I'm one year in from IB and had some luck with recruiting for a mbb
Was hoping to understand if anyone had made the move and how they felt in terms of wlb, overall satisfaction, career progression, comp (decrease)
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I went from consulting to PE. WLB is materially better in consulting. Pay is lower but my lifestyle hasn't changed (e.g., you won't be stuck without luxury vacations or fine dining). The work is much more interesting, especially if you like project based work. Career progress is more of a preference once you understand how each works so to each their own. The downside is if you actually like finance it's not the place and if you're trying to maximize comp, nothing else matters, it's not the place.
They're materially different careers. Which is better depends on the person.
WLB: Consulting > IB
Overall satisfaction: Depends on work interests, but probably consulting since (1) more varied work and (2) typically better boundaries (i.e. late night urgent fixes are rare / never happen if you work for a decent manager)
Career progression: Both quick with significant pay bumps between levels, consulting typically has more varied exit ops but if you want to do something in finance or PE you're better off in IB
Comp: Consulting < IB
Is the WLB really that much better? I heard the travel is really harsh and you still work until 11ish on most days M-Th with little to no downtime (unlike IB). Understandably you get your weekends back though.
From an hours perspective I would say it's materially better than IB, but it's still bad compared to most other jobs
From a travel perspective, as a young person with a lot of freedom I preferred travel because it let me see other cities and alt travel on the weekend (i.e. visit somewhere other than home for free instead of flying back home), but it certainly can be a downside. E.g. if you have a wife and kids you might prefer more brutal hours in exchange for getting to see them in the morning on weekdays. Worth mentioning that this is still TBD, but I'd be surprised if the traditional M-Th every week travel schedule remains the norm in the future
There's a high variance, and you can see a breakdown by firm of hours/week on the consulting reddit's survey, but the following is probably fine as a generalization of travel weeks:
M: Wake up early to travel, proper work ~11am-9pm
T-W: ~9am-9pm
Th: ~9am, flight out ~3, usually don't work too late on Thursday nights
F: ~9am-3pm
No weekend work. Subtract out a bit of working time for team dinners/other misc. Add some working time for wrapping things up here or there at the hotel room (I'd usually go back to my hotel room at ~8 if no team dinner)
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