I HATE Being An Investment Banker (Life Rant)
- Thread starter Theraflu
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CashmereThoughts
Veteran
This is a rant so pardon my incoherence
I'm sitting outside my office building on a break I have to write this because my life fukking sucks right now. I work at an investment bank, a very big one (JP,UBS etc)
I have a BSc, MSci and I'm CFA level two educated. I recently got hired as an associate in January. I was previously an analyst where I had little exposure and now I have my own work and serious contact with clients the reality of this is all hitting.
I left my old finance job to work in the family business for 18 months and honestly nothing will compare to working for yourself but I needed to get back to work. Working for family good but was only to help out.
Investment Banking is the worst job ive ever had. I've worked in call centres during college, retail, being a waiter but no job has made has been as ridiculous as IB.
1. It's not diverse. All the IB firms do all this affirmative action and equal opportunity big talk to make it SEEM like they're diverse but it's B.S check the directory of every main IB firm. There's like 4 black people per 100 whites.
They like EVERYONE but blacks. The tipping point was this week. I've been working with a black charity which helps place black kids in Wall Street bank internships. These kids are smart, have experience and we spend months prepping them interviews. Only one of them secured a role.
Mean while I have this new intern shadowing me today he is dumb as a brick and lacks basic common sense and he is somehow there.
I've been observing that in every division there's the same pattern (2 black men, 2 black women and that's it). I'm pretty certain they're only there to fill a quota.and legalities
You spend your days working with literally people like Don Sterling ALL my clients I'm working with on deals are ALL senile and old and you can tell the ones who don't wanna be doing business with a black dude
Last week I had to go Vienna for a day to meet a new client and you should have seen his face when I walked in
To top it all off I interviewed a black girl from another division who was great a few weeks ago and our M.D said she wouldn't be a good 'fit' meanwhile they hired some random blonde chick
The only good thing about people a black investment banker is the money but how much is it really worth though. Yes, I earn a lot but at what cost ?!
Oh and I finally get why people like @Poitier and @marcuz hate bed wenches so much. Black women are literally not rated AT ALL as in AT ALL by our clients (CFO's CEOs etc) while all the white VPs get to travel our black female VP rarely gets to travel ever. They don't see her as a 'face' for the firm.
I just think people need to stop pretending n saying the 'black boys need to study and go college''we just need to work 10 times harder'
All that 'you gotta work twice as hard' shyt our parents told us was LIES.
It's nothing to do with your degree, your presentation these people are always gonna operate the one at a time rule
I hate being an investment banker and Ill advise all black males to run away from this life path.
I wanna go back to family business but pay isn't enoughI miss being my own boss
This life is a lie breh's I went through college did all the things people claim black men should do and I'm still no better off
You should expose the racism in an annonomous letter. It could easily go Viral and if the company is noteworthy the media would probobly run with it as well.
Be specific, just not specific enough to give yourself away. Force them to acknowledge their racist culture
CashmereThoughts
Veteran
Oh because if you make 100k you shouldn't be concerned with being treated with dignity.
cant do that because hes one of so few. itd make for an awkward situation for every black person in the circle. if he was leaving however then...seems like his biggest issue is the clients though not the bank
CashmereThoughts
Veteran
They won't hire qualified black interns, they neglect the development of the few blacks they do hire, and even the blacks that make it to semi high positions are used as work horses but never embraced as the face of the company.
Sounds to me like the company is more if a problem. In my experience, when you know your company has your back, it's not so bad dealing with clients like this
john goodman
All Star
Funny thing is.. nearly all jobs suck. People are annoying, become self reliant. . You're not a slave to any company
Then u just become a slave to your clients.
These are the musings of someone whose never seen 6 figures. Theres more to life than money.
This wouldn't work.
He's already told a message board that he works in Europe for a major bank hosted in the US. That already narrows down the candidates.
He needs to be as anonymous as possible.
The problem is the clients, not the company.
If there was more black wealth, the firm wouldn't have a problem, however nuanced or slight, to push more black faces to the front.
I joined this site just to comment on this post. It's absolute truth. I also work in a corporate environment and we have headquarters in New York, England, and Asia.
We're currently running a summer internship program, and young students (one in particular who is especially stupid and has zero social grace) are being taught to be analysts and are completely being invested in over more qualified, and more racially diverse, employees who have been with the company for years. I won't go into too many details, but I'll list out a few things that only corroborate the OP's post.
-A Hispanic employee who has been rated #1 in his department for 3 years in a row is consistently denied raises and magically never hears back about internal job postings.
-Job postings that are placed on the website only to make it legal, they know who they're going to hire before the posting is up.
-Blacks/Hispanics are routinely placed in departments with little chance of promotion and get little to no exposure to those with hiring abilities.
-Managers often hire their friends over long term employees. Many of those employees are temps and receive no benefits, while someone's friend is hired full time and given full benefits within mere months.
-2 roommates and their best friend were all somehow promoted to high paid leadership positions. Note: none of them have a degree that relates to the field, and the last one was promoted to a leadership position in about 4 months. Again, he was promoted over people who have been with the company for years.
-Yearly internal surveys continually highlighted that the employees felt the organization valued diversity well below other things. In desperate retaliation, the company created employee interest groups, none of them have focused on career progression, and rumors are floating around that they were 'forced' to refocus their attention on charity events and volunteer efforts outside of the company. Not career development for those who are stagnating (minorities).
-Managers will use the excuse of 'they're not a good fit' in order to deny you promotions or, in some cases, fire you. None of this has to do with actually job performance.
-White males rule the organization. Asian women excel, but are rarely given leadership positions. Indians do well, but most of the leadership only deals with them when they have to. Racist things are said about them frequently. Other minorities don't excel at all. Outstanding minorities are labeled as work horses, are given extra responsibilities, but that doesn't come with further job growth or financial compensation. White men who aren't capable are consistently given jobs, verbal outbursts by employees who say, 'such and such is more qualified, and we all know it' is commonplace.
-Nepotism and Cronyism rules. As well as being white and upper middle class. I've heard 90 minute conversations occur about country clubs, boating, and vacation homes...lower departments aren't allowed such freedoms, and inversely, are punished for not working for that amount of time.
-This may be my cynicism, but I would never tell a minority to pursue a corporate career. You'll see injustices, you'll be labeled difficult if you point it out, kill your chances of advancement, or they'll find a reason to fire you.
Sorry for the long post.
We're currently running a summer internship program, and young students (one in particular who is especially stupid and has zero social grace) are being taught to be analysts and are completely being invested in over more qualified, and more racially diverse, employees who have been with the company for years. I won't go into too many details, but I'll list out a few things that only corroborate the OP's post.
-A Hispanic employee who has been rated #1 in his department for 3 years in a row is consistently denied raises and magically never hears back about internal job postings.
-Job postings that are placed on the website only to make it legal, they know who they're going to hire before the posting is up.
-Blacks/Hispanics are routinely placed in departments with little chance of promotion and get little to no exposure to those with hiring abilities.
-Managers often hire their friends over long term employees. Many of those employees are temps and receive no benefits, while someone's friend is hired full time and given full benefits within mere months.
-2 roommates and their best friend were all somehow promoted to high paid leadership positions. Note: none of them have a degree that relates to the field, and the last one was promoted to a leadership position in about 4 months. Again, he was promoted over people who have been with the company for years.
-Yearly internal surveys continually highlighted that the employees felt the organization valued diversity well below other things. In desperate retaliation, the company created employee interest groups, none of them have focused on career progression, and rumors are floating around that they were 'forced' to refocus their attention on charity events and volunteer efforts outside of the company. Not career development for those who are stagnating (minorities).
-Managers will use the excuse of 'they're not a good fit' in order to deny you promotions or, in some cases, fire you. None of this has to do with actually job performance.
-White males rule the organization. Asian women excel, but are rarely given leadership positions. Indians do well, but most of the leadership only deals with them when they have to. Racist things are said about them frequently. Other minorities don't excel at all. Outstanding minorities are labeled as work horses, are given extra responsibilities, but that doesn't come with further job growth or financial compensation. White men who aren't capable are consistently given jobs, verbal outbursts by employees who say, 'such and such is more qualified, and we all know it' is commonplace.
-Nepotism and Cronyism rules. As well as being white and upper middle class. I've heard 90 minute conversations occur about country clubs, boating, and vacation homes...lower departments aren't allowed such freedoms, and inversely, are punished for not working for that amount of time.
-This may be my cynicism, but I would never tell a minority to pursue a corporate career. You'll see injustices, you'll be labeled difficult if you point it out, kill your chances of advancement, or they'll find a reason to fire you.
Sorry for the long post.
Brehs
pardon the delay in my response, as you guys know I'm in a different time zone. Home now and it's friday
all of you guys made good posts for me and were very supportive, sending replies to all the posts now
pardon the delay in my response, as you guys know I'm in a different time zone. Home now and it's friday
all of you guys made good posts for me and were very supportive, sending replies to all the posts now
Hi breh, i and the female VP are actually v close, she comes and goes between this office and our NYC office. She's the one who helped me find my mentor. She's really cool.