Feeling quite lost with career. Thinking about resetting
Hi all,
I have been feeling lost about my career for quite a long time. I guess it is finally the time to take courage and ask on WSO.
A bit background about myself. I graduated from a target with a 3.5 GPA and joined BB IBD. Worked for 2 years, moved to a large fund in another country (non-MF but it is quite well known in the industry) and have worked for more than 1 year here.
I don't like my job but I am not a networking guy. I guess I am sort of a lucky candidate though. I almost didn't network at all and maybe I sneaked into high finance by chance by joining teams with high attrition.
I am now thinking about resetting my career and I am considering either lateraling/MBA or just restart with a second undergraduate education
Lateral to a corp dev job / getting an MBA
- I can try securing a corp dev job in my country but paycut would be steep and it is a one way decision
- Should be ok competitive if I am applying to the class of 2024 (applying 2 years later) but I am not sure how different it is from lateraling to corp dev directly now
- After working at 2 banks and 1 buyside I feel reluctant to continue. It feels like things will only go worse
Redoing undergrad
- I am actually quite interested with medicine/academia and I am considering doing an MD or PhD down the road
- Thinking of redoing an undergrad, and instead of gunning for IBD SA, I could be spending my summer in research and build a more competitive profile
- Tuition is expensive and I am not sure how difficult it is to return to the commercial sector if this path fails
Sorry for the long post and a lot of complaints with my life. Hope if someone can shed some light on it, especially if you also considered going back to school at one point in life. Thanks in advance!
You touched on it a little bit above but what do you think is making you feel like you are lost in your career? Do you not find your job interesting or feel it is monotonous / repetitive / not adding any value that makes you feel excited to get out of bed every day? What about medicine sparks your interest? I feel like a quarter life crisis is getting really real and popular for people nowadays. I am in almost your exact same shoes and feel like medicine might be an interesting career in the long-term as well.
I feel that my job is repetitive and I don't see much value in it. Yea, I work on models and ppts. But most of the time I am spending time on appendices and writing some valuation methodologies, operation benchmarking, industry overview, etc.
I don't see much value add, especially after spending countless hours building the deck and incorporating the comments. Sometimes I ask myself, does it matter? Is it material? It doesn't... When we head to IC, nobody is actually looking at the deck. I just feel my work has little value. It is mostly for show for the seniors who prefer form over substance.
Also, culture at my shop is quite bad and it just became more apparent after the virus. I got dumped more work during WFH and loads of internal VC with seniors to "just check in with your wellness".
Last few weeks I have been asking myself, do I find the work meaningful? Does my work make any impact at all? Did I learn anything? - I don't feel my work is making any impact. Replace me with another junior and he could probably do the same type of work. My existence does not change anything and I am just a cog in their wheel - I learnt how to build model. But did I learn how to invest? Perhaps if I join/start a PE then I can apply the DD experience and learn how to do expert call etc. What if I want to do personal investing? It doesn't help much. Skill set is different and my colleagues' personal investing performance is worse than index ETF. How about entrepreneurship or joining an F100? I don't know about FP&A, corporate treasury, etc. I could join an F100 if I am lucky and they appreciate my work ethics acquired from IBD/PE. But again, what is my value add here?
I feel medicine is better because I am learning something important and people (and I) would value my contribution. I discovered myself having some health issue when I was a second year analyst and I wish I knew it earlier. Also, I can have an ownership in my career in private practice as a doctor. I can have flexible hours in different stage of my life and prioritize different goals. Perhaps I can have such lifestyle as well as an MD in finance, but this is a long journey and my career will always be cyclical because this is the life in finance.
Sorry for the whine. I guess ultimately I will leave my job in 2-3 years time. But I need to make sure what I should/want to do next to avoid another regret.
Some thoughts for you:
A major factor here, IMO, is the culture of your firm. Whenever I hear 'high attrition' that's a red flag as it probably means there's little professional development, mentor ship and/or EQ within your team or firm. I would strongly consider how much this is the issue vs. the work itself. I'd also encourage you to avoid the trope, popular nowadays, with this ' oh finance is bullshit, it's all made up, nothing that we do matters, etc.' We all joke about it, and there's a kernel of truth, but people need finance and god knows quite a few companies, individuals and institutions need financial professionals to give them advice. Don't fall victim to this idea that you don't add value to society at all or whatever.
Since I just made that last assertion - I'll tackle the Medicine part here as well - Go into medicine because you love it and have a full understanding of what it requires of you. I'd guess you do, I'd even guess you may have family in medicine who have a view on this as well. it's not a path you go into for flexibility, or better hours, etc. - even far down the road. Do it because you love it and do it because it's what really makes you happy. I don't have any good advice on how to tip your toe into it, test it out or even what pivoting looks like - but I will tell you that the worst possible reason is to do it because it's somehow 'more noble' than finance or because you feel unfulfilled at your current job. Pick it because you simply can't live having not done it... that's up to you to figure out.
Onto the finance work, you'll always be faced with this prospect being replaceable and/or my work has no value. It's cousin feeling is 'this work is stupid, it's thoughtless, repetitive admin work'. Both are valid and partially true - running models, building power points, etc. is not exactly the most challenging work on the planet. The point, however, is that you are slowly but surely building a base set of skills, tools and experience that you will call on as your career grows. It's just the way it is, period. You need to examine your own attitudes and understand do you simply not like the prospect of eventually selling a company on a transaction, or finance generally.
I would also re-orient your view of jobs and how you accumulate skills. Everything you do is a building block for you to call on as you move forward. Sure - building a power point is mundane, but knowing what a good presentation (or, maybe, a shitty one) looks like will help you eventually articulate yourself to investors in a medical practice. Your building of financial models gives you insight into assumptions, valuations, etc. that can be leveraged should you go into corporate finance or even more of an asset management role. The transactions you were on can... blah, blah. You get the point. Simply consider some of that as you go forward.
As far as the MBA decision goes, I don't think I would recommend that at this point. It's an extremely expensive move that, in my view, requires a really good sense of either your future career aspirations, the removal of some 'barrier' to your career growth or an extremely expensive networking move coupled with one of the above.
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