I guess I started my career in finance late but I report to VPs and Directors that are in their late 20s. There is a MD that is one year older than me. Could this hurt my chances if I search for other opportunities? Other firms may question why I’m still an associate. I feel like there is a culture when you’re in finance and at a certain age, if you’re not VP or Director, you’ll get the cold shoulder.
Lie about your age.
as long as you can show u can make me dough i dont care how old you is
A lot of people start at that level in their late 20s or early 30s. Here are some examples I’ve seen of people who had earlier jobs and then switched to finance: UN diplomat who went to graduate school, college professor who became an ER associate, medical doctor who also went to ER, lawyer who changed careers, army battalion commander, high end real estate broker, professional athlete, a whole ton of engineers who went to business school, etc.
All of these people have impressive resumes and no one will question their quality just because they did not start in finance out of college.
Of course, if you have already worked in your job for more than 5 years and are still an associate, then people will question why you haven’t been promoted.
Spot on! I don’t think people outright ask you for your age in interview so unless you tell them they can only guess… I would say progression after getting the job matters as Ohai highlighted. I’m Analyst 30 year old but I got tech work experience which is an asset in finance now… so I don’t care.
Sorry I can’t relate. I was VP before graduation.
doesn’t really matter about the title…what matters is what do you do and what’s your paycheck?
In my world that I work in, if you’re above an analyst or senior analyst, you are a portfolio manager or director of research or maybe even CIO depending on the size of the fund…Anyone above senior analyst role makes at least $600k on any year equal to or better than “ok year”…My boss last year made a tad over $1.2M all in…a big shot PM from an underperforming (to SP500) mid sized equity hedge fund…But when the SP500 has been going to the space for the past 10 years, you can under-perform and still trigger that fat incentive fee of 15%…
My point is that “analyst” has different meaning depending on which sector, industry, and company you work…Hedge fund or PE analysts, you’re doing well because you’re probably taking home $300k a year…“analyst” as some back office person such as trade operations analyst, not so good because they make around $70k a year…70k a year in NYC where one bedroom rent is 40k per year…
Also “analyst” is very different for those working for financial advisory shops and/or working under Client “Portfolio Manager”…Not all analysts are equal both pay and prestige.
He’s not necessarily talking about small buy side firms… In most financial institutions, there is a hierarchy of positions, with ranks that show a somewhat uniform position across various companies. If you are an analyst or associate, you’re considered a junior employee, and your pay is going to be within a standardized band adopted by most companies. VP is a junior going to mid level position. Director and MD are mid to upper mid positions. If you don’t show that you are climbing the title levels, that will be an indication that you are not progressing in the firm.
I started late too (29). But in my case I think it helped when I went to find an analyst job. They liked that I was more mature, knew exactly what I wanted, and wasn’t going to jump around like a 20-something employee. Worked out well for me and them.
I also work with people my age who are PMs, but you can’t let it affect you or get jealous. They started right out of college. I didn’t. Would I have started younger if I could do it all over? Sure. But I also know if I hadn’t done what I did in my 20’s (military), I would always be wondering if the grass was greener in other professions.
I agree with your statement. I certainly do this when I let my mind wander. Oh well, too old for SEAL training at this point.
never too late to serve in the armed forces
^It’s more of a grass is greener attitude. It would never work as I think too much and haven’t really believed in most of the missions that took place during my lifetime, especially the Iraq war. I would have hated to be like Gina Haspel, join the CIA before the end of the cold war and by prime of career running black sites in Thailand and dealing with the current state of US politics.
Who cares how old you are as long as your experience is right and you are killing it at your job.
without getting too much into politics…Yes, i agree with your statement however for me, I am too big of a pansy to join the armed forces. Some of you know that one of my older brothers is army vet, an officer from west point. I graduated high school in 06 so yall get the picture of his year of graduation and deployment…After the first tour, few of his friends were over at our house for bbq…one of his friends said hey ___ did you kick some serious ass over there or what…kill some dudes rambo style?? My brother with tears flowing walked up to him close and said don’t ever say as if you know anything about war or if it something cool like you see in the movies…People died, innocents died, my men died…
But to add to your point, the movie Zero Dark Thirty, although very thrilling and gut twistingly good, was an absolute failure of a movie…The movie made it out as if torture and those black sites were actually fruitful when in reality the people who were tortured just blurted out some random false information which in turn put the US soldiers in harms way for no reason searching for WMD that didn’t exist in the first place…The dudes who ran those black sites and the commanders said all in all it probably cost American more…and nothing tangible or material came out from those black sites…Also the movie makes it out as if that one giri, Maya, did 90% of the work…Well there are thousands of officers including another thousands of field agents in disguise all over the world collecting data…the culmination of these data as in …001 + .002 + .0003…made it 1.0…
but anyway what do I know right…I’m just merely an analyst at some random PE fund in NYC…Ask my brother or his friends or some ex-intelligence analysts or read many books that are out about this topic written by the very people who either oversaw or directed such actions…and no, don’t go to twitter or some blogs on Breitbart for info or some “expert” on news shows lol
Yes, I’m aware of these facts and that guy at the bbq sounds drunk. From my previous experience, I know that I would not be able to be effective in support of a mission that I believe is wrong. It is not a matter of politics.
I know a lot of people, scientists, soldiers and others, who do not support some recent missions by the US but nevertheless build weapons or act directly in support of those missions. Often, this is because those missions afford them opportunities to work on projects and express skills that would not otherwise be available. I am not interested in doing exciting work in support of a cause I believe to be seriously harmful.
yes, agreed…
We in the US don’t read too much about Iraqi population…We went in to find WMD but also to install democratic government…Let’s think about “democratic” which in layman terms means for the majority…But roughly 75% of Iraqis were Shiites and the rest were shia and very minority were Kurds which Shiites consider them nomads and borderline invaders…Shiites don’t want US democracy and they were okay with their living standards. But when a foreign army goes in and destroy all known infrastructure and in the process kill 250k civilians and install US backed president…well the 75% of the people in that country are gonna be pretty pissed off.
Disclaimer: I am not saying in any way that Kurds deserve or not deserve or Hussein should have or should have not been overthrown and not saying that Iraq was a happy land and not saying that I support or do not support any action by our government…Merely laying out the facts…Look there are plenty of oppressed, tortured people in the world who live in poverty and/or dirt poor in an unfair legal system and constantly afraid for their safety from the government…Look at Saudi, the nation by the way that funded known 911 terrorists and which more than half of them were of Saudi nationals…Remember Saudi banks are all state owned…
I didn’t join the military because I ‘believed’ in this war/that war, etc. I joined because it seemed like a good deal for me - free college, exciting work, good experience. And the whole ‘defend the country’ thing was a bonus. (this is pre-9/11 remember). I forget how young you kids are.
I left because that lifestyle (moving around every 2-3 years) is not for me. Not how I wanted to raise a family. I have buddies that are still in and approaching their 20, kudos to them.
Anyway, thread successfully hijacked. The point is, I am in similar shoes as OP, but I never said “I want to be a VP/PM/Director by the time I am 30” or whatever. You just do your job well and focus on moving your career forward. The more you worry about other people’s career paths the more you will be depressed. There will always be a Doogie Howser, CFA opening a successful HF at 27 with daddy’s money.
Agree with you on all but the last sentence…managing your dad’s money wouldn’t qualify as a hedge fund or hedge fund manager…Although there is no specific hedge fund in the rules or compliance books…
Kind of depends. If your dad is a billionaire, then your management experience is probably non trivial, and more consequentially, they’ll want to hire you because you have money (you’re not going to turn down Chelsea Clinton for an interview). Additionally, I think the implication above is that the guy would have expanded on his initial investment with outside money, which is an achievement, even if he had a head start.
If you’re just managing your dad’s 401k like a lot of finance people, then yeah, that’s not really anything…
On a side note…Chance of anyone being a billionaire: .0000315%…or roughly 1 in 3.5 million which is much higher that the odds of winning a lottery.