What is so bad about Back Office Roles?
I know this forum seems to crap on BO/MO roles but I do think that there is a little bit of a misnomer on the actual field. From people I've talked to in ops and risk it seems as though it is a fairly laid-back environment (although I'd avoid HR like the plague). I also think that it is still a decent route to MBA programs and can give someone a decent story to "why ibd/MBB?'' questions for post-mba jobs. It also appears that people underestimate the size of BO/MO teams at banks. It is pretty interesting that technology is the biggest dept at GS.
I'm going to need you to speak a little louder
I interned at a BO role at a BB and here are some parts of what I disliked: --Do shit and clean up shit no one wants to deal with or touch --Lame ass co-workers that mostly came from Big 4 audit backgrounds and carried with them all the negative stereotypes about accountants --Managers and bosses that have been around for 25+ years and are stuck at the VP or ED level. Lots of old people and few young people --Didn't see myself being able to transfer my skill-sets much at all elsewhere --Doing BO/MO for a large BB, you're likely going to cover just a tiny portion of an I/S, B/S, or CFS - if you're at a smaller or mid-sized company you might actually have more responsibilities and be taken seriously --Awful turnover; less of a culture/camaraderie in BO/MO roles --Don't contribute to the top or bottom line; just overhead
Some BO/MO roles can and tend to lead to good exit opps or more interesting roles - think FP&A, market risk, credit teams etc.
Big data is the future and will eliminate back office in 10 years time. I would not go int back office, unless you have the intention of going there and then getting an MBA - not even sure this is possible BTW. I would do back office only to get money to invest yourself and do your own shit. Working for someone else is seriously over rated.
I know someone who did back office and worked up to manager in Visa - he is on 100k and works 9-5. Fuckin kills it. He loves it as well.
I worked in a back office role for a year and It's painfully mind numbing and repetitive. I sent the exact same emails at the same time to the same people everyday, ran the same reports/macros everyday etc..It was so unbearable that I put in my two weeks without having another job lined up. The (low) pay wasn't worth how miserable I was becoming and I could feel myself actually becoming depressed/mildly insane.
Prior to my current role, it was all BO. The issue is you rarely learn new things. Jobs are very station-to-station (trying to avoid using the word 'operational') and you can hit a ceiling very quickly. You're dealing with the internally outsourced tasks, which are repetitive. I honestly don't get people who enjoy it. Managers in the BO are generally people who have just been around long enough to promote and brag about their understanding of "everything that goes on at the company" which is hilarious.
The long and the short of it is this forum isn't the right audience for BO/MO discussions. While, yes, I agree, back office is in all likelihood way more "boring" work with less "upside", the fact remains is there are very limited IB roles. If you remove the prestige mentality of this site, its probably a pretty good career track with decent pay, benefits, etc. Is IB better, duh, but the people on this site that put down BO/MO are just immature.
Worked in settlements and risk control for a total of 3 years. Boring, repetitive, no transferable skills, low pay, not a lot of bright people to learn from. Any new "project" is just typing numbers in to a an excel file. I do not understand how somebody can enjoy this.
How did you escape
I had a prolonged business trip to Sweden when I started in Risk Control, they payed well so I was able to save around 6k$, I opened an IB account and started trading and learning the basics of investing. I took a lot of online courses on coursera.org in Finance, Stats, Computational Investing etc. + 5 month C++ programming bootcamp. If you want to invest/trade you need to analyze data and you need to know how to code, simple Excel does not cut, at least VBA is a must. My thesis was simple it's not the university you went to, it's not your grades, it's what you actually know and how you can contribute. After that I was able to get an Analyst position at a local IB boutique, did almost 2 years, then 1 year at a mutual fund, now going to be a broker at a local private bank. Programming skills were a big plus at almost every interview. The last position might be surprising, but in the country where I live banking industry is very different from US or Western Europe. Finished my MSc in Econometrics this year and now study Machine Learning via online specialization want to do some freelancing in that field.
Most of this post is pretty accurate. I strongly contend with the person that said 'BO can be enjoyable as long as you're not a prestige whore'. That's just not true at all. When I worked in a restaurant, I thought the manager there was at least 2x as smart as my manager from my time in BO. I could actually learn from that person, they at least had an ounce of passion about their work.
The BO/FO argument is kinda stupid, because it should really be BO/any other career opportunity. If you're a person looking to simply have something fairly stable while you stack cash for post-retirement or your actual passion, I think it could work. The BO/FO argument only exists on this site because of college kids having absolutely no clue what a career in 'finance' looks like, so it becomes a struggle between making an everlasting good or bad decision within what is perceived to be the only two main options. Realistically, every FO role is different from investor types, to managers, to advisors, and then even more distinction exists among different products or industries.
As long as I'm interested in closing deals and potentially being a professional rainmaker, I'm going into the FO versus med school, as an example, because I just don't care about repairing knees or handing out shots or researching the effects of smoking one extra cig on the brain. Personally, I'm more interested in deals and building relationships, from a deal/investor standpoint. Finance is still pretty broad and once you select the avenue that works best, there's something for most personality types.
Also, I don't think that a person should choose to go into BO if they are looking for a career, because as mentioned there are no relevant skills that can be developed and I'm pretty confident that tech will eliminate most those jobs as they're extremely repetitive and monotonous. As I said, going into the BO looking to generate a steady stream of income can be helpful if your eyes are set on using the cash for something beyond your years of dedicated toil.
keen to understand the difference between BO/MO repetitive tasks vs. IBD/Trading repetitive tasks. From my perspective junior IBD/Trading/BO/MO have the same level of monotony.
BO/MO - Entering numbers in to excel/creating reports. IBD - Researching company financials plugging in to models/Creating reports. Trading - Staring a screen all day (Not entirely sure what junior traders actually do)
Also genuinely interested in the transferable skills that you can only get from IBD/Trading.
Thnx T
What you get out of IB is at the junior levels, a strong command of finance and a lot of transaction experience. Other than corp dev which seldom takes folks straight out of college, there's nowhere else to get that kind of experience. I'd analogize IB to boot camp for business, you learn a lot of hard skills (financial modeling, statement analysis, presentations) and soft skills (attention to detail). You also are working 1.5-2X more than people in the corporate world, while this may be shitty it gives you the ability to jam in more experience in a short amount of time. You can get this experience elsewhere e.g. TAS, management consulting, but it won't be tied up in a neat little package.
I work on average 36-38 hours a week. Do people in IB really only work 55 hours a week (1.5x more)? This board makes it sound like they are in the office much more than that.
Also just as a side note, all of the skills you mentioned are part of my current role at an equal or higher level. We do quantitative modeling using the balance sheet and present to the senior leadership team. What we put together goes in the Ks/Qs.
I'm not saying IB isn't great by any means, but out of the 120ish people on my floor, more than 10% came from IB roles at top firms. While the pay is about 20-30% less managers in quantitative roles make ~160k and you can get there by 30 years old. I just can't see how $80/HR with a life is worse than $30/HR with no life....
Let me add: I believe there are many reasons people choose IB such as, getting into a top ranked B school and having a ton of exit opportunities. However I also think there is this idea that it leads to being a multi millionaire before you're 30. One thing I don't think a lot of people realize is that not everyone in IB reaches that goal, in fact many don't. Look around at the number of analysts at your firm and multiply that by the number of firms (adjust for size). Do you see that many PE managers or IB MDs?
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