FP&A is boring, is there something more intellectually stimulating that hearken back to the finance in school I loved so much?
I went to a pretty mediocre school and took a job doing corporate FP&A at a mature technology company about a year ago. The industry, company, and culture are great but I find the work bland and unstimulating. I mainly forecast expenses and Capex and write close explanations. I also do a ton of extraordinarily boring stuff like cost center maintenance and sending reports ad nauseum. I've written macros to speed it up but each month someone requests more and more reports.
Sometimes I work on business cases but only because I butt in on the work that the MBA's do and they throw me a bone. I enjoy that work no matter how tedious because I feel like I'm really adding value, but it's pretty much impossible for me to get in on it full time as an undergrad, that's just the culture of the company.
Because I find the work boring and unstimulating I feel my workplace productivity declining. I've started to spend a part of the day reading on macabacus building out models of my company as well as others and reading the news.
I really enjoyed the valuation part of my schooling. Modeling cash flows, NPV, reading 10-ks, industry research, etc. and building out models for entire companies is loads of fun.
I feel like investment banking would encompass a large part of what I really enjoy. However, I've heard that 10% is actually finance and the rest is doing mind numbingly frustrating things like formatting decks for five hours at 3AM. This would probably be more enjoyable than my current job despite the double in hours.
My main concern is that I'm just being a big bitch and I need to take my lumps as a new undergrad. If I can't handle FP&A maybe I can't handle IB or anything else. But I feel I would find at least some aspects of IB work very interesting and this coupled with exit opps would make the tedious work and all nighters worth it. But breaking into IB is a whole nother ball game.
Is there a job that would return me to the finance I care about? A strategy/corp dev role sounds like what I want but all are looking for IB experience. Our corp development guys work on the coolest stuff but they're all former IB and there's no way I can break into corp dev as an undergrad.
Are any other FP&A analysts in the same boat or is it different elsewhere?
Does anyone have any career advice?
Sorry for the book of a post.
My thoughts are, if you have a mediocre school on your cv, and have a decent gig in FP&A at a reputable company, it may be the path of least resistance to spend a couple years there, kick ass in your job, network like a ninja into corp dev/strategy like you're interested in, or use your good years of experience at the mature tech firm to hop into a target b-school to rebrand and either take a crack at i-banking or leverage back into corp strat if that's what you're really into. Is it possible to network into IB from where you are now? Yes... but it's certainly not going to be easy. FP&A work is going to be similar in some regards despite where you are, but that's kind of like asking if being an finance analyst in general is the same everywhere. Of course not. Amazon or Google or ExxonMobile have kick ass analysts doing cool stuff. Walmart has a bunch of 45k/year logistics monkeys masquerading as financial analysts -- not to hate on anyone at Walmart or their business model--just kind of a easy target...
So you are saying that working as a financial analyst at a Fortune 1 company is inferior compared to the other 3?? Not sure I get the logic
What I mean is, the type of work you do as an analyst there is totally different, not that the experience is inferior. I only say that because I live in Walmart's backyard and have had several close friends and colleagues go through Walmart (and some who are still there). It's a great gig if it's a good fit for you, but Wall Street types will tend to become bored--it's mostly process improvement and margins management. Some of my friends have loved every minute of it (usually the more "accountant" and "engineer" types, as opposed to my friends who have hated it, who tend to be more of the finance theory and high energy investment and macroeconomics types). Again--different strokes for different folks. Additionally, because Walmart is such a cost leader, entry level finance jobs pay pennies to the dollar of the other companies I listed. Walmart does, however, look great on a résumé, esp if you want to do CPG or logistics.
Thanks for clarifying, this definitely makes sense at the undergrad level. From what I hear from my classmates their MBA pay is pretty competitive and the work is interesting (strategy based) at the MBA level.
I would suggest looking into BIG4 TSA - less pitching and more of the valuation part. Usually considered more technical than IBD sector coverage groups (at least in Europe). There's quite a bit of due diligence there as well, so really going into details which in IBD you don't do that often. Think about it.
Ipsa dicta doloribus vitae quaerat accusamus iste animi exercitationem. Omnis hic et nulla est quod. Rerum et rerum omnis nam sed.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...