Life Advice After Banking/PE (Rising College Jr.)
For context: at a top target, incoming SA at an EB next summer. I keep reading about the crossroads people hit after 2 years in banking, 2 years in MF PE, etc., and I've realized career decisions are basically on autopilot until you reach those points.
With that in mind, I don't understand why more people aren't solving for making partner at an EB. Senior pay runs $3-7M+ and inches higher in strong deal cycles. With compounding, that looks like a fairly stable path to a very comfortable back half of life in exchange for the grind to get there. The only other path in finance with comparable pay seems to be actually winning the HF game, whether quant (if you're technically capable out of undergrad) or L/S.
Against that, PE looks structurally worse than a decade ago: compressed returns, diluted carry, tighter promote gates. Yet the entire analyst class still stampedes to on-cycle instead of considering A2A. What am I missing? Is it the attrition math, the optionality argument, or something about the A2A path that doesn't show up from the outside?
For those of you who've stood at these crossroads and wish your younger self had your current perspective: what would you tell a rising junior to think about or pursue now instead, beyond the obvious advice of enjoying college while life is still simple?
