First year help - how to mentally get through banking?
Hi all,
Like so many others on this site, I’m a first year who’s been working for 7 months and I’m extremely burnt out, tired and just depressed and anxious. Every new email or message about work sets my anxiety off, I constantly dread getting work, etc.
I’ve made it through the 7 months, and I know it gets easier (hopefully) in your second year, but I just don’t see how from feb to june I can just keep grinding while knowing that my work load will probably only increase and get more technical and difficult.
how have you guys stuck it out? Or mentally prepared yourself? I don’t even have such bad hours (obvs a few 100 hour weeks, but norm is 70-80 and I do have protected saturdays mostly). So I know I should not be complaining as others have it worse but I just don’t know how to stick it out mentally. Any and all advice or commiseration is helpful. Thanks.
Life is a mindset thing, change it and you’ll feel better. Those late nights suck but everyone has them (although some more than others). Focus on the good of banking, compare yourself to where you were financially when you started, see how much better you are. I like seeing progress so I saved down my first few pitch books and look at how my work product has improved. Always have a positive attitude and you’ll be ranked high and enjoy it more
Following...same boat
Stay angry dude. Its the only thing that keeps me sane. Once you accept the banking lifestyle and let that fire die, you become another victim of the shit lifestyle and that will feed into every job you get from here on out.
Stay angry about stupid emails. Stay angry about dumb fucking comments. Stay angry about pitches you know aren't going anywhere. Channel that anger into networking so once you want to leave banking, you can get a stellar job - one that you're gonna crush because you're still hungry.
This is so true. IB totally fucked up with relationship with work and it’s going to take a while to reset (and probably not in time to make PE work).
Same boat as OP. I quit and joined a startup. Banking still left me with an abusive relationship with work. Now, I'll work from 8am to 8pm and then feel lazy and worthless for having free time during the week, like somehow I'm "cheating" my employer. I generally have weekends free but still choose to do work-related learning (podcasts, books, articles, general brainstorming, etc) because I still feel like I'm pulling a fast one on my new company for being stuck at home and choosing not to work certain hours or certain days. Granted, its definitely less stressful than having back to back client calls, DD, pitches, etc
any advice for going from 1st year analyst in IB to a start up? Actually thinking about going down that path, but not sure how to even recruit / find these opportunities.
Since you're still fresh out of college, I'd recommend using your undergrad network to find early stage opportunities where they'll take a chance on you. Most startups (unless they're already a unicorn) don't really have corp dev needs and if they do, they're definitely not hiring someone with 1 year experience to run that M&A process. So you really have to think about the role that they need filled and how you can mold yourself into that role. Could end up being some combination of Product/Biz Dev/Marketing/Ops if you're joining a startup that has a single digit number of employees. Don't forget to aggressively negotiate your equity
What type of role did you move into and how big of a pay-cut did you take?
I just know I have a plan to get out in 2 years. So each day is another day closer to the finish line
I start this year and you are scaring me
I just keep going through the week trying to get to friday. Then I keep thinking about how a whole week has passed, and I’m another week closer to some kind of break (vacation in spring or summer...) and ultimately closer to that deadline of hopefully leaving after 1.6m In December. It’s already Feb — just need to make it to summer when it’s nice and pretty outside and then to December when you can quit or leave!!
I get what people are saying for An1: stick it out for another 6-18 months if you can.
How about a first year associate, who will likely have to stay in banking much longer? How do you guys handle what looks like a no-end-in-sight grind? You have no two-years and out to look forward to.
I remember in my old BB, there was a serious staffing shortage and the VPs and Directors used to work almost as hard as the analysts. In that case as a new associate you were looking at a 10+ year commitment (Longer if you were an analyst and planning to stay for A2A) to the 100 hours-per-week grind. That long and seemingly endless tunnel became one of my reasons for leaving.
That’s exactly why (even excluding the increasing hyper-competitiveness at each level + industry becoming less profitable) I can’t see myself in PE long-term. Even the principals’ lives seem shitty.
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