Really feel like its over for me
Just realised that my career progression is fucked. Got a back office internship for 13 months and I feel like its going to fuck me over when applying to grads. Even if I get a return offer, lets say I work in that role for 5 years. I would be making £40k until I’m 27 years old. I would be wasting my entire youth doing mind numbing work and getting paid nothing for it. Genuinely I feel so lost its crazy. The prospect of having a house and kids doesnt exist for me anymore its so frustrating. Dont know what I’m going to do.
How does an internship last 13 months? You can always switch right?
Placement year, so 3rd year of uni instead of completing my studies I do a year in industry and complete them in my 4th year
Sandwich course.
Non-FO comp in the UK is shit. Have you thought about emigrating?
Comp in the UK is shit*
Wait, you're getting this worked up about a back office placement year? Dude like 75% of all placement years are low paid back office BS. It doesn't matter. Most people still go on to do half decently. Why tf are you extrapolating your life from one internship? No one is forcing you to do BO forever.
But the issue isnt moving its the time before moving. I’m worried that I’ll be spending years working in a bad area wasting my life before I could think of moving to what I want to do (FICC trading) but this is assuming I dont get a grad job
I'm gonna repeat this very slowly so you understand. Noone. Is. Forcing. You. To. Work. In. Back. Office. After. You. Graduate.
Know a number of people who did MO/BO placements who came out of uni into top roles (BB/EB IB, S&T). And more who came out into very good roles.
Yeah exactly
Apply like mad to other roles and don't put this BO into your CV to not get labeled as a BO office guy.
What you say about wasting youth brain doing mind numbing work is life and career regret 100%. Can't emphasize this enough. Even a selling role is way better because at least you become good with people and selling, which at least makes you likeable when networking and gets you a job.
Make moves, now.
Idk dude my graduate job was in retail banking. If you're determined enough you'll get where you want
Do what I did and lie on your resume to break in.
Another one bites the dust.
Dude, I spent 8 years in WM before breaking in with an AM startup. It's never too late.
That salary though. Can't you do better? My dumbass ex was making that while selling women's shoes with an art school degree a year ago.
Nah its completely impossible unless you're FO in the UK its insane, basically every single grad that I'm aware of that isn't FO is 40-50k and I think that's after a year of 30k too, its literal retail manager salary. Even my internship is 26k all in which is a joke.
I did some calculations for a 40k salary and my take home is around 2.5k a month after tax, lower end rent in London is £1.5k.
That leaves £1k disposable, looking at my avg food shop it would be around £110 a month bare minimum more or less, gas and electric is would be around £100.
Lets assume £120 on travel too (£1.90 train fair + potential extra bus fair) assuming I don't use a car.
That leaves me with round £670 disposable income and I'm sure there are other misc costs that I can't think of so lets reduce that down an extra £50 to £620.
So per month excluding leisure/ entertainment or any kind of repairs I would have £620 a month to save.
Median house price in London is around £500000 but lets assume I can find somewhere that's a bit cheaper than avg so £400000.
Assuming that I'm putting 15% down that's £60000 I need upfront which would take me 96 months to save (again assuming no leisure spending or extras) for which is around 8 years.
Obviously my salary would likely increase in 8 years but not by much so lets be generous and say 7 years.
That's absolute dogshit and I've been pretty generous in my assumptions.
I'm going to make a few assumptions if you don't mind. I am going to assume a pound is a buck-.25, yeah we can argue that, but he made $20 an hour plus commission which was an extra $8-ish
and this is why every man and their dog are up and leaving. The country is cooked. The city is cooked. I implore you to look elsewhere, it will be a while until our once great nation returns to its former glory
Don't worry about it. Seriously. Your career and your life swings so rapidly that your "5 year projection" never plays out the way you expect. I initially started of in a "preftigious" MBB consulting role and aimed to stay 5 years to become an seasoned manager (PL/EM/Case Leader). I burnt out in just 2 years, heading to a role in tech, where I stayed for 4-5 years to ride those sweet, sweet tech RSUs...except I got bored and felt stifled by the simplicity of my role within a few years. So I jumped to a fast growing startup that would revolutionize the world. It was a place where I could work hard, grow fast, and maybe, just maybe strike it rich. I knew these roles are high burn from my time at my MckBain Consulting Group, so I didn't expect to stay more than a few years. The goal was to learn 5 years worth of skills in 2, then eventually take these skills into a cushier corporate gig back in tech.
I lasted 1 year.
Anyway, I'm now a little past what you are fearing is your life for the next 5 years. I promise, I never would have expected my career to play out the way it did. I'm currently (finally) a manager at a cushy F50 company, having comfortably settled into a corporate role that has excellent comp and WLB. This is the kind of role I dreamed about when entering college. I'm sure the goal posts will eventually move for me, but that is life. Keep learning, keep growing. If you do so, when you pick your head up in 5 years, I guarantee you'll be laughing at how trite your 22 year old self's thinking was.
Yeah I guess I'm being pretty short sighted
People tend to overemphasize the current problems they have and underestimate their ability to adapt over time.
The best thing you can do is find a long term “heathy” obsession (I use the word Obsession instead of Passion because after 40 years old I realize folks don’t believe in fairy tales as much).
An obsession makes you willingly take a $15 per hour job for 7 months when you are 35 years old in order to gain valuable “line staff” experience (I did that). That $15 per hour experience was valuable for when I co-founded a couple companies in the sector. I would later cash out. So the timing of money flows was erratic.
An obsession insulates you from comparing yourself to others. You play your own game. A obsession pulls your mind and time away from your current work almost effortlessly - you make your own time and seek knowledge. I tell friends who are thinking of quitting their jobs to make time for their start up pursuits in a bad labor market - I tell them they haven’t found their obsession. An obsession would have them working to 2am, they will have all the time and energy they need. Combine your obsession with a long view, a plan. You become delusional (so what you are not making a lot of money now, one day you will leapfrog ahead of your more conventional peers), but while building yourself brick by brick.
For anyone who feels they are in a rut in their career, find an “healthy” obsession. Obsessions can be a natural path in your current career, or a pivot into a new field.
One thing I like telling college students is find an obsession that would be supported by a hard trend, that is still in the nascent stages currently but will have a lot of growth when they are in their 30’s - 50’s (like the space business if they had a childhood obsession with space). You can totally remake yourself within 3 years and become an expert in a growing field within 10 years (within your niche).
When I read the OP, I see your obsession in the current moment (an unhealthy obsession). While great financial insecurity can suck your long term view (I know, I had over a million extracted from me in various legal wars) and make you dwell in the moment, your obsession can pivot to solving your current situations with renewed determination.
You have it in you be obsessed - we all can see that. Just look around, observe yourself naturally. Over time, it will come to you. The book, The Alchemist, was a good one - listen to what the universe is telling you. If you are obsessed with a field that is growing, with a long term plan, and delusional to your current situation and keep building, I bet you will be happy with your career with a higher likelihood of financial success.
Merry Christmas!
What obsessions do you see becoming the most lucrative besides space?
I can’t tell you all the growing fields, because you just have to look, and know that they will need finance, capital raising, strategy. It has to resonate for you.
For me, after I sold my company, I bought my entire family full body MRI scans. Around $2,500 each, out of pocket. My family has a history with cancer so what good is delaying life’s pleasures if your golden years never come due to a terminal illness. So, I am somewhat obsessed with MRI’s and started investing in these companies (the first North American one called Prenuvo started in 2018. They’ve had these similar companies for decades in Asia).
What I’m saying it needs to resonate with you personally. My first company happened after I became (actually first an admirer as a college student) then a consumer, then worker, then owner of the businesses. And while I worked in real estate, there was some overlap with my obsession (asset intensive business) and I pivoted. You can’t force obsession, it has to come (sing) to you.
wouldn’t fret about BO internships too much although it does seems a little long. the fancy interns like quant intern etc does seem value adding but it’s also skill set specific- if you never knew how to code or a STEM major, you weren’t getting it anyway. what you can do now however is understand the processes involved and find out what you’re missing between your internship & when you graduate & go out to work. then use that time to refine yourself
You're not going to get anywhere with that mental attitude. The most successful people I've known in my life have immense confidence that they will achieve success, no matter where they may be within the pendulum of life. The good news is that you can slowly train yourself to take on this mental attitude. Self-affirmation is extremely powerful. Have inspiring quotes or pieces of writing in places you will frequently see them. This is what our generation's most successful venture capitalist, Roelof Botha, did by writing “10 to the power of 9” at the right-hand corner of each sheet of paper in his notebook to represent the billion-dollar return he was going to achieve with his investments (he's crushed this number already).
To me, it's this piece of quote from a WSO post I came across when I was struggling myself:
Give yourself time. Make sure you are getting better every day in ways that will help you achieve your goals. Finally, get good sleep and exercise. I fall back into my moody, pessimistic self when one of those things are missing in my life.
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