MBB vs D.E. Shaw

Hi all!

Wanted to post regarding some advice as to what opportunity I should pursue for the upcoming summer.
I'm a penultimate student at a target university in the UK studying a liberal arts/social sciences course.

I've been lucky enough to receive an offer for an MBB summer internship for 2018 (in London). When beginning my internship search, this was my dream gig - but, after receiving the offer, I found out that I had made it to the reference check stage (after final interviews) for a "generalist" internship at D.E Shaw in NYC. I had not heard much about D.E Shaw but from all my online research it seems like a great place to work and ridiculously selective in its hiring process. I also have been told by friends that D.E. Shaw's reference stage is quite substantive, and so am not yet sure whether I have an offer. However, if I do receive this offer, I would be really torn between the two opportunities.

It would be really great if I could get WSO's opinions on

1) The work/life balance for each job
2) The nature of the work I'll be doing at D.E Shaw (the website is a little vague, I know I'll be doing something corp.dev but I have little idea what this actually means on a day to day basis)
3) The exit opportunities (will the DES corp.dev job pigeonhole me into HF/finance work?)
4) The compensation

Thanks!

 

Hey drmockingbird, what a lonely thread. I'm here since nobody responded ...so maybe one of these discussions will help:

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Any pros willing to rescue this discussion? Sehgal Thiemo-Werner Tscheidl

If those topics were completely useless, don't blame me, blame my programmers...

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

Normally I don't post much but this is an interesting question and you've only gotten a Bot to answer you...

How did you get this far with DE Shaw without knowing much about them?

Do you have any description of corp.dev?

 

The D.E Shaw interviews were heavily focussed towards my interests/resume/applications as well as some general brainteasers rather than specific questions geared towards the firm itself. Of course, I did my reading on the firm's culture - but as someone who never really applied for traditional finance roles (I targeted only consulting), I still do not know what "corporate development" or "investor relations" means on a day to day basis.

The official description given by the firm is "As a generalist intern, you’ll collaborate with employees on challenging, high-impact projects that require creative problem-solving. Past generalist interns have analyzed data about new funds and counterparties, built risk models, and evaluated whether and where to open offices overseas."

My long term goal (think 10 years down the line) is to have my own social enterprise. At the moment it seems that MBB will give me more opportunity to do social impact projects, where as D.E Shaw will be a more stable work life balance and will be paid better - in terms of starting my own gig in the future, is it better to have the skills or the capital? I'm also unsure whether the exit opps from D.E Shaw are better given how selective it is as a firm.

Thanks!

 

Go MBB. Jobs like the DE Shaw one are always available to MBB folk when they exit, but not vice versa. 10 years down the line, your capital position is not going to come from your savings your first 2-3 years out of college.

 
Most Helpful
Discobolus:
Go MBB. Jobs like the DE Shaw one are always available to MBB folk when they exit, but not vice versa. 10 years down the line, your capital position is not going to come from your savings your first 2-3 years out of college.

I actually agree that this person should go MBB but your rationale is flawed. Top flight quant funds are not "always available to MBB folk". That this is a corp dev rather than front office role makes this claim not as ridiculous but still false.

That his capital position will not be a function of early year's savings is not necessarily true. Presumably I don't need to tell you about compound interest?

 

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