There perhaps lies one of the biggest difference between tech and finance jobs. Tech jobs generally require more specialized skills and those skills evolve quickly. Employers generally don’t look for “general” skills specifically in college grads. IB jobs, on the other hand, require few specialized skills, but “people” skills are critical, as IBs are fundamentally in the relationship/distribution business. Few IB analysts make to the next level without such skills.
And you missed all the fun things people get to do in their younger years. You never get that back no matter what.
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But if you pick the latter and retire at 45, isn’t the implication that you don’t actually enjoy it that much and would prefer to do something else instead if you had sufficient money to not have to work? Hard for me to imagine that, I’m sure I’ll be happy to continue working part time in my current job at 65 or 70, perhaps beyond.
I think this is true in most careers where you want to achieve significant success very quickly. Hence the focus on tech over the last decade (though the best time to come to Silicon Valley to take advantage of it was after the tech crash in 2001). I worked in consulting, was fortunate enough to ride the telecom bubble in the 1990s and it was quite the experience. That was especially true of the travel while I was young: going to Australia for the day (from London), another week with a day trip from London to Argentina and on to Seattle the next day, going to the Persian Gulf and having a banquet at the Sheikh’s palace.
The question is what’s the next wave of innovation? It’s hard to predict and in the end may just be a matter of luck. I do see a bunch of kids interested in space right now, but I fear they’ll be disappointed.
Surveys of software engineers consistently show far lower hours than IB. For example, in a recent Stack Overflow survey, the average among software engineers in the United States was 42.1 hours per week. The job titles that averaged more than the 42 hours per week overall average were all were senior ones that suggested managerial roles, not new junior employees.
However, there are specific companies that are exceptions. For example, it’s not unusual for software engineers to work well above 40 hours per week at certain start-ups. Some companies or managers at larger companies also have a culture of encouraging longer hours (maybe 50 or brief periods of 60, no where near 80). Others try to keep talent by making employees happy and allowing employees to work far less than 40 hours, so long as the employee gets their work done. Some require employees to log hours and pay overtime for >40, which requires special approval (often companies with a lot of government contracts). There is a lot of variation rather than a simple rule.
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If you could get hired, or get your startup funded. The “hire anybody, fund anything” days of 1998-2000 was reversed in 2001-2003.
Of course, 2001-2003 was probably a great time for a frosh university student to major in CS, when student demand was low (less competition to get into the major) and graduating cohorts were smaller (less competition for the first job in 2005-2007 as the sector began to recover). Much better results than many 2001-2003 CS graduates ended up with.
My wife’s boss had an interesting observation, we spend our youth trying to gain wealth. Then we use our wealth to try to regain our youth.
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Google’s IPO was in 2004, Amazon really began to rebound about the same time. If you could get a job there, like one of my interns, then the ideal time to graduate from college was 2001-03, because people stopped coming to the Valley for several years. The same with just after the 2008 recession, which made the 2008-10 period the best time to join the social media companies (Facebook, Twitter etc).
For me, it was not so much that I didn’t enjoy the work. It was just stressful and physically tiring to do past a certain age. I also got out of the game because I realize that I was going to miss help raising my kids - going to school plays, coaching/ watching sports, etc… I had long since made my “number”, so it was just going to be a different phase in life.
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In 2001-2003, most job applicants in the computing industry were unable to get jobs in the field.
@twoand18:
With all due respect, that is a rather earthbound perspective.
While everyone ultimately pursues their life path the way they want, please don’t condescend on a life choice just because you did not chose it.
After my time in IB, I had the time and resources to do things I couldn’t have imagined before.
The experience allowed me to move out of NYC, chose an enjoyable/affordable part of the country to live without regards to employment, raise 3 kids as a present parent, actively participate in our community and run a small business, all without worrying about money, office politics or what happens next.
If you told me when I was 18 that was possible by 40, I wouldn’t have believed you.
All this being said, the IB life was very hard, and while many might say the money was obscene, every penny was well earned for all the intensity and the sacrifice. While some may question the contribution to society of an IB professional, honestly, I don’t think I made any real contributions before I turned 40.
However, at 60, I can tell you that some major contributions have been made over the last 20 years and successfully raising three kids (all in/finished college) has been fulfilling in many ways. I would not have been able to give my kids this level of attention had I been in a 40 hour a week job for 40 years. My wife was also in IB and neither of us would have done it any other way.
I am not writing this to suggest this is the only, or a better way to go. Quite the contrary, it is an unlikely path for most. However, as this is a thread to that was initiated to discuss careers in IB and I am trying to be helpful by offering an experienced perspective when the current/popular narrative is so negative.
My comment about riding the waves was meant to suggest that careers in IB can be very fleeting/risky and that staying too long can be dangerous. Knowing when to leave is as important as knowing how to get in.
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One can’t compare apples with oranges. For the comparison to be meaningful, one has to compare jobs with comparable compensations. A $60k programming job (and there’re plenty of them) isn’t comparable to an IB job that pays $150k+.
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Perhaps. Or maybe you try something else now that you’re financially well off. Venture capital, PE, angel investing. Clearly the person who wrote the comment enjoyed it enough to stay in it for decades. I’d take that … he ‘s now free to spend time with his family, find a part time job that he can do into his 70’s if he so desires. It’s not binary.
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That’s your opinion. A lot of those fun things cost money. And all I hear about is how students are drowning in debt so I’m thinking most them aren’t having as much fun as you think 
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The median base salary US employees in the referenced survey was well in the the six figures. All job titles had a median base salary of at least $100k. All job titles except for “senior executive / VP” averaged <44 hours per week.
If you mean comparing companies with similar aura of desirability, maybe comparing software engineer at Google to IB at Godmen Sachs would be appropriate? Most Google software engineers report near 40 hours a week or slightly more, depending on a variety of factors. Some have said that Google actively discourages GS type hours. For example, one Google SW engineer on Quora wrote,
It’s a big company and it varies a lot. But on average it’s like most office jobs: eight hours a day, five days a week.
There is a pretty widely held philosophy of “no heroes.” A “hero” in this context is someone who goes way beyond the expected bounds to make their project succeed, things like working 12 hour days and 80 hour weeks. If a project only succeeds because of a “hero,” something is wrong. What happens when that person burns out and quits? For projects to succeed in the long term, the people working on them have to be keeping a sustainable pace. As the cliché goes, success in business is a marathon, not a sprint.
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There’re many more levels of employees at a company like Google, compared to a financial services firm. Teams at financial service firms must remain lean with a lot fewer employees with a singular focus on measurable P/L in order to be competitive. Google these days operates in a monopolistic environment and can afford to have many more junior employees.
Actually most fun things when you are 25 cost little money. Seeing Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Continental Club in Austin. $5. Hot girls free. Beers $2. Beach at Malibu–free. Hot girls unlimited. Surfing free. Parking free. over 45—stay away old man
That’s not my intention at all. I’m more interested in the difference between jobs where you work to live (in this case work to live afterwards) rather than live to work. It’s always seemed to me that while almost everyone I know in the UK works because they need to earn money to pay the bills, here in the US there’s more of a sense that you should at least aspire to love what you do (or as Steve Jobs put it: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”)
For example the perspective you offer of achieving a lot more in your life afterwards is very different to what I hear from other people who get to the top of very hard working professions. I’d put many doctors at the opposite end of that spectrum and most consultants and lawyers somewhere in the middle. I’ve seen some people in the tech industry (eg from the early days of Facebook) walk away with lots of money, but most of them still want to keep doing things in the industry. On the other hand many of my contemporaries from college went into IB and I can only think of one who is still working in his early 50s (in that case because he got right to the top of a major bank).
It seems like something for our kids to think about when considering what they might do in their careers, especially if they might try to take Jobs’ advice. Although perhaps it’s just too hard to think of a 30+ year career at that point.
To each his own. None of that sounds remotely appealing. And those aren’t NYC prices.
It is easy for a successful CEO to say “don’t settle”. It is harder when someone has to take a job they are not particularly excited about working in to pay the bills, because the things that they like to do are not things that they could get paid (enough) for. In the context of college, lots of BA/BS graduates take jobs not directly or only slightly related to their majors, because there are not enough jobs for BA/BS biologists, historians, anthropologists, etc…
Of course, there are situations other than CEO where someone’s passion is something that they are able to get paid (enough) for. But that may not be true for the majority of employed people, regardless of which country they live and work in. Many people work to pay the bills in a job that may only be acceptable otherwise (or even less than acceptable if they have no other choices in their area with their employable skills).
However, it appears that the US culturally has a relatively strong work ethic and work identity, which has various social and political implications.
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https://twitter.com/Mens_Corner_/status/1372699456207003653
Sort of along the same lines…it’s easy to say do what you’re passionate about when you’re already successful/wealthy. 
I’ve had similar discussions with my DC over the years.
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