I get the feeling that Karl is quite a lot like my sister - they both work hard, they both have achieved quite a lot but for some reason, they refuse to take credit for what they have achieved and they constantly put themselves down, choosing to focus on their problems rather than their achievements. One thing does stand out for me in Karl's situation - he has managed to work in two different banks in Singapore, granted he wasn't in a particularly senior position, there are still many young graduates out there who would give an arm and a leg for that kind of opportunity and they would work 14 hours a day without complaining just to prove themselves. Just to get your foot in the door in the banking industry like that is an achievement already. Furthermore, many young people do start off in very junior positions when doing their first jobs and you have to lower your expectations when you are just starting off - in the words of my reader Di Talasi, it is a rite of passage: you're expected to swim through rivers of shit before people take you seriously. I have a good friend and former colleague who did exactly what Karl did in his first job - he worked for the mortgage department of a Swedish bank and spent his days processing mortgage applications. He said that it was the most dull job ever given the repetitive nature of the paperwork and on top of that, he had a boss who demanded that they work extra fast to increase productivity. He had a miserable time at that Swedish bank but has since gone on to do great things in corporate finance, he has proven himself in swimming through his river of shit in that Swedish bank. I am pleased to tell you that's he has gone on to do much greater things in his career! So don't be disheartened if you had a crap first job, it's a rite of passage.
A rite of passage: rivers of shit
Just like my former colleague and Karl, good grief, I had to do some pretty shit jobs after graduation just to gain enough work experience and prove myself - I too had to swim through my rivers of shit. Could I have been luckier, could I have done better jobs? Sure, but I had little choice but to work for whoever was willing to give me a chance back then as I was young and inexperienced. It wasn't like I had family connections here in London - no, I was entirely on my own and it was tough. I fell into sales because it was the only opening I could get. After all, sales directors were willing to give me a chance because I spoke so many languages and I was looking for a job which allowed me to use my languages. I'm not trying to defend the poor decisions I've made, but there is a saying that comes to mind: good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement. I made a lot of poor decisions along the way - the thing is not to beat yourself up over those bad decisions that you would have never made in hindsight, but to make sure you learn your lessons from those decisions. Like Karl, I think the one poor decision I made was staying with a company for too long because I got comfortable - I wasn't happy, I wasn't progressing the way I would have liked to but I was gainfully employed and earning decent money. It was probably a combination of being lazy and lacking the confidence to shift to a new company that stopped me from looking for a new job then, I have since learnt to be a lot more aggressive and bold when it comes to pursuing new opportunities if and when they appear. So Karl has nothing to be ashamed about - he did some terrible jobs (I don't even think they were that bad). That's fine - that is his river of shit that he had to swim through.
Unfortunately, Karl has had the misfortune of having to deal with some really difficult people at work - he has given me a lot more details about one psycho boss he had, but all I can say is that he is extremely unlucky. If you have the bad fortune of having to work under someone like that, you really only have two choices: you can either find a way to get along with them or you can simply leave. I once had a COO who was brought in to make all of us do our jobs better - good grief, his job was to criticize everyone and scrutinize everything we did. Believe me when I tell you that everyone hated him and it was not the way to motivate us to be more efficient! Having served NS, I realized that the way to survive working with someone like that was to make sure you were never the focus on attention - I knew he had a problem with one of my colleagues from accounting so as long as I could keep a relatively low profile, she would be the one being scrutinized the most. In the meantime, I actually made a genuine effort to get along with that COO, nobody else in the company actually tried to be nice to him apart from me. I didn't do it because I liked him - no, I did it because I could sense that he felt isolated and was desperate for some kind of social interaction in the office. To his credit, we did actually have a few fairly pleasant conversations and I remember my colleagues being like, "I can't believe you're chatting with him, he's so creepy." It got messy, this COO made life so hard for her that she decided to resign, then sued the company for making her work conditions unbearable - that was the beginning of the end for that COO and he left soon afterwards.
I will always remember this incident from my 20s, I had a colleague who behaved in a very rude manner in the office and I duly ran to my boss then to report the incident. My boss simply turned around and said, "I'm very busy, you're no longer in school and I'm not your teacher - I'm not here to police the behaviour in the office. You can't come running to me over things like this. If you don't like what Nigel said, then just stay away from him and ignore him, but don't come running to me each time something like that happens." In hindsight, I could have either dealt with Nigel directly by challenging his behaviour, or I could have chosen to ignore it given that we didn't work on the same team. But what I did learn from that incident was a simple lesson: if you want something done properly, do it yourself. If you want a desired outcome, then the best thing to do would be to take matters into your own hands rather than to expect someone else (a HR manager, a director, a boss etc) to give you what you want. Don't get me wrong, I empathize with Karl - I may have summarized a lot of what he has written, but it suffices to say that he has had more than his share of bad luck when it came to working under difficult people and I do truly empathize. But unfortunately, no amount of sympathy or empathy on my part is going to change the fact that we all may run into people like that at some point in our working careers and the only sensible response to this issue is to learn to be prepared to deal with this ourselves. Whilst it may be nice to have a boss you can run to when things go terribly wrong in the office, the only person you can really rely on at the end of the day is yourself.
I don't know why Karl has this desire to move into corporate finance because of the "complexity and prestige". Quite frankly, I have looked at his CV and I think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with what he has been doing so far. Okay, it may not be the most exciting part of finance but let's put it this way: if you're looking for fun and excitement, you shouldn't be working in financial services. People work in this sector because it is very well paid, not because it is fun. There are many jobs within corporate finance - you can either work on the structuring side (which involves spending long hours in the office doing a lot of tedious paperwork - Karl would probably hate it). Then there are a lot of people in the accounting department which once again, isn't fun and it is not something Karl can do anywhere since he hasn't trained as an accountant. Then there's what I do which is essentially sales at the end of the day, which once again, Karl is questioning whether or not is right for him. Look, I'm happy to do sales - I'm good at it, I have plenty of experience in sales, it is something I can do well, it can be very lucrative and I enjoy a lot of freedom because I am mostly working for commissions. I can take long holidays and for the first time in my life, I have money to spend on epic holidays. When I was a student, I had all the time in the world to travel but no money to travel. Then when I started working, I was so busy - I had the money to travel but simply didn't have the time. I now have both and currently spend between 10 to 12 weeks a year on holiday. You may look at the amount of money I earn and the amount of holidays I take a year and think it is a rather enviable position to be in but let me be clear about one thing: I work in sales. I am a salesman - it's just what I do.
What is wrong with sales?
I can see why Karl has been keen to get out of sales - in his very long message to me, I can relate to a lot of the problems he faced. Where do I begin? He had poor management, he didn't have a nice team to work with, he wasn't supported, he didn't have the right products to sell to his clients, the products he was selling were neither attractive nor popular and under those circumstances, even the best salesman in the world would struggle to sell much. They say a good workman never blames his tools - well that doesn't apply in the world of sales. Let's put it this way, I am supposed to be promoting at least 15 projects at the moment, but 90% of the money I have raised have gone to just 3 projects and the vast majority of that has gone to just one project. Why? This is because that is the most lucrative, most attractive investment proposition that sells itself - so there's nothing all that intelligent about what I do for a living. I am just a salesman who happens to have a darn good product to sell and I'm extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Of course, under the wrong circumstances, working in sales would truly suck if you didn't have the right product to sell - I have this memory of when I was like 13 or 14, this was back in Singapore. I went bowling with my friends one Saturday and this young lady had to chat to people like me coming out of the bowling alley to persuade us to join 'the Bookworm Club' (for a fee of course, of which she would get a cut). She was extremely pushy and I am sure she bullied a few people into signing up with her, but I basically burst out laughing in the middle of her sales pitch and walked away. She then accused me of a rude asshole and wasting her time. Well, in response, I called her a loser, I said that she was wasting her life doing a terrible job like that: that she should have studied harder, went to university and got a better job.
Well, it is perhaps misleading to say that both myself and that young lady who approached me at the bowling alley work in sales - she has a bloody tough job having to pitch strangers at a bowling alley whilst I have a network of regular clients I deal with. She probably made a few dollars on each sucker she managed to convince to sign up and she probably had a boss who gave her targets like, "you must speak to at least 200 people today and make sure you get at least 25 of them to sign up. If you hit your target of 25 for three days in a row, I will give you a bonus." That's pretty much the case for people selling low-value items - it is a numbers game. I remember this sushi seller in Raohe Night Market in Taipei: it was very late and most of the market had already packed up for the night. But this guy was still selling sushi and I felt sorry for him, so I bought a pack of sushi from him. The sushi vendor tried to persuade me to buy more at a discount and I told him that I couldn't possibly eat two packets, that's way too much for me even if it was delicious. He then told me that business had been bad that day as it had rained all day and for much of the evening, so he didn't sell much and he couldn't keep the sushi overnight because of the raw fish. So this sushi vendor also worked in sales but he needed to sell a large amount of sushi on a daily basis in order to make a good profit, if he had to throw a large amount of sushi away at the end of the night, then he would make a loss. It was a hard life for him. The beauty of working in corporate finance is that I only have to sell an idea to the investor, unlike the sushi vendor in Taipei, I don't have any stock that I need to shift before the fish goes bad - if I don't sell anything today, I don't incur a loss. Gosh, I have a much easier job in comparison.
So really, the question whether or not Karl should stick with sales or get out of sales is a moot one - it would depend completely on his circumstances: does he have a good product to sell? I have a friend Christopher who is an estate agent and before you roll your eyes, I have to state that he is a highly successful estate agent who handles high end luxury properties. He makes a lot of commission each time he sells one of those multi-million dollar properties and thus that makes him insanely rich. I calculated that he only needs to sell around 5 or 6 of such properties a year to keep him in the lifestyle he is accustomed to but of course, he usually sells a lot more than that. Why do we get a bad impression of estate agents then? That's probably because there are some estate agents out there who are desperately trying to flog low-end properties and are struggling to make ends meet, giving the profession a bad name. Goodness me, I remember the sleazebag estate agent I had to deal with back in the day when I was looking for a place to live as a student in London back in the late 1990s. After all, I was a poor student then and didn't have a lot of money, so I was looking at the bottom of the market for somewhere cheap and the kind of estate agents who offered that kind of cheap accommodation for students were not the kind of people who had many redeeming features - they would never ever sell the kind of properties that Christopher is selling or become as successful as he is. Same industry, seemingly same job title as an estate agent - but of course, not all estate agents are as successful or indeed as rich as Christopher. Therefore, perhaps it is not really the job per se, or the industry, but the individual and the roles that they play within that very large industry?
A lot of it boils down to working for the right company and being given the right product to sell. Christopher has awesome properties to sell - he often posts 'previews' on Instagram of the latest properties he is selling and he doesn't even need to say anything, the video already does all the selling because it is an extremely luxurious, beautiful property. It does make Christopher's job a lot easier as all he has to do now is to simply sell the property to the highest bidder, deal with some paperwork and then collect his commission - not a bad job if you ask me! But if you were working for one of those low-end estate agents in a place like London dealing with short-term student accommodation, you're dealing with those in the market trying to look for the cheapest possible options and thus profit margins are extremely thin. So turning back to our friend Karl, I can see that he has had a bad experience with sales because of a number of factors that were out of his control: poor management, a bad team to work with and most of all, inappropriate products for the market to sell to. I don't believe in the cliches about "he can sell ice to the Eskimos" - that's just complete bullshit. Karl had a hard time in sales through no fault of his own, not because he sucked at sales. Even if you gave Christopher or myself a bad product, neither of us would be able to sell it. So I would urge Karl to keep an open mind about sales under those circumstances.
So should Karl try to get into corporate finance? I can't answer that question, only Karl knows the answer and he needs to do a lot more research because right now, I think he sees it as this one of the more prestigious sectors within financial services (though some might disagree). Whilst I do work in corporate finance, I would caution Karl against putting so much hope in corporate finance because I have seen people leave corporate finance not because there is anything wrong with the industry, but because of poor management or simply working with the wrong people. Hence having a good boss, having nice colleagues is still vital and really, that applies no matter what industry you work in. Oh this reminds me of an old friend from Singapore - let's call her Kelly. She hated Singapore and always wanted to leave and she used to tell me, "I don't care where I go, as long as I get out of Singapore, I'll be happier for sure." So one thing led to another, eventually Kelly managed to settle down in the UK like me after marrying a British man. However, life was not a bed of roses for her here: her career stagnated, her husband had a job in a small town in the middle of nowhere so she was bored out of her brains because there were very few opportunities for her in that town. The UK was not the promised land she had hoped for - so even if she was able to live here, she still needed many other things to find fulfillment. She eventually got pregnant and had a baby, becoming a full time housewife but I know that there is a part of her that is very disappointed with the way things turned out for her here in the UK. It's not a total disaster - she has a wonderful, loving husband who is taking care of her, but she had to give up all her dreams and become a housewife and full time mother.
Karl is a smart enough person, oh he's definitely capable enough to get a job in corporate finance but I am worried that he may end up like Kelly. You see, Kelly made the mistake of simplifying a complex issue: "if I can just get out of Singapore, all my problems would be solved." Well, she certainly got out of Singapore, but she realized she still had a ton of issues she had to deal with and they weren't going to magically resolve themselves the moment her flight landed at Heathrow airport. Likewise, I can see that Karl is facing a number of challenges in the work place and even if he does get a job in corporate finance, those issues aren't just going to go away - not till he learns to deal with them. All I can say is that I do work in corporate finance and I see a lot of people in my industry who aren't exactly happy with their jobs. I'm not suggesting for a moment that Karl won't be successful in corporate finance - if he manages to land a job with a good company, of course I am sure he will go far in the industry. I'm just cautioning against any kind of simplistic approach to this kind of issue. This is especially the case given that Karl has made it clear to me that he gets bored with tedious, boring, repetitive paper work and he is also not sure if sales is right for him - thus if we apply both of these caveats, then that rules out most of the jobs within corporate finance for Karl. Thus this does suggest that he needs to find out a lot more more corporate finance before deciding that this is definitely his "golden ticket" to wealth, success and happiness.
You probably know what I am going to say: no, this is not right for Karl at this moment.What is the purpose of a masters degree for Karl at this stage? Is it going to get him the chances he needs, to for example, secure a job in corporate finance? Again, the simple answer is no, it wouldn't do that. It would serve only one purpose: it would allow Karl to procrastinate looking for a better job. Here's the problem with masters degrees: they are expensive! Karl mentioned a masters degree programme at SMU: those cost roughly S$68,000 for an MBA programme at SMU. That's just the fees alone without any of the additional costs - what about the fact that you have to spend about 18 months doing it, you're giving up one and a half years of income. So even at a very modest estimate, you need to spend S$100,000 to get a qualification, so the question we need to ask Karl is this: would it be worth that money? The answer depends on a simple calculation: if Karl has roughly another 30 years of working life left and he takes 1.5 years out to do this masters, would he recoup that S$100,000 over the next 30 years? Would this masters qualification raise his income by at least S$3,333.33 a year over the next 30 years? The answer is "we can't tell, we don't know." Universities cannot guarantee that you will get good jobs after you graduate. Whether or not you will get a good job upon graduation depends far more on other factors like what kind of jobs you apply for and how you perform at those job interviews. Indeed, there was a recent case of a woman Fiona Pok who successfully sued her university. after failing to get a decent job after graduation.
A very expensive mistake to make
Thus would it be sensible to spend 18 months and at least S$100,000 on a qualification that may or may not yield any positive outcome? I would say that in the absence of any kind of certainty, I would say no, it wouldn't be a wise choice. It is a gamble: you might be better off juts taking that money to the nearest casino and betting it on the roulette wheel. I get the feeling that Karl is contemplating this because it does give him some relief from his job hunting - it gives him a good excuse to be unemployed if he is simply waiting for the term to begin at the university, then if he becomes a full time student again, he is spared the difficult challenge of looking for a new job for a while at least. Whilst it may be a face saving gesture, I actually believe that it would be an expensive mistake. Sure it may be easier to say, "I'm a full time student doing a masters degree" as opposed to "I'm unemployed and looking for my next job", but given the opportunity cost of S$100,000 and 18 months of his time, I would say that Karl is definitely better off without doing a masters degree. Right now, what Karl needs to do is to figure out exactly what area of finance he wants to work in and he is simply not going to find the answers in a university. Karl wants someone to tell him what to do, to give him all the answers and that person is not going to be a professor at a university - no way. I'm afraid Karl is once again barking up the wrong tree: if these teachers at the universities were so wise about the business world, then why are they teaching a course at a university, drawing a modest (but respectable) income there, instead of making millions in the business world? I certainly wouldn't go running to them for those answers because they simply would not know enough about the corporate world.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that all masters programmes are a waste of time, what I am saying though is that you need to know exactly what you want to do with your career before you spend that kind of time and money committing to a masters degree. Many people who do such masters programme do so only after working a few years and knowing exactly what they need to further their careers - they're not some lost sheep needing direction wandering into a university looking for answers, instead they are very determined, motivated and driven people who know exactly what they want out of that experience. I'm sorry but that's just not Karl at the moment, he's more like a lost sheep looking for answers and Karl, the professors at the university are not the right people to help you find those answers because only one person can get those answers for you. That's right, you need to do your own dirty work, you can't take short cuts or be lazy. If you want answers, then the person who knows you best is yourself - not some professor at a university. There's a very simple reason for this: you have every incentive to make this work for yourself because you don't want your life to suck; whilst the professors at the university are not paid to care, they are just paid to teach you the syllabus and whether you go on to be wildly successful or if you end up unemployed, none of that really matters to them. It's not like they get some commission if you go on to make a lot of money or if they will be punished if you end up a complete failure in life. So, why would you expect them to care enough about what eventually happens to you after you graduate?
So what should Karl be doing instead? Well, ironically, he is already taking the right steps by talking to people like me to find out more about what his options are and to his credit, he did track me down. Now what he needs to do is to keep talking to people like me: older, more experienced working adults who have been there and done that in terms of looking for jobs and are also in the position of hiring younger people. No disrespect to the people who work at universities but when was the last time any of them had to apply for a job in the corporate world? So unless they have a sibling, a child or a close friend who is going through that process, what would they know about what gatekeepers are looking for when sorting through hundreds of applications and CVs? Karl has a lot of homework to do and I can only point him in the right direction, he needs to find the answers he is looking for himself. So, on that note, I think I've covered a lot already for Karl. Over to you my readers: what do you think Karl needs to do? What are the questions he needs to ask himself in order to gain clarity about what direction he should be heading in for his career? Where would he find the answers he is looking for? As your own personal experience, where did you manage to find help when it came to good career advice? And should Karl be seriously considering a masters degree or is that just a waste of time if he still doesn't quite know what he wants to do with his career? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Many thanks for reading.
Just want to point out that the value of MBAs isn't in the education or degree, like you said if that person is so capable they wouldn't be earning a modest salary at a business school (HOWEVER, the teacher could actually be a professional who is just contributing his time outside of work which is pretty common)
ReplyDeleteMBAs are more like networking camps for working adults where you meet other high value individuals (which is why it costs so much, it's a gatekeeper of sorts) and gain connections. Since there's a lot of course work and team projects you get a better grasp of your fellow students capabilities and work ethics which if you're entrepreneurial enough, can make use of. Of course, it only applies to the top level business schools (Wharton, Stanford, Harvard...etc)
From what I know (my cousin and her husband went for it) though, those courses are normally paid through their companies/government grants or the students were already high income earners. It doesn't magically increase your net worth by attending it. It's not like a computer science or engineering degree where you are taught skills to suit the industry because the fundamental nature is that if it could be systematized for education it's already outdated. Sure you would learn how to do a business plan but frankly if you network enough, that's something you can figure out by asking around or finding a mentor.
A MBA doesn't improve your resume by itself, it's who you get to know during that course that's the real value. It's why Ivy League colleges exists. Not saying a MBA is useless, but be clear about why you want to take it.
That's how I view it.
Thanks for the brilliant analysis Bay, you are totally spot on! I will make sure 'Karl' sees your comment.
DeleteJust want to add one point, if you think taking the MBA will help you get connections take a deep breath and think about why the high value individuals there want to connect with you ? They're not assholes, but they're high value because they're very goal oriented. If you can't speak their lingo and have the same hobbies, you're going to have a hard time making that connection. I would ask Karl to take a cold hard look at himself, does he have that initiative and drive ?
DeleteMy advice? Try to find a job overseas and do it for a few years. Expand your horizons and use that experience to see what niche you can fill. Singapore's too stable and comfortable but we have a good reputation, passport and our English can beat any of the Asian countries. Use those facts.
Thanks again Bay. I think Karl is aware that unless he gets into one of the more prestigious business schools, any kind of MBA is not worth it. But if he can get into one of those programmes, like you said, these people are not going to readily accept you into their inner circle: then the greatest test would be your social skills at that stage. And here we have a classic catch-22 situation: if you already have those social skills, then chances are you already have the right connections, you don't need an MBA to make those connections. But if you don't have the right social skills, then we can place you in the world's most prestigious MBA programme then you're unlikely to make the right connections there with the classmates on the programme if you just can't connect with them socially.
DeleteWorking abroad seems to be the best option - thanks for that, I'll message Karl and tell him to read what you wrote.