Hi Everyone! Haven’t been active on these forums since my business school days. Thought I’d drop in and say hello to the folks that I haven’t kept in touch with. So glad WSO is going strong and has such phenomenal content! Hope everyone is making the most out of this crazy situation the world is facing.
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Hi CompBanker, it's amazing to see you back. I haven't posted in almost a year. This website lost a lot of its allure to me. One major factor was the absence of some of the OGs like you who I looked up to for your knowledge and contributions when I first joined.
My sentiments are captured really well in what CRE shared yesterday in a thread asking why later-career users are active on the site:
I hope you're back for more than just the pandemic work-from-home stint, it would be great to see you stick around.
Agreed
APAE CompBanker You guys have written so much evergreen content that we all have to work that much harder to provide any extra value! Sometimes I open your posts / comments during slow times just to enrich myself. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Thanks for everything.
True. I still have some guides by CompBanker and some notes by APAE saved on my list. Then Asatar 's tech guide, lots of philosophizing by thebrofessor , the two CREs, some useful stuff by NuckFuts , IlliniProgrammer , frgna, DickFuld and, of course, Eddie Braverman.
Also, where the fuck is FTB?
That’s my post! Hell yeah! Glad it was useful for something.
CompBanker Welcome Back. It's nice to see you're still kicking and doing well.
APAE I still check in every so often, but I feel the same way as you do. Between the political discourse and changes in online culture overall, it's hard to be active in like I once was. Plus, priorities do change over time.
Hey brother, wow, this is like a reunion.
Hear you on the shift in priorities. I'm still relatively young, but it really does hit you. I feel like I've always been a very intentional person, but it's continually humbling to re-recognize that there's yet another thing to reorient toward or account for.
It is a bit surreal to see you guys all posting again. Reminds me of when I first joined.
Haha yeah, it really does feel like a runion. Been good. Just busy. But that's life for ya. Priorities are a big part of that shit. Everything gets reshuffled, changed around, and things move to the wayside while others stay present. And you definitely are right, this does feel like the old IRC rooms, where after someone returns, everyone's like holy crap, "You're Alive".
CRE, yeah, it is definitely like a mini-reunion going on with names I haven't seen posting popping up out of the woodwork. I think some of it is due to all this going. I think some of it is a willingness to pass the lamp of knowledge - seriously, how many young bucks on here have worked through a market that's blown passed a correction. I'm definitely enjoying seeing some of the comments people post about what's going on, all Politics aside of course (you know me... dispassionate analysis when it comes to that stuff), and seeing how people's views are being shaped by the fallout of '08 and what's happeneing now.
Hi Comp Banker, good to see you here. How's it been at work these days? Have things slowed down due to this or are you busier? I remember your threads and comments and had always found them insightful. cheers
I never interacted with you myself (was a long-time browser before posting), but want to say thank you for popping back in and that I hope your journey has continued to be as successful as it looked like it was back when you were posting. As someone who is now 4-5 years into my IB/PE career, the number of posters with years of experience beyond my own, and whose advice I can draw on, has continued to shrink. I still find myself going back fairly often to posts I've tagged that you, APAE and several others made, in addition to private messages, that have been tremendously influential in real-life decisions I've made in my career. I'm certain I'm not the only one on this site progressing in the industry from a non-traditional background, without alumni whose experiences / advice I can lean on, who sees the content you've provided as some of the best mentorship I can find for my career. There's a ton of noise on the site these days, but still some incredibly helpful nuggets buried in the archives.
Would love to hear how life is progressing for you and have you pop in here once and a while, but also understand priorities shift and so that may not be the case. In any event, welcome back and thanks again!!
Could not agree with these thoughts more, very well said. Some of the best WSO contributors are in this thread, and it’s great to see you back. Thank you for all of the incredible info and guidance.
I encourage students and recent grads to read all of their posts, as it’s an absolute gold mine of content and knowledge.
I wouldn't have achieved what success I have without the direct advice of seasoned veterans here, APAE in particular. Thanks to all who enrich this community with your hard earned wisdom.
So it is hard to say that I’m “back” as life circumstances have certainly changed. I have so many ways that I want to spend my time and certainly not enough time to do it. In my 20s, my focus was almost exclusively on my career, and my career dictated almost all of my major and minor life decisions. Now that I’m 13 years into my career and pretty well established, I’m simply not fighting for that “edge” over the competition like I used to be.
Not to pile on too heavily on the reasons why seasoned veterans elect to leave this website, but I certainly felt them back when I stopped posting 6-7 years ago. As one of the original members of this site (ibankingoasis.com!), I’ve typically been more of a content contributor than a consumer. That said, I still learned a lot from peers and made some friends. However, over time the challenges I have faced have become very specific as well as very confidential and therefore don’t lend themselves to online collaboration.
I’ve always been a bit of an “old soul” relative to my peers. I don’t think it is my age so much as my personality. The memes / insults / related postings have always been an extreme turnoff to me. I understand a lot of folks value this type of interaction, but it definitely pushed me away. The political stuff doesn’t bother me as long as it is contained in the Off-Topic forum.
Anyways, it is rather nice to see folks respond so quickly to this thread.
Great to have you "back" CompBanker . Always a great contributor with solid views, advice and content. I fully relate to your change of gears. Any idea of what's happened to BlackHat , another of the bosses of this place, like those named above. Good to hear you're doing well. Would be great to see you posting once in a while.
A quick question for CompBanker APAE : for those of us who are at an inflection point (namely, go back to school vs. continue with our investing careers), what would your experience say is a sound course of action? Having never been through a recession as a professional, I'm torn between a few options:
(1) Hide out in school (have a great business school offer in hand, although the experience could be negatively impacted by COVID);
(2) Look for a lateral investing role, trusting that there will be good opportunities to buy attractive assets at cheap prices as the pandemic wears down;
(3) Find an operating role in an industry that I'm interested in for 1 - 2 years (e.g., chief of staff at a health-tech company) and then come back to investing (interested in more growth stage stuff long-term).
Understanding that (2) and (3) might be difficult to land given the current environment, any advice for professionals in a similar situation?
Similar boat, but with a "20 month path to VP" at a LMM (but where the two partners / two VPs all do have MBAs...). Would also be curious to hear.
For what it's worth, my own 2c on if I was faced with the exact (3) options as you, unless you were actively against going to business school for whatever reason, I would probably go that route. My thinking is that while some of the experience will likely be negatively impacted, much of what most people in our shoes are really paying for here you're still getting in spades (credential, optionality, network, time off more broadly). If anything, it will give you two years to wait the situation out in a great school and provide you with the ability to pursue either of (2) or (3) afterwards (and likely have a much easier time pivoting to doing that both being a post-MBA and potentially better macro environment).
Now we just need Eddie B to post something
Haha. Maybe Midas while we're at it. Lighten things up a bit.
and bankerella
Midas is greatly missed, he was one of the highlights of the site.
WallStreetOasis.com have you talked to eddie lately?
just gchatted him...definitely been too long! maybe he'll drop in to say hi with all of the all-stars in this thread :-)
Blast from the past and great to see some familiar names pop up again - I came to this site a couple "generations" after many of you, but have to admit I wouldn't be where I am today w/o this site and am just looking to pass it forward 4-5 years into my career now.
Nice to see some of you back around. Several of you were instrumental in helping shape my thinking and career path, so for that thank you.
Echo this. This website was instrumental in getting the information I needed to break in and get my career going.
Always nice to hear that the contributions have been impactful for others! I can’t tell you how many hours I spent typing up posts and it is great that the content lives on. This site is truly required material for anyone who wants to work in the industry.
Just want to say thank you (and the other OGs here) for the great content that got my business school to banking career started 6 years ago. Inspired by you, I've striven to (mostly) carry on the spirit of quality contribution to pay it forward to the next generation.
welcome back CompBanker !
Also here just to say thank you. You guys have been instrumental in my last 8 years with the semi-target -> IB -> PE -> MBA path, along with some of the major life choices along the way. I wish us relative "youngsters" could pay you guys back in a meaningful way (exotic vacation?)
Happy to see you again, CB. You shaped my thinking on this industry.
Sup y'all? Good to see everyone is still swinging the bat.
Holy Shit. How are you doing man! It's been ages. How's things down in the Big Easy?
Yo Frieds ! Shit's getting a bit grim down here at the moment, about on the order of NYC. That'll happen when you throw a giant party for a million people from around the world in the middle of an outbreak.
Otherwise hanging in there and executing the old 2009 playbook in this market. How are you doing?
Eddie! hope all is well
wow, what an awesome thread that brings back a TON of memories... how is everyone?!
Update from me: 3 kids now (4, 2 and 1) so lockdown here in California has been a challenge, but luckily everyone seems healthy (although I think Terry may have had Covid back in late Feb when there weren't enough tests - not joking)
Just want to say thank you to all of the all-star members in here that really made WSO what it is today. I feel bad that with all of the investments we've made into the platform, we weren't able to make the right changes fast enough (or navigate the moderation balance well enough) or give you guys enough value to keep you active.
If you take a look around, you'll still see plenty of political discussions and the occassional thread that veers off into an ugly debate, but we do have ways to mitigate the impact of that (no bumping certain hot threads, collapsed comments = you don't have to see an annoying back and forth). Given we are in an election year, how polarized everything has become and everything that is going on, I don't think that it's possible to avoid...but we do try our best to mitigate it and feature the more professional content (tons of AMAs now :-)
Anyways, I hope at least some of you will stick around and let me know if there is anything you would do if you were in my shoes to make the platform better. I'm always open to hearing how we can get better.
Thanks, Patrick
Woah Woah Woah better watch it throwing around "AMA" so casually. I'll have to report you to the Reddit power users, lawsuit #2 incoming.
Wait, are we allowed to call them AMAs again?
Who are you? No one knows you..
Newb, Welcome back :)
those of you who shit vote me a morons . fuck y’all’s
I'm not dead yet.
Return of the legend, like Muhammad Ali stepping back from retirement and into the ring. Nice to see you CompBanker .
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