Why are we doing IBD again?
Admit it or not, most are in IBD for the money. But honestly I feel like a joker working 9-2AM on the daily while my tech / trading / HFT friends are making 300k++ working 9-5PM casually.
Is IBD like the biggest clown in high finance?
I think about this often, but it's less about what you are making today (though good and in the 3rd deviation by age group for each level), it's more about an investment in what the "big bucks" can be once you are a Director / MD. Life get's a lot more manageable, the job more enjoyable and you can make some real money if you are good, patient and a bit lucky. Well, that's at least how I rationalize it...
There have been a ton of fun adventures on the way and it would be a bit challenging to envision myself doing something else that isn't at a comparable level of intesity.
Though it's not entirely late game/early game scenario. By the time you're MD/D, HFT peeps are long gone enjoying their retirement already, and in their last few years they're probably racking up as much as you would at MD/D level. So back to my point, I think IBD is a clown in high finance, the real money is elsewhere.
And those clowns in HFT are probably jealous of the unicorn cofounders who achieved a 8-9 figure liquidity event. Shit, those cofounder clowns are probably jealous of Bezos and Musk. You can always compare vs. some other role and say how much greener the grass is, but how many can realistically land it? People in IB are smart, but most aren't smart enough to be quants at a HFT firm. A lot probably aren't cut out to make it as SWEs either, I know I certainly wasn't. IBD gives those who are reasonably smart and willing to put up with at times a shitty lifestyle the opportunity to make substantially more money than they could make in other career paths. When you've had enough of the shit, you're then well placed to exit into a job which pays a lot more than you can get going through the standard corporate route. That's why a lot of people do IB.
Well just go to tech / trading / HFT rather than complaining on WSO homie
I am complaining cuz I can't qualify there. Why else would I be a whiny bitch here?
Why complain about things you can't control?
You're discounting yourself more than you should. As a pretty below-average programmer at a big tech company, I can tell you from experience that anyone can land a solid SWE position with a few months of studying + leetcoding. You obviously won't succeed if you're actually dumb, but if you're smart enough to get an engineering/consulting/finance/etc job, I'd be extremely surprised if you couldn't get an offer from at least one reputable tech company so long as you practiced leetcode.
The real question in tech is: can you rise up the ranks? And this is where the grass isn't always greener. I know so many coworkers who quit after a decade at a place like Google/Netflix because they had enough money for an okay retirement, but they couldn't get past L5/L6. The guys who stayed are just resting and vesting and not looking to advance their careers. And the people who do break through the ceiling and make it past are literally about one in a hundred. Imagine being a first year associate at some bank until you're 45 years old.
Like a ton of other people in this thread are saying, stop complaining and comparing yourself to others. Be thankful for what you have because it could be a lot worse. And if you really hate it that much, just get another job.
To exit to PE.
Easily with big carry checks. As others have mentioned, focus on yourself. There are PE and even IB professionals who make more than anyone in the professions you listed will ever see.
lol, if you're smart enough to work in HFT then no idea why you've confined yourself to banking. probably because you, like most bankers (including myself), are not. I'm also sick and tired of Jason Tatum being paid tens of millions to play basketball all day while I am forced to do comps so my analysts can have their mandatory 5 day vacations.
Well I'm not, so I'm here to bitch
Fair - it's the eternal struggle of the 'pretty smart but have ambitions of being more than pretty successful'. That's why I never went to PE. You'd need to be in the top 20% of associates in PE to move up, unless it's Apollo in which case you'd just need to be alive at that point. I'm always top bucket in banking but if PE is made up of all top bucket bankers to begin with, I'm likely falling in that bottom 80% and ending up in corp dev lmao.
I suppose it’s just the demographic that exists on this website, but I’ll bite.
It often gets lost how ridiculous of situation you’re in to make such a high compensation package out of college. I come from a small town with parents who didn’t work in finance. They didn’t really know what investment banking was until I got a job in it. I went to a large state school that places maybe 5? 10? Students a year into investment banks. Of those 5 or 10 it’s almost all within the school run accelerated investment banking path/prep that you must apply to as a first semester sophomore and have a GPA of ~3.9. Unless you’re extremely lucky or have great foresight you’ll miss that opportunity.
I don’t have a stellar GPA, but it’s above a 3.5. I’m not in the Honors program, but I’m plenty smart to succeed. In highschool I wouldn’t have gotten in to an Ivy, UVA, UNC, Duke, UMich, maybe not Vandy, but nor did I want to go to one of those schools. Most of my friends with worse, similar, or better GPAs don’t know what investment banking is, nor do they care. They’re excited about getting their job in sales, corpfin, insurance, big 4 accounting, etc.
The position I am in to go to a very large population center and live in the wealthiest, youngest part, max out my 401k, IRA, put together a small emergency fund, and have enough to put a down payment on a house is so utterly ridiculous at 23 it’s hard to comprehend. It’s like I skipped about 10-15 years of financial adult life. I’m not rich, but I have insane upward potential in life financially speaking. I have an opportunity to take risks, and I am now gaining skills at a rapid pace while also building a network of people smarter than I who will probably do great things.
I think this gets lost on this website because the demographic is largely prestige-consumed individuals who went to prep schools, then to Ivys and other prestigious schools who had parents in finance. The alternative is so much worse it’s almost incomprehensible.
It'll work out in the end. You're putting up hellish hours now, but you'll see exponential career/comp growth soon enough — your friends in tech/HFT won't. If you keep comparing yourself to others, you'll always find something to be bitter about.
And for what it's worth, my college friends now at Google/Amazon are still working 45-60 hour weeks. Sure, they work a lot less than I do, but it's not as much of a cakewalk as people like to suggest. If I'm in the office past 6, I might as well get paid top-dollar and have solid exit opps by staying in this industry.
Not sure why people still discuss this. Does anyone really do IB to stay in banking? Maybe I'm privileged, but I thought everyone had the implicit understanding that you pay your dues for 2 years in IB so you can exit to PE (fingers crossed). I imagine if you'd know this if you were an incoming.
lmao are you just replying to yourself?
1. You’re probably not in banking.
2. You don’t have same-aged friends in tech / trading / hft making 300k a year.
3. You don’t have friends to begin with.
Hahaha yes bro come give me a kiss
To be fair, $250k with 5-7 years of experience is miserable
Miserable?? bro the average 27-30 year old is not making anywhere close to over 250k what fucking planet do you live on.
Wait till the free money policies fade away and the tech companies start seeing a cash squeeze, IB will probably be the only high paying job available in abundance
I see IB as my "training years" and also as platform to network with funds or succesful bankers/entrepreneurs/investors and learn from them. My ultimate goal is to have my own company in the future. In my opinion, there are tons of wonderful ideas that could lead to successful businesses, but most of them usually lack the proper execution or capital. On the opposite side, I've seen terrible ideas that have obtained millions in funding, just because the founders worked in IB (and some of them later went to PE/VC) and know PEs/VCs and people who would invest in them.
Hence, for me IB provides 1) a solid training in executing projects, in other words, in "getting things done", usually with high pressure and long hours. There's a huge difference between having ideas and taking action, and the latter is usually the crucial aspect behind the success of many companies. And 2) Exposure to people with capital.
But how can I have the confidence to live through my 30s knowing that my friends are earning 3x more than me at 1/3 the hours !?
There's a job that pays 2.5 mil for 20 hours/week? Send me the application portal ASAP
If you're willing to sacrifice comp for WLB then go apply for big tech jobs and stop complaining. It makes no sense to me when privileged new grads bitch and moan about workload when they're about to join the top 0.01% of earners globally. You kids have no clue do you? If you were born just 2 thousand miles east, you'd be living on 50 bucks a month kicking rocks for fun. You regret banking? There are hundreds of thousands of other jobs readily available to you that might not pay as much, but still allow you to continue living a comfortable life. Seriously. Shut the hell up. I'm sick of seeing these out of touch, moronic posts.
This is a pretty awful argument. First off we are talking about BUSINESS and FINANCE majors not STEM/tech. Most of the population (even those in IB) do not have the mental capacity to succeed in such a role. And that's not a diss, it's reality for 99% of people. Combine that with the facts that cost of living and relative deprivation matters. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to stay with their parents or have had their way paid through school. Student debt is a serious problem for many. Would love to hear what the "hundred of thousands" of other decently paying jobs are for soft business/econ/finance majors out of school? Genuinely curious
"Business" majors (who the hell majors in business in IB?) do just fine recruiting for technical positions, so long it isn't a real engineering job like chemical/mechanical engineering. I've seen enough morons from my high school land AirBnB/Facebook programming positions after a few months of bootcamp. Everything I'm saying is in line with what the big tech poster commented above me, and I'm going to bet he knows more about tech recruiting than some miserable AN1. As for your question — consulting, tech, sales. Hundreds of thousands. Either you are out of touch with reality (which you are) or you recently had a bad experience with an MD a few days ago and you're looking for a place to project your insecurities. In any case, I'm getting tired of the nonsense and by the looks of the MS on your post, everyone else would appreciate it if you stopped whining.