Hello. I like finance, but the culture is repulsive?
I'm a senior in college. I am a business major with knowledge spread around finance, econ, and marketing.
I'm not 100% sold on finance mainly because of the culture. Do more relaxed places exist? Or am I looking for corporate finance?
Anyway nice to meet you all!
Can you explain what you mean by "the culture of finance" and at what firms you experienced this?
I think you've been watching too many movies
Just look at the way people talk down to others in this forum. The whole industry is consumed by wanting compensate for something. It's great to want to make money and to like finance, but people on the whole seem defensive, selfish, and bitter at the world like working your butt off in a big city makes you better than other people. It ruins the experience of just enjoying the world of finance.
You will experience this everywhere, including corporate finance.
You will experience this everywhere...become a nurse, get looked down on by some doctors (and vice versa). Become a paralegal, you will be looked down on by some lawyers (and vice versa). Making sweeping generalisations isolated to one industry is misrepresentative. You will find total douches in finance as well as awesome people - same goes for everything.
Consequences of a highly competitive industry filled with driven, accomplished people who are used to being better than others at something.
Get a group like this in one room and they'll automatically create a (perceived) hierarchy of losers and a winners, hence the arrogance and so on.
Like others have stated, this happens everywhere.
You should choose something else to do with your life.
Welcome to the real world kid. This happens everywhere, as others stated. Try to do what you want to do and be the person you want to be and don't worry so much about what others think and you'll be fine, whether in finance or elsewhere.
Culture varies from firm to firm. The culture at Goldman Sachs is much different than JP Morgan which is much different then Greenhill which is much different than Lazard.
I would actually recommend Big 4 accounting. People are actually pretty amazing and while the work itself isn't fulfilling, the people and the environment really make up for it.
It's not sink or swim like most finance jobs, there's a very strong support system here. It's THE career launchpad.
Also be aware that a good amount of posters on here are finance wannabe students who act like BSD's because they watched Wall Street too many times.
There are huge assholes in every single industry in the world.
The higher the pay, the higher the competion, the higher likelihood of meeing an asshole who wants to see you fail.
This is literally every industry.
You should figure out what type of work you actually want to do. It is clear you have no idea what finance role you want to do so you have a lot of work ahead of you. Find a job you will enjoy then get ready to deal with assholes regardless.
Find a position where you will enjoy the work, worry about dealing with "toxic cultures" when you have actual work experience.
Choose whatever you want. Don't follow the trend, follow your heart.
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