Why being an associate sucked (for me)
The list is pretty long for why I just did not enjoy being a banker. Most are obvious, but some are not. Feel free to email me if you have any questions:
No control over your time. Just spent the day working from 8am until 2am and about to log off? Too bad, so sad! Here come some comments from the client 2 timezones over who is nervous for their roadshow tomorrow - maybe you'll sleep tomorrow!
The amount of time you spend in powerpoint is absolutely insane - you're more often than not a glorified graphic designer for some clients (yes, even with the incredibly talented graphic designers you are pinging in Asia to turn slides as fast as your senior bankers demand)
You are pitching a lot more than you realize and sometimes aren't even looped in when things fall through. "Hey MD so and so, whatever happened with the bake-off deck we put together for the client over 2 brutal sleepless weeks?" Guess what, you lost the bakeoff 2 days ago because the client went with their college buddy, but your MD just 'forgot' to mention it to you
Modeling and I never clicked. Yes, I tried to devote every waking hour outside of work to practice, but it always took me a little longer to build and cross-check analysts work. There are tons of memes about how shitty associates are at modeling as compared to analysts, so I know I'm not alone, but it was definitely frustrating.
Everyone you work with is miserable. Analysts are just biding their time until they leave (recruiting for PE often happens weeks after they start and so they have offers for their next job in hand almost a full 2 years in advance - it's insane), other associates are unhappy and gossiping about how terrible every single senior banker is and how awful it is to work with each analyst they're staffed with, senior bankers are pissed off because junior bankers never seem to be able to decipher their scribbled notes or one word emails into client ready materials - it all takes a toll on your mental health pretty quickly
The money really isn't that great relative to the hours expended. I left my firm, 9 months before I would have been eligible for the VP promotion (a promotion I doubt I would have gotten anyway). My base salary was $225K, but I had worked every single holiday except Christmas Day and Thanksgiving, on average I worked 60 hours a week and most important of all: my time was not my own, at any peaceful moment whether I was sleeping or finally eating a meal with my significant other or a friend could be completely derailed by the vibration of my phone