Front Office, Middle Office, and Back Office - What's worth fighting for?

Why does people look at Front Office job as a better place to work? or it is being targetted by most of the people.

and Why does MO and BO seems to be inferior than the Front office? Please share your insights

The closer you are to how revenue is generated, the more valuable you are

Probably because FO people are paid twice or more of MO or BO…

Then I need to move to FO.

But its not the case in the Philippines for freshers.

We have lots of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the Philippines that offers back office position and almost twice as the salary in our Local Banking FO operations.

Do you think it is only in the fresher years? and when it moved to mid career, FO will give huge $$ ?

BTW, is being an Research Analyst / Equity Analyst belongs to FO / MO or BO ?

That would generally be seen as front office. If a client is directly paying you for the research, as is typically the case now on the sell-side, then it is unambiguously FO. On buy-side, a research analyst should also be directly influencing investment decisions -> hence also clear front office.

Sometimes the labels between FO, MO and BO can be blurred. All else equal, FO would be seen as more presitiguous as it is generally better paid and more interesting work (although not always).

I would say that FO is not always better paid than MO/ BO. At the specialist level, the pay can be equal: again, depends which companies you compare against each other. FO offers better exit opportunities which, again, depend on the state of the market: however, it is generally easier for FO stuff to get MO jobs than the other way round (Itwouldbenicetohavesomeonewhoknowsallthat- mania is strong among certain MO hiring groups!). However, MO/BO can be very different too - there are tons of dead-end positions, and there are those with interesting careers. It is never really black and white.

For the few of us sales folks on here, the FO vs BO distinction is pretty clear. If you’re client facing, you’re FO. If you work behind the scenes supporting the client facing people, you’re BO.

There’s a huge gap in pay between the two.

^what if you just have BO?

use deoderant, body odor never helped anyone’s career

Like if you eat too much curry?

As people have said, at the high level FO means more money and more interesting/challenging work.

Having experience working in the BO at a BB and being completely realistic about what I did for a few years… anyone could do it. You didn’t need any type of finance or economic degree (even though that’s who they hired anyway but I digress). There were procedures already in place, you learn how to click some buttons and that’s your job. The raises and bonuses were pathetic, your exit opportunities are virtually zero and the people you work with were mutants/drones. And not only that but those jobs continue to get cut on the US side and outsourced to India so there isn’t even any job security. Fun stuff, really.

That’s the very end of the spectrum. I agree there are some blurred, grey areas in between where you might not necessarily be working in “true” finance FO but have a great career, making solid money with good quality of life (aka 40 hour work weeks). It’s not always so cut and dry once you drill down into the more specifics of the role.

lol, so you deal with it?