Feeling disillusioned
I dont know why I decided this was the best place to post this, maybe to vent or maybe to know Im not alone in feeling this way but here goes.
Setting:
I work at a tiny PE shop (think 5 people) and it gets very isolating. We're practically remote and I go into the office (working at home is isolating so I need to get out of the house for my sanity). However, no one is ever really there. I dont travel much for work so it's just me being in front of screens all the time. The people are fine to work with for the most part so no major complaints there. But the work is mind-numbing and I cant imagine that is it. THIS is what I worked my butt off in school and internships for? Truly played myself.
So, the actual question:
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For those who moved on from PE what did you end up doing that you enjoy?
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For those in PE, how do you shake off the existential dread?
Thank you all,
lost finance gal
Hm I don't know. Some of this just sounds like disilusionment with work / adult life in general. Some of it sounds like your firm is just not stimulating you. I'd try and do the soul searching to figure out how much is in the first category for you vs. the second. It's a lucrative enough career where you might want to at least try another firm before you throw in the towel.
I ended up staying in PE. I'm not exactly smiling and doing cartwheels on the way to work, but I have a family and adult life in today's world really ain't cheap. Unfortunately the conclusion of that is that writing the screenplay will have to wait...
Thats definitely true - realities of working. I was at a big firm and i'd take my current role over that any day
Dude I’m in the same spot, old title. It’s a tiny firm (15 people) but I’m at a new office with like 3 other guys. just in front of screens and lose my mind if I work from home out of my room from sunrise to past sunset. It’s painful. The dread eats in to me, but I wanted to be in this seat for so long. I think going to a company and climbing the ladder might be better.
I was at a big firm prior but it was even worse. Cog in a wheel in the truest sense. work life balance was nonexistent (it was evident by the horrible personal / family lives the senior ppl had)
Been there. I'd say its 50/50 adulthood + working in finance / specific culture at your firm.
Had a similar experience where I felt lack of spirit day after day, people were just so dry at my firm and it made working day after day rough. Nothing wrong per se, but felt like a stagnant point in my life for lack of better term even though was in a spot I yearned for long during IB/undergrad. Nothing really changed but I did end up leaving and can say it's a little better at my new firm, the job is largely the same but something about the inner culture resonates throughout and makes going into work and waking up a bit brighter. Another thing you may be facing is subtle quarter life crisis, perhaps a therapist could help guide you through the introspection process to pin-point the cause of your feeling.
in therapy haha i do think i need to transition to a mid sized firm later on because i am pretty extroverted and need a good balance of independent work + team work + socialization
If you’re basically fully remote, why don’t you go somewhere interesting and warm and work from there? Florida, Phoenix, Puerto Rico, Mexico City (highly recommend). If you don’t mind the cold, go to Salt Lake City and night ski and snowboard after work during the week. Go visit your friends in other cities and stay with them and work from their apartments for a few days.
No job is going to give you a cool and interesting life, but it can give you the raw materials for it (money, flexibility if remote). It’s up to you to now to figure out how to use your time, resources, flexibility to go experience something interesting.
Life isn’t served to you on a silver platter by a job - you have to go create it yourself.
saving up to buy an apartment so trying to keep expenses low for now. also its tough to work on a small laptop on the go (unfortunately do need those two large screens)
you are right, you create your own reality
There are options for the screens - look into portable external monitors and carry a separate keyboard with you (I’ve done that and it isn’t as weird as you’d think). You’ll get used to it faster than you’d think.
Regarding saving up money for an apartment - I can’t comment on your financial situation or priorities specifically but what I will say is that being young + remote gives you the chance to have a lot of very very unique life experiences and for me personally I would be okay putting off buying a place to go have an adventure while you’re still young and don’t owe anyone anything. Also, there are options to get cheap tickets and sleep on a friends couch for a Friday - Sunday trip. If you want to spend more time in another city, you can also do a one month sublet on craigslist. If you go to Latin America (highly recommend Mexico City), your housing in a nice area (polanco, Roma Norte, condesa) and food is very cheap and it’s really only the plane ticket that you need to spend a lot for.
FWIW I’ve been doing this for 3 years and I absolutely love it and I’ve gotten to have a decades worth of adventures in that time. Can’t ever imagine working in an office in biz casual and being forced to be somewhere at a set time every day ever again.
Fully remote sounds great. Find some cheap air bnbs and portable monitors and go work from a nice destination once in a while.
were not fully remote. its just hybrid with monday's required in office. my problem is the isolation of a small team / the work and going fully remote i think will make that worse in my case
Plan a weekend (Thursday - Sunday) trip to visit a friend and work from their apartment or get a wework / Regus desk while you are staying with them. Spending time with old friends in a new city sounds like the opposite of loneliness and boredom to me.
Reminds me of a firm I interviewed at last year called Signet HC Partners. People were all very nice but the whole company was 6 people lol. I couldn’t make peace with that and stayed in my current role
I think about this a lot too. For context, I'm at a growth PE firm with a small team but great rep. I actually quite like what I do - I'm an extroverted person and I spend a good amount time going out to meet CEOs, traveling to conferences, etc. I like the vertical markets we spend time in and enjoy the diligence. Yes there are deal sprints, but the partners are good mentors and nice people. Really no complaints overall. Only one perhaps is that I'm still the youngest one on the team by far and do miss the bullpen culture at times, though in no way would I trade that to go back to the banking grind...
What really gets me is the fact that, well, this is life... I'm a couple years out of school now and and it's scary to lookup and think, wow, this is what I could be doing for the next 20+ years, just with (hopefully) more responsibility, impact, comp. In some ways I wouldn't mind, but in some ways I'm quite not ready to grow up. I worked my tail off but I wasn't one of those kids who was gung ho finance from day one. Maybe I should go pursue a path that was once a dream... teach? Work on the hill?
But at the same time, I have friends in a myriad of other careers and you come to realize that at the end, life becomes routine and every path comes with its share of challenges and grief. It's quite a privilege to have a job with great comp, upward mobility, daily stimulation, and hopefully some balance. Isn't that the dream? And yes I've spent time at the big sweatshop firms too and know that grass definitely isn't greener there...
I think some of it is just accepting adult life and learning to appreciate some stability while still building your life. Not saying be complacent and don't chase a better job, or a truly thrilling / life-changing opportunity... but count your blessings while you're at them.
My two cents, from someone who hasn't yet figured it out either
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