riverripper wrote:
Having just gone to my Kellogg 1st year reunion, I was shocked at how many people hated their jobs and really blown away by how many had already moved on to a new job. Some of this may be a result of tough recruiting and improving options. However, a lot is people taking jobs based on brand/pay without regards to other factors. It seems pretty common for some companies to give the bait and switch, this may be unintentional on their part...honestly it is very difficult for a company to know exactly what you will be doing 18 months after recruiting take place. My friends from banking all looked like walking zombies and most talked about how it was a two or three year plan before leveraging their experience for something better suited to having a life.
There is a lot to be said about really looking hard at any company you are planning on joining, get away from the folks involved in recruiting. Remember they are basically sales people, they are selling their company to you. Even if they are alums and you like them, I found it rare that they would open up about the really bad things about a company. However, alums and others I could contact who worked at companies who were not involved in the recruiting process were generally very very open about the pros/cons of their company. There were companies I decided to completely avoid based on what I learned; I felt no matter how great the brand, pay, and supposed opportunities that I would hate being there.
This is good advice. Like riverripper, I've been shocked by the number of people looking to leave their firms. To be fair, I was one of those (and I've since left) largely because I was sold what I thought was a bag of goods in recruiting and the real job didnt come close to living up to the real thing. It wasn't money in my case -- just the lesser of a few options and the only job offer I had that didn't require me to move or to go back to consulting (which I had no interest in doing) - but after a year at that gig (actually after about 2 weeks) it was clear to me that it wasn't a fit. They (recruiters) know how to market to MBAs... I had dinner with the CFO and CEO of a company that employes over 50,000 people - and yet, when the rubber met the road, the job lacked responsibility, challenge and intellectual rigor.
Some of my friends who chased money are happy - some are just wired for the 100 hour week - others are miserable beyond compare. A "sorta friend" of mine who I ran into while visiting London told me he was making $100K ish base, plus a $50K sign on, plus another $100K bonus on top of that and he was unhappy beyond belief. First class was empty and I got him bumped up - we spent the next 10 hours catching up. A year later he called to tell me he was back in town, had quit, was making half what he had been and was a million times happier. Good for him I say.
I've since gone to a non-traditional firm myself (they dont come to campus) and I couldn't be happier. I may not be making quite as much as some of my peers, but I've got everything I need: a comfortable single family home to raise my family in, a nice backyard i can spend years fighting weeds in, a interesting job, a loving wife, and I'm home by six.
The broader point riverripper makes is a good one: the 'menu' of options presented at MBA programs is woefully small when one stops to consider all the opportunities that are out there. And if you step away from either brand or money for a moment, and really think about what you would want to do, the world opens up.