is investment banking good enough for top MBAs?

sallyawp
Thu, 03 Aug 2006 10:59:45 +0000

I will be brief, replying only because I’m so amused by epoch’s naivete.


While your website references are charming, just because careerbuilder or cnn lists a job as “hot” does not make it so. And since when was a starting salary of just under $42,000 per year (according to the lists you cited) well above average? A not insignificant portion of the IT industry has been and is moving overseas. Yes, I’m sure there will always be IT jobs here, but a lot of software development, for example, is being done in India and Russia right now, as I write this message. A healthy phenomenon? It depends on your perspective. I doubt the unemployed software developer in Reston, Virginia thinks appreciates that someone in India is doing the job he was doing last year.
Let’s be frank here, companies are not outsourcing work to foreign countries in the hope that a wonderful, healthy, friendly relationship between the U.S. and whatever foreign country will emerge. Companies outsource because it makes financial sense to do so. Managers are responsible to their P&Ls each quarter. At the end of the day, BY LAW, companies are responsible only to their shareholders, and that means delivering on earnings per share.
I’m sure that my MBA program must be very sorry that they ever admitted me and granted me a degree because I never went out and started my own business so that I could help the world at large. Sadly, my innovation skills must be lacking. I can say, though, that I have helped to build my own little piece of the American economy even though, dare I say it, I have worked throughout my career with the dreaded investment bankers. I know, it’s stunning, but the Wall Street Journal has always seemed to think that what we have done is newsworthy.
I don’t know whether you’re correct when you stated that most i-banking analysts who apply to top MBA programs have just two years of experience under their belts, but you are wrong in that most are not accepted to top MBA programs with just two years of experience under their belts. Even if they were, though, two years of intense 90-hour work weeks should probably count as four years of work experience, shouldn’t it?


So let’s recap Epoch:


I hope that you will single-handedly do wonderful things for the American economy someday, but for now, understand that, to those of us actually out there in the working world, your world view seems decidedly rosy and lacking in some real world experience.