How to Deal with Burnout in Finance #Finance

so without a doubt Finance attracts some of the hardest working people i’ve ever met the pure capacity to put in that many hours of work on a weekly basis is

truly impressive but i think there comes a time in almost everyone’s career where they struggle with this kind of concept of burnout this definitely happened to me during my second year of banking during various parts of private Equity and i think what’s important to

understand is that almost everyone struggles with this i think in extremely high-powered Industries like #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance in particular people are very scared to be vulnerable people are scared to admit how difficult it is to deal with something but i can tell you firsthand with a couple of rare exceptions that almost everyone struggles with the concept of burnout

so today we’re going to talk about some of the characteristics of burnout as well as potentially some strategies you can employ to improve your overall quality of life i saw this quote a little while back from a friend who also left

style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance to start their own business but it essentially says that burnout is what happens when you avoid being human for too long and i think it’s a pretty apt description when you are working week in and week out

80 to 100 hour weeks every single week you kind of just deprive yourself of the natural desire to be free the natural desire to enjoy yourself and i think everyone has a different level in which that kind of kicks in you’ll meet some people who even struggle to stomach their summer internship

and other people who will grind through four to eight years of Finance without even blinking and why i think burnout is such a difficult thing to deal with in

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance is because people in Finance tend to extract a lot

of their own personal value and identity from career accomplishments so when they start struggling with these symptoms of burnout it really challenges their own self-esteem and their ego but again i’ll say i think most bankers at some point have contemplated if you know quitting is actually a

logical choice so i think if you’re at that stage and you’re just thinking about it don’t worry i would say that’s extremely common most people don’t actually quit but lots of people have that thought lots of people struggle with the turmoil of having to put in so many

hours at work i actually think it’s pretty instructive if you experience burnout because it’s very educational for yourself in terms of what you can handle and the kind of career you want in the future so i think after a couple of years of working in

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance you’ll very clearly know kind of what you want to do next with your career if you’re interested i also have a personal blog at mattaine.com where i talked a little

bit about my struggles with burnout and how i made my career decisions i kind of want to shift our attention to what you can do on the job if you feel like you’re struggling with these issues and the first thing i think you should ask yourself is can you get by while doing a worse job and

this kind of sounds preposterous because lots of people that are attracted to Finance they are hardwired to want to do a good job you know you get good grades in school you

want to be evaluated well consistently throughout your life and it’s a very natural feeling to have but it’s one that might have a huge expense on your personal life you should think for yourself do you think you can get by if you only put in 70 to 80 of the amount of time that you are

doing now do you have to be as meticulous in all of your steps you might even think of other people in your class that don’t put in as much work as you but still get very similar results i think especially at the analyst level sometimes the spread in bonuses is so small from a percentage

basis that it’s not worth it to be top bucket analysts sometimes it’s better to be a bottom bucket analyst with your mental health intact you’ll also see this a lot among second year analysts but if you can dump your work onto someone else on a junior analyst or if you’re an

associate to a junior associate then i feel like you should feel liberated to do so there’s only so much power and leverage that your boss has over you i would say this is the tried and true method of second year analysts who have secured a buy side offer they will just push all the work

possible to people who still are trying to do a good job at work another thing and it seems almost hilarious to suggest but i find that checking your work is an extremely time consuming part of none;">Finance if you just lazily check your analysis and if there’s other kind of safeguards in place for example if you’re working with an associate then you have less of responsibility almost to check your work because checking your work can easily be 20 to 30 percent of

the entire time more tactically speaking i think it’s important to develop a good relationship with your staffer the staffer is the person that kind of manages the workflow for the analysts or the associates because if that person trusts you then you’ll generally get better work but

you’ll also have the agency to push back a little bit more and in my experience if you’re able to develop an actual personal relationship with them then they’ll be more understanding when you kind of need more time to yourself so let’s say you’re already doing all that

you’re already kind of mailing it in and the hours are still horrible the next thing i would think of is how much leverage you actually have over the group because if you’re at a small boutique or maybe a satellite office for a firm you might have more leverage than you actually think

because replacing you hiring someone new as well as training them could be a several month process and i actually think if all you’re asking for is a one or two week vacation then the senior person really has to think about what’s better for the firm i actually think there’s a lot

of value in trying to have a candid conversation with your boss most people they will kind of torture themselves in their head they’ll think about how much they work but then they’ll put a smile on so everyone actually thinks that nothing is wrong if you actually take the time and

communicate very clearly and directly to your superior maybe it’s your staffer or maybe someone even more senior then i think there’s a chance that they would actually respond humanely i don’t think this is guaranteed by any stretch some people are just set in their ways and some

people have to have a vicious kind of mentality in order to succeed in Finance but i think there are people who would respond to a very candid conversation and might not even

be aware of how difficult things are for you so let’s say you’ve already climbed down those two rungs of the ladder well i think at that point you kind of have to take more extreme action and i would say that you should actually start thinking more seriously about laterally to a

different group or maybe even to a different firm if you’re in a really bad group at your firm and other groups at your firm are relatively better i don’t even think it’s that hard to switch after a year or so as long as you put an average work it’s relatively easy to switch

i think most of the larger investment banks are going to have the capabilities to put you into a different office or put you into different product group and if it is a firm wide thing i think thinking about switching to a different firm is extremely reasonable it happens all the time there’s

a lot of cyclicality and attrition in these jobs and i don’t think you should feel ashamed of not liking the culture at a specific firm i also think it’s important to think about the bonus timing because lots of people’s bonuses are going to be kind of on a yearly basis you get

paid a huge lump sum that’s maybe 50 of your compensation at the end of the year if this is the case i think it’s valuable especially if you’re like a first or second year analyst who doesn’t have a lot of money yet so just stick it out let’s say for example you

decided you wanted to take a sabbatical or wanted to recruit for a different industry having even just a single Finance bonus is going to give you a lot more downside

protection and i think just gives you a lot of psychological comfort but there does come a point for lots of people where enough is enough they feel like that they can’t reasonably sustain themselves while also working this many hours but one last thing i would urge you is consider at least

doing four years of work in Finance it’s a little bit of an arbitrary figure but when i was in color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance and thinking about leaving and i talked to older mentors many people suggested that i try to do at least four years i think a little bit is because the two plus two path is pretty well known lots of people go to business school and then

other Industries afterwards so there’s a little bit of a history and a trend to doing four years i think lots of careers in

style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance are structured so after four years you’ll already have received one or two promotions and you’ll have amassed a large financial cushion i don’t have as much specific data about this but i also

think that when you reach this level of credential and experience it’s easier to switch back into Finance should you change your mind down the road i think i want to

close by saying that your career is a deeply personal path you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone if you don’t want to lots of people experience burnout and leave none;">Finance because they know that’s the right thing for them i just think it’s important to be aware of other intermediary measures you can take to maybe improve your quality of life and that lots of people face these symptoms of burnout but still just kind of try to

persevere through so good luck with whatever you’re dealing with and i’ll see you in the next CashNews.co you