Curious to hear some answers on this. In my circle of friends, I feel like most people in IB/ER/PWM/HF enjoy their work a lot, even though it can be stressful and the WLB can be awful at times. Despite that, they're pretty thoughtful about the work they're doing, try to contextualize it and derive some meaning from it, and take the time to learn as much about / become proficient at every role they have.
I do, however, have some good friends who are miserable and absolutely dread work on a daily basis, but they seem unwilling to let go of the prestige / compensation that comes with their role.
I enjoy my work (SS ER BB) a lot, and I feel pretty lucky that I get paid to read, write, and talk about companies and the market, but the fact that I get off at a reasonable hour may be positively skewing my views, lol. I'm curious what bucket you all fall in / what you observe about your friends in the industry.
I flip between love/hate depending on the day but generally like it.
Every day is a new day. New companies, new deals, new people/egos to manage, new problems to solve in execution, lots of learning opportunities. Keeps things fresh and exciting. It's what has held me back from moving to industry into a corp dev / strategic finance role. Plus I have an awesome team of really fun people which helps.
I hate being at beck and call and unpredictability but it is what it is. And fuck clients who treat us like "vendors".
Thanks for writing my exact response for me! But seriously, this is exactly how I feel about it too. So I would say that yes, I do like my job for all these reasons.
no
Yes and No.
Yes for my current role - HF.
I run an event driven volatility + arbitrage strategy and have enjoyed great returns in this choppy market with gyrations.
Like the intellectual aspect of it, absolutely love the risk-taking part of the job. The adrenaline & dopamine from killing it with strong P/L contribution and alpha generation is just unreal.
No for my past role - IB
I hate cranking out long ass pitchbooks with cliche language. No meaningful ownership of my work.
The formality was just so boring, the conversation was dull, and face time culture in IB was miserable.
Questioning the meaning of my existence everytime I had to move logo on PPT.
The only positive thing when I was in IB was that my coworkers were cool & nice, easy to get along. That's all.
haha good points
No.
Username checks out.
I don't think I've ever truly "liked" a job. But I will say I enjoy start up life more than my previous jobs in financial services.
what type of startups? i'm jumping into a SaaS startup and super excited
Previously healthcare now SAAS
Sure I just started my own company so all I'm doing is cold outreach to try and sell. I don't mind just banging out cold emails all day. Doing some cold calling as well but kind of tough to find phone numbers for people in software sales. My product is a sales tool that could help anyone who is doing cold outreach, financial advisors/insurance brokers/software sales/etc. Haven't gotten any sales yet but just only started selling yesterday.
Large sample size here
I used to work as a sales development rep - basically doing the same thing that I am doing now (except for now I get to actually conduct meetings versus my old job I was just setting meetings up) - and I mostly liked that job. I think I will like selling my own product more.
I think I do however I think that this is the case mostly because of my role and also the company I'm working at. I could easily visualize myself hating doing the job of other people sitting in the same floor as myself. And I also could easily visualize myself doing this same job but in a company with a shit(tier?) finance culture of which I know many and hating every second of it. I have nothing better to do right now so I'll lay out some of the reasons for why I may be actually enjoying this job. Maybe others can relate.
Only job I ever enjoyed was a volunteer job I had a long time ago in gap year at university. Since then it's been a 15 year suck fest of unpleasant experiences and unfortunate events.
I write this as I unhappily for home to my ingrate of a wife so that I can daydream about curling up with a charcoal burner in my one man closed door WeWork office for the weekend.
Not my business at all, I know this is a "joke" but there is truth behind every joke, this is pretty dark, and I hope that you are OK.
not a joke mate. Like a recovering alcoholic, it's day by day. That plus I'm relatively certain there's a sprinkler system in the Wework. One of my friends, a fund manager, offed himself with a charcoal burner in his Tesla up in the hills a few years ago. Thing is, I don't have a car, and I live w/ the ingrate wife, so I guess I'd never manage to pull it off without getting interrupted.
I love mine. Work from anywhere in the world (currently in a surf town in Costa Rica) while getting to trade commodities and build statistical models to help out the trading team. Work is interesting and scratches that creative itch.
Even though you say anywhere in the world realistically you’re limited to North America/ South America due to market hours right?
Fortunately, I’m not bound by market hours either. I work for a commodity processor/trader and my work specifically is building statistical trading strategies over long time horizons. 2-3 months when I identify structural price dislocations given what we know about the supply and demand and some other factors. The other part of my job is building/maintaining models for predicting world export flows, new crop spec prediction, etc and helping out with ad hoc projects focused around potential capital projects that need a commodity pricing/statistical approach to valuation. So all of that is pretty much on my own schedule as long as the project gets done in a reasonable time.
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