Six years into my career, I find myself looking back to the time when I was coming out of college. I am happy with the pay and work still motivates me to come to the office, but sometimes stress overwhelms my sense of achievement. Would you start over if you got a chance? Where would you want to restart your career?
Yeah, should have become a doctor
It’s one of the worst industries I can think of. Unless you got that perfect start as an IB analyst and went to a target school, the pay and prospects aren’t that great. Even if you DID break into IB, you better be in capital markets or M&A. ER and S&T are tanking hard. Your skills also aren’t that transferable because no accountants cars about how well you can guess stock prices or “value” businesses from the outside. Even less so if you’re a trader. I would get out if I wasn’t already years deep, and didn’t want to start over.
I’m going into healthcare either PA or NP, just getting my applications together for next cycle after taking all the prereqs in the evenings. Took forever and was difficult, but there’s such a beauty in the sciences that doesn’t exist in business. I’ll work harder, get borderline abused by patients and docs and the hours might suck but at least I’ll have job security and won’t have to deal with the corporate BS to the same degree. Plus in Cali I know Midlevels can make upwards of 200K with some OT if you work in a surgical field. Can’t wait for the day I can say “adios MF-ers” to all the people I can’t stand @ the office
Love it
It's ok
If stress is your obstacle then i suggest looking inward and working to find a way to reduce stress at the same level of productivity or more.
my point is i think that has nothing to do with your job but your individual relationship with your emotions
I don’t regret my journey beginning in Finance. It’s led me (and many others I know) to great GM roles where the exec team trusts in our ability to be fiscal stewards of investor funds and really think critically about how we deploy resources across the org to maximize ROI. Being in the right types of finance roles have you analyzing all sorts of cross-functional situations, and you learn quite a bit about how all the components of the theoretical machine work together. I wouldn’t trade my experience for any other.
I got fucked by a group of ignorant morons who became by lead and manager. Fresh out of undergrad willing to start a career in technology who pushed me into working in a role that is a quality analyst one. Finance companies don’t care about tech and they don’t give a fuck about optimization. All they want is compliance.
I was in finance for 11 years and made the switch to tech. I'm so much happier and I didn't have to take a huge cut. You don't have to stay if you don't like it, and you don't have to go back to school to make a switch.
It can be a tough career if you’re in the wrong group and your personality doesn’t align with the team. Or, you can work in a good group with a good team and it’s not so bad. I’ve been lucky to find my way into the second. Yes, the hours can be long and some days / weeks are tough, but generally it’s not a bad place to be, at least for me.
I lasted 4 months in finance out of uni before I bounced. Move before you become another corpse in the graveyard of engineers that is finance. Unless you're a quant; if you're a quant ggwp, you won.
If you're a quant at a bank, you lost big time :P
if you're a quant anywhere means you can transition to a quant anywhere else and eventually land the 1m TC positions. I would have more respect for the only non-idiots in a bank, goldman.