Should I Abandon an Economics Degree?

Hi all, 
I am currently a rising junior at UC Berkeley pursuing a degree in Econ and I'm lost. Since sophomore year of high school I thought a career in high finance would be ideal for me. I think I'm an apt critical thinker and a hard worker, but after working in a sell side shop this past summer (in S&T) where I focused mostly on credit analysis I've decided this path is not ideal. I was the hardest worker, knew the most about finance going in, but was still overwhelmed by the lifelessness of it all. I love money and the cool shit I could potentially do with it, but judging from the conversations I've had with juniors in IB/PE, the grind will not necessarily pay off until I'm 30. Recently I've been turned on by potentially working for a startup somewhere in the industry where I can be more engaged in what I am working on and hopefully feel passion in building something bigger. I do not know how to code. I do not know the first thing about recruiting for these types of jobs. However, I feel like jumping ship from my current path at this point in time may be more worth it than entering the industry and then leaving after a few years in the event that I can't take the heat of a 100hr week. Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

hey dude, close to the same story, biz econ at ucla and thinking of tacking on a stats minor and squeezing my way into tech

 

Glad to know I'm not alone. What year are you? I'm also Bus-Econ & think the best way to go is with a Bioinformatics or Data Science Engineering minor. Been looking into it a bunch today. My fear is that these classes mess up my GPA, then I'm fucked. Feel free to message me, the job search can be a lonely, cutthroat one.

 

Econ is a pretty good degree, you can do more than IB with it. Keep it. In fact if you suddenly wanted to become a doctor, you could do so with an econ undergrad. Learning to code has 0 correlation to econ, learning to code is literally free now and you can take certifications if you really wanted to. Startup life can be raggy and has a lot of uncertainty btw (although huge upside potential) so know what you might get yourself into. 

 

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No pain no game.

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