Most Junior Bankers Feel ‘Disappointment’ With Pay, Aspire to Buyout Jobs

Bankers being investment bankers, in this case:

Via Bloomberg at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-25/most-junior-bankers-feel-disappointment-with-pay-aspire-to-buyout-jobs.html

-------------------------
While young bankers said they enjoy their jobs, most are dissatisfied with pay and hope to leave the field, with almost 60 percent saying they want to work in private equity, according to a survey released yesterday by headhunting firm Capstone Partnership.

“It’s been a rough couple of years for them,” Rik Kopelan, managing partner at New York-based Capstone, said in a phone interview. “Fewer and fewer plan on making it a career, because they’re working these long hours and not getting paid as well as they were.”

One investment banker who participated in the survey described a breach of the “tacit understanding” that he or she would be well compensated. Considering “the sacrifice I make in my personal life (100-hour work weeks, canceled vacations, etc.), this business has to be more rewarding,” the person said, according to Capstone.

That banker isn’t alone. Of about 2,000 associates and vice presidents in their first three years, 67 percent identified “disappointment with compensation” as one of the biggest reasons to leave the field. Almost the same percentage described their jobs as “satisfactory,” according to Kopelan.
------------------------

I know a fair amount of people who went to work on Wall Street right out of both undergrad / MBA programs. Almost all were working 70+ hours per week, if not more. One of the attractions to the jobs was the idea that you would sacrifice everything for a few years but finally earn a big enough bonus that you could either stop worrying abut money or spluge on materialistic wants. I will be very curious to see if this trend continues and, if so, how it ends up affecting recruitment to the big investment firms.

But of course, government bailouts for their risky bets, i.e., privatizing profits and socializing losses, is a pretty good game to be in, isn't it?

Try a job where you do something constructive, like MAKE something, you entitled little scumbuckets. :grr:

hours a week? Do junior investment bankers average more than $36,000 a year in salary?

I heard the military is looking for some new cannon fodder
the pay may start out small but you can work your way up to general

nuff said. greedy bastards.

If I come work for you, I will become ungodly rich. If not, you're not keeping up your side of the bargain.

Again, for the people I know, it is amazing what they sacrificed for the dollar. Multiple people ending up in the hospital, stress breakdowns, divorces, etc. all for the carrot of a huge year-end bonus.

I'm a type B personality--I'd much rather have a rewarding work/life balance, and feel like I actually have contributed something meaningful to society.

I don't know how they can whine when they are getting paid far more than people who are actually working.

http://www.businessinsider.com/banker-pay-crisis-bonus-base-millions-2011-4


The pay breaks down like this:
Precrisis: About $2.2 million a year. ($200,000 base, $2 million bonus, about 60% of which was paid in cash).
After taxes: $700,000 cash take home. $1.4 million total.
Postcrisis: $1.6 million a year. ($400,000 base, $1.2 million bonus, about 60% to 70% is in the form of deferred compensation, largely in company stock).

That's about
After taxes: $380,000 cash.