Argument for middle/back office?
Thoughts from someone slaving away in M&A waiting for comments back
Isn’t there a strong argument to go into a back/middle office position and get your head down, work hard, be competent and make director/MD at a bank instead of slaving away like we do in M&A?
I know several people that have done this, eg a family friend is a director in compliance at a BB and pulls £300k+ TC each year. He said he can count the times he has worked past 7pm on one hand.
I get the comp in IB/M&A is incrementally higher as you move up, but pay per hour is shocking and these guys can have a v good salary and a WLB, relatively little stress and you make decent money on your way up - and can make a lot at senior levels. Think about it, a director in a BB is pulling in what v these guys in MO/BO? Am I right in thinking it will be something like £500k v £300k?
I imagine there are loads of seats in senior positions that pay well in ops, audit, treasury, risk, compliance etc etc. Thoughts?
The problems are 1) the work isn't very interesting, 2) exit opps are limited and 3) as the years go by, many of these jobs are being automated away. Not to mention, 4) when a recession comes, bank cost centers are the first to go.
Its a big world and there are plenty of other jobs out there with decent WLB that are more interesting & have better career runways than finance MO/BO roles.
Best of luck w/ your recruiting process.
Second everything said above, but will also add that a highly motivated person won't be happy in MO/BO. The work is boring, the people are not great to work with, and even as a star performer you're still navigating lots of dumb politics and you're ultimately not at all important to the bank.
If you're already in M&A, there are lots of opportunities to jump to strictly 40hr/week roles at corporates that are interesting / will eventually pay well without the mindlessness of BO.
Thanks chaps, OP here. have been in M&A for just over a year now and don’t think the slaving away is for me. These corporate jobs you are referring to, are they Corporate development, portfolio analysts, fp&a type roles?
I started in the back office, moved to the middle office and then the front office.
There are days where I pine for the simple life I used to have. Then I remember that I was so bored I wanted to pull my own teeth out for some excitement. Along with the positive lifestyle adjustment (which is nice), there is a negative mentality adjustment.
You're not doing exciting work with the possibility of upside, you're doing basic work with nothing but downside. The front office will shit on you for their bad performance and there is no way to distinguish yourself as a great contributor, you just do your job well or not well. Imagine how big of assholes some people on your team are when things go wrong, now imagine those people are your clients.
You'll find you're frustrated with even more bullshit politics, because no one has a revenue generation metric for dick measuring.
If you're really not happy with what you're doing, I would look outside of finance (not being rude at all). By going further from revenue, the type of stress changes.
Good luck on the journey.
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