For people who were out there looking for jobs back then, was it the opposite of now? i.e. were employers struggling to find people? I’m just wondering what the job market is like during the boom times. TIA.
In 2004, things were awesome if you were trying to get a job as a mortgage broker.
yup 2004 was the sh!t. I was a BOM and I was getting offers for BOM jobs every other week. Looked like I was going to finally break mid 30s for my salary. Just remembering the day I could finally be able to afford processed lucheon meats brings a tear to my eye.
Great idea - I’m going to start looking for work in 2004! Why didn’t I think of that before?
The 2000s have been more or less a lost decade unless you’re John Paulson or Jim Chanos.
In 2004 I used to light my cigars with $1000 bills…now I’m reduced to using $10s. Truly a sign of the desperate times we live in.
Back in 2004, I was the IBanker in “models and bottles” - it was a sweet life making $65k base and ordering $200 bottles of vodka (chicks on both arms). Now, I sneak alcohol into clubs and never get l@id. A sign of the times we live in.
I think the glory age of jobs was the 98-00 period. This is what I’ve heard but I didn’t graduate until 2001 and was in accounting through 2005 so who knows.
agree with prev poster, 98-00 was the ideal. 03-04 the mortgage industry in general was hot; as a mortgage broker I was blowing out most of my friends who went into I-banking and I was running my own company. Things looked far brighter than Ibanking. 05-06 the cap markets caught up and overtook main street. Trading in particular was a sweet gig; fixed income traders - everything from RMBS, CMBS, ABS, CDOs, the entire alphabet soup - was hot hot hot. Right now, its actually not as bad as 01 imo. Last time the companies chopped the juniors and kept the seniors on; this time they have taken the opposite approach. Granted if youa re graduating form school right now, it must seem horrible. When I graduated in 2001, no one I knew; not friends who went to Wharton, Stanford, Michigan, etc., was able to land a good position on a major iBank. The only ones who got into finance went to boutiques. Some of those boutiques are getting awfully big though. I suspect we will be redefining the list of bulge bracket firms very shortly.
2007 was the best. I was turning down interview offers left and right from top funds because they didn’t fit nitpicky requirements like being located in the right building in Midtown or not having enough hot research assistants on staff. Nowadays I would pay to have the opportunity to interview with firms in Chelsea staffed with hairy fat g@y man-bears if they were putting up good performance and raising assets.
Ha, not having enough hot research assistants.