Young People of WSO: What is with this fascination towards IB?
I'm a lot older than most of you guys and while I never worked in FO IB or desired to do so, I don't understand the obsession of getting into IB. I genuinely believe this behavior is putting too much pressure on yourself and it DEFINITELY will show during an interview. Any banker hearing how you came out of the womb wanting IB will call you on your BS. I've read some of @ArcherVice" 's comments and he really seems to be the only voice of reason on this topic.
I do believe IB is a good job with a TON of opportunities, no doubt, but it seems like some people on here have let this obsession of IB get in the way of other jobs they could've had. Example: How many posts do we see of Seniors in college asking how to get in IB with no relevant experience? Tons. Then because of this behavior they have to scramble to get some random job (maybe ops) and then hate their life because it isn't this prestigious ib job that they only know about from reading WSO threads.
It's one thing to swing for the fences and another to burn every bridge in pursuit of this BB IB career that you have to do seemingly everything perfect to reach.
It's the work of God
this is a finance forum
finance has a theoretically unlimited earning potential, and people are drawn to that. in other professions successful kids might go into (engineering, medicine, law), there's often times a ceiling: people make partner at a law firm, open their own medical practice, or become a VP at a technology/industrial company. all of those positions pay very well, but kids feel that because you see some hedge fund/PE guys make $1bn in a year from carry, or MDs get paid 7 figure bonuses, that finance is the way to go.
the problem with this is kids don't accurately handicap the likelihoods of these career paths. I'd say it's just as likely for someone to make VP at goldman as it is for someone to make VP at Cisco. neither of these are particularly easy, but they pay about the same, and yet you have kids willing to dole out blowjobs to get an interview at goldman (hyperbole, yes).
unlike other paths (engineering & medicine in particular), finance is something that doesn't require a lot of prerequisite coursework or training, kids can decide in their sophomore/junior year that they want to be a banker (or even later in some cases). and while you don't have to major in a hard science to get into med school, good luck on the MCATs if you haven't had an anatomy class. engineering? fugeddaboutit, the engineers I know started as freshmen, and the courses are ordered such that you need to get in early, you can't just wake up one day and decide you want to be an engineer, it's truly a 4y degree.
it's one of the few jobs where you can make $100k as a 22yo, despite the fact it'll likely be in a super high CoL city. money attracts a lot of people.
it's one of the only careers you can start at 22yo. it's near impossible to get into a buyside role straight out of undergrad, so IB is a logical path.
as far as kids getting disappointed, it's all about expectations, kids think they can't be happy if they don't make $1mm a year, have a house at nantucket, a trophy wife, and a business card with a top tier firm on it. it's just not like that in the real world. finance is an uber-competitive industry, sales driven, so you have a super high concentration of type A people, and if you're type A you want to be the best, so when you don't become the best, it's a let down.
Why do you care why people are fascinated with banking jobs?
Why do you care why he/she cares why people are fascinated with banking jobs?
I think it's a worthwhile question to raise once in a while (similar to the recent 'do you enjoy your job' threads). The IB forum is often full of 'BB IB or bust' kids who seem to have little idea about what they are chasing.
It's one of the best gigs you can get out of college. It requires no prior training or education aside from a bachelor's, pays incredibly well, and provides you with a skill set and branding that opens the door to countless opportunities after your two year stint. Moreover there's no real ceiling for how well you can do, and there is a defined upward trajectory that sets you up very nicely.
I'm not really sure why you're surprised people are obsessed with going for the aforementioned. If I had the opportunity to get one of those jobs, I would absolutely turn down some random job that I wasn't satisfied with. I'm going to assume a lot of people on this forum went to targets or semi-targets, are fairly competent, and quite young, so I don't believe it would be that hard to find an alternative job if the banking path didn't pan out. Lastly, to address your interview comment, as someone who has interviewed candidates, I know that most stories about interest in banking from a young age are BS, but I do care that candidates have the ability to think on their feet and are well-spoken. That's what the question is screening for.
Is IB the best job someone can get after college? Absolutely not. But it's definitely up there considering the lack of requirements and the aforementioned benefits. You don't need to know computer science like you do for tech jobs or most quant jobs (which are frequently stated as being more desirable right out of college), you have a greater upward trajectory on average than tech (most software engineers plateau very quickly), and probably a little more stability and security on average than trading (see turnover rates at funds like Citadel and Bridgewater).
He wasn't indicting the choice itself, merely the mentality and stupidity of burning every other opportunity because it doesn't stack up to GS TMT IBD/who fucking cares--not to say I don't like the "never settle" Facebook platitude--but it can do more harm than good.
I completely agree with that. I mean I would say that generally getting a job in high finance (not targeting a specific firm or group) is quite doable for a large percentage of this site's target audience. There are definitely cases though where people overestimate their own abilities or underestimate their competition and end up getting burned. Seems like a very prevalent mentality among target school kids who are type A and so used to excelling in whatever they do that they're genuinely surprised when they don't get GS TMT or MS M&A. There are plenty of great opportunities that don't receive the attention or respect that they deserve because they're overshadowed by some of these name brand or prestigious posts.
I went to HYPSW and legitimately had classmates that had already planned out their career path as follows: GS/MS top group -> Top mega fund -> HBS -> Top mega fund. People don't understand how narrow the funnel gets as you progress in this industry. So yeah, in that sense I would agree with OP that obsessing about the most elite positions is harmful and unrealistic.
Exit opps for trading, especially prop trading like your username, aren't that bountiful.
Exit opps generally include: early retirement in the Cote d'Azur or the poor house...
Some of the comments in this and other threads bring to mind images of undergrads sitting around talking about their future careers in finance and speaking with an air of authority about distinctions between front office, middle office and back office, how many millions an "average" bank pulls in a career, which teams at GS/MS/etc have the most prestige and which car it is most appropriate for an analyst to buy with the first bonus.
Kids, if you're ever participating in one of those discussions, know that you are all talking absolute shit.
I've met a lot of analysts who got into this for the "prestige", to tell people their group/bank, and to make it to black stone and be a billionaire someday. But there's also a significant amount who see see this as a 2 year training ground to build up your resume, build a network, gain a skill set that is transferable throughout business, have more time to figure out what career is for you, and to open doors for opportunities to get jobs in many careers with less hours that still pay 6 figures to a 25 year old. These tend to be the guys who shoot for a BB but take the average to good group that has a great culture and not the ones shooting for all the groups people go nuts about on here. While WSO seems to have more of the first type then the second type, the second that I mentioned definitely exists as well.
Money. Why PE/VC? carry (money).
Everyone has a line about wanting to help business people take it to the next level or wanting to be on the forefront of economic growth or loving the markets, whatever, but you could be a loan officer at a regional bank if you really only cared about helping businesses acquire capital and grow.
Honestly, if you have your entire career mapped out in your head by the time you're a junior in college, what possible criteria could you have besides lifetime earnings? I want to work at GS/MS for the camaraderie, KKR because I love their strategy, HBS because of the student body's academic curiosity, then Sequoia Capital because I love the energy on the west coast? Give me a break.
The investment industry has one function: Make money; for the investors, for the entrepreneurs and for the army of people working on the deal.
I'm not saying everyone falls into this category, or that money is the only reason, but if you want to know why a bunch of undergrads on an internet forum are obsessed with IB, this is your answer.
I think that many of us adults forget that we know now what we didn't know then.
I think that many of us adults also forget how badly we wanted it back then.
I think we forgot that we got 12 weeks of vacation/year as college students and assumed that would continue indefinitely.
I think many of us forget how much stamina we had back then. (I am not sure I could pull a 100 hour workweek today, and I'm just ten years older)
Today I am incredibly grateful that I did not wind up in IBD, but had I been offered GS IBD back as a college student, I would have taken it.
And I wouldn't talk down to my 21-year-old self. But I'd show him what I got done because I WASN'T IN IBD (albeit I was still in finance.)
I took up motorcycle racing. I took up SCUBA diving. I took up hang gliding. I ran a 5:30 mile for the first time in my life. And I still never really wanted for money. Or wanted for sleep. Or wanted for a life outside of work. And as a quant I got to work for and with some really awesome people who were truly class acts. Guys with IQs that were 20 points above most people they worked with-- and who didn't take themselves all that seriously. Guys that were even cool enough to be gracious when I arrogantly assumed I was the smartest guy in the room, even though it later turned out they could run circles around me.
Here is my only point with careers- life moves at a crawl in grade school, speeds up to an extremely slow and boring walk in high school, moves to a normal pace in college, and turns into a jog or even a sprint after you graduate. And you blink-- and ten years have gone by. If your life's purpose is deals, that's great- be a banker. But if you like or even love finance- but that's not the only thing you want out of life, you probably shouldn't be in IBD.
The industry is changing and trying to fix work-life balance. This advice may change in five years or it may even be a couple years outdated. But us humans only get a few thousand weekends during our lives- and only 500 in our 20s. Any professional with a good work ethic will spend some of them behind a desk, but it's not healthy to spend all or even most of them unless this is truly your life's purpose.