WSO Podcast | E169: VP at BB Investment Bank on Work-life balance & Breaking in from a Non-traditional Background

About

In this episode, Synergy shares his path from a non-target school in the US to working in China post-graduation in consulting. Listen to hear how he thrived in China, transitioned to a Big 4 in Transaction Services as one of the only expats in the office and eventually, how he used an MBA to transition back to the US and break into investment banking at a bulge bracket. Also, hear his thoughts on work-life balance and how the culture at many banks leaves a lot to be desired.

 

WSO Mentor

Want to work with Synergy? Check out his profile here!

 

Or Listen to the Podcast Here:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify  
Stitcher 

 

Resources:

WSO Courses

WSO Resume Review

WSO Mentors

 

WSO Podcast (Episode 169) Transcript:

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me! As I talked to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, synergy shares his path from a on target school in the U.S. to working in China post-graduation and consulting. Listen to hear how he thrived in China, transition to a big four and transaction services as one of the only expats in the office and eventually how he used an MBA to transition back to the U.S. and break into investment banking at a bulge bracket. Also hear his thoughts on Work-Life balance and how the culture at many banks leaves a lot to be desired. Enjoy. Ok, synergy. Welcome to the Wall Street Oasis podcast.

Synergy: [00:01:01] Thank you very much, I appreciate you having me, Patrick.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:03] So be great, if you could, to give the listeners a short summary bio. Yeah, so, you know, I grew up on the

Synergy: [00:01:09] West Coast, was interested in quantitative stuff, you know, went to an engineering school, but quickly found out that although I liked math and numbers, I didn't really want to do engineering or computer science as a long term career. So I decided to switch into finance, studied finance and had the opportunity to do some internships and wealth management and the normal things that people do. So at the same time, I really wanted to study abroad and study other languages. So I ended up doing a study abroad program in Asia and ended up working there full time after graduating. So I went to consulting first at a small shop, then transitioned over to a much larger consulting firm to do commercial due diligence and transaction services did that for about five years. I really liked working in M&A and around it, but at the same time, you know, I realized that investment bankers and people around that area were getting to see the whole transaction process, rather than just create reports and send them in and then be on their way. So invest in thinking of something that's interesting to me. And then after spending five years in Asia, we kind of wanted to come back to the West Coast, settle down, start a family and do investment thinking. And so the way I figured I could do all of those most efficiently was to apply for an MBA program and to do a full time MBA. So I ended up doing an MBA program interning in banking during the summer, then returning full time, and it's been about five years since then. So now I'm a, you know, mid-level VP at a broad bracket bank on the West Coast.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:56] Awesome. Super, super interesting that you kind of were able to use the MBA kind of make that transition, but I love the international experience. I'd love to dive into that. So kind of going back all the way to undergrad. You graduated a pretty tough time for being a finance major. You know, you had had those internships was it was the jump into consulting more opportunistic? Was it just because it was, you know, right after the great financial crisis? Tell me a little bit about how you ended up abroad kind of full time. Yeah, that's a great that's a great

Synergy: [00:03:26] Question, because I think about a lot of decisions in terms of how much was it opportunistic versus how strategic was it? So I would say that it's obviously everything is a little bit of both. So I was interning in wealth management during 2008

during the financial crisis. And so, you know, it was on the front lines of getting to see what was going on with that. But obviously, after that, you have a very depressed kind of job recruiting going on across the board. And at the same time, I had been studying languages. I had been studying Japanese and Chinese and was planning strategically. Planning like that would be an interesting thing to do to study abroad. I wasn't planning to do a job abroad quite yet, but I thought studying abroad would be interesting. So I had that on the schedule for a long time, something I wanted to do during a summer. So the following summer I did my study abroad and then, Oh, look, by the way, you know, this region is booming. And then when I came back home? Not so much so. You know, at that point, I decided to expand my job, you know, job horizons abroad and then quickly found out there was a lot of opportunities to go over there. So I just decided to go for it and do it.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:39] That's surprising, you know, that's surprising to me, I guess. Was your language, your language skills that far advanced? Because from what I've heard from some of the contacts on Wall Street, Oasis is that it's really tough if you're not born and raised there to get a job there. What type is for people who are looking to make a similar kind of move like you did or the opportunities still there today? And then how should they go about looking for those?

Synergy: [00:05:03] It is definitely different and harder today than it was, so at the time. You know, when you're looking in China, the. The bar for getting a visa and other aspects like that could be done by somebody who had just graduated, and now I think you need something like five years or something like that of experience. So, you know, the gate has closed for certain cities or certain areas, for sure, and then the competition has become much fiercer. That being said, I don't think it's impossible. And there's also. You know, there's also a lot of different countries that you could go to. I think that. You know, with a.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:53] Where would you go if you were graduating today?

Synergy: [00:05:57] It depends on what kind of person you are. I really think so. You know, there are some people who just have to have clean water and clean air and know like nice infrastructure everywhere they go, and those people shouldn't go to developing Asia. There are some people who are looking for, you know, the rarest, fastest growing experience, right? And in that case, you know, in my opinion, like China's good, but also there's Indonesia. Indonesia is huge. Vietnam is huge, right? And those are areas where if you get in early, learn the language. You know, you can do a lot of stuff because those countries you know, the niche I found when I was working there was, you know, people in all of these countries were trying to go outbound. And so being a native English speaker and being able to be somewhat competent in that language, you know, actually helped a lot. There's a lot of synergy, you know, to coin my own username to working there because there were 10000 people in our company who could speak the native language. But there is there's only 10 people who are native English speakers.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:05] So it was that big of a company that you went and you were doing kind of investment research or what? What was?

Synergy: [00:07:11] Yeah, I was doing a bunch of different stuff. So I did some, as you do, like it's just again.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:19] But just compared to even like, how did you even get this? You intern there like you actually went there.

Synergy: [00:07:24] Yeah, I met. I met a guy at a networking session who owned a small consulting firm. Got it. And he said, I have an office in Washington, Dc, and I have an office in Beijing like, you know, which would you like kind of like to go to? And I said, I want to do Beijing. And that's what I like to do. And so once I was over there and that was a vehicle for me to get my visa, get my boots on the ground. After a year and a year and a half of working there at a kind of again like a no name consulting firm, very boutique, then I had the opportunity to again network my way into a much larger, you know, big four accounting firm. And do you know the, you know, advisory side on that, at which point I did a bunch of different advisory related roles. So I mean, both of those jobs came from networking, and then I come back from my MBA and I also just, you know,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:23] It's a lot about how are you now? How were you networking? So you said a networking session, was this like hosted by your school initially for the. Now it was it was my school

Synergy: [00:08:32] Was helpful, but not so much for non engineering areas at the time. Maybe they've gotten better at that now, but I was it was involved in a charity, a big, a kind of large charity. And was that an event for that? So something completely unrelated to what I was, what I was going to school for, or whatever. So that was a that was a cool opportunity for me to make

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:57] That happen. And how did you feel like you made the impression such that the person was like, Hey, I'll give you a job in D.C. or Beijing? How did you make that impression to that person? Was it just after talking with them for a few hours or?

Synergy: [00:09:07] That's been a long time since I've thought about this, but I think,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:10] Like for you, the job and not some somebody else.

Synergy: [00:09:13] I think I was very I was one of the few people who really wanted to interested to go abroad like, I know that sounds silly, but at the time, like there's not that many people who are like, Yeah, I want to go work abroad. And, you know, like, I'm willing to be on a, you know, under market salary, you know, at first to do it. And I'm, you know, I don't know everything and what's

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:38] What's in the market like forty thousand U.S.. No, it was more like 30000

Synergy: [00:09:44] Or 25000 starting out. And then, you know, it was one of my I think our average starting salary at my school is 50. So I took half I took half pay to go abroad, which is insane, but not the

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:57] Time. Not really, because then you get your opportunity right and you're like, you're seeing a new course

Synergy: [00:10:02] For like five hundred bucks a month when I was living there. So we end up saving my taxes for nothing. So, you know, I'll probably end up saving a lot more in general. Then it's just about then you put a lot of pressure on yourself to grow because you're taking the bet that I need to be able to grow my career faster than, you know, where I'm starting out at.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:19] So you're there for almost a year and a half and it's a pretty small firm. What would what were some of the struggles of going over there and like if somebody were to go to Indonesia today? Like what would you think was the hardest part? Besides, I assume language is tough. But then how did you even learn Mandarin so, so fast?

Synergy: [00:10:34] Language is tough, but you know, I think you need it. You just need a mindset of assimilating. You really need it. It's just difficult, especially over the long term, especially if you're going to stay there for two or three, four or five years or more. The people that make it over the long term, I think. There's an element of. Understanding who you are and appreciating your own individual identity and your own culture and being grounded in that and having some expat friends and stuff like that. But if you get too deep into the whole community, only hang out with other foreigners. I'll say, you know, or other people from your own country, then you'll never learn the language. You'll never make any friends you can't network, right? Like it kind of just surviving, which makes things really hard. And then people do spend a lot of time doing that. And then, you know, after ten years, they don't know anything about the language and they're just kind of doing their job and going back. And that's also it's fine. It's a lifestyle choice. But the other way, if someone some young person was like, you know, Hey, I'm a I'm a crazy, adventurous person and, you know, maybe I didn't get the shot that I wanted, you know, in, you know, in the U.S. Doing, you know, recruiting for these large firms. And I was open and interested to go abroad like, you know, I would say. Definitely like dive, dive into the language and then just make honestly, just like make friends and hang out with people in your own country. I think just balance their time between making local friends and studying really hard. Yeah, when I wasn't around your job,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:13] I was in bursitis. I totally hear what you're saying because there's like a strong expat community there. But like, I had also friends, friends that lived in Woodside that you know, from Argentina, and that was the cool. Those are the coolest experiences because I was like, they invited me to like their farm in the middle of nowhere, like Saudi and like I travelled with them. And I

Synergy: [00:12:31] Think that's that really helped me improve my Spanish. Yeah. And you know, the expat community is helpful for venting because people kind of sit around beers and then complain about the country that they're living in, right? That's kind of how it works a lot of time to call the police or the utilities or the electricity went out or whatever, right? But you know, that's you need that sometimes. But if you spend all of your time doing it, it's kind of like spending all of your time, you know, complaining about doing banking or consulting or something like that, like you need, you need a release, but then it's very toxic. If you spend all of your time

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:01] On the negative. How did you how did you meet Paul? How did you meet locals there? And was it tough to kind of make local friends?

Synergy: [00:13:06] Well, thankfully I had a busy job and a lot of, you know, a huge at a huge company. You know, eventually when I was at about when I was at my boutique, I became friends with like the few people I was working with on a small team. So, you know, you become more intimate friends with them. And then when I moved on to a big company, there's

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:23] And they spoke no English. They spoke no English.

Synergy: [00:13:26] No, they spoke pretty. I mean, I would say decent enough, but you would

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:31] Converse like you would not converse in English.

Synergy: 00:13:33] Are you a little bit of both? Because they would want to practice English. So it's kind of a tit for tat, right? So I'd be, you know, helping make presentations or helping the final stages of the translation of something or doing research. I think that learning the language is important and making, you know, strong connections at work. There's some element people, I think are reticent to kind of try to reach out to international people because there's a there's a half truth in that, you know? Oh, well, I'll never I'll never be fully accepted into the society or fully immersed or fully native in the language. So why kind of bother starting to try? But I think that's kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater and that, you know, actually getting halfway there is actually getting a lot of the way they're, you know, becoming, you know, people are embarrassed, but like having an intermediate fluency in the language, you know, making a couple of friends that are pretty deep, even if you're not the best man at the wedding, right? Like people that you can call on and people that you can, you know, touch base with about different types and stuff like that, that's a lot of value. And then there's a lot of people who. Between any two given countries, right, there's only so many people from that native country who have kind of had the experience of going to

School, let's say, in America and then coming back and being able to make friends and know English pretty well at the same time. Same thing for the U.s. it's like there's very there's not that many proportionally people that are comfortable in another country and able to kind of go work, live, play there and survive. And I think that it's not so much specifically about any one country, but I truly think like if you can go to Buenos Aires and work or live there, like you could easily just go to Japan tomorrow and be fine. You could easily go to Switzerland and be OK, like the specifics of the language are kind of what they are. But beyond that, I really just think like people are either travellers or they're not right. And it's fine either way. But if you are like just, you know, go for it, like take the plunge. If you if you're thinking about that, you know. And then the other thing too is a lot of. The U.S. job  opportunities have dried up for international students like people are going to MBAs or people are going to top undergrads, and they're realizing that not many firms are sponsoring work visas anymore. And, you know, it's really difficult and there's a whole cultural fit in a way that banks and people like that choose who to hire. And a lot of them are, you know, have spent a lot of effort to kind of get here in the U.S. and try to get a job here. But, you know, there's a lot of barriers to entry. Certainly a lot more barriers than there are spots, you know, for people to get in. So, you know, but I would even say to those people, like in your native country, like it is a value added to have had the experience to come here. If you start working at a large

company, like if you start working at a Deloitte or something like that back in your home country, you know, down the line, if you keep going at Deloitte, there will be opportunities for international travel. There may be opportunities for secondments or, you know, moving to different countries like from your job. So kind of the larger the larger company, you can attach yourself to kind of the better for mobility options in that way. And I think that that's you have to sometimes play the long game if the opportunities are shut off, you know, for you when you are younger, which is in a way,

Sort of what I did as well. Yeah. So coming from a non target in a lower GPA.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:34] Largely how low how low is three

Synergy: [00:17:37] Lower than Pi,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:39] Ok, three point one four. I love it. That's my birthday, Mar 14. That's right. So did you? Ok, so. I guess what you're saying is, well, really what happened was you got a job. Paying not a lot of money, but in a new country with totally open like. Very adventurous. Is this like in your blood or your brothers and sisters that did something similar or nothing? No, I mean, like, it's

Synergy: [00:18:07] It's another it's another good question. I think that we moved around a lot as kids. We're not a military family, but we, you know, we lived in 10 plus different places and then my parents got divorced in high school. So we're going back and forth. And so I was always kind of I don't think I spent longer than three years in a single house like growing up. So that's tough. It wasn't. It was easy for me to move across the country for college, and then it was just as easy for me to just go to a different country and just give it a give it a try. I wasn't that much holding me down.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:38] So you're there for like a year and a half and then tell me how you and manage to kind of get to a big four. Well, there's if

Synergy: [00:18:45] You're in a different country, and I think I give the same advice to international students. There's a lot of people once they find out my background, like a lot of people from China and other, you know, Asian countries for sure are asking me about recruiting advice or whatever because I've been in their shoes just on the opposite side. There's a lot of societies and stuff like that. You can join one, you can join the American Chamber of Commerce, like if you're abroad. And similarly, you can kind of you can expand your network into, you know, other expats and all international people like through that way. But then there's also, you know, a lot of events. There's a lot of events and kind of lectures and things that are being held by different organizations. And I would just go to all of those like everything that I could to try to meet people, to try to learn more about the options that are out there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:48] Did you do them? Did you know you were thinking like, Hey, I'm going to go big for that? Eventually, I'm going to get MBA and go banking was what was that? What was the master plan? When you read

Synergy: [00:19:56] The master plan, the master plan was I wanted to work at. I wanted to work at it on a at a bigger platform. And I didn't. I didn't, you know, I wanted to do stay in advisory. So if anything, my entire career has just been one unbroken string of advisory. Whether that's wealth management, it's basically advisory. But IT consulting is advisory M&A advisory as advisory, its client service. It's all just client service and investment banking, its client service. So it's been one thing. It's like you're making something for somebody who's paying you something for that, for your knowledge or for your experience or for your advice. So it's even though I've done a bunch of crazy stuff, it's all been advisory related. So that's the way that I've sold it in MBA interviews, especially when they're like, you did a bunch of weird stuff like, I want a safe pair of hands, like, why should we hire you? Well, actually, you know I've been around transactions. I've been in client service my whole life. Like, I know what it takes to get that done. So, you know, it may not be the, you know, the most straightforward path ever. But, you know, I think that it also makes a lot of sense. So that was the strategic part of it.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:08] Yeah, I mean, I'm strategy. I mean, a strategy at this big four, you were there for another three and a half years. So like you said, five years almost or yeah, right around five years. Yeah. So tell me a little about like what the progression was up to manager at that before and how you how you grew there? Was it like a tough transition or was it like much easier because it was such a bigger platform to like, stand out? So yeah, there's a couple of

Synergy: [00:21:30] Things like so I was at this boutique consulting firm as an as an analyst, right? I was able to negotiate when I moved jobs, moving over as an assistant manager, which is kind of the after a year, which is kind of like a third year role, I'd say, at a normal big four. After about a year and a half of experience or slightly more than that, so that was a boost. You know, it's a lot of people changing. Firms can give you a salary bump or sometimes a tidal bump. So I was able to do that somehow.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:06] But she went from like twenty five thirty k a year to what was it? Sixty K or something?

Synergy: [00:22:13] Ok, maybe, maybe, maybe 50. Maybe forty five. I don't. I don't actually remember there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:20] You're still living, you're still fine.

Synergy: [00:22:23] I stayed in the same apartment and then you

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:26] Just stayed the same place.

Synergy: [00:22:27] My yeah, I didn't move at all. Oh my gosh. I mean, I was, you know, I didn't. I didn't change anything. It was fine. It was it was very convenient, like I was living in a small apartment, but I didn't. I didn't upgrade anything interesting. So in terms of my lifestyle, I never bought a car or anything like that like I was. I was just pocketing it all. Ok, so you're there and you're kind of at this big four, you're start ing kind of as a third year equivalent. So you're kind of have a path toward Manager, right? Yes, I that was kind of my goal. That was the strategic part was after I started, I was like, Oh, I'll try to make it to manager. I think that's interesting. But then, of course, opportunistically, I kind of changed slightly changed teams, you know, once or twice during that or like focus on in terms of what I was doing based on whatever opportunity was there and kind of played a bunch of different roles

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:24] Were there are a lot of other locals there or like, was it other expats in that

Synergy: [00:23:28] Office? It was all locals. There was there's a couple of other expats. So the numbers I mentioned were actually literally true. There was there's about

10000 people in China in this big four and there's about 10 expats and then four of those are in Beijing and two are in Shanghai. And you were one of them now that I was one of them. So of course, I knew the other three guys, you know, who are expats, and then there would be people that would come over temporarily. There's way more common is this international assignment. So if you're at a big four or some similar type of company and you can do this and even at my bank, this happens, I know that

they sent people in New York over to another country to work. If you get an opportunity to do something with three or six months like, definitely do it, why not? I mean, if you're not like trying to take care of you, do

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:20] It for you. Whatever you have. If you have a family, do it for

Synergy: [00:24:23] You, have a family. Just go ahead and go ahead and give it a try. Like, it's definitely it's definitely worth it. And then some. People would try to parlay that into a more permanent remote working experience or just kind of develop their niche back home and to somebody who can work with people, you know, from this country that they spent time in. So there's a lot of temporary people who came in, who came in and out and in and out. So, you know, there's very few permanent staff there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:50] So you're like year two and you eventually get the manager permission. At what point are you thinking MBA? Let's get back home to California.

Synergy: [00:24:59] Yeah, I was it's a little.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:02] Were you ever thinking I wouldn't stay here for my life? Is this it? A little bit of opportunity.

Synergy: [00:25:06] I would have been fine, actually. I didn't have, I didn't like hate my job or anything like that. It was a little bit of opportunity because one of the other expats in Beijing really wanted to get out and he was going to take his Gmat. So he's like, I need to do my study partner like they should study the GMAT and think about applying, because then it can give you some optionality, like in case you don't get the promotion,

in case you do get some promotion, you know, but you want to do something else. And I thought, oh yeah, that's not a bad idea. And then it's another way to kind of make if I was going to go back home, the transition a lot easier than trying to interview, you know, across the world. Certainly in an era with no zoom or whatever, we're trying to use Skype on very bad internet, which you've had that experience. You know, that's not

 

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:55] Not my whole team on Skype, and it's it can be interesting at times. But yeah, so

Synergy: [00:25:59] Yeah, so that in 2012, you know, in China was not it wasn't a great experience. People would I don't even know how you would. People are much also all the recruiting is much less online and much more in-person, so I thought that, you know, I took the gmat basically, I studied with this guy. We both took the GMAT. He ended up not even applying to MBAs that year, so he didn't even use it. But I applied. I applied to a bunch of places and then I gave it a lot of thought and I happen to get, you know, very fortunate with some scholarships and other things like that that just made the decision to, even though I was by that time, was a, you know, several years later, I was a manager already. I just did kind of like calculus of saying, OK, an MBA is going to let me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:55] What was your assessment with your score super high? 760. Yeah, it was, I figured, an engineer. Background Yeah, that's the way the math is off the charts. The low GPA engineer scored seven sixty. It's a very it's very common.

Synergy: [00:27:11] That's right. Well, it's by that time I just wanted to do things differently, right? Like, you know, I was like, OK, I'm actually going to study for the GMAT properly instead of slacking off like I did in undergrad. And you know, I don't, you know, I think a lot of the older people that are older in school or people end up going back to get their mbas, they have this mindset. They're like, Oh, it's another chance for me. Like I, I want to try to do this better. I want to get into a more prestigious school or whatever. Like people have that mindset. And then now that they're an adult, like they take, they take things really seriously compared to before. Some people do.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:48] So you got some, you got some good scholarships and that didn't make the decision for you. Like, when was the turning point of like, OK?

Synergy: [00:27:53] No, I got in and I was like, I was definitely going to go. Then I went to sleep and I woke up and then scholarship, you know, came in. I was like, OK, well, I’m definitely, really,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:01] Really going to go, Yeah,

Synergy: [00:28:03] Yeah, I mean, because, you know, money is money is still a decision. I mean, even if it's not the. And education costs get higher and higher every year, so there's always a question, I see this a lot on the forums of like, do I take out, you know, $400000 to go to NYU and then but I'll be able to make it into banking versus do I stay at home and my state school or something like that, like if it doesn't have as much recruiting or maybe does, but only for the elite five people or whatever. So right, it's always a, you know, it's always a decision for, you know, as somebody who. You know, was, you know, making 2025, you know, 2K a month net, you know, when I started out like, I'm not naive to think that not a consideration and you know, it is, it is. Sometimes it is worth it to take out the loans and make a jump, and sometimes it is not. And it really depends on, you know, who you are, where you're going. You know, how solid your plans are. And a lot of luck. Honestly, yeah, I agree with that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:10] How solid your plans are, like, you shouldn't be doing that jump, especially that that I feel like a little bit of an extreme example of 400000 a debt to NYU, but you should be doing that without a pretty good understanding. The hard part is if someone's 17 18 making those

Synergy: [00:29:25] Decisions, that's the problem, right? The time when you have to make the decision is the time when you're least sure about your plans. And as somebody like I went to college, I changed my major. I changed my job and I did internships in three different industries like, you know, I changed my mind five times. But it wasn't a crippling decision because I had undergraduate scholarships coming in and I worked during school and in school is less expensive. I mean, I went to a public university, so tuition was only 12000 bucks a year or something like that, or 15000.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:55] Yes, I was in crippling debt.

Synergy: [00:29:57] Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't it wasn't crippling debt and I was able to pay it off anyways after I graduated. So I had a couple of loans left and I was able to pay it off with them by the time I came back to the U.S.. So it's awesome. But then, you know, do you want to reset that decision again?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:11] And luckily you had many scholarships and so like was it was banking on the radar at this point or when did it come on the radar? You were probably just you just found Wall Street places, probably around this stage.

Synergy: [00:30:22] Yeah, I was doing some research, you know, I got in, so I got it. So I had to write essays to get into MBA programs. So some of them I wrote about consulting, some of them wrote about banking, you know? Because at that time, I still wasn't really sure, because to me, they're just very similar. I think people make people make them out to be way more different than they actually are for, for whatever reason. And I think. It just doesn't. At the end of the day, to me, it's still feels it still feels similar enough. Maybe I just have a different perspective on it, but it's still client service. You're creating something that's written, you're giving advice like one is about a transaction. One might be about a piece of strategy, but at the end of the day, it's it's pretty similar. And I think people that go into these two different things are, are, you know, could be could be swapped out without any disruption in the business, to be honest. So I was thinking about it. I got into the school. I ended up going to had a really strong banking

Program, so I thought, Oh, for this, for this school, you know, I think my strategy is going to be to try to do banking. The recruiting happens first, so I'll know quickly whether I've been successful or not and getting a summer internship, and then I could always pivot to Plan B and do something more in real time. If I, if I needed to, but for the time being, I was like, Look, I'm just going to go all in on banking. See how it goes. Try to do a summer internship. And even then, if I do a summer, I don't like it. Whether I get an offer or I don't, I could still have time to transition. That was the point of doing a two year Mba was having the flexibility to kind of figure things out as I as I went along. And so then of course, like I found Wall Street Oasis. Yeah, it is what you mentioned. Whilst Genesis was instrumental, I mean, this is not like a

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:16] This is not a paid bug. This is not.

Synergy: 00:32:20] This is the interstitial ad you can't skip. Wall Street oasis is instrumental and I would say at least as helpful as my career consulting services to get like real like direct answers. Because what happens when you're an MBA or even undergrad? It's fine to ask questions. But if you ask too many naive questions or you make a bad impression on someone that you're talking to or whatever, like, you know, the second year MBA students are evaluating you and then they're giving their advice back to the firms that they did their summer on. So they're like, Oh, come talk to me, like, ask any questions and then, you know, first year student be like, Oh, great, like, tell me about the salary here. How does it compare to somewhere else? And then the second year MBA will come back to their firm and go, like this. Guys only ask questions about salary to me so far and is OK, or he's a little awkward and you know, you're just getting judged all the time. So the anonymity online of Wall Street oasis and being able to have people that, you know, definitely do work in the industry. Some people have been in a long time, some people who have just done their summer or some people who have who are analysts or some people will just transition to PE or whatever give you like concrete advice on hey, like you can ask a silly question or a direct question or a question about a topic that people don't like to discuss, like comp and other stuff like taking vacation, which sounds so dumb, like people that aren't into the industry are going to be like, This is so dumb. Like, what do you mean? You can't ask about vacation days or whatever, but you can't, right? Yeah. Even when I started, like I still to this day, I've never directly talked to any of my colleagues about this stuff because, you know, there's a there's a whole stigma around it. So most resources have been really, really helpful. And figuring that type of stuff out when you're when you're in that recruiting station, in that fact, finding stage, it is unbelievably helpful because you just can't you can't get that type of candor from or you shouldn't get that type of candor to, you know, around the people there's they serve different roles. You should obviously still ask questions. Yeah, and talk to people who are the second year of the or the juniors, the seniors or whatever who your undergrad who have done this job before. But the idea is that those are actually interviews. Every interaction with those people is basically an interview. And the other direction, like they're interviewing you as much as you're interviewing them. So it's just something to it's just something to keep in mind is that all the impressions matter and that that stuff is all networking and your desktop research is just as important. So, so Wall Street Oasis is great. Thank you. Thank you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:07] I appreciate the shout out.

So you're coming back. You're traveling back. You kind of how was that reemerge? And we'll call it into U.S. culture from

Synergy: [00:35:17] Being gone for so long? Yeah, I mean, I didn't have any work experience that wasn't an internship, which is still pretty different, kind of just the lowest person on the totem pole and doing whatever anyone asks you to do. So, you know, I came back, I was in a new City, so, you know, was back on the West Coast, but I was in a new City that I never lived in or even visited before. You know, I as a result, like I didn't know anybody who was going to this business school, like I

Speaker3: [00:35:48] Wasn't working at a big company in that city and then just going, Oh yeah, well, five people are going to go to this, you know, go to this MBA with me or whatever. So at least I can talk to them. So that was a little that was a little different.

So but at that time, like I was also already married and stuff, so I was coming over

With my wife. Planning to start a family. And then that was the point of doing an MBA. It was

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:10] You. Did you get married in Beijing?

Synergy: [00:36:11] Yeah, I did.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:13] Yeah, yeah, I did. Was it tough to come back over here and did she want to come back? Like, I assume that's going to be tough. She has. Did she have family there?

Synergy: [00:36:23] She does have family there, and she had a great job there, too. So it was definitely a it was a family level risk to both quit our really good jobs, you know, and not, you know, and take the risk that I will need to recruit for a job or whatever. So she stayed there while I was recruiting until I got my offer. I know that sounds very mercenary, but yeah, she's just she went back and forth. She kept her job and went back and forth and travel back and forth for about a year. No, it's OK. You guys are

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:59] On reducing risk and whatnot.

Synergy: [00:37:01] So yeah, and I mean, at the same time, like I could go out and party, I could go study, you know, and then she would come over for, you know, a couple of weeks and then go back. It was actually worked out great. I think all couples should think about such an arrangement. The opposite of that is quarantining for COVID for over a year, you know, like that's a real test of its real test of your relationship. It is. I've heard it's been great to be there. But yeah, people have found out that, you know, they have a

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:34] Preferred amount of time.

Synergy: [00:37:37] There's a level at which it's too much or too little for you. You have to figure out what that is. And if you're really busy like she is in a busy job, I was in a busy job. You know, sometimes as anybody who's in this kind of work knows, like the relationships are hard to maintain, hard to make in the first place. Yeah, especially romantic ones, because you just can't plan around it. So thankfully, I was kind of there's an advantage and a disadvantage to have already be, you know, locked down or married as it is before going into before going into this type of thing, for sure. And the advantage is you don't have to you don't have to go do that later. I've watched my colleagues that are more six year post MBA kind of. It's hard to find a meaningful relationship, right? Sure, because you don't have time.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:24] You don't. It's unpredictable when you do have time to try. Good luck scheduling a date or whatnot and maybe at the VP level, it's a little easier. Yeah, it's a lot of people.

Synergy: [00:38:32] I mean, just a second theme, you know, but people are starting families like ten years later than they used to. Yeah, right. Like, I got married in twenty five and had my daughter at 29. But I mean, there's a lot of people that are thirty five that are not, you know, not even married yet. Right? And there's people that are thirty nine, they're having their first kid, right? That's basically it's basically 10 plus years. And then for your parents' generation, that's probably another five years added. I subtracted from that. Yeah, like a lot of people are having kids when they're 18, 19, 20, 20, 22. Yeah, that was way more common to do that than it was to have a kid at 40. Yeah, at that time. Right. And now it's the other way around.

 

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:14] Yeah, I'm 41 and I'm done, man. Yeah, I have three little ones and I'm just like, I'm thinking, I'm like, sometimes. Sometimes it's like, how about a fourth of like kind of half joking? And I'm like, No way I can't take as much as I like to.

Synergy: [00:39:30] Yeah, there's no end, there's a there's an Md at my bank with like six or seven at this point. And I think at that point you're like, that's the golden handcuffs you have to. That's right. You need to you need the other ones to start helping out with the younger ones, but so isn't. So is that, you know, an MBA or it's recruiting for summer associate stuff and catching up on kind of skills that I didn't have with my career that I would need to get to banking and doing all the preparation and buying the guides and stuff like that, like they're well worth the money. For anyone thinking about it, like there's beyond kind of the memorizing, the 500 questions to get kind of circulated around by your school is one thing, but you got it nowadays to stand out. You have to do more than just that because banks are evil bankers like me. You're thinking of more complicated questions that you can't just memorize and. Oh, I mean, I like to hand people a set of financial statements during our super Day, for sure. A hand people, a set of financial statements and ask them questions about that, like what do you think, what jumps out at you? You know, like what?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:44] Sometimes they'll be like huge working capital issues or something like that.

Synergy: [00:40:48] And it's like, Oh, why do you think that is? And you can dive into that. And like, you know, can you think of any examples of this that like, you know, you can you can dive into that. And people are also asking the MDS like to ask stuff that's tied to like the real world and current markets. So I was I remember being asked like, this is. I got like 13 first round interviews or something like that, and I was going to all these different and you know, the nice thing about the NBA is that they're all scheduled

and all the same two or three days. So it's not the insanity that is underground recruiting where you're doing an interview, you get an offer. You have to decide now, but you don't even know who else likes you or not. Yeah. Then you kind of race to call other banks and try to schedule them soon and delay. The nice thing about NBA is you do them all at once. So that's going back and forth to all these different interviews on interview week and get ask crazy questions. And NBA goes, what industry do you like? And I said, Oh, I like, I don't know, like health care sounds interesting and like, Oh, health care, what's the what's the p ratio of Amgen right now? You know, they ask a lot of gotcha questions like that to scare you. And like, why do you think that is? You know,

how has it changed, you know, but if you're like in the health, if you were like, I should test question. Yeah, there's you're trying to scare you or I get really complicated from another bank that was a more of a restructuring type of bank,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:17] Like a Rothschild or a homeland, whatever. Yeah, OK.

Synergy: [00:42:20] Yes, exactly one of those one of those three. Yeah, I got asked this just insane. Like mental math questions like there's a there's a pyramid with a number of sequence that goes like one two one two three like add up all the sides of the out of all the sides of the pyramid. Like how fast can you do that? I made that question up, but it's literally exactly something like that. And there's and things like that, they're just designed to kind of break you because they're just bored of asking. Walk me through a DCF or a hundred dollars of depreciation. You do need to know that, and you will be asked that you'll basically be asked that stuff by everybody. But as soon as you determine that you know that stuff, then people will sometimes will, depending on the bank, they will either take it to a more technical side or they'll just say, OK, you get it, you prepared. Let's go on to fit.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:20] I want to talk. I want to. I want to talk to

Synergy: [00:43:21] Something going more towards that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [ [00:43:22] Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about just when you started full time as an see, you obviously got the offer. Let's talk a little bit actually first before we go there about just surviving the summer associate. You know, transition, because it sounds like you were super busy during your.

Synergy: [00:43:38] I don't. I had no ego, so that helped. So I basically was like, Look, I'm an analyst, I don't know anything, you know again, it's just the it's just the part of it is just the desperation of being a mature person who's whole has made this gigantic sacrifice to get there. It's like, look, yeah, I'll find books, you know, I'll copy stuff, I'll run and go get Starbucks and come back and I'll do my job right and I'll learn how to model and I'll learn how to be an associate like, and I'll just do it. I'll do it all. And you know, I don't I don't care

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:10] If you work 400 hours, were you working 100 hour weeks that summer?

Synergy: [00:44:13] Yeah, probably. Yeah, I know people round up. People exaggerate. I mean, I,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:20] You slip there.

Synergy: [00:44:21] I slept in my I slept there a couple of times. Yeah, I slept in my car, I think twice and slept on the couch once in the conference room. Did I need to? I don't know. Like, but it felt like at the time, I really did know at the time it felt like I really had to like it was more. It was better to get like four hours of sleep in the office than like commuting back and forth to where I was living and then wasting an hour and a half of sleep and getting up and stuff like that. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not saying I advocate that, and that's the way to get the summer internship. I don't think that. I don't think that you definitely need to, but I do think you need to have the do you think you need to have the right attitude? For sure. And I don't think for the most part, that's a problem that I've ever seen. I think people basically get that. You can kind of

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:09] Can you be too far in that direction where like you just bow down to the analysts too much?

Synergy: [00:45:16] That's a good question.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:18] As I've heard this from a lot of people like like, what if you're just such a pushover like they just need to

Synergy: [00:45:24] Prove that you can be an M.D. later, which is why they want to hire you as a full time associate. So you can't be immature about it, right? You know, at the same time, like you literally don't know. I mean, you don't know anything coming in, right? Like you, the eight weeks of the 10 weeks or whatever, like, it's just enough time to kind of start to make like fewer errors, like to produce something by the very end of your internship. That's what people are evaluating. There is they're just projecting like, how are you going to be in your career? If we hire you and you come back? And how long are you going to stay? Are you devoted to this team or this company? Will you be able to actually pick up the work and be a real contributor later on in the summer? You're just not like I was the closest thing to a real contributor could be during the summer. Like be close three life deals like at the time. And I was like doing like the real stuff, you know, not just working group lists, but like, you know, modeling and helping out with sections of that and the presentation. But even then, like, I'm not people took as much time to explain things to me and correct things as they were taking, as they were saving for me working on stuff. So they're investing in your future and they're trying to predict what that's going to be like. And I think having a good working relationship with the analysts is a really important component, and it's set a lot, but it's still probably underrated, is still an important component of things. And I don't I

 Think it's not about being a pushover. But I also don't think you should ever refuse anything unless I ask you to do, you know, like it's way if we're talking about different types of errors. It's way better to err on the side of, you know, he would run through a wall for our team and he would pick up the roll up his sleeves and like, help out with the analyst work whenever we would need them to. Versus he gave me attitude one time and you know, like, you just don't want you. Definitely the impact of that is way worse than saying, Oh, well, you know, he's a bit too eager beaver. I just. And again,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:31] You can't be. You can't be too eager beaver almost of when you're an associate trying to prove yourself there. I thought you were sleeping in the office, start out, start out eager and then become cool later on. You know, like when you're I like that, I like that phrase. You become a cool later. I love it.

Synergy: [00:47:49] Yeah, at the beginning, there's just there's not there's not much benefit to trying to be clear to how I did it at my previous company or whatever, like not just leave. Pretend you're starting out. Leave it all. Leave it all behind. Leave all the baggage of your previous career and all that stuff behind unless someone has really specifically,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:06] How are they operates that year that you were at the bullet bracket for associates? My company did a really good job at basically just having a slot

Synergy: [00:48:16] For everybody who was hired. They didn't hire. They don't. They don't do that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:20] So this is almost 90 percent off rate. 100 percent. Yeah, yeah.

Synergy: [00:48:24] I think our return rate was like 80 percent or something really good. Eighty five. So not bad mid tier bulge bracket that was really careful when hiring interns, you know, I think that approach to me is great. There's a lot of places and at the time, at least when I when I was interning, the elite boutiques were definitely not like that. They would have, you know, two slots for they'd have one slot for every two people or something like that or a ratio that's not one to one. And I think that is. Definitely more challenging, it's more challenging the situation to get yourself into, did you look at

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:04] Like the associate offer rates before choosing which bank to? Definitely. Definitely did. Definitely smart. I mean, like I just again, I'm a more risk averse person. A lot of people

Synergy: [00:49:15] Who end up like surviving a long time banking tend to be, yeah, you know, because why would you do that versus doing a startup or something like that, right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:23] So you're looking at your page that must have been pretty significant, pretty monstrous, right?

Synergy: [00:49:31] Yeah. And I've still pretty still pretty frugal.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:34] Yeah. So it's just a way to it's just a way to live your

Synergy: [00:49:38] Life, I guess. Yeah. So you're the pay, but you know, it all goes away somewhere. You're living at a high cost of living city. If you're living in San Francisco or L.A. or New York or Chicago, right, you know, you have taxes, you have housing, you might still be paying off your loans, you have MBA loans or undergraduate loans like, you know, getting paid a lot, but you're not pocketing that much, honestly. And it's very easy to get your lifestyle and get ahead of you and then you don't have anything to show for it. You're working a hundred hours a week and then, you know,

You know, if you don't, if you don't pocket anything that you're not really hedging against future risk like you can get laid off. Yeah, I could get laid off next year or something like that. You know, if I had no savings, then I'd be in trouble.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:22] Tell me about your perspective. We had that survey we circulated a couple weeks ago about, you know, taking from the Goldman 13 like complaining and then tell me about we released a survey. I don't know if you saw it. It was like almost 500 respondents just basically saying, you know how their mental health is decreased. The hours have been hard work

Synergy: [00:50:39] From us validating what everybody knows, but has been getting no press for a long time.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:43] Yeah. So, yeah,

Synergy: [00:50:45] Five years that I've been in banking, right? The five years that I've been in banking. And it's funny because when I was in China, the whole thing was like, Oh, the people in Foxconn are jumping off a building into the nets and stuff like that. And, you know, but then when I was in banking, I've seen, you know, not naming names, but like there's like four or five people. Like, there are young analysts who who basically overworked themselves, you know, to literal death or suicide, which is a really difficult conversation, right? But it's happened. And then for every one person that's like that, there's one hundred, you know, five hundred, you know, analysts are suffering a lot

and associates who are who are junior bankers who are just having a really tough time or, you know. I kind of casually mentioned sleeping in the office as if that's something

normal, but, you know, if we take a step back like that's not normal, that shouldn't be expected of anybody. Like, that's absurd. You shouldn't need to do that to get an internship offer. You know, you shouldn't have that much

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:47] Did by knowing that the offer was basically one hundred percent, you still did that. Yeah, it's just the fear and the risk aversion of it, like you.

Synergy: [00:51:54] I mean, I liked doing what I was doing too. Like, I really I liked it and I was able to. I was able to. And it sounds crazy, but I was able to somewhat balance out, you know? But look, everyone is in a different spot and, you know, people are under a lot of pressure. And I think that's gotten worse and worse. And I think with COVID, that's gotten really bad. But the tendency I see it every bank, I've been following this closely because I've been working on this issue at my own bank, on my own team as well as I've been kind of watching so really carefully to see what the reactions of the other banks were. And it's just kind of sad like. Banks are basically like, well, it's just because of COVID and working from home, it's less efficient, which means more hours, so it's going to work Itself out once everyone's back to the office, let's get everybody back to the office ASAP. But like people were killing themselves before COVID, like five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, like before people were remote, like this was not.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:02] Even everybody knew about people just with underlying health conditions were dying because of depression.

Synergy: [00:53:06] And, you know, whatever, like underlying health conditions, you know, people were getting depressed. People are gaining 30 pounds a year. People are leaving the industry earlier than they really needed to. They come in. They have bright eyes. They're ready to make a difference. They like finance. They've worked so hard to get in here. Like, How can you not retain people that are like that? They made such a conscious decision to join the industry. To me, it's unconscionable. And then you see the reactions of a lot of firms that range from either no reaction. Let's get everybody back to work to here's some money show money. Yeah, you know, yeah, whatever. And it's like or let's reiterate policies that we already had about no sats or whatever. And again, like, tell somebody that's not in finance that you know that your firm thankfully now has, you know, only a six day working week instead of a seven day working week. No laugh. They'll be like, No, are you serious? And like, No, no, this is great. Like, if I can only have one day guaranteed off week, that would be amazing that if no one bothered me, and it's just silly. So the industry has gotten behind the times of basically everyone else and most particularly technology, right? I look at the forums almost every single day. There's a why banking instead of tech, right? I'm a college freshman and I'm a smart kid, and I don't, I don't know. Like, I kind of like computers. Banking sounds interesting, you know, just like where I was when I was a freshman in college a long time ago. You know what? What should I do? And honestly, it's becoming a harder and harder sell for people to do finance for, you know, for lifestyle reasons. And the compensation is again, not it's not that different. And to the extent it is, it's marginally not that worth it unless you have a, you know, again, unless you have a real passion for the career,it's chicken on the egg. How do you find if you have a passion before you actually do the job? For sure. So the same person, if I was starting college again, like what? I go, what I go into finance or consulting or what I veer towards more towards tech, honestly. And I've thought about it like I might be. A person would probably veer towards more towards tech, like if I started again, if this was if I had of the honest information, if I had the full information, if I had the full information available to me.

 

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:55:29] You also had you also have a little bit of an advantage in the sense that you are technically minded person who would probably be really good at tech because I mean, you were an engineer, undergrad, right? Some people don't have that gift and maybe they're a little more right brain, right? Exactly, exactly. So like everybody

Synergy: [00:55:47] Is everybody, everybody's going to be a little different and you can

succeed in both. Both. Tech and finance, whether you're left or your right brain, because finance requires a lot of analysis, modeling and diving into details and, you know, you can't be like, Oh, I'm ready to make relationships, but you have to do a cap to analyse a capex schedule like at the same time, like there's tech sales, portion, the people who really make the big bucks, right? So being outgoing and the sales capacity, it's also very valuable trait there. So there's different ways. There's different ways to make it work, kind of no matter what you're no matter what you're doing, I'm still happy with my decision to do banking, and that's a survivorship bias because it's too good to be a mid-level VP. But you know, as one person, I think it's a good idea, but I think that the industry has to fix itself and it's silly to me. I think people have short memories like the VP's and even the directors MDS who had suffered in their job, you know, just five years ago. And remember that pretty freshly in their mind, like still aren't keen on, you know, implementing meaningful reforms in the industry to

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:01] How could Wall Street. What can we do besides the survey? Because I've thought about this a lot. I think not that we want to continue

Synergy: [00:57:10] This, continuing to continuing to shine a light. Yeah, I mean what the advantage that you have is that again, like people say that just 13, but like Goldman Sachs is not unique in that aspect, and they might even be better than a lot of other banks. For all I know, it's group specific and individual specific. But but you know, it's it's the overall culture. And I think painting a light on it is really is really good. And then just giving people tools to work through it is also really helpful. One is just the form in the community. And I go back to the expat stuff like having being able to connect with people who are who are struggling through it. You know, that’s really helpful to have a community. Sometimes you can talk about your with your fellow analysts in person, but you know, we're working from home. So it's as easy to talk to people on Wall Street Oasis as it is to talk to people at your company at the moment. So that's a definite advantage. And then being able to kind of see and chart out a path to the future will help you survive short term problems. Like I wasn't thinking, yeah, short term pain, like I wasn't thinking about, you know, working a lot during my summer internship because the whole point is to get an offer and go back full time, right? So as long as you can have a goal that you're getting yourself towards, you know, it's easier to make it through it. When you feel like you have no idea what's going on or you don't have a future or something planned out, then it's much harder to survive that. So. Wall Street Oasis also is helping people to learn about exit options and to prepare for PE interviews or prepare

to explore other areas like we have, you know, Corporate Finance Forum and, you know, real estate for other areas like How do I make it coming from doing this to going to do something else? And that's just part of the part of the conversation and an extra

part of the banking conversation as exit options and helping people explore that is really is really important. So that's all helpful. I mean, just in terms of being there and being a resource and being a community of people that you can trust and get to know a little bit better and give honest advice and or just joke and meme about things, right? Like people love the Instagram Finance account. Yeah, my analysts found them all for me and subscribing to them so I can see that coming across my feed in every day. So that's been helpful. But you know, it's a little bit about, you know, there's an opportunity to it's banks don't hear this as well. I just thought about it, too. We have every bank has done these surveys, right, but people are never honest on them. They just aren't. And because, you know, they're afraid they're going to get found out. And that might be true.

It might not be true. I mean, to this day, I don't know.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:08] It's tough. It's tough because you're not

Synergy: [01:00:11] Getting accurate information. So the guy sitting at the top is going, everything's fine. Like 70 percent of people are somewhat satisfied or better. Based on my rigorous survey of everyone, we got everyone to respond to it. So I guess I guess it's fine. And that's or we know we need to do a couple of things, but it's not a disaster. But in reality, like, you know, day to day, even the people that would never say this in a survey, but privately, they're like, Oh, I have no work life balance. I have, you know, I've been asked to work on Saturdays every single week over the last month, but I'm just not willing to sit on a survey. So I think banks don't have a realistic picture of what happens in the industry or especially at different banks. They don't really know what's going on most of the time.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:57] I just don't know how you feel. There's no easy answers because it's client service, right? It's and you have there's the incentive is to always use as much of the junior resources as you know, everyone's battling for that, say, in limited supply of resources. So like as

Synergy: [01:01:11] This is a fundamental problem between banking and consulting, because when I was at the big four, you spent time, you do a time sheet, you charge hours out. So if I'm suddenly spending twenty hours over time, everybody in my team knows that it's not good, right? Like the utilization is going to have suffer and our profitability on our team on this project is going to suffer and everyone's going to ask why. And it's there. It's the incentive to figure out like why that's happening and to improve that thinking. It's the opposite. It's operating leverage. You're a fixed cost, you're a five k, I guess ninety five K or whatever. Average for an analyst plus bonus. And then you know, hey, like if you spent ninety five K on something for a year, you're going to use it every day all the time, right? Like buying something expensive. You're just going to you're going to try to make it worth your while like getting an expense. It's like joining equinox, right? You spent $300 at Equinox a month and you're like, Gosh, I got to go it. Every day more worth it, because then it's only ten bucks a day, I can rationalize that. But if you go three times a month, then it's one hundred dollars for

an hour of running on the treadmill or whatever like that doesn't make any sense. So. So it's the same thing. So people are seen definitely as resources, and they're paid. They're paid kind of a cost and there's no accounting. There's just no accounting for time. And not everyone wants to do timesheets for sure. That's not this. I'm not saying that's a solution, but there's literally no way to track it. And so even the MDS kind of go, Oh, this person hard and don't they have like

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:41] The key cards. Can they show when kids are coming in and out of the office, they do it, but it's not in the office?

Synergy: [01:02:48] Yeah. And that's helpful. But then it's also not tied to

 

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:51] Specific MDS or specific.

Synergy: [01:02:53] It's not still not tied at work. So their thinking is kind of I remember being an analyst, you guys are hanging out having lunch and I don't know, they're in their office. They don't know. They don't know how much time is really spent working versus hanging out or whatever. Hey, I only gave comments at 7:00 p.m. So they're really only working from 7:00 onwards. I don't know what they're doing the rest of the day, but I don't care what their cards say. I'm being cynical, but in reality, like. And then the real those are the ends that actually work on the deals, the people higher and higher up at the bank that aren't working on any deals, you know, are even less aware of what's going on, right? And so how do you make the I think those has to cascade downwards from there, like somebody at a bank that's at a high level needs to try to get as close to the front lines as they can and Really understand, like what are people doing?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:03:50] Why are they doing it this way? One of the biggest problems random nights in the bullpen one, you know,

Synergy: [01:03:54] And it may not be a bad Idea because they're not even they're not opening Excel. So they don't know how inefficient the FactSet plug in or the Capital IQ plug in is at this particular bank, right? Like, I don't know, like they get a feedback like five levels up from that. So yeah, making technology decisions or efficiency decisions or personnel decisions, you know, it's really difficult if you're not if you don't understand the intricate details. I mean that. The banking heads need to be more like, you know, they need to be more like F1 team managers and stuff like that to really kind of to really kind of, you know, be in a level playing field. I think with the people that are doing that are doing the work. I honestly think empathy could go a long way. A lot of times you're right, like, you can't fix it. You can't fix a lot of structural problems. But at the same time, like your MD can think, like if they knew and they cared how long you're spending on something or they want it to be efficient, they could probably reorganize a couple of things and get your comments a little bit earlier. They could give you slightly if your comments are only working on one page. It's important instead of, you know, a moonshot, you know, five or 10 pages or whatever that's going to get done to the

appendix or deleted or whatever, right? So again, like it's not it's not an easy solution, but I think just everyone understanding really carefully the level below or several levels below what they're working at is a really good step forward. But so far I have heard zero banking and banking CEO. Is there anything that? Make any kind of, you know, any move towards, you know, towards towards doing this because they just think they know they've all been analysts before. So they're they they value their own memory higher than anyone else. And then of course, like as the years go on, you remember things that happened in the past for more fun that you tend to forget some of the bad, some of the bad details, unless they're really, really bad, but the rest of the day to day, you know? Yeah, the day to day stuff, it changed. Also, the industry is just again, it's just changed, and they have to realize that they're competing with industries that are just

night and day different in terms of, you know, working style. I mean, like, it's not about stocking juices in the fridge or whatever, like a tech company, it's about kind of like. Having time to work on your own project about, you know, that sort of thing just like a respect, it sounds funny, but like a basic respect for the individual, you know, as a teammate. So it's hard, it's hard, but you know, just it's like, why don't we J.F.K.? Why do we go to the Moon? Like, we do it because it's hard, like it's a problem that's worth working on. And you can't solve it, but it's probably it's worth spending every single year trying to get better on. If you're a banking M.D. because you're competing with more and more banks for the same talent being with other industries, you're trying to retain people. Retention is abysmal. This year has been a disaster across the board. Wait till you

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:07:16] Wait till June. Oh yeah, it's going to be. It could be that a mass exodus? Yeah, I mean, I mean, people are pretty. Do you feel like the banks are ready for what's going to happen once analyst bonuses go out?

Synergy: [01:07:28] I don't. I just think they'll think it's again. They're just going to the gods. Kobe is Kobe, you know? You know, things are going to be once of once you're

back in the office, that's going to solve all the problems. And it just shut people up because now they're sitting next to people lose.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:07:43] So think of how much, how much money they would save if they kept more second year analysts to be third years. Like, yeah, or just straight associate promotes like there's already so efficient, they're so they're so good, but it's hard to do that because that means you have to like not drag them through the mud for. You know,

Synergy: [01:08:02] If you think about it, right? Like. The people that. You know, it's a job that you already know how to do, and you should be really efficient at it, right? Like being an associate, it's not that much. It's not like tremendously more difficult than being an analyst. It's kind of the same thing. And once you get someone working kind of beside you or whatever, I hesitate to say underneath you, you know, but like once you get someone some extra help, right? Like you can divide it up and like, you're getting paid a lot of money. So the fact that people still choose to leave should be a huge red flag, right? Like I should be, it should be a huge red flag. Like, why wouldn't she be

able to keep 50, 60, 70 percent of the people you know at your job and people are leaving for, you know, a lot of people leave for P to make to make more money. That's what they think will be fewer hours, although in reality that can be the opposite. Yeah, but that's but that's why. But again, like. And a lot of shops or even for a lot of people. Is it that much more money like and if you're going to go back and not,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:09:13] You know, free MBA associates that a middle market shop, which is where a lot of these analysts go to, they're actually taking a lot of them are taking pay cuts or slight pay cuts.

Synergy: [01:09:23] So it's just it's really just like, Hey, I got to get out again. Just like,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:09:28] I mean, it's just like I to get out. It should be me. After my second year I had, I was offered a third year. I, you know, the VP said to me, how much stay, how much? And I was just like, there's no dollar amount. Yeah, I'm like, I wouldn't even like it was probably to stay another year. I probably just had like $2 million or something insane because just mentally and physically, I couldn't handle it anymore.

Synergy: [01:09:50] And so, yeah, that's not it's not exactly right. It doesn't. It doesn't really make it doesn't really make much sense. And it's one thing it's kind of funny, like, it's one thing if you're moving from one bank to another, right? The people are just looking to leave the industry. Yeah. And wow, I mean, it seems kind of inefficient. And then it's the same thing for a lot of places that hire again. Sorry, I mean, I was opposed to MBA associate, but kind of like relatively more useless post MBA Associates because it's again, it's like tricking people for the first time into getting into finance, you know, and then maybe they can get a couple of more years at that level, the people before they figure out what they really want to do and they can do better. So for the banks to kind of go, all your problems have taken care of because, you know, you get in a couple of years, you get out and maybe that's maybe that's a model that's reasonable. And then the people that a couple of people who really want to make it to be a VP. And you know,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:10:45] I think the pendulum has swung so much like in terms of like. So many people are running towards private equity that if you're willing to stick around in banking, you can probably be like, No, give me more, no, give me immediate, like you can possibly get promoted really fast. I'm thinking, What's your thought on that? What's your thought on that? I have to be good.

 

Synergy: [01:11:02] But you can also flip this around. You say, Look, I know that people are going to leave in our industry, right? So let's treat them really well. We're going to we're going to say, Hey, our bank is the best place to train up. We're going to treat you with respect. We're going to give you lots of training. You can be open about. Recruiting for PE will help you out a lot of regional offices, including the one that I'm in. So, you know, hey, like you can tell your MD or your whatever that you're recruiting for PE like, yeah, they'll help you. They'll give you advice like you can take a week off if you need to go to fly to another city and go recruit like we want you to be successful as a person. And then when you come back, you know you'll be back on your projects and kind of finish out your time here, right? Like, you know, that doesn't seem to me like, I mean, it's costless. It's not asking for a lot of money. I don't think you solve that by throwing more money at it. I think you solve that by treating people slightly better. And it's just not that more difficult to do. But you can differentiate your bank by saying, Hey, we have an actually good culture. And yes, we work a lot. But if you work hard, it's going to be for a reason. It's going to be for a page. It's going to end up being in the final deck. It's going to be on a model, it's going to end up being used or whatever. So, you know, we've given it thought and there's consequences if something goes wrong, right? And at the same time, like, here's what we can promise to you like, we're going to give you a lot of resources to help you be successful, whether you choose to stay on or whether you choose to move on. And I think just being open and honest about that, that in itself could be if a bank came out and said that like that would be a really interesting differentiating point versus the people that are kind of hanging around the hope at the same level, at the same level of prestige, which is another issue, I guess, to think about,

which is shifting around a lot,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:12:51] But really fascinating. I want to talk to you more about it, but I don't want to. I don't want to keep you much longer. It's already been a long, long, long and long episode, but I maybe offline we can chat at some point about if we can leverage as community and do something to help more besides just a survey here and there. But yeah, let's stay. Anything, any final words of wisdom for the young, the young ones listening here. So I would say that. I think that the

Synergy: [01:13:23] Point earlier about strategy versus opportunity is really important. You should strategically, you should always kind of. Try to be thinking about what you want to do or a three year plan or a five year plan. In reality, it'll never work out.

Usually it doesn't work out quite the way that you've planned it out. So you go back in your advisor strategy, but also just be open to opportunities to come up. So you know, hey, I want to get into investment banking. I'm an undergraduate and I think I want to,

you know, work at a New York bulge bracket or elite boutique in the top three. Maybe that works out, and that's great. Your strategy and your opportunity align if you get it, if you get an option there, but also like opportunistic, opportunistically like. Be open to the banks that are headquartered in Chicago, be open to going somewhere else, right? Like there's banks in Atlanta. There's banks everywhere doing something. If you can't get into banking, there's a lot of finance adjacent areas, like if you're from a total non target and a completely struck out and banking across all the middle market bulge bracket elite boutiques. And you've tried and it doesn't work out like again, like banking isn't impossible. I didn't start out in banking, so I mean, like you, but I see a lot of people that have that are so gung ho about banking, but they've never even thought about the Big Four advisory, right? Yeah, either because it's they think it's below them or it's not as direct of a path as they would want, but like, Hey, you know, people are making good salaries. They're, you know, they're learning real deals, they're learning a ton. There's exit options directly to banking. There's extra options to MBA. Once you get into an MBA program, it's like one hundred percent. It's almost a hundred percent chance of you getting into banking if you really want to at the MBA level. Because banks are starving for talent, all the analysts are leaving, right? Yeah. And there's only so many MBA programs. If you get into a top 20 MBA program like you can, you're going to banking. If you try hard from any background, from literally any background. So but if you're not, if you're not willing to be patient about it, right, and your strategy, that's going to be a problem. And if you're not opportunistic enough, you're not open to going, Hey. Maybe a Fortune 500 corporate finance platform, whatever, with a big name, so that when I end up applying to an MBA, people have heard about this company or whatever or maybe a startup, right? And working on a startup and growing that will be part of a way of telling my story. But I just think, like, be really open minded. It doesn't mean like stretching yourself so thin and you can recruit at 20 different industries at the same time, but have a plan a, a Plan B, a Plan C, and you know, and think about it and be open as your as your career develops. I mean, again, because you could get into banking, you can have everything that you plan for in your dreams. But then two years later, if you get offered a million dollars, that's your job. You wouldn't do that. So you'd better give it some thought, right? Like, you know what? You what you kind of, you know, not what your life's passion is, but like what you would be open to doing next. And that's good enough for most of the time. Sometimes it's just about, hey, what's going to keep the most doors open possible for me in the future if I don't know what I want to do right now? A lot of people in college, myself included at the time, didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was just like, what's going to open some more doors? And then you pick a direction, you try it out and you can you can adjust from there, right? But you know, a lot of a lot of the work is done by making that first step and then just having a really, really positive attitude. If things don't go exactly as planned, you can still have a great life doing almost anything. All very. If you're listening to this podcast, you're already extremely fortunate. So it's all about kind of there's no there's no one perfect path, but it's all about kind of your own individual journey.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:17:25] I love it. But then on that synergy, thanks so much for your time and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. And till next time.