Young and ambitious ladies and gentlemen, I am feeling unhappy and want to share my thoughts with you. Not a fan of whining in the Internet, but I have found it hard to find people who I can open up to and who can also truly empathize with my situation.
A little background, I did my undergrad in engineering at a top US program (MIT/Caltech/Stanford). I thought of myself as very sociable and thus did not want to go into an engineering career. Don’t get me wrong, I love engineering, but I was afraid of getting into a fulltime job surrounded by colleagues I did not feel I fit in well with. Let’s face it too, before I hit the real world, I was very ambitious and felt I was worth more than a $200k annual paycheck by the time I made senior engineer in my mid 30s.
Next thing you know, I am at MBB (big surprise, huh?). While there are some moments in which I like it, the longer-term trend is that I am becoming very unhappy. Why?
Travel
I was used to traveling very frequently, even for short trips, so I thought this would not be an issue. Whenever I heard consultants complain about the travel, I thought to myself that I was different and that I would not mind it. However, now I realize that it is not the travel that I dislike, but it is the loneliness that kills me. I did not realize how much this sucked until my third week of being in a hotel by myself- once the novelty wears off. Eating dinner alone one night is fine, but doing it 3 nights a week, every week, while sleep deprived makes me depressed. Which leads me to the next point:
Health and sleep
Before this job, I was one of the most happy with life people you will have ever met and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I got 8-9 hours of sleep every day and exercised at least 4 times a week. After a good workout, I would feel high on life and then I would get a meal with friends. It was awesome. Now I sleep closer to 6 hours a day and exercise 0. I work all day on weekdays, I like to be social Fridays nights, I make Saturdays my recovery days and by Sunday I am back to thinking about the next week, which leads me to my next point:
Stress
I know I am not saving lives here, but the setting I am in leads to a high level of stress: expectations for quality of work are high, deadlines are tight and there is absolutely no room for error. Nowadays, as soon as I wake up every morning I check email and feel an anxious feeling in my stomach as I wait for it to refresh. I thought I could control my emotions very well, but I am starting to realize that the context around me plays a very large role in shaping them.
On money…
I am starting to realize how little money is actually required to live a great lifestyle. I am living very comfortably and am probably spending only a quarter of my income (taxes not included). I don’t spend much but also don’t live cheap (e.g. cabs rather public transit). The consulting expense policy helps, but even if it were taken out, I feel the money I would earn as an engineer would give me the freedom to do as I feel, which is all I really need. Once I have a family, etc, I’ll want more, but by that time no matter what career track, I’ll be earning more too! Given my educational background, I’ll be making more than my parents did, and I feel like I lived a great lifestyle while growing up. We weren’t rich, but I never felt I lacked anything. I realize now I don’t need to be earning $1MM a year to be happy!
On learning...
The experience at MBB has been great from a personal maturity standpoint. Sure, I am learning and all that, but people forget that I would be learning at almost any job. And sometimes I feel that at MBB I am learning a little about random things all over the place, rather than learning a lot about a focused topic of my own choice.
On next steps...
I think I know what I have to do, but it is really hard to grow the cojones to actually step out of the rat race. I need to get my life back to the balanced state it was in before and I know I cannot do that at MBB. What’s next? Strategy at Tech Company? Beyond that, do I have the balls to go to a job at non-prestigious big engineering firm? (Sounds easy in theory, especially given what I just shared, but sometimes I over-think it).
To the more experienced folks out there, what are your thoughts on my situation?
Thank you for sharing. Quick question, how are your colleagues? You say you are lonely but I guess you are never alone on an engagement right? Can't you eat with them? Or even exercise?
You're really on the road alone that much? Don't you usually teammates on the road with you?
For most people, MBB is a transition to that job that allows for the lifestyle you seem to want to recover; doing MBB just makes it clear that the follow-up job is something done by choice, because you have the chops to make it through MBB's competitive process. With your MBB plus Stanford/Caltech/MIT degree, this will be apparent to most people.
If you're still overthinking this transition and viewing it as a matter of cojones... just bear in mind that BB and MBB tend to attract the risk-averse, and at some level it's part of the culture, so the longer you stay, the less cojones you'll grow.
If you're no longer enjoying MBB (seems like you never did) and it allows you to get to a non-entry-level job that will allow you to have a more comfortable lifestyle, then it's served its purpose and you should move on.
solid post +1
Three things:
(1) When people talk about hard work, this is what they mean. If it wasn't difficult, they wouldn't preface the work part with "hard". Lots of people think they are willing to spend decades of their life doing very little but work to get to the top, but few are actually willing.
(2) Yeah man, there's more to life than money and you're right you don't really need that much. Do what makes you happy. Another option is to head to M7 b-school, and then exit to a six figure corporate job with pretty good hours. I was recently talking to a b-school friend who is in a corporate rotational program at a F50 company, and he said he works less than 40 per week! Crazy! Sure, not all post MBA corporate jobs will be like this, and certainly not all the time, but I doubt it will be the standard 13 or 14 hour day that MBB often is.
by three i mean two
monkeyoasis, I don't have enough banana point to PM you but shoot me a pm with an email contact. I think I can help talk it out.
I don't think your feelings are that odd, and I don't think you don't "have the cajones" because you don't like MBB. That being said, a lot of people go through this sort of state ~1 year into their first job. Working kind of sucks, and it certainly doesn't afford you the freedom to crush it at work, work out every day, see friends, recover, and sleep 9 hours a night. Part of growing up is figuring out how to manage all these demands.
If you want to quit, go ahead and quit. You'll have plenty of awesome options abailable to you, and you won't be alone. I talked to a girl the other day that quit Bain after two years from b-school, and she said ~40% of her office's starting class had quit by that point. Just think about trying to make some life adjustments first, and see how you do. MBB, and most consulting overall, is a stressful lifestyle. Travel does suck, and it doesn't get any better. You're at the demand of your managers and your clients at all times, and deadlines are seemingly impossible to meet. I just think you need to look at it and think about whether or not you'd be happier in another, slightly less stressful job right now, or if it's more a task of figuring out how to manage your life. I have friends that worked 40 hours per week out of college that struggled to make the changes to their habits to be happy.
Hence why I'm considering peacing out to accounting. Sure it's a less exciting job, but I'll have time to do ACTUAL EXCITING STUFF OUTSIDE OF WORK ON A REGULAR BASIS. Great post, I totally hear you.
if you're thinking about moving to a big 4 for that reason, you are SORELY mistaken.
Note necessarily. Depends where he goes.
I've been fortunate to be on exciting projects with good teams. I think every project is different so take each one with a grain of salt. Network with the people you think you'd enjoy working with and go from there.
I think consulting is great because you have the opportunity to drive your career if you are very proactive. If you are not, you may get stuck in boring projects/lame teams and eventually be pigeonholed. Grab your career by its horns
It's called QLC (quarter life crisis). Look up the symptoms in wiki.
Do what you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life. Simple concept, yet sometimes it takes a while to find it. Find out what turns you on and go for it!!
Think I can contribute with my 2 cents here. My background - ex-consultant who moved to industry. Looking back, consulting definitely gave me a great skill set to help me with my career. OP - you have a background that would lead you to success in pretty much anything you want to do in the future. From what I've seen, in the long run tenacity is a bigger advantage than intellect, and you seem to have that. Best of luck!
Junior Monkeys - if you do want a negative take (and on bad days I definitely felt this way) I would recommend this series of posts by an ex BCG consultant: http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/dubai.html
Personally love this quote from the post: "What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work". I whole heartedly agree with his views
I interned at MBB and really, truely disliked it. The people were great though. The work and lifestlye was awful - all my friends who interned in finance partied in NYC, while I was traveling around all the time. But it was a great experience and of course helped me land my FT offer.
Almost all of the interns who went back full-time to our MBB left within two years. OP - you should realize that you only have 12-15 months to go. Get your game face on, finish your two years, and exit to a more interesting path. Also, bringing such things up internally is no big deal - almost all MBB analysts leave in two years, besides maybe 25% or so who actually enjoy it.
I'm doing the same work right now and I'd say its about two things: -learning -personal interest and motivation As long as these two are addressed it's worth staying on. If not, then its definitely time to move on considering the impact this type of work has on your life. Consulting brings you a very broad and thorough skill-set for future management roles. As long as you feel like your growing you'd have to wager if its worth the sacrifice. If you feel you get stuck doing the same stuff, either demand a change or move on. Personal interest/motivation this type of work requires a very strong element of both, if you really like what you're doing you wont mind the travelling. If that is not the case switch to whatever you do like, as interest is the main driver of motivation and productivity. That being said, toughing it out for the first two years to learn the basic package of skills is almost always worth it.
It looks like the usual burn out, we all hit those points sometime in our lives. It's a good thing that you seem to have reflected a lot on this and not afraid to move on.
I kinda don't think it's the lifestyle of the job that's killing you, but rather a sense of real satisfaction you get out of it. Perhaps going out on your own and start your own firm will be what you need. Let's not forget, when you are an ambitious motherfucker, you will always want more and get bored with routine. The only way to harness that energy and be happy is to run your own company.
The simple bottom line is that if you've spent at least a year in banking, then you have a good chance at getting a good job outside banking (assuming you take all the right steps and prep). So start talking to recruiters and quit. Simple.
Clearly, you were delusional from the start. All the reasons you have for unhappiness are very well known concerns and negatives about banking. It doesn't seem like you did your homework at all.
Also, who do you think you are saying you were WORTH more than $200k in your 30's??? If you are ambitious and DESIRE more than that salary, fine. If you want the perceived prestige of banking, fine. But you are not worth anything more than anyone else, especially anyone that has done the work you have. And clearly you are NOT worth the money because less than a month later, you can't even handle it.
Before you go to a new job/career do the research and find out what your life will be like; otherwise you'll be back here with the same complaints.
Agreed.
I think that in order for this post to at least be helpful in the slightest bit, you would have to read the original post first before going off about banking, when it is clearly stated in the title that the OP is talking about consulting.
And OP, I would generally agree with the people who have said sticking it out will be beneficial for your personal growth. It's not as though you won't have options coming out with your background, but leaving early would be a big red flag (as stated before).
.
I don't work in MBB, but I can assure you these feelings will be present in any job role with any amount responsibility. Figure out a way to deal with it and persevere. Hit some supplements (5-HTP), see a doc, find a way to workout, read about someone who has it harder than you, etc.
If you can make yourself persevere you will be stronger for it.
If you really hate it and will never have passion for business then quit and take a job with minimal stress / responsibility. However, if you really have a passion for business then stick it out, because the opportunity you have is one of a kind and rare. You will regret quitting if business is your thing.
How common is it for consultants to match the analysis to the conclusion the client wants....? That is very disappointing if true.
Exceedingly common. This is partly because the analysis consultants do is often so weak (i.e. not particularly rigorous or evidence based) that it doesn't really matter if they change a few variables and arrive at an answer that makes people happy.
What really annoyed me was when a partner would say something completely silly (i.e. no real analytically backing) off the cuff to a client ("We believe that's a $2.5B market") and then expect the team to prove it because the client is "anchored" in that answer. Don't know how much this happens everywhere, but this was definitely a very McKinsey thing (better to make things up than to admit you were wrong/ full of it the first time).
Very disappointing. I know MBB puts out some good people and information, tools and thought processes that have helped me in business; however, maybe their concept is outdated or too big and expansive. It seems there was more significant impact from past MBB people and leadership. Maybe the value still lies in MBB researching and answering questions for a corporation that can't commit its internal resources to do so.
If I'm the OP, I'm sticking it out for two years. There is very little better than having MBB on your resume, you essentially unlock almost every door.
OP - I'm sorry to hear that. If you want to PM me, feel free. My first reaction is to try to give you advice on how to turn around your experience, and you will no doubt find many people happy to prescribe to you next steps and solutions.
But I will leave you with the following:
There is more to life than work, and certainly more to it than consulting. Do what you love, and if that's not consulting, squeeze it for all it's worth and get out. Consulting firms, banks, etc. alike will take more and more from you. The people that are most fulfilled in my firm are those who decide where to draw the line and stick to it, not the people who keep giving.
Best wishes.
PE sucks too bro. The senior associate I work with most is pissed off all the time, but he is going to work in finance forever because he believes it is the only way he can be rich and successful.
I see the same with my friends in consulting, banking, PE and HFs. After 2-3 years, most say the work is boring and uninteresting. They either leave and do something radically different, or resign themselves to work for the high paycheck.
Wow I would think that working at a MMB would be more sustainable than IBD. I rarely see posts like these.
Alright, listen man. First, great post. Anybody a year or two out of undergrad feels like this. My closest buds and I are in banking, accounting, consulting, etc. and everyone gets these post-undergrad blues. If you honestly, honestly, though you were going into MBB and love everything about your job and save the world right out of undergrad, you did a good job of fooling yourself.
You, me, and the majority of young WSO'ers dedicate a lot of time and energy in investing in our careers early. I have talked to very few people who took these routes and wish they would have differently 5, 10+ years down the road. Your career is an investment. The going is tough at the beginning. Look at this period as an opportunity for you to show the world (and yourself) that you can handle a little adversity and power through tough times. Lessons like these are very valuable. Pick yourself up and tell yourself that you can make it through these times and that they will benefit you for the rest of your life. Attitude truly is everything and I think it is often underestimated how much a positive, energetic vibe will get you in the workplace.
Think of it this way: there are kids out there who didn't get that shot at MBB who are going to have to work even HARDER than you will to make it to the next role. I can guarantee you those kids aren't feeling sorry for themselves. They have their noses to the grindstone with a bit of vengeance in their heart (or maybe they are actually happy with their job and glad they didn't get MBB).
You have two options: Suck it up and make the best of it and start to make your next move, or wake up every morning with a tear and trudge into work everyday and be someone who nobody enjoys being around.
I only rant because I was in a situation very similar to yours. Also, dude... eating dinner 3 nights a week alone is not that bad. Start a group text with your friends, make it a point to call a friend once a week, etc... It's the little things bro.
I have to concur with the earlier posters recommending B-school. B-school may be a great way out, provided the firm does not pay for you... Then get a corporate job with a MBB after 5 years as Associate/EM, she bought property and started a hospitality business; she now sleeps at 9pm every week night.
The grass is always greener on the other side. I sometimes have similar thoughts of picking academia over finance.
Nothing much to advise on. The thing to bear in mind is that although job turnover is costly, its costs actually grow with time, and it is somewhat expected that this will happen to a fraction of the incoming classes, i.e., at a relatively early time in your career it's no big deal to quit... AS LONG AS you have thoroughly stressed the hypothesis that you won't regret it (I call it a hypothesis because you never really know). Spend a good deal of time talking to people you trust about it to make a strong case to yourself.
Well, first thing I would think is, who have you worked with? Are they happy? Can I leverage my experience in that industry? Umm. brother, you don't live at home, so... you are on an expense account... do I need to break down why you spend 1/4 your income?
.
Good for your for realizing what you like. Life tends to beat that out of most people. Go for what you like and don't look back. I've been at an MBB for 5+ years. Don't believe the hype.
Stepping out of the rat race. Bold move. In your next post explain to us why you want to get back in.
If you're that unhappy, start planning your transition out. It would make sense to try and jump to a corp strategy type role, start reaching out to people in that arena.
Go for corporate strategy. MBB is really just a name-dropping for your first job that gets you jobs later.
You are in a tough but not unusual spot, I've been there and have some thoughts for you ... to give context, I've been at one of these firms for 4 years now and am on track to make partner if things continue to go well, also have a background very similar to yours (we may have gone to the same school) and shared the same motivations for coming to MBB. Only difference is I worked at a bank and then a HF for a few years first so saw a bit more of the working world than you before consulting.
The key message I want to convey is that work, at least with a reasonably competitive role is hard, much harder than school. You need to understand and accept that, because in many ways it only gets harder as you go (actually it gets more stressful over time, but you become better equipped to deal with it, and it's also less menial as you can delegate boring work as you get more senior). MBB consulting is definitely a tough job, we solve leading company's most complex problems and it is certainly stressful, but no harder than banking or working at most funds, and certainly not as risky / difficult as building your own company. Now engineering would indeed be easier, but who the hell wants to do that? It's a commodity, you won't get paid, you won't be impressed by your peers, and you will want to do something else soon. Strongly suggest you take a broader perspective and try to develop a thicker skin, you need to learn deal with the stress of demanding partners and clients at your firm, whether you want to stay there or not, that skill is invaluable and transfers to everything.
As for not getting to the gym, this can be a real problem as it will make you miserable. I know firsthand ... I stopped going for a couple of months while on a crazy case a few years ago and became as unhappy as I'd ever been, it was a huge mistake. You simply must carve out time to be active. 2-3 times from mon-fri and both days on the weekend is totally achievable if you make it a priority. The weekday workouts can literally take 20 minutes if they need to (e.g., an AMRAP of bodyweight bench press / pull-ups for 20 minutes will wreck your upper body very quickly), then do the longer ones in the weekend. The key is to tell your manager that you simply have to carve out a couple hours during the week to get to the gym, tell them it's the only way for this job to be sustainable for you. They will try to make it work if you do. Sometimes you will have to skip workouts, but overall you will be able to do it if you make it your priority. And honestly, if the quality of your work slips by 5% because you didn't check your footnotes for the second time before sending your pages out and went to the gym instead, who the fuck cares? Follow the 80/20 principle with things and you will get a lot more return on your time invested (hard for an engineer to get used to, I know), but 'good enough' and fit is better than being a perfect, fatass consultant, right?
Travel sucks ass, but you will get used to it and find that working your face off mon-thurs isn't so bad of a deal if you can generally chill out fri - sun at home. Also, usually project teams are pretty social on travel cases, why are you eating alone all the time? Lastly, if the travel is really too much, I suggest you transfer to more of a business hub city (e.g., NY, Chicago, London, Paris), if you do then you will hardly travel unless you want to or work in a terrible practice area like IG. Also, sleeping less than 8-9 hours takes a little getting used to, but that's post college life ... if you want to have a real job, you need to accept it. And you can always hit snooze on saturday and sunday if you want to.
As for money, that's totally a personal choice. As for me, I value having money quite a bit, and while I'm comfortably in the top 1% in terms of personal income and know my comp will continue to go up a lot in the next 5 years, my biggest gripe is I'd potentially be making more if I stayed in the HF space (it's scalable), albeit with more risk. The flipside is that the people I work with are the best combination of friendly, smart and generally interesting to be around folks that I've ever come across, the comparison is very stark with my old fund which was full of geeky introverts that were generally (but not always) dicks, and there was no "team" atmosphere to speak of. But, if you really don't care much about money then go be a teacher, doesn't get much easier / more fulfilling than that.
Re learning, I found the generalist approach of the first couple years to be great, it was awesome to get the exposure to different things before I decided what to 'focus' in. If you really don't like that then you should try to imbed yourself in an industry / practice area now, shouldn't be hard to do if you are doing reasonably good work, if you are not then you will continue to be bounced around because folks won't want to repeat staff you (and honestly you will CTLd if that happens for more than a couple of cases). More important than the industry or functional knowledge though, you will find that after a few years, you are way ahead of almost everyone else in terms of your mix of polish, ability to solve ambiguous problems, present to senior audiences, make logical structured arguments, develop storylines and presentations, navigate organizational politics, and all the other shit you need to be an executive.
I see two options for you now: 1) Gut it out for another year or so, apply to b school next fall (doing this would be my advice) a) Depending on where you get in and how it's going at the job, potentially go to a top MBA program for an extended party / vacation, odds are you will get into one of H / S / W given where you are applying from, but apply to a couple of the next tier just in case (I'm partial to sloan / kellogg / insead too, but that's just me), this will be a fun experience, and coming from one of these schools, with your background, the world will be your oyster b) If you like things more in a year then stick around for a bit, get promoted and double your pay for doing the same thing you are doing now, except with the ability to dump some boring work on junior folks 2) Enter into transition now and take the few months to figure out what to do with your life (wouldn't recommend this path, but it's up to you), if you do decide to do this and aren't too risk averse then I'd suggest leveraging your degree and MBB experience to join a smallish / mid size start-up where you can get paid a salary but also get real equity, I have a friend who just did this after 4 years at one of these firms and her equity already is worth $2.4M after less than a year there (granted she got a little lucky)
Hope that helps a bit, feel free to message me if you want to chat more
Nice post. Thank you for sharing.
I think the beginning part of one's career is always hardest, when you have to undertake new situations, challenges that previously you may have thought did not apply or were easy to achieve.
You can either stick it out for 6 - 12 more months (it does get better after some time, usually after a year/ two when you really get used to the whole routine/ colleagues/ actual work)...or you can quit and do what you want and be more free and happy as you say previously.
Just a word of caution, the grass always looks greener on the other side, so if you do move and find that you regret leaving your MBB job, it's best you ask your nearest and dearest for their advice before doing so(parents /aunts/ uncles/ siblings, who are probably best to provide their advice in this situation).
You also mentioned you feel lonely, this is quite normal. Don't know if this helps but this helps me. I set up many group chats with my friends, so we all chat away whenever we want, and having more than 1 group chat (on Whatsapp or BBM whatever you prefer), really helps a lot. Maybe try that, and timezone difference doesn't matter because most people like chatting on these platforms at unreasonable times! So am sure you can at least feel less lonely that way :)....good luck with it.
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