Best Bank/Desk Combo? From an IB perspective

it's like comparing apples to bananas. Most aura? GS Rates Vol, might be so. But is that actually the seat that successful EQD traders in MS, eCredit Traders in Barclays,,,etc should/would like to jump ship? I don't think so. THey have completely different career track and their technical skills needs are completely different. (well EQD traders might have some overlap with Rates Vol though)

One thing also to add here is that products change. Yes rates is the hot product now but it used to be that for a decade rates stayed flat and rates trading was the most boring desk and traders come in at ten log two trades and leave at two. In a long career trying to optimize for a single product is just kind of pointless. Just find a desk you’re genuinely interested in and be the best at trading exactly that.

As someone who briefly dabbled in IB before I switched into S&T (eqd), prestigewhoring works differently in S&T.

There's a larger scope for how different desks operate even within the same product so it's quite difficult to directly compare prestige if you're doing different work entirely. For example, I like eqd, I didn't want to work at ms eqd because you are effectively a button pusher as a junior and don't meaningfully contribute at any point in your career (the desk has been around for a while so the work is pretty routine). Imo the work > the brand is more important for the longevity of your career (I'm still a prestigewhore make no mistake but I remember at uni when I was applying for IB internships I was obsessing over the differences btw gs and ms).

However, on the IB side, prestige is the main differentiator across banks since the work is largely similar so it becomes easier to have these conversations directly comparing desks. 

I might have a convo with someone also in eqd and we're both working on such different niche financially-engineered-on-crack products that our daily workflow looks completely different...

Vol desks by far. Any and all vol desks will have great exits primarily because the desks take on loads of risk - biggest thing is you can only hedge so much

You can hedge your delta which changes often, vol is difficult to hedge, and as a dealer you’re usually short gamma (as clients buy options -> you’re short options / gamma). You’ll have theta as well.

Unless you work on a total garbage desk (commercial fx, corporate rate solutions, equity finance, etc) you can have PM type exits. And even with the others - can go work for eg a corp treasury (light job and pays decent and corporations are based in loads of MCOL cities).

Overall a great life man - most desks are better than people make it seem