Wasted Talents at Non Targets going towards Back Office IT Jobs in Wall Street.
As a chemical engineering major going to a Non Target school on the East Coast, I have noticed many incredibly smart and driven students turning down their Silicon Valley offers and opt towards a job on "Wall Street" in hopes of "making it big". Unfortunately, the jobs these people are getting aren't the front office jobs that many people on this site aim for. Instead, they are given shitty IT/Tech jobs that are way below their levels and capabilities.
I hate to say this, but I find it unfortunate how the Business Majors at my school are eating up all the Front Office offers, whereas the Electrical Engineering guys getting 3.8+ GPAs/Google Internships are getting their asses shafted by some shitty IT job at Goldman. Now you may question: why exactly are these talented individuals opting to work a shitty back office job on Wall Street? Its because of the lies that the "info sessions" make when these big banks come to recruit at my school. Whenever there is an info session with [insert Bugle Bracket], the Bulge Bracket is ONLY recruiting for back office, NOT front office. The recruiters straight up lie to these engineering students that attned these info sessions, promising them high salaries, "Good Name Brand", and "transferable skills". My ass. What shocks me is how so many kids fall for this recruiting scam, and how many of these 1500+ SAT scoring, 3.8 GPA+, Electrical Engineering majors are wasting their times and efforts into getting a shitty back office job in JP Morgan.
Sorry if I vented too much.
I assumed you have an IT job at a bank? You know you can always leave, right?
Just so you know, you're wrong. I see a lot of non-targets electrical engineering majors on the desk.
When you say non-target... Are you talking about Rutgers, Penn State or are we talking about Benedictine College in Kansas?
Surprised someone knows Benedictine. Have a lot of friends there.
hahahhahahaha
Northeastern probably?
I don't find it that surprising that the business majors are taking the front office positions at investment banks. I know there are many exceptions but that still tends to be the norm.
STEM students and Engineers take second-tier IT jobs at big banks because they hope it will lead to quant roles down the road, either at said banks or hedge-funds.
Front-office work at IB is not rocket science, and If anything, people that love technically challenging work might get bored to death. Not saying that banks refuse top STEM students because of this, but it is certainly one questions I've been asked many, many times during interviews at such places.
Quant Net is a good resource for anyone looking to do that with their lives. Learn to code, get into a top Masters/ PhD program, then you can network to get offers at JS/ Citadel. Not that this is easy or simple, but that's the generalized layout. PhD is not always necessary and CUNY has a top rated Masters in Financial Engineering (that's like $40k in tuition, compare that to MBA price tags). Keep in mind the curriculum is really difficult and acceptance is incredibly difficult.
There are also more software based roles at top hedge funds, but those pay slightly less than pure quant/ algo trading roles. Nothing to sneeze at. Top software engineering roles can pay 200-300k starting (wide range, I know), whereas Quant roles can pay 200-450k starting (wider range, I know).
Agree with this. Banks are also moving more tech heavy. The most ~~~~~prestigous~~~~~ banks like Goldman are already poaching the best and brightest techies to create trading systems, etc.
No one who is smart and tech-oriented would go into KYC AML or ops
my friend working a "shitty IT job at Goldman" is developing apps to reduce headcount and they're paying him about 15% above Google and nearly 2x gross what I make.
Agree with Ergo clears... if these 3.8+ talents don't understand where the revenue comes from in a given company, maybe they're not that talented.
Goldman - revenue comes from front office (banking/trading), engineering and IT are support, cost centers to keep the business going
Google - revenue comes from engineering/IT/innovation, finance roles are support, cost center to keep the business going
If people are going to Goldman they either have other opportunities in mind, or are just blindly going to "Wall Street" for prestige.
I would say working at Google is equally impressive as Goldman. FWIW tech cares a lot less about prestige too. People love Google because of the high pay, amazing work life balance, and moderate pace of work for most teams.
Right. So you got a problem with back-office jobs because you have an EE degree, pretty boy? Try that shit out in India.
I have seen folks get an engineering degree from a super-competitive college followed by an MBA from a top-10 b-school, settling for a back-office job. I understand that frustration you're putting on display might be coming from a place of personal hatred when you see these 'sub-intellectual' folks taking up jobs your 'gifted friends' are unable to get.
Understand this - front office IB is difficult to break into. Show me every person who understands how to structure a deal and make a flawless financial model, and I will show you 10 people with the same skill sets who couldn't break into IB. IB is as much a marketing game as it is a finance game. That's why they keep telling you - the MD is more of a salesman and less of an analyst. Because once you understand the game, you're selling left, right and centre - deals to the clients, negotiations with the bankers on the other side of the table and then selling the bank to the 'sub-intelligent' business majors at the colleges. If you lived in the good times of banking you might even find yourself selling it to the Senators trying very hard to make you look like a Bond-villain.
If your 'friends' with 1500 SATs and 3.8 GPA EE majors can't use their brains to sell themselves into an IB job, then please ask them to take their 'gifts' to Google and make the world a better place.
Also - screw the prestige and money they promise you in finance. If your 'gifted friends' have the brains in place, they might as well take it to the companies who are trying to solve real-world problems and making money out of it.
If you are running after the money and the prestige, stop giving the bull-crap of getting duped. It's not a pyramid scheme. Every single company out there is overpromising. Alphabet is changing the world. Goldman is doing god's work. Amazon is...being Amazon.
It would really help you if you stop cultivating the hatred for these business majors. They are simply carrying the apt packaging for the gated community they call IB. Even if they play their cards right, they only have a sliver of a better chance than you do. It ultimately comes down to the selling part and not just the raw intellect.
More surprising to me are the ~1450+ / 3.8+ kids at state schools who early on get funneled into the 5 year bachelor/masters accounting programs (because the school only sends
This!!!^
Yes yes yes, this was exactly what happened to me. "Do accounting we have big 4 recruiting come here and take a ton of students ree!" Now I'm a back office bitch with a masters in accounting.
Thank god for FT MBAs!! Front office here I come! REEEEEEEEEEEE!
Edit: haha i'm not even admitted yet gd
They sound like nerds. Who wants to work with a 3.8+ GPA engineering student? Not me
Ahh here goes another kid who thinks bake-offs are won via management monitored SAT exams taken by MDs of competing banks. I recall our bank losing out on a major deal last year because our deadbeat MD only scored a 1490 compared to the GS MD who got a 1510.
Of course, as you already know, that SAT score is then multiplied by the weighted average GPA of each bank's analyst class.
and we call that multiplier WACC lol
It boggles my mind when people think that being a STEM major somehow makes them a being of superior intellect. Jesus Christ, you’d think these non-target STEM majors graduated top of their class at Harvard by the way they speak about themselves. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for business kids to make more than STEM kids. They tend to be much more well rounded, deal with it.
Agree. and this isn't a rare occurrence either, I've personally been made fun of for pursuing a business major as my primary major (my secondary major is technically STEM but its not relevant).
STEM people can do what business people do but not the other way around... That simple. I have yet to find a business/economics/finance exam that comes close in terms of difficulty with an easier STEM exam.
It's interesting you say that. One of my CS friends had another friend who was going for a business minor. He had to drop the minor due to failing the entry level weedout business class. Also as a double major (business with STEM) I can tell you that you're wrong. There are STEM classes where I didn't study for the exam and did fine and business classes where I had to put the time in to do well.
Also difficulty =/= real world application. Quantum Physics is very difficult but has little practical application to the real world. It's why Physics PHDs make about the same as entry level accounting jobs.
Maybe that's why those STEM Rick and Morty intellectuals OP is talking about fail to get FO jobs. Talk about entitlement, just because engineering or whatever is more difficult than a business major does not mean that engineers deserve to front run business majors for jobs, it's a lot more holistic than "My perceived IQ is obviously higher, how dare you take a position in IB that's obviously meant for me."
This is the attitude I was referring to ^
Just because your exams are harder, doesn’t make you smarter (not referring to you specifically). Also I disagree with the notion that STEM kids can do things anything a business and etc. kid can, but not vice versa. There are Harvard philosophy majors with 2400 SAT scores (sorry, I’m old), yet STEM kids will pretend like they have vastly superior intellect.
Do you truly think the Harvard philosophy major couldn’t learn to code if he really wanted to, and do a bunch better job than hypothetical entitled STEM kid? That’s just delusional and shows a sense of exaggerated self worth.
Ohh damnn!! Everybody look - he's got a 3.8+ GPA !!
See OP? nobody cares
As a non-target kid who just got a FO job, you need to chill out. The people who work hard, network hard and respect the process get FO offers. The rest call one call to an analyst “networking”.
What sort of talents do they have if they cannot discern the difference between where their skills are valued and where they are treated as "cost-centers"? That lack of perception doesn't seem to be the hallmark of successful people.
Also, the major is irrelevant. What matters is the economic value you can create and, more importantly, capture as an employee.
You don't need critical thinking skills to get a 4.0. You just need to know how to be a grunt.
A lot of people that are hardworking and smart don't become successful. This isn't a meritocratic world. This is real life. It's unfair, it's harsh and it will knock you down again and again. Get used to it.
My parents have worked 80hr weeks for the past 20 years and we still don't have an emergency fund. Just real estate assets worth like $1m.
This is life. Young people have ambitions, they fail, they move on, they settle and wonder "what if".
Stop complaining. You're lucky you're in the US and that Wall Street considers your uni even for the "shit" jobs.
P.S. What is "shit" for you, could be lifechanging for someone else. You've read WSO too much and you think that if you're in BB FO, you're fucked. Grow up. There's endless opportunities. Don't benchmark yourself against trust fund babies from the BEST SCHOOLS IN THE WORLD. smh
Hmmm I wonder why the business majors are getting the business jobs, and the technical majors the technical jobs. Hmmmmm, lemme think about this for a but.
It's oddly depressing to come home from a Monday after a long day in the office to see a thread like this. Be at least happy and grateful to complete an education degree on-time, and in an interesting major that you can utilize to make a difference in society.
Instead of venting, why not consider what your, not others, priorities are and why you are in the position you are in. Do you think blaming a system or others is going to alleviate anything? People will provide all sorts of reasons to justify his or her or their decision regardless of the criteria.
I would use education as more of a tool to further pursue a purpose or goal. Broaden your horizon.
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