Accidental Career

Hi,

My name is batpunk, I turned 22 years old, a couple of days ago.

My life is a blur, albeit a good one thus far, and at the moment I am looking for a moment of clarity. When I was 14, I founded my internet company where I developed websites for clients and I went on to develop mildly successful websites that could generate money off real services. Midway through high school, I shifted from Science subjects to Business ones keeping close to Maths and Computer Science which was what I really enjoyed.

My real story though probably begins at 17 when I graduated from high school and I did really well. After graduating, I felt hey, Finance and Accounting in general aren't so boring so maybe I should study those. And someone told me that they going on to study Computer Science would be weird as I already grasped most of everyday practical skills and knowledge I needed. And it struck me that maybe I should use my existing skills in a different field where I could probably use them pretty well and give myself an edge.

So I went on to graduate from a Scottish University with a double major in Accountancy and Finance keeping my path from high school largely unchanged. Once again, I did really well and ended up with a distinction. Not so bad. I graduated at 20 yrs old but I was like 'what am I going to do now?' I blindly applied for a corporate finance internship at a hospitality corporate and the guy gave me a break even though they needed prior experience but he was impressed with my modelling skills and I basically said I could model, not knowing what it really meant. He asked me to do a few things after the interview on Excel and he really liked what I did. So I got the internship which was half a year long and then they hired me full time.

I didn't know what the Corp Finance internship was going to involve. So I found out that my work for the six months was largely based on new deals, creating proformas, IRRs, NPVs, cashflows, lots of modelling and a bit of research once in a while, due diligence and saw a couple of big deals close in front of me. After this I was full time.

Eight months down the line after being full time, shit went down and my gaffer basically left. He was a really cool guy and he was very efficient and I learned a lot under him and the most important part was he respected my abilities and let me have my own schedule I knew it was very rare. He let me do cool things at work, use InDesign, left the documents up to me because he would just map his ideas and I would bring them to life digitally. It was a great learning experience. He looked after me and he thought I should be in mgmt consulting.

Also, after I got full time, I could say I get about $50K - $60K in NYC terms. To give you a better idea.

The reason he left was though because he got superseded with a dude from Corp Development that calls me Planning. Now I find myself in a new world with my work behaviour completely different which I don't get. I get heavily micromanaged. I get called Finance and I still do a lot of modelling work but a lot of my work is now research oriented. The cool thing is though I get to work with the highest top brass of a 20K people global organisation. Which is really cool. But sometimes you hear stuff like Planning, Finance, Development, just these vague terms thrown at you. Lately, it hasn't been all that great, my productivity is really affected because now I work a lot of hours and produce very little because of the overall clarity in communication.

My question mainly is if I were to be told, 'hey kid it's a budgeting issue, good luck in your future endeavours', where do I go from here? What are my options? What would you suggest if I were to tell you I really like M&As but haven't really been a part of one. Where would you see me?

Looking forward to your helpful responses.

Thanks,

Punk