High Finanace Job vs Corporate Job

With recent forums discussing how classic IB exit opps like HF or PE being crowded or becoming less desirable, I was considering forgoing a banking career for a corporate job career. I would be gunning for a VP or CFO role instead. Ofc this would be at a Fortune 500 company or of the sort. I wanted some opinions on what you guys think of the costs and benefits. This is a generalization of the research I've found so far.Corporate

Pros:

  • Good hours
  • Job Security
  • High Salary after gaining experience and seniority (20 years)
  • Easy to lateral and rebound
  • Position yourself for a CFO or CEO role

Cons:

  • Poor entry salary throughout your 20s
  • More office politics
  • Slow career/salary progression
  • Possibly less ambitious and smart people
  • Lowkey sounds lame and unglamorous

Investment Banking:

Pros:

  • High entry salary
  • Fast salary progression
  • Culture of comradery 
  • Builds a strong modeling skillset
  • Well respected
  • Supposedly had strong exit opps (still requiring sweatshop hours)

Cons:

  • You won't see your friends or girlfriend
  • Easy to get kicked out of
  • You sacrifice your 20s
  • Your mental and physical health is likely to suffer
  • Work-life balance, what's that?

I've also seen hints of a consulting —> MBA —> consulting —> corporate department director route but I don't know much about it. I'd appreciate it if someone could comment on this as well.

 
Most Helpful

I don't have experience on the IB side, just corporate. From what I can tell, your pro/cons list is pretty accurate. The quality of your peers is definitely lower, which is good and bad. On one hand it is easier to stand out if you are smart and driven.. the bar is lower, and if you learn how to speak/present well, look the part, and learn the role quickly you'll be in a better position for a promo than your peers. But the downside is that the work (at the analyst levels, at least) seems to be geared for slower workers. I've struggled with finding enough to do because I automate a lot of the time-sucking menial tasks.

Another downside of corporate is finding companies that are willing to promote young. This is a code I'm trying to crack- how to identify companies that are willing to have 26-27yo managers, 30yo directors, and 33yo VPs. So far, the companies I have been with are slower moving and seem to think you need to be 30-33 to be a manager and 37+ (at the *young* end) to be a director. I'm countering this by being willing to jump- I left the first company for geographic reasons and because I didn't like the industry, and we'll see about the current company. If no promo once I finish my MBA, I look outside.

My personal recommendation would be that if you can get into banking and are willing to have no life the next two years, I would go for banking, save as much money as possible, get your MBA, and then jump to corporate. In my case, getting into banking would have taken a super-human effort from the school I was at, and I was about to get engaged so pulling 80hr weeks wasn't something I was willing to do. I don't regret it, but if I wasn't engaged and if I had a banking offer I would recommend that path, at least for the first 2 years.

 

Possibly- there are a bunch of factors to consider. I don't want an inflated title without comparable pay- a lot of smaller companies have managers doing analyst work and getting analyst pay. Another factor is career growth- I see roles at smaller companies where a manager reports to the CFO. After a few years you might be ready for the next promo, but are not ready to be a CFO, so you're just kind of stuck in limbo. Last factor is brand power- smaller companies don't look as great on a resume, so they are better to jump *to* rather than *from*. I think it's pretty likely I end up at a smaller company eventually, but I think I want to burn that wild card later on, as a way to get a VP promo from director, or to get a CFO promo from VP.

Start-ups are a luck game in my opinion. Never know which ones are going to grow and take off, which ones are going to fail, etc. Not bad if you want to roll the dice, but not my play until I have more of a financial cushion.

 

Pros / Cons list seems to be relatively accurate apart from a few things that might be considered more subjective.

I would add that IB for an analyst stint still makes tons of sense from a corporate perspective. Without getting super detailed... it's much easier to get from IBD -> Corp Manager -> VP / CFO as opposed to starting off as an Analyst in corporate -> Manager -> VP / CFO.

The prior posts you alluded to argue the former (i.e. exiting IB into corporate) as opposed to the latter.

 

I've heard about this, though don't bankers build a very different skill sets than what's required in corp fin? I heard they often exit to corp dev, but I thought that was very different from say an FP&A role. Can ex-bankers confidently handle being manager of FP&A analysts?

 

Incoming IB FT and I'm actually pretty interested at exiting into Corp Dev after a few years, would love to hear from anyone that has done something similar about expectations and how to go about the process given that its probably unstructured recruiting and how you feel about leaving the "high finance" path. My thinking is I'm willing to put in the hours and learn as much as I can, but I don't see the high hours/unpredictability in work/life being something I can do longer term. 

 

Your thread basically has laid out my career progression (IB -> Corp Dev).

This is about accurate. I would say that doing IB before CD was incredibly beneficial even though it is the grind that most people say it is.

Authored by: Certified Corporate Development Professional - Director
 

For the longest time I wanted to go corporate. My reasoning was that I wanted to be an operator and the work-life balance per dollar was appealing. I haven't worked in IB, but I've worked in demanding consulting roles that support finance (i.e. Transaction Services), so I'm familiar with working hard and have seen just how hard IB/PE guys crank. My gameplan was to do Advisory (I'm a CPA by training) till I'm early 30s, then jump to corporate and chill.

I'm starting to change my view on this for a few reasons (feel free to counter since this is just based on my experience):

  • Work-life balance on any team that has visibility is kind of a myth. I'm doing this never-ending system implementation work in consulting for a F500 (side note: avoid these projects like they're COVID) and am working 55-60 hours regularly doing boring work. The problem is my client is right there with me working as much or more. Same goes for my friends at startups/pre-IPO companies. My goal was to eventually lateral to director at a pre-IPO company, but after seeing how much these guys are still working and how much less the pay is versus the equivalent level in consulting, I don't think the transition is worth it.
  • Going hand-in-hand with point one, there's a lot of boring ass work that needs to be done in the corporate side at all levels. As a consultant, your life is demanding, but it's because you're usually working on the more important, or high-visibility projects that Management wants to (or more cynically, "needs to") spend money on to get correct. Even as a more senior person in finance, you'll be involved with things like month-end reporting, internal controls, disbursements for payroll/AP, etc. The one way to escape those duties is to go to a F500 company at a senior enough level, but that comes with the problem of working on a very specific thing for a specific product, etc. It's very siloed and not something that suits my personality of wanting to work on different things.
  • Geographic mobility - this is, to be fair, mostly a personal pro, but I think that the ability to work in most major cities is a huge pro for consulting. If I'm in a city I don't like for a couple of years, it's not too hard to either move internally or find a larger firm that has operations in the target city.

As such, my goals have changed a little bit. I'm thinking I may pivot to a different type of consulting role and instead try to either get to the buyside, if I can, or only jump to industry for a company whose mission I really believe in and can get me a seat at the junior exec level. I don't really see much advantage currently in moving to industry, working as much as I do currently, and rolling the dice that equity (if I get it) is what will make all the difference in the world. Again, this is just based on what I've seen so far in my short 6-7 year career, so I am kind of curious how more experienced folks feel about what I've said.

 

This is a pretty good take and highlights some of the issues people don't often discuss in detail. I went IB to a hybrid role that touches a couple of different workstreams but is essentially corporate development / finance most of the time. Couple of takeaways from the last few years.

  • Work / life balance improves on a relative basis, but episodically it can be just as bad as banking or consulting
  • Comp is competitive very early on when you factor in quality of life improvements, but moves really slowly at mid-level roles
  • There is an incredible amount of mundane work and you rarely have the resources to offload any of it on junior people; there are few entry level hires for CD specifically. Also might have to coordinate your own calls, travel, meetings etc. or have a shared admin across an entire group which means they're focused on making only the most senior person's life easier
  • It's better to make the jump as a senior person and come in as a VP / SVP, I've noticed there's institutional resistance on the corporate side to letting someone move up from an analyst or associate level role to VP too quickly even if they're capable
 

Corporate Finance wasn’t my first choice, but it’s where I landed so it is what it is but I think if you’re able to able to get into an FDP from undergraduate or from an MBA, you’re going to be fine from the promotion perspective. It might be in title and pay only, with a slight change in responsibility but from my understanding if you’re in a development program you're generally getting attention from a lot of places which can help progress your career quicker. 
 

Compensation-wise it’s clearly not as good as IB or consulting but all in first year for me is around $80-85k at an F50, and 45-55 hours a week. Nothing insane but also doesn’t consume my entire life. I had another offer from an F500 that was very similar in total comp but structured differently. Upon competition of my program I’d become a manager in finance and receive a fairly good bump in base, stock and bonus (it’s given as a % of base). 
 

Similar to above, if you have the opportunity to do banking/consulting for two years I would take it. If I had the opportunity I would’ve done it. IB can get you into most Corp Dev roles and can get you fast tracked for upper management too. 

 

Can you elaborate on IB being a fastrack for upper management? From what I've read on this site, IB gives you the skills for Corp Dev but not as much for the rest of corporate.

 

Can you elaborate on IB being a fastrack for upper management? From what I've read on this site, IB gives you the skills for Corp Dev but not as much for the rest of corporate.

I guess from my general experience, which isn’t a ton, there still seems a preference for people with banking experience. Most specifically Corp dev, but even in general areas it seems to give a fairly large leg up on others. Again, my experience could be vastly different and the exception to the rule. 

 

MSFT / other tech company?

$80-85k all-in for a new grad in corpfin outside of top tech, o&g and finance is unheard of.

Standard is ~$50-65k base or so.

 

You mention getting a manager promo after the program- how many years is the program? Will you have any direct reports as a manager? Expected comp?

It seems like the norm is to get an SFA promo after an FLDP, and to be making in the 80s/90s (in a low COL city like Dallas/PHX/ATL tier). Manager after an FLDP sounds amazing, though I'm wondering if there is some slight title inflation going on

 

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