Q&A: Early 20s w/ 140k TC came from a non-target school with a 1.666 GPA & GED from highschool

Hello,


Decided to give back by answering some questions.

Summary of the story:
- 1.6 GPA out of highschool

  • Went to community college then transferred to shit tier university

  • Got lucky and got into consulting because fuck the story and fuck WSO for erasing the story

  • Now, I'm part of the top 3 tech consulting firms making a comfortable amount living in a tier 3 city in my undies drinking chocolate milk

  • The best advice I got was harsh, rude, and true. This shit helped me beyond anything else, I will do the same back to anyone asking questions


Ask me whatever questions you want:

  • Resume

  • How tech strategy consulting it like

  • How companies work

  • What people look for

  • What makes you stand out

  • XYZ



Final note: Keep in mind that I am still relatively young. So everything that I say is subject to being wrong as I grow older and become more experienced. 
 

However, I have had to endure a lot of obstacles/adversities that most people have to deal with when they are in their 50s. This is bitter sweet, because it was difficult to overcome but gave me a new perspective on life. 

 
Most Helpful

1) A lot of company HR shit likes to state "Be yourself, diversity, etc." In reality, that's all fucking bullshit. Put your best foot forward and adapt to the person you're trying to sell yourself to. It's just like poker, there's not a perfect strategy unless you play GTO headsup and if you do, go kill yourself because you make other people want to do that. Anyways, after you've adjusted yourself to what the white guy, you're going to add just a splash of your culture into the interaction. You want enough culture to say "Yay XYZ company is diverse by hiring me. You don't want to add soo much to the point where they're thinking "God fucking damnit that Indian motherfucker is microwaving Satan's asshole again and that's going to stink up the entire office.

Statement #1 Summary:

- Adjust to who you're trying to sell yourself to. Put your best foot forward and throw out any piece of your culture that may make them remotely uncomfortable if your objective is to gain favor with him.

- To connect bridge the culture gap, make sure you build 99% of the bridge do reach him throwing out all the shitty parts of your culture that is viewed as being weird in white guy culture. Try to be like that 1 black friend in a group of white guys that can act very well-mannered and at the flip of a switch can go back to being in "the hood mode"

2) How to avoid burnout/mental breakdowns. Where does burnout come from? It comes from the following items: 1) Thought of losing your job due to poor performance. 2) Get a promotion. 3) Because you like taking it up the ass. Here's how to solve these problems.

---> 1) Get so good at a skill that you can tell your job to fuck off if they place a retarded amount of workload on you. Then you get hired somewhere else in a couple of days for a salary that's 20% - 35% more. I can share later about the hard skills that are high demand.

---> 2) Don't bother getting promoted, getting internally promoted is dog shit compared to hopping to another firm. I understand why, because is Billy Bob gets a 35% raise because he grinds his dick off being an SME in 4 different proprietary softwares then Billy Jane (Billly Bob's inbred sister) will sue you because she only got a 3% pay bump because all she does is rearrange the colors of PPT slides and she's really good with doing that thing with her tongue on your eggroll.

---> 3) Some people just like to feel busy. They like to brag about traveling for work and to have that feeling of "omg I'm so important because I charge clients x amount of money an hour." For these people, go ahead and continue enjoying that feeling of suffering. This usually is a sign to me that no one significant in their family has died which means they don't value time spent with their loves ones before it's gone.

3) I have a good hard skill that is high demand. I can't go too much into specifics. I was able to get this skillset by fucking around and creating excel models, runescape bots, and just watching youtube videos about coding. 

4) Experience experience experience. Throw away all the stupid fucking fluff of executive summaries and vague things like "TEAMWORK IS GOOD YEAH!" "FINANCIAL MODELING RULES! WOOT"  <--- Having these things in your resume is equivalent to saying Hitler did a bad thing or that black people should not be slaves, these are obvious statements. Instead, give me examples, stories, and timelines of how you completed objectives.  If you don't have any then go fucking do something. Go start a business, go start a school club, go do something with your life that will add moderate value to this society.

 

Your point 2 about promotion and getting a 20%-35% pay bump by leaving etc. doesn't really apply to MBB. If you're at MBB and want to stay within the industry, your comp growth will all come from tenure/promotions, not from jumping between firms (which is usually pretty pointless, since the pay is identical and standardized).

Not trying to take away from what you've laid out here as it's true for most firms/industries. But since this forum focuses specifically on consulting and has a lot of people who are trying to get into strategy consulting, thought I'd mention as an FYI that things work a bit differently there.

 

When I was still in Uni, I got a once in a life time chance of talking with the GS banker. He essentially asked me "Tell me about yourself."

I said I wanted to do the following:

- Equity Research > IB or PE or HF or Consulting or XYZ

- I am super interested in stonks and here's all the books I've read "Citing off stupid shit to show off to a god damn GS fucking banker" (He was 26 ish making close to a quarter million a year not including bonuses)

He literally told me to shut the fuck up and that I didn't know anything. He told me that I don't know the first god damn fucking thing about IB or what it's like so why the fuck do I want to do it. He said stop focusing on all these different avenues and narrow down on something that you mother fucking want to do and fucking do it to the best of your god damn possibilities. 

He said, because I was coming from a god tier shit school (non-target) that I have no fucking chance of making it unless I have some x-factor like Olympic athlete or some shit like that.

This shocked me and made me want to prove this fucker sooooooooo fucking wrong sooooOOOOOooOOOoOoOoooOOo fucking wrong... But, turns out he was right. Truthfully, if he hadn't given me that advice I would still be delusional and on graduation day I would probably be a manager at a waffle house making 40k a year... I still need to call that guy up and thank him... He's the best.

 

The advice I've received has always been situational and broad. I don't believe that any advice will truly help you unless someone knows you in-depth (working with you personally to the point where you guys can bullshit around and give insightful feedback.).

If the objective of the advice you're receiving is to better yourself or to achieve XYZ goal, then I would go out and take the required steps that you need to achieve those goals then when you hit a road block ask a question to the person you're trying to seek advice from.

For example:

Generic broad question (No Value Add): What is some of the best advice you have ever received?

---> ^This question is not very helpful for the individual because the best advice that has worked for me may not work for anyone else. If it does, it would be a very small percentage. The question I feel does not have an actual purpose besides getting a third person perspective.

I'm not saying that this is you: I also noticed that when people asked me these type of questions they haven't done any research on their own. I feel that they expect me to lay out the foundations/groundwork for them instead of them doing a 5 minute google search.

Targeted Specific Question (Value Add): Hey Soy Dawg, I've heard that you have a couple of properties in Georgia county. I've ran a couple of of comps in XYZ area of town, and I can't find a CoC return % above 10% is this normal? 

--> ^ This question is targeted, clear focus on an objective where the third person's perspective is valid assuming that he/she knows the field or is experienced in the field.

Btw, all this info is Safety Harbor because:

1) I'm still relatively young and potentially retarded which means everything that I'm saying is more than likely going to be wrong

2) I'm an anonymous scrub on the internet, for all you guys know guy named "Chuck" who just acts like he knows his shit just to get off on the feeling of superiority like those scrubs on reddit.

3) Because of any other blanket reasons of why I could be wrong.

 

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