<p>As someone who was offered an internship this summer and decline (I don't wanna do IB) I've recently been talking to a few of my fellow interviewees/classmates/friends who secured jobs and things are getting a little crazy. With the prospect of a recession looming they have kissed away the dreams of 150k salaries and are now more concerned with just keeping their jobs that they thought they had lined up. Many of them are wondering if they want to work the 100-120 hour weeks for an 80/90/100k paycheck. Most of them still want to do it but are concerned they'll get axed in the coming months. </p>
<p>IB is very hard to get, and it's going to get MUCH harder in the coming year. Just a word of advice to keep other options open. You may think you're secure but it can never hurt to have a backup plan.</p>
<p>As investment firms "restructure" or "re-engineer" or "survive" this year they may turn to interns to pick up or fill-in incases where they downsize too much. It's definitly not a time to be looking for an IB job (though that's ignorant opinion) but I can't see why it wouldn't be a time to get your foot in the door.</p>
<p>All depends on your function, too. If you're in a revenue-generating (client facing, front office) position, and can be billed out at a huge rate, and business is doing well enough that you won't sit idle, then you're probably doing ok - the business is better off having you than not having you.</p>
<p>But if you're in an Ops or back-office position (or god forbid IT) with an investment bank, that's probably a bad choice of industry to start off a career with. The same probably goes for middle-office stuff (account manager, risk management, lower tiers of asset management, etc).</p>