Late night thoughts as I spread comps…..

Does anyone else feel like a lot of people commenting on this forum are generally:

(i) overly risk averse, and
(ii) short sighted / not thinking critically enough about what the “right” career for them actually is?

There is so much discussion here around prestige rankings, firm A vs firm B, or a 10k salary differences between similar banking jobs.

Are we not solving for entirely the wrong thing?…

I get that prestige matters early in your career. It helps pad the CV and creates optionality.But over the long term, is it really going to be the dominating factor in whether you are successful? I doubt it.

Surely the better thing to optimise for is the overlap between:

1. Where there is genuine job market alpha / structural growth
2. Where your talent and interests actually line up

And I’d argue point 1 is more important than most people realise.

The large-cap PE shop with 12 rounds of interviews is not necessarily where the alpha is. In fact, I’d argue the interview count is often inversely correlated to opportunity.

I put myself in this bucket as well. I feel like I sleepwalked into a BB IB and then PE because it was the obvious “high-achiever” route. But for at least 95% of people, I’m not convinced this is actually the optimal path. It is just the most legible one.

Prestige and earning a bit more than your mates feels good in the short term, but does it really move the needle? Does it really give you the best chance of achieving your full potential?

Maybe we should spend less time checking where the comps are trading and more time reflecting honestly on ourselves, thinking harder about where the real opportunity is, and figuring out where we are actually likely to excel. It’s not meant to be easy.