Do you find your work meaningful?
Dear WSO users,
Just finished my first IB internship, waitin' to get enlisted. Before I start serving for the country, I wanna make up my goddamn mind and focus. Would very appreciate if you could share your voice on this.
So I've been in this forum for a while with a full hope that I can also work at "NYC BB IBD" and achieve some American dream sorta thing. Came to America last year by myself, done several internships in finance, met with quite a few people through networking, joined in frat, transferred, and bluh bluh. Worked my tail off to end up where I stand as a sophomore. Came bank to my home country and did an IB internship. Right, I was so naïve to think that IBD will be so fancy and intellectually stimulating. Turns out, people there were pretty bittered about their life, advised me to go another indstry, and I didn't see why those elite students are pursuing this exact path. Guess I should stop this hustle, find a real passion inside me, and start from scratch.
What do you think? Do you find your work meaningful? Would you make the same choice if you were in my shoes? Curious to hear what you guys think.
Thanks!
Bump
Nobody works for free. It's all about money.
Money is good
I think the allure of IB and why it is so competitive isn't because of some intrinsically rewarding aspect of the job. Sure, while the work you do might have an impact on large deals that transform the outlook of companies and industries, but that's an optimist's view at best. For the most part the actual work you are doing as an analyst is not very rewarding. But assuming you can break in, you're making six figures right out of college and can do almost anything you want to do afterwards. This leads to IB becoming competitive for a couple reasons. First, people who are unsure about what they want to do in their career during college can pick IB to delay their final decision in a way. Second, the more people that recruit for IB in college, the more people they attract as well. A lot of the other people at your school who will throw in applications to OCR aren't really interested in IB, they are just following what everyone else is doing. Finally, IB is one of the high-paying industries out of college that requires relatively minimal investment of your time and effort. If you consider a legal or medical career or maybe even tech, you have to invest a LOT more intellectual capital to break in. I'd say if you do have a path to pursue your real passion then do that. If you aren't sure, just go with IB.
Great answer. I'd also add that while the majority of the actual work you do won't feel rewarding (e.g. formatting, pulling precedents, etc.), you will end up learning a ton that will be valuable in a lot of aspects of life. Two examples (there are many more) from my personal experience of how these menial tasks benefit you more than appears at face value:
1) Pulling and scrubbing comps / precedents: One of the most annoying analyst tasks. But after scrubbing a thousand comps, you start seeing trends. These trends can help you form perspectives on things like which industries are thriving vs. declining, which products/solutions are doing well in this industry, does this industry focus on growth or margin, etc. This not only allows you to talk about these things with friends in the industry and open up new doors if you want to exit. You also get a sense of what industry you may want to focus on.
2) Creating CIMs: This has actually been one of the most valuable albeit tedious parts of my experience. Doing this exercise actually hones your skills in storytelling. This is one of those rare exercises that analysts can really think big picture. Whether you go into PE, entrepreneurship, etc., you will always need to sell something. Whether it's a product to customers or your fund/thesis to investors, you need to be able to tell the story well.
Like the above poster. I'm a rising junior and I feel that IB is essentially like majoring Undecided, but for life. I like the markets so I want to work in S&T, but follow your inner calling. Best of luck!
I quit finance some months ago, I was warned I might be let go due to the COVID-19 thing but I pulled the Uno reverse card and quit basically. I am prepping for med school now so take my perspective as that of someone who is outside of the industry rn. It is not meaningful, it is outright repetitive and thankless. The thought of spending my twenties aligning logos and crunching excel numbers for 6 hours a day (yes, 6 because the other 6 I was at the office I was doing fuck all because bosses did not know how to manage shit so it was always last minute emergencies) filled me with dread. I thought the status and money would be fulfilling to be honest but I have a girlfriend, I have a dog that's 5 years old now and I thought to myself if something happened to my dog or to my girlfriend would those 100 hour weeks for those pathetic bonuses be worth all the sacrificed time doing something I do not enjoy and time I could have spent with loved ones when life is so fleeting and precious? Heck, no.
Did you always want to become a MD and couldn't afford med school until now or was it just a change of heart?
I was thinking about it since 9th grade but it was so scary to commit 6 years of my life to med school along with the subsequent years needed to get a specialty. I thought to myself, nah finance is better, I liked the material and ultimately money is what is important and social status, right? Well during my short stint in finance I realized those things do not matter that much in the grand scheme of things and I felt foolish for giving up on my MD dream and now I don't regret leaving finance one bit.
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