Thoughts on Banking!

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Go to the brokerage side all the way, especially if you can get into IB, ER, or some other analytical capital markets role

IB or ER for sure… I can’t help but believe them when they say corp banking gets mindnumbingly boring.

Depending upon your personality, IB or ER definitely best route. No brainer. Corp Banking is good too, but you can always go there later if desired.

Definitely switch to IB, especially if you want to do an MBA. Whatever your long term growth potential is, IB looks much better on your application than corporate banking.

IB as an outlook is looking better these days. But it is a more narrow field.

ER, you can learn a ton that is transferrable to a lot of places, but SS ER is going through a really rough patch, buyside ER is good, but few openings.

UPDATE: So despite my boss’s assurance, it’s been 6th month and I’ve not been transferred to my hometown in regional corporate banking office. I didn’t opt for the transfer to investment banking because couple of people left the department due to poor management style of ‘big guy’ there. Declined the offer from investment management subsidiary because I was really looking forward to moving back to my city, close to family and friends, although I knew (and already mentioned above) that corporate banking is monotonous and operational work. I was thinking about taking up side gig and make the most of living in my hometown, but F**K HR and its bureaucratic red tape.

Anyways, to cut long story short, I’m close to few senior guys in investment management subsidiary of the bank I’m at. And they’ve again extended me the offer to join equity research team and even choose the sectors I would like to cover. Only downside, I won’t be moving back to my city (like ever) and these guys are not offering me any bump in compensation. Right now, there is shortage of buyside/sell-side analysts and they’ve been looking for an analyst for like a year now. They made me an offer 6 month back and now again, but at similar terms (they’ll match my expected 2014 salary, grade etc). Do you guys think it’s worth taking up the option, work by *ss off and ask for appraisal after completing 3month probation (as I’ll be forgoing bonus at my current position)? Money is kind of tight right now and it’s the only thing that stopped me from availing the option 6month back.

Apologies for the long post.

You should take the role if you feel like a couple years from now, you can leverage it to get a real job back in your hometown. And you may end up liking this city more than you realize. However, if you don’t see any path of progress that will lead you back to your hometown, where you want to be, then you may want to just keep looking for roles specifically in your location. Obviously you can’t always have your cake and eat it too, but personally location matters a lot for me even though I’ve moved around a lot in my life. Only you can make that call. However, also think longer term because it’s possible that you’ll find it easier to transition back to your hometown once you get a couple years work experience at this place.

Hard to say without knowing your full background but that’s how I’d be thinking about it.

That long post was hard to read, but I forced myself to do it.

Sounds to me like the offer to do ER for and IM shop is the opportunity that many here would kill for. I get that you don’t want to leave your current town right now, but assuming you are still fairly young and this is the career path you want, a bird in the hand here is worth many many more in the bush. Opportunities like that are hard to come by.

Additionally, it’s likely that your non-raise will go farther in your home town than it will where you are now, so you may have more discretionary income even if you live in (what you make sound like) a less exciting place. Save the difference and travel in your vacation time, or go and network in cities where you want to live. Ultimately, a few years when you are young is not a huge sacrifice.

All in all, I think taking the job is a good idea unless you have evidence that you will still be hot in demand applying to places that have never heard of you.

I thought that either it was a drunken post or that I myself was drunk

One point I missed on the first read: if you’re foregoing the bonus, you definitely need to negotiate with them to recomp you on that or give you a raise. It’s a substantial switching cost, and if they’ve been looking for a year, clearly they don’t have a ton of leverage.

Whaaat?

@Numi/BChad: Thanks a lot for your input, you guys are always very helpful.