Doing a permie stint to get a leg up?

[Funkywood]

Guess this is just a rant as I've pretty much agreed to it (got pimped into it) but I'm having second thoughts about doing a stint as a permie in an investment bank.

I don't have that foot in the door of investment banking and getting a IB contract without it is next to impossible. I can get a max of £400 without it but doing stuff that isn't taking my skills anywhere, just improving them slightly.

I've agreed to take 55k + bonus for an interesting sounding permie job that will be a gentle introduction to the world of derivatives and all that, kind of like giving up the excitement of black runs and paying out for an expensive ski lesson for a while, hoping it will add to my speed when I get back out there.

The question is how long do I have to stick at it before going back to contracting in order to get the £550+ contracts that will make it worthwhile. I was hoping a year would be sufficient but my cv is full of short contracts right now.

I'm also slightly worried the market might not be so good in a year's time and I'll have lost a year of £400 per day earnings for something I won't be able to take advantage of. I'm 30 so have a while to get a return on the investment.

Did I do the right thing?

[Gonzo]

I think so. I would hope that you are able to live on 55 grand a year

But do be aware that the world moves quickly in the IB world, so what you learn there now may be completely redundant in 5 years time. The big money is in being familiar with new stuff that noone else knows.

Two years ago there was big money to be earned in RMBS* which probably are not going to make anyone a load of money anymore.









*Residential Mortgage Backed Securities

[BlasterBates]

The key thing is to get a balance of technical and business expertise. I would try after a year, if you have good technical expertise, then 1 year maybe enough. However we don´t know what the fall out will be from the subprime, so this just might make it difficult, short term. But lets face it if it is a problem the rates will also go down, so you wouldn´t be able to earn big bucks anyway. There are plenty of areas where knowledge is transferrable, and is durable e.g. calculating interest rates, or valuating options. Make sure you learn about these things and can comfortably answer questions in interviews.

[Funkywood]

Thanks Blaster, that sounds like good advice.

I'll make an effort to learn the transferable stuff. Even if I have to read up on it outside the job and then blag it.

I'm reckoning from ads that ask for banking experience but nothing specific that there's a value in just having that foot in the door and the experience dealing with traders (I'll be doing some basic support for the total non techy among them) even without specific industry knowledge. Am I putting too much value on that?

As for the market, yeah, even before the sub-prime mess there was a chance of mild recession and I guess the contract market in banks will be most affected.

But hey, maybe there'll be work rewriting the mark-to-model formulas so they don't assume that delinquency rates won't be affected by letting any muppet (no offence to muppets ) have a mortgage!

[kesm]

Guess this is just a rant as I've pretty much agreed to it (got pimped into it) but I'm having second thoughts about doing a stint as a permie in an investment bank.

I don't have that foot in the door of investment banking and getting a IB contract without it is next to impossible. I can get a max of £400 without it but doing stuff that isn't taking my skills anywhere, just improving them slightly.

I've agreed to take 55k + bonus for an interesting sounding permie job that will be a gentle introduction to the world of derivatives and all that, kind of like giving up the excitement of black runs and paying out for an expensive ski lesson for a while, hoping it will add to my speed when I get back out there.

The question is how long do I have to stick at it before going back to contracting in order to get the £550+ contracts that will make it worthwhile. I was hoping a year would be sufficient but my cv is full of short contracts right now.

I'm also slightly worried the market might not be so good in a year's time and I'll have lost a year of £400 per day earnings for something I won't be able to take advantage of. I'm 30 so have a while to get a return on the investment.

Did I do the right thing?

May I ask how many years of IT work experience you have and what kind of role you secured?

[Funkywood]

I've got 7 years development, last 1.5 contracting; though the first 2 were pretty much surfed through. Luckily, after that I persuaded my then boss into adopting .Net not long after it came out of beta and have been doing C# and ASP.Net since.

The role is supporting and developing a grid computing network that calculates possible trades as well as telling traders that their calculation is 104th in the queue when they winge about it taking longer than it did last time. I guess I'll be writing a reporting system to tell them that without ringing us guys up every 5 minutes.

[ChimpMaster]

Sounds like you've got yourself a good and interesting job. Stick at it for a while - at least a year - and bide out the forthcoming recession before jumping into a contract. After all, 55k plus bonus plus benefits probably isn't all that way off £400/day. The experience in Front Office is worth it.

[Funkywood]

That's my plan now. Here's hoping this recession is a short and mild one. The only reason I had second thoughts was that I was going to go to Australia for a year at the end of '08 which is the latest I can do the working traveller visa (I'm getting old stubbornly).

I can probably get in on a skilled migrant later but wanted to check out the work life there before commiting (as well as taking time off on the way). Still, this way I'm relatively safe if things do go bad but all being well on the economy front I can still use the via deadline as my excuse to leave. Sounds like a plan anyway

[DBA_bloke]

.

Did I do the right thing?

I think it's a sane thing to do.

IB experience is one of those Catch 22 things. Do a year and back to contracting. I have actually thought of doing the same. And maybe still will, next year. Good luck.