Disagree that sales offers the best work-life balance. What I meant was that sales offers the best money:work-stress ratio, which is different.
It’s kind of ironic, because you get all of these kids coming out of school and they have preconceptions like “dumb sales guys” and “I want to be a decision maker.” Most of them are not evaluating this risk/reward scenario correctly. They would be much better off targeting sales and making bank, but instead they kill themselves trying to get into research or IB and often fail in the process. I guess they weren’t cut out to evaluate their own prospects, let alone a company’s. Not that anybody can do sales (far from it), but it’s a heck of a lot easier than becoming a PM or steadily rising through the ranks of the IBD (and less stressful). Harsh but true.
Guess everyone defines work-life balance differently, but money:work-stress is a big component for me. The other being I work about half the hours a typical IB associate does and I’m always home for dinner (and we eat early, like blue-hair special early). I haven’t found anything that offers a better balance.
Your second paragraph basically described me coming out of grad school. All about wanting to get on the buyside and be a PM. Why? I can’t really remember to be honest. Glad I’ve found myself in the position I’m in.
Traders have the best work-life, IMO. My FX and institutional FI/money market guys are 6-4pm out here, little OT, good cash flow. And no BS politics. Just produce and you get paid. The sales folk I work with are constantly traveling and having to wine and dine (which has long run impacts on your health). And the endless politics. There is no amount of money you could pay me to do what the sales folk I work with daily have to do. And I’m sure some of these boys make solid cash.
True, not all sales positions are created equal. Having a good geographic territory is a huge bonus. Like the guys that just cover Chicago…that’s a sweet gig. Other positions are more national in nature and do require a lot of travel. Then it just comes down to personal preference. Some guys love being on the road. I don’t mind it, but I don’t have to be out as much as some. As to the wine and dine lifestyle, well, what I do to my body on an average Tuesday is worse that hanging out with clients. Plus, damn rules don’t let us have that much fun.
This is also a good point. When I attend conferences and meet up with my peers from other asset managers, some are every bit as happy as I am, and others hate their shop. But, I don’t think that’s necessarily just a sales problem. Working for a company with a bad culture sucks no matter what position you’re in.
people tell me that everything we do is sales. if your client facing you sell to clients. if you are research, you are sellign yourself to the pm. but the closer you are to the money, the higher your pay will be. assuming they have passed their hurdles, they have the most laid back job. so sales > everything else.
trader’s job is prolly the easiest overall. since you are juss executing other people’s trades and gambling most the time.
Its not 2:30 everyday. And I’m not a trader. I work 7-5ish, +/-. I wake up 615 as well. But on a nice day in the summer I’ll pull a 6-230 and I golf with some of our traders those days too. When the markets close at 2pm, its easy to get for some golf.
^so happy im not the only one. 5:30am to 2:30pm. but i typically get out at 2. i love it. so much free time after work plus the sun always shines when i leave cuz im in LA. used to these hours though since i was a kid plus i really juss need 6 hrs for a good sleep.
Trader is by far the best work life balance and if you’re good at it you make rockstar money. 8 hour days is on the high end. Usually out the door by 10:30 am the Friday non farm payrolls comes out.
But being a trader leaves you with crippling social problems. Unless someone at a social gathering yells out, “what’s 56 times 26,538?” you’re pretty much useless at parties.
Futures. Mostly equity indices (eurostoxx was my bread and butter - my regular clip size was 200-400 contracts per trade). US Treasuries on economic numbers as they moved the most (especially 10 year and 30 year). Currencies and oil from time to time but with very small size and mostly to kill time when nothing else was happening.
During my prime (a good 3 year run), making 6 figures while working 4 hours a day was the norm. I was mostly trading the Eurostoxx market off the S&P e mini and at the time they were only active at the same time from 9:30 am - 2 PM eastern time.
I think the worst part of being a trader (there are many good ones by the way) is bringing your day home. Your entourage knows right away if you had a good day or bad day. Impossible to hide it. And if you had a bad day you aren’t too pleasant to hang around with.
^ Does this apply to more the prop guys or the bank guys as well? If I dial up my FX man at Big5 shop, he’s not really taking sizeable positions right? He’s just more matching buyers and sellers and taking his pips. Or the guys trading money market for 3bps spreads? I always figured these guys have it made, easy hours, no position stress, and probably decent coin.
A good metric to use here would be annual income divided by hours worked per week. For example, someone who made 100k per year (junior analyst fresh out of school) working 50 hours per week would have a ratio of 2,000. For sales people, add the number of hours going out to dinner, playing golf w clients, flights, etc. to hours worked. By the age of 30, if your ratio isn’t north of 10,000 (i.e. making 500k per 50 hours worked), you’re probably doing something wrong.