Hello,
An issue I want to explore is what if you are not good enough to progress in banking. What would you do? Would you continue to be a second-class citizen in banking earning a 6-figure money or do you quit banking and find a place where you can be a star?
This might be hard to accept to a very young person who is trying to "break-in," but there are bankers who are "stuck," literally stuck and I believe there are a lot of us.
If you ask me, you aspire to be a vice president. 9 out of 10 who did what they were supposed to can make a VP. After that, your abilities and aspirations will be tested. Long stories short, You can make good money even if you are one of the "dummies, morons and idiots," but not enough to retire in your 40s or 50s. Most of us don't have the balls to start something new like your own business.
I guess this is a post for those of us who feel stuck. If you are earning $70,000 plus bonus, its easy for you to say I will do something else. If you are $200,000 plus bonus and are asked to give up the regular salary to do something else, you will find it extremely hard to, even though your good colleagues are earning a couple of millions. But if you compare yourself with your non-banking colleagues, you are still earning a lot.
Let me summarize; you are a loser when compared to your banking colleagues, but you are (or at least you feel like) still winning when you compare yourself with non-banking colleagues. You are a second class citizen in banking, but you still feel like you are "better off" than your colleagues in non-banking.
To progress, you need skills, knowledge, will, and luck. When all these come at the right time at the right place, you will succeed, if not, you will be one of those old supporting casts in banking and will be fired in your mid-50s because banking hates old people. Those people wonder, I think, what if I went into another industry, another career path.
I conclude with this remark, sometimes you have to know when to call "quit." The older you are, the more you earn, the more difficult it becomes to call it. Obviously I don't want any talented bankers to leave banking at all, just those people who consistently struggle. Struggle to get in, struggle to change jobs. Those are actually good signs, I sometimes think, to call "quit." I sometimes wonder if the websites like these are making those who could have done something else in life do things they shouldn't have done (namely be a banker).
Some use MBA as a second chance to get into banking or CFA as a way to get into investment management. (By the way, those 2 are very different qualifications, so do look up.) Maybe give it a few chances, you can struggle for a year, but after that, you might as well find something else to do. Banking, finance wants specific people with specific backgrounds, education, experience and looks.
Maybe if you didn't get into banking as an undergrad, you should probably take that as a sign that you ought to look elsewhere and you will probably be happier.
