into my first global partner meeting.

The journey to making partner was really tough, I saw so many strong-performing peers fail - it felt like being elected to this super-exclusive club. And then I walk into this auditorium, there are literally >1000 partners there, of all shapes and sizes, and it struck me it's not so special after all.

For me the shuddering realisation came in the second year of medical school. The job was physically dirty, very demanding, with no work life balance and mediocre pay (outside the US). I was nothing special and had 10+ years of board exams to look forward to. People with a three year BSc in Economics (compared to a 7-year MBBS) would out earn me in 5 years. It was not at all the glorious life I had imagined.

I subsequently entered a quarter life crisis and ended up on this forum for a year. Realised the grass is brown everywhere. Changed my philosophy toward work, life and religion. 

I was introduced to finance by reading Barbarians at the Gate in my senior year of HS. My first finance job was an internship at a hedge fund after my sophomore year.

Some point between those two events I made that realization

Less about the job itself but about a year in life is kind of hitting me that my parents are going to get old, people don't care about me as much as I thought they did, it's up to me to pave my path in the world, having strong morals are important and I have a lot of work to do. Lots of these types of things

If you read through the posts here from the more experienced people, a key takeaway is as you move up, you start to appreciate your life outside of work.

We all came in with hopes and dreams and big egos and especially in your last years of school as you're recruiting, it really really consumes you and becomes such a huge part of your identity. When you break in and as you put in the time, you realize everything you're seeing now - the work can be commoditized, people aren't as smart as you think and really big one for me was a reality check on how special/smart/unique whatever I thought I was. I'm not, I'm just like everyone else.

Once you understand and accept that this is a job/career and only a small part of who your are and what your life is, things get better, or I'd say more palatable. I enjoy what I do and I like the paycheck but disentangling being a banker or whatever from a large part of my identity has seen such a huge jump in my mental state.

I enjoy work more because I'm not prioritizing it all the time. Huge part of the reason I chose to downstream away from the hypercompetitive BB/EB world. I get to do what I enjoy without all the unnecessary bells and whistles of the optimized path.

can't relate. I'm always prepared for if a good opportunity comes up to be ready to take it. No one dreams about working in an office, the dream is to learn and build the connections that the job offers so then you can really do the interesting things when the opportunity presents itself (the luck aspect).

It isn't all for nothing though, I almost envy that naivety. I'm 20 and have screwed up a lot of my classes because I cannot stand the reality of this field and can't see myself doing this monkey shit as a real career. There's no honor in it, and I have lukewarm indifference to many of the higher ups and idols of this industry at best, with a contempting disdain for their ignoble cowardice at worst. I cannot abide the lack of integrity and pusillanimity that must be displayed both by myself and those who go through this career if their hearts are not in it - which it seems most are not. I actually cannot functionally complete any of the work in study, let alone on the job.

At least your "cringe wrong expectations" gave you the means to endure this pointless shit to the end of attaining the piece of paper. Though the truth is otherwise people will still look upon it as if it is a marker of anything more than your ability to sit down and obey, to sublimate your own misunderstood ambition to the effect and mobilisation of another man's dreams with the hope of emulating and bathing in their reflected glory. There are a few people like these guys at my college in the clubs, I believe they too are incredibly naive. But they are getting good marks and will graduate so maybe I am wrong. But I don't think it, they will just come to realise it later. At least with a degree - whatever comfort that maybe affords - I'd imagine it a more merciful revelation but given your experience perhaps such an assumption is just emblematic of greener grass in the other field.

If I did have that faith in the purpose of this degree and career path maybe I could find it in myself to put in effort into the classes and pass, but as a man I cannot follow through on what my heart is not in. It goes against my integrity hence I am now at a crossroads. Like a wildfire bearing down on San Francisco and all the fire department focused on the frontline, a call to rescue a cat up a tree will just get ignored. The reality of the degree and relevant path is simply overshadowed by so many greater concerns and affairs it just is the bottom of my priority list. I do have military training so I could always become a foreign fighter in Ukraine, but if I could lie to myself enough I wouldn't have to choose.

Yes it is somewhat delusional, kicking the can down the road and all that, but at the same time at least you get some level of credentials (however worthless they objectively are at least subjectively it is viewed well by the corporate world). Who knows. If I make it to 22 without stupidly and desperately going to Ukraine or the French Foreign Legion then there should be some more coherence in my life, hopefully less chaos in regards to my future, more certainty and clairty and maybe even hope too. I am very very good at speaking and debating so maybe I'll do Law as some family have done to a so very profitable effect.

But the reality is for men like me there just feels like there is nowhere in the world for us. This is not the way good, true men should live. This misses the very point of mortality. It sounds like we are on similar paths deep down. I wish you all the best.

I can't relate. I went Ivy -> BB SA -> BB FT -> Mega Fund PE Associate -> VP Promote. 

What I do is very prestigious, I have always been significantly compensated materially more than my peers, and my current carry allocation likely works out to $1M - $2M assuming fund returns within the 25% - 75% range of historical average. This is in addition to annual cash compensation of nearly half a million. My wife is a Partner in Big Law and together, we have achieved everything we thought we would in life, at least as it pertains to economic security and career ambition. I work on billion dollar deals daily, and receive million dollar paydays for it. 

If you're stuck doing Consulting in BumFuckShire, UK that's on you bud.