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The most (and least) stressful jobs in banking and finance

by Beecher Tuttle and Sarah Butcher 31 December 2015

 

 

How it is in accounting

If you work in an investment banking division (IBD), or pretty much any other sector of financial services, you are likely spend a healthy part of your day dealing with career-related stress. The working hours, the responsibilities, the external pressures to deliver consistent compelling results – they all add up. But who has it worse?

We decided to conduct an informal survey to find out. We then asked a host of recruiters and actual employees in each field to rank them based on the stress levels employees tend to face, leaving it up to each voter to qualify “work stress” as they see it. Below are the composite results, along with some notes from those who chose to go on the record and explain their thought processes. Do you agree?

1. Most stressful job in finance: Investment Banker (M&A or capital markets professional)

Jobs in the investment banking division (IBD) were the runaway choice for the most stressful job on Wall Street and in all of financial services, finishing in the top three of every ballot. The main reason is that investment bankers are confronted with the two main triggers for career stress: the difficulty of the work coupled with the sheer amount of it, particularly for analysts and associates and despite banks’ attempts to mitigate the strain. 

“The life of a junior banker is one of the last forms of legalized slavery,” said Roy Cohen, a career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide. “It is a grueling survival of the fittest existence defined by all-nighters, no time to eat well or to exercise, and compensation that has remained flat for a number of years.”

The Epicurean Dealmaker, the anonymous M&A banker behind the eponymous blog and Twitter account says M&A careers remain stressful throughout, but that the nature of the stress changes. “Juniors are crushed by work out of their control. Seniors are whipsawed by clients’ unreasonable demands,” he says. “Juniors have no responsibility for revenues, though, whereas MDs [managing directors] do. That is huge, constant pressure. MDs have (lots) more money and somewhat more life control, but much high burnout rate and obligations. Juniors rarely fired; MDs are fired all the time.”

And if you decide not to become an MD to escape this pressure?  “If you don’t get promoted to MD eventually, you’re fired,” says TED. “You can’t stay a hardworking irresponsible junior forever.”