In my experience you are exactly correct. IF you are a new mba or BS these firms are looking for you to work long hours. THe pay seems good until you add up the hours. The top firms expect you to essentially live at work. Now this is all good experience but I'm not sure that taking these types of postiions indicates that you are truly intelligent. To me it indicates that you either are fine with having no life outside work, or you were not very smart and did not do your research prior to committing a lot of time and money to get into a situation where you are signing up for indentured servitude. A few people will advance up the ladder at these firms for a price. The rest will simply be chucked out during the next downturn and thanked for all their hard work - which when they divide the hours worked by the pay, turned out to be a great deal for their employer. At that point you can start your own business. IMHO the truly smart folks start building their own business from the start ....
If you want a standard of living up to par - in this case, cash flow discounted into the present - you have to put in the long hours! Its a exponential cash flow curve, ie. your pay dramatically shoots up. Name a job that doesnt require 70-90hrs for recent graduate? If you work for a prop firm, who's to say that you WONT work 90 hours? Do you expect a 45 hour work load? Look at Junior Analyst, putting 15-20 additional hours of work to study for the CFA in addition to 60+ hours at their position. Prop traders who have to learn the ropes are expected to put in a decent amount of hours as well. <b>Think of it this way: the long hours and good pay is a drawback to having some form of INSURANCE. Low risk, high reward with the added kicks of long hours. There's no free lunches in this market people...</b>
You really need to love running your own business and you need to love this business in particular.. One bad year is not a reason to leave something if you really enjoy it. You can do very well in this business and build your own venture and beat the salaried numbers you mention. Working at a large hedge fund might get you more dollars ... you certainly wont have as much freedom and there will be a lot of other people reviewing your every decision.
Remember the fallacy of the lottery: just because a few people make big dollars in a few large corporations does not mean that you will be one of them. The financial business and many other industries play people with this notion that they need to work long hours to succeed. There are lots of smart options that put you in control. If you want to work 70- 100 hours per week then do it ... most people would rather not and would highly prefer to have time for a family life and to accomplish this requires some planning and smarts .... These options exist: you just need to look for them ....
Absolutely correct. This notion is fed to all class of workers. A myth created by upper managment to squeeze more juice from each rung in the ladder. My grandfather always said "work smarter, not harder".
WHat i find amazing is the fact that all these new college grads are coming onto the board looking for the best possible firms and recommendations.....yet when you pull up their name , they have no info, no e-mail, no interests , zilch....I know that if I was looking for work I'd have a way to be contacted, id have some info on me regarding where im from , how I can be contacted ect...it;s part of networking...I also find it funny that recent IVY league grads aren't;t contacting Lehman , schwab, herzog ect...
You wrote, "At that point you can start your own business. IMHO the truly smart folks start building their own business from the start .... " This might be great an all in THEORY. The All American entrepreneurial dream and that's what I'm pursuing. But how does one start a biz if you have NO experience and NO capital? $10K-$25K that most prop firm wants you to start out is NOT enough start-up capital in trading for someone to start learning AND earning an INCOME STREAM from his initial $10K capital base AND paying bills. With no experience and pressure to pay back loans and bills for a new college graduate, his probability of success is small. Whereas if he starts out from college and has a steady income from a job that he might dump EVENTUALLY, at least he gets $ to pay off his student loans, learn the industry, save some $, and maybe trade or work on trading systems on the side for a few years on a small acct that he does NOT mind blowing away. And after a while, when he's ready he can always start his own biz and trade with MORE CONFIDENCE. Don't you agreed? In trading, we all play with odds every single day. Don't you want to put the odds on your side of success? A new fresh guy right out of college has way too many hurdles and pressure to do all those things right off the bat and plus the monetary pressure of bills and can't trade properly. As horrendous as corporate world may seem to you us(including ME!), I still glad I did it so I had the experience, credentials and CAPITAL so I can now trade prop for a yr with so so results and not put me into financial ruin. Of course, you can start your biz right out of college, but doing what? You gotta learn the ropes then go out and strike on your own. You wrote," " I don't know about you, but I've WORKED HARD at prop trading. I've put in MANY and MANY hours researching, STUDYING old trades, LOOKING at my MISTAKES, REFINING my strategy, etc. The way you put it making $ in the market is so easy. Just plop down $25K at a prop shop and start trading and the MONEY WILL JUST START TO ROLL IN and you enjoy the INDEPENDENCE of being your OWN BOSS! All from day one?! WTF?! That's bs. That's why 99% of traders fail, because they UNDERESTIMATE how DIFFICULT this game is! You have to WORK HARD. And LONG HOURS to figure out you "edge". Sure, you only work 6.5hrs/day that the market is open. But a lot of prop traders I know work AFTER the market to make income to supplement their prop jobs since they are not getting any salary. So, it still adds up to 70hrs/week. Once you figure it out, then it's "easy" because you will be just executing your edge every day and money just rolls in. Until your edge goes away.... To make ANY kind of good $ in life, you gotta work hard. There's just no way around it unless you won the lotto, but that's not work! haha.
absolutely correct do the due diligence listen to the managers, but talk to the actual traders when you visit
I would also suggest that when he/she finds a few shops that appear desirable to spend a full day at each of them. Watch everybody carefully, notice how they talk, how they type. It is the little signs you should be looking for. Lets face it you can get the same deal almost anywhere but not the same atmoshpere that may be condusive to learning how to trade.