The funny thing about refocusing this blog toward answering people’s questions is that the inflow of emails is so unpredictable. Sometimes, I’ll go a couple of weeks with no messages and then I’ll get a bunch in a couple of days, which is what’s going on currently. The email that I’ve posted below is from a soon-to-be Computer Science graduate who is asking for some advice on which type of job to take. Reading his email took me back to when i was in his shoes and made me realize that I’m getting pretty daggone old

By the way, I didn’t forget about your message, Raffaele…I’ve just been trying to put some thought behind it so I can give you a good response. I’m going to try to get something back to you by the end of this weekend.

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T.Y. wrote:

Hi Marquis,

Thanks for spending so much time on your blog, it’s great to read. I have a question regarding career management and career path. I am 23 and graduating from a top 10 school with a master’s degree in Computer Science. In 2-3 years, I see myself doing consulting/business. And more long term, I’d like do startups or vc work.

I have a choice right now to either join a startup, as a programmer, with some equity, or to join a bulge bracket investment bank, in their technology group. I think the startup will be a great learning experience, and preparation for my future aspirations to start my own company, however I am not extremely passionate about their product. While I wonder if banking would be challenging enough and help improve my problem solving skills, though given my background it will provide me plenty of business experience that I sorely lack.

My questions is which do you think would be a better choice given my mid-term and long-term goals?

I stopped recruiting for consulting jobs after I got my banking gig, a BIG mistake! I realize now that consulting is more of a right fit for me, do you see anyway I could remedy that in the near term? Does attempting to recruit again during the fall make sense?

Thanks,

T.Y.
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My response:


T.Y.,

Thanks for reading my blog and congratulations on your impending graduation. I know you must be feeling on top of the world right now. I really like the fact that you’re thinking so long-term at such an early stage in your career.

Your Computer Science background and the mention of a programming job are taking me waaaaaaay back to my former life and, because of that, I might be a little biased in one direction for your main question about the programming job versus the banking job. When I was about to graduate from college, I chose to go with a programming job at a start-up that came with some seemingly valuable stock options instead of going with one of several IT consulting offers. I had similar aspirations of starting my own company and thought the start-up would be a great learning experience that I would be able to leverage later on…that choice backfired on me and had me stuck on the hardcore techie track until I finally broke free and went to business school. In short, with my future business aspirations, I should have chosen the route that would have moved me in the business direction, but I didn’t and lost several years stuck behind a computer plugging away at Java code when I’d lost the passion for that work long before.

I guess this story pretty much tells you which way I’d advise you to go with your choice, huh? The start-up might be a good learning experience and the equity could be cool too, but that option could backfire like it did with me. I-banking will require long hours and may or may not be challenging enough for you, but it would give you a ton of business know-how that a Tech job wouldn’t provide. Rather than thinking about the choice in the short-term, try to look ahead and see which one wil provide the best foundation on which to build your career. If you look at this situation with the far-out future in mind, the banking job would most likely put you in a better position to reach your goals faster than the programming job. Your background in CS would make mastering the financial modeling part of a banking job easy and would allow you to focus on learning about business, finance, and everything else that you can get in the role. Also, it is much easier to transition from i-banking to consulting because of the intellectual rigor required in the work. I’m not saying that you couldn’t transition to consulting from a programming gig, but I’d bet that it would be MUCH harder for you to do so.

Given your desire to do consulting in the relatively near future, you probably should have stayed in the recruiting process for jobs now, but it’s too late to worry about that. For now, you’ve got to make the right move to set you up to enter a consulting firm after a few years and, as I said above, I’d go with the investment banking job if I were in your position with the same choices. BUT, the ultimate choice is yours, so take the time to consider what you want to get out of the next few years in your career and make a choice based on that…I’m just a random guy that maintains a blog, so just take my words as a perspective and not as “the gospel”.

The last question in your email was about whether you should try to go through recruiting again in the Fall to get a consulting gig. That is definitely an option for you, but not one that I would recommend. Since you will have already graduated, you probably wouldn’t be looked at by the recruiters as a campus hire. And, because you wouldn’t have started much of your career yet (if at all), you wouldn’t have the foundation to lean on as an experienced hire either. In other words, you’d be stuck in the middle, which would put you at a distinct disadvantage. At this point, your best bet would be to stick with the job that you choose for a couple of years and learn as much as you can in that time. Once you are sure that you’ve learned enough from that position, then start applying to the consulting firms and leverage that couple of years of work experience to position yourself well in the recruiting process. I’m not sure if the consulting firms would bring you in at a Sr. Analyst or an Associate level, but, whichever one you get, you’d be guaranteed to learn a lot from Day One and having some solid work experience would be helpful in getting acclimated to the work.

Let me know if you’ve got any follow-up questions. Take care and congrats again.

-Marquis