17 Comments
 

Internal Audit at a bank, coming right out of college - I didn't know any better.

Advertised: Fast paced, something new every day, fun, risk analysis, financial analysis, and important to the bank

Real: Control testing (doing the same things 30+ times on an excel sheet) a few times/day, reading over contracts that were signed 4 years ago, everything takes forever, no finance involved at all, checking over operations procedures, mundane work and literally saw no value to the bank at all..

So glad i got out of there.

 

I did this at a big 4 and it was equally as soulless, the only caveat was that my clients were in a variety of industries so at least I got to change my surroundings every so often. My mental health is thanking me for getting out.

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 

Corporate finance where a former IB MD became finance manager/controller and ran the entire accounting/finance group like an IB commanding ridiculous hours. The entire team almost turned over. Then he was replaced. The end.

 

Why did a former IB MD even waste his time becoming a controller? How did he even get the job? The skillsets are so different

 
"kakaman" Why did a former IB MD even waste his time becoming a controller? How did he even get the job? The skillsets are so different

Rumor was he was forced out for poor performance. Then he couldn't hack it in corporate finance.

 

This guy was out of his mind and wanted updated dashboards, renegotiated lines of credit, different CAPEX & D&A tracking/reporting, and so forth. Just making us work for work sake. He also had us change auditors after he pissed off our long time big 4 team.

The CF area was not a bullpen as he remembers from his glory days.

 
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I was hired for an acquisitions role and became a residential property manager.

Right when I was hired, the property manager of an existing asset was fired, and because the property was 95% student, and leasing was behind with only three months to go, they needed someone to step it immediately. Without any experience except for office brokerage in my history, I stepped in and leased the place up. I was given a small bonus and then I asked to start my real work. Unfortunately, I had proven that I was good at my temporary role, and they decided to keep me there.

I went to graduate school instead.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
"InVinoVeritas" They should have paid you $50k minimum bonus for pulling that off. On the plus side you probably learned a ton...

Hah, take a zero off of that...

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Got recruited by a fop-ish guy on campus for a "financial advisor firm" - i.e. MLM where you got pressured to sell ETFs to your network. We even mapped our friends and family in a diagram and went to an "motivations event" where the (admittedly pretty cool) CEO spoke. Even had to pay for that event out of our own pocket. And all under the name of "making it" and "hustling" and all that. Left those idiots after a few weeks because I saw through the BS, but some of my mates got hooked on that train.

 

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