2024-01-08 16:57:00
A great opportunity for new graduates, high salary levels, a young working atmosphere and very rapid career development… Such is the how careers are often portrayed in the world of finance. A speech that seems to attract: many business schools, engineering schools and universities offer these specialized courses popular with students. More precisely, the professions of traders and salespeople on the markets, as well as financial analysts, promise particularly lucrative remuneration for the first hiring which is the dream of a certain number of young men and women. In order to start their career with very high incomes, young investment bankers don’t mind working long hours at the start of their career.
Speeches that are no longer always enough. Many newcomers to the job market have their own requirements, whether in terms of quality of life orenvironmental commitment For example. A dark side of the sector has also been highlighted over the last decade by publications by former trader Jérôme Kerviel presenting the ” gear “ in which he found himself caught.
Nos works with financial market professionals, most of whom are expatriates in major international capitals, thus questioning the dream that these professions can represent in the medium and long term. We followed a cohort and interviewed around forty financiers who work in some of the most profitable professions (more than €100,000 in the best years): traders, analysts sell-side and sellers. They seem to follow a two-step movement.
Out of breath after five years
In the early days, traders expressed real enthusiasm for the activity and the context in which it took place. One of them talks about his first five years of experience for us:
“I liked the team, the atmosphere, the tasks and that’s why I got there. »
They all seem very motivated by their new job and say they are very satisfied with it. In this first phase, work seems to allow the individual to find a certain personal happiness. He takes pleasure in it and it leads him to be productive. The literature sometimes describes these reflections as “ sustainable career », the sustainable career, a process by which the individual adjusts his work and his opportunities to find meaning in them. The pleasure of intellectually stimulating work, the international atmosphere of banks and the high salary intoxicate young bankers entering the job market. A career in finance is thought of as an El Dorado both for money and prestige.
After 5 to 7 years of career, this positive movement and certainties, however, give way to difficulties and questions. Are overinvestment, demands and excessive working hours worth it? The average working hours according to our respondents is 10 to 12 hours per day, with sometimes peaks of 14 or 15 hours in the case, for example, of work on an IPO. Nights of sleep are sometimes short, as an analyst with five years of experience explains to us:
“I went to sleep at 1 a.m. and got up at 4:30 a.m., and I can’t take a nap at work. »
Bankers also have a hard time eating well. They often eat on the go and late, to the point that some bankers concerned about their health do not hesitate to pay someone to cook for them:
“Until a month ago, my manager paid a 70-year-old lady to cook him food…”
Financiers also highlight ever more intense competition in the job market, with ever higher demands from year to year:
“Employability has changed a lot, you are a lot more defensive, a lot more is demanded of you, there is a lot more stress about success…”
Women are subject to specific difficulties in this very masculine environment. A traditional representation of women persists where becoming a mother is considered a withdrawal from competition because this stage of life would necessarily require time spent with children which could be used to sign contracts or maintain customer relationships. A saleswoman with six years of experience at least assumes so:
“Perhaps when you have children, you are less involved, you have lunch less often with clients, you stay less often in the evening. »
If we can expect a clear evaluation of each person’s work, correlated to financial performance, the bonuses in fact seem poorly explained and left to the discretion of the manager. In the case of an error or poor management, it is the lowest ranking person who will pay the consequences. The evaluation system by objectives, supposed to provide neutrality through figures, is in fact not egalitarian because if the calculation of performance is objective, its interpretation is subjective and can be subject to bias, particularly in terms of genre.
A strong dissatisfaction then appears: it is not enough to work a lot to be well evaluated and well paid. It is the myth of meritocracy that is collapsing.
Leaving… to stay?
In the medium term, this set of constraints causes a drop in motivation. The young banker questions his relationship with work, his career and the meaning he can give it. However, retraining remains difficult, not knowing where to go, some bankers leave the bank to finally return in the same type of position:
“My sabbatical year gave me a little more perspective on this job. It allowed me to understand more why I did it and especially why I went back: it’s essentially because I don’t know what I want to do, that it doesn’t look bad on a CV and that it pays well »
Furthermore, while one might think that hyperconsumption would be part of this financial culture, our respondents actually prefer to live comfortably without excess. They save in the event of a change of position which would be less remunerative, for example. Access to property, which is difficult in major international capitals, also encourages people to save. Staying in these major cities, particularly London, is a motivator for maintaining a job in finance.
Some seek intermediate solutions, a less exposed banking position or use their detailed knowledge of financial products in other sectors of activity. A balance of meaning in the career seems to be found when the individual accepts certain constraints to remain happy in his personal and professional life thanks to comfortable remuneration which allows him to take advantage of the numerous restaurants and bars and to have access to property. .
In contrast to this exit strategy, some people choose not to build a personal life. Work becomes a “lifestyle”, a way of life. Everything must be oriented towards optimization in non-work time in order to free up as much time as possible for work. The rest is put aside and the body is put under a lot of strain. An analyst in the sector for seven years wonders:
“Is your boss married? How do you expect him to keep a girl with the work he does…”
Those who remain are the people who find gratification in the activity and in the demonstration of their capacity for work. Or do they want to provide their family with a good education and comfortable housing, particularly in London? The loss of their job, or a significant drop in remuneration would mean a return to France (a return not experienced as a failure).
If we can think of this as contradictory to the work of traders, our work shows on the contrary that, whatever the profession, the individual seeks to give meaning to his work and to build a lasting career. After eleven years of practice, a professional explains to us:
“It’s a lot more fun than before: I decide my hours, the direction to give, the products to develop, the customer sites to prioritize… It’s much more interesting! »
A career in finance thus appears to be an Eldorado that can transform for a time into a golden prison. The happiest seem to be those who take into account the short duration of these careers in finance and regularly ask themselves questions about “the post-trading room”.
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