Is it weird to desire to work at middle office?
Hi, I am a rising sophomore at a umich ross with 3.6 gpa. I recently had an internship at a ibank in HK and felt as if this was not the job for me. The hours seemed long, and the work was so tedious - fixing typos, formats and etc. There was no real tangible work that I was able to doing that made me enjoy my job.
I have recently been looking at middle office positions, especially in the market risk and credit risk arena. Is it weird that I want to work at credit risk despite all the hype about ibanking? Its the hours and the decent pay balance that just does it for me, I really want to enjoy my social life and risk is front office at some places e.g JP Morgan.
What do you guys think? Am I being stupid or is this not too out of the norm?
Nah it's not weird
You'll be shit on by a lot of people here, but don't sweat it. If MO's more your style, then go for it.
If you think you'd be happier doing it, then no, it's not weird at all
Go for a job you love - who cares what others think?
Good for you. Try it out this or next summer and see if you like it. Having a healthy balance is never weird.
You ever see Margin Call? That movie makes the risk department look pretty badass.
i have been told risk actually has decent exit ops as well
It could be great but just remember that the grass is always greener. You could do an internship and find it just as boring as IB. But there's nothing wrong with giving it a shot. Like Ultima-RDK said, treasury has the potential to be quite interesting as well.
what is weird is asking strangers on the internet to justify / condone your life choices......
Not every MO position is going to be the same- some will be engaging, others not so much. With that said, nothing wrong if you want to go that route. You are still young, so try to get a few diff experiences before heading down one path.
I want to do risk long term too man, not weird at all.
You should alsways strive to be the best.
Do what makes you happy 100%. I did one internship at BB M&A and hated it, started a LevFin BB internship this week and loving every minute even though the prestige is obviously a lot less. You will spend too much time of your life working to hate your job - do what makes you happier.
Going to reiterate what everyone has said. Go for it. You're still a sophomore. Try to land a risk role for the summer and see how you like it. If you like it, great. If not, spin off story for why xyz junior year recruiting.
And as for risk, even thought people often crap on it, there's multiple aspects, some more desirable than others (ex. credit over ops or regulatory). Some banks really put a high value on it, such as JP Morgan as you mentioned. I can confirm their Investment Banking Risk group is considered front office, I've had friends who have gone onto work there and recruiters tell me so (ib pay + ib bonus + what you like doing = win in my book). This is not to be confused with other risk groups in the bank which JP has (commercial credit, finance guys with regulatory stuff, ops, middle market, and the list goes on). This one is solely geared towards the IB folks on the deals they do and thus, one of the harder ones to get into.
Other than JPM, I think the only other firm is Barclays that has a risk group dubbed the "Risk Solutions Group" in Investment Banking. The rest of the firms house risk as the typical stuff its known for.
Hope this helps.
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