Operations in Investment Banking

Hi all,

I had a few questions regarding working in Operations from people who work in Operations or know of someone who does or may just knows anyway.

1) Ive heard the starting salaries are around £35k-£42k, how does this increase after 5-10 years in the job?

2) What are the working hours like for analysts?

3) If you want a career change after 5 or 10 years, what other jobs can you go into?

Reply 1

student-91

Excluding bonus and if you are good:

1st/2nd year 40k, 3rd/4th year 45k, 5th/6th year 55k, 7th+ year 100+k, 10th+ year a lot more.

Work 9 to 5 pretty much every day. Never on weekends.

Reply 2

TSR King

OP

13

Original post by student-91

Excluding bonus and if you are good:

1st/2nd year 40k, 3rd/4th year 45k, 5th/6th year 55k, 7th+ year 100+k, 10th+ year a lot more.

Work 9 to 5 pretty much every day. Never on weekends.

9-5 pretty much everyday? This is clearly wrong.

Reply 3

bluenose53

Original post by TSR King

9-5 pretty much everyday? This is clearly wrong.

That's not wrong. Granted different roles within Ops vary slightly with hours. General markets middle/back office processing type roles are 8:30ish - 5:30ish.
Sometimes you may need to stay later, for example if your working in the futures middle office and that time of the month comes when the contracts need sorting, I saw teams that stayed until midnight, but they had a morning and an evening shift.

Some product control, projecty type tasks were very much 9-5, but may stay later the odd time with a deadline for completion.

If you don't mind doing abit of a boring and tedious job, then the hours and money (for this) are great.

To add: it also depends on which bank/organisation. Some had a culture of taking hour long lunch breaks away from the desk and leaving at the earliest possible opportunity whereas others aways had a desk manned it seems.

It also depends on how quickly you want to be promoted. There were people there in their early 40s who were still Analysts, but they were quite happy coming into work 9-5 each day, doing their processing and going home. Whereas other more driven types were VPs at 30, but worked hard(er), ate lunch at the desk, strived to be better and stayed later etc.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 4

student-91

Original post by TSR King

9-5 pretty much everyday? This is clearly wrong.

No it's not. 9-6 max if you take a longer lunch break. Some do 10-4.30...

Reply 5

TSR King

OP

13

Original post by student-91

No it's not. 9-6 max if you take a longer lunch break. Some do 10-4.30...

loooooool

Reply 6

student-91

Hourly pay is like double FO ;-)

Reply 7

harryhoofter

1

I've worked in operations before. Weekend shifts are expected if you are covering a particular region, for example MENA (Middle East North Africa), atleast where I worked that was the case for workers.

It is well remunterated for what you do. My experience was working with unmotivated individuals however who lacked passion (for their work). For me it is not something I would personally like to do long term, although compartivly speaking the wages are good and the work can be fairly relaxed, if a little tedious (as mentioned before). Operations however encompasses a wide variety of roles and my experience is no way representive of all middle/back office work.

Overtime happens. Usually lands up in the hands of the most experienced/most willing who are looking to advanace into leadership roles.

One further point. The environment that I saw it was difficult to differentiate yourself. In terms of the processes that you are doing they are highly automated and uniform. My experience was clicking macros that someone else has made and ticking sheets of paper. Not trying to put you off operations. We are all different people, with different motivations and differing passions.

Best of luck

Reply 8

yoyoyomo

9

Original post by harryhoofter

I've worked in operations before. Weekend shifts are expected if you are covering a particular region, for example MENA (Middle East North Africa), atleast where I worked that was the case for workers.

It is well remunterated for what you do. My experience was working with unmotivated individuals however who lacked passion (for their work). For me it is not something I would personally like to do long term, although compartivly speaking the wages are good and the work can be fairly relaxed, if a little tedious (as mentioned before). Operations however encompasses a wide variety of roles and my experience is no way representive of all middle/back office work.

Overtime happens. Usually lands up in the hands of the most experienced/most willing who are looking to advanace into leadership roles.

One further point. The environment that I saw it was difficult to differentiate yourself. In terms of the processes that you are doing they are highly automated and uniform. My experience was clicking macros that someone else has made and ticking sheets of paper. Not trying to put you off operations. We are all different people, with different motivations and differing passions.

Best of luck

future options? what's the exit into industry opportunities like?

Reply 9

Makka4

Currently work in Future Ops for a small boutique firm after being bought out and we did a lot of our work manually as before we were a small company and whilst we did have macro spreadsheets we were & still do use tickets and clear trades from tickets, run reports manually etc.

I only see it as a short term position and as someone who came out of secondary school with avg grades to work in a middle/back office role at small company the work is not that challenging although it is tedious as others have mentioned and I'm looking to make the move away from this role and would like to do my trader/broker exams (whether or not I pass or not is another story) but at least I'm showing some ambition and incentive to better myself which has been recognised.

I'm not sure if OP would but I think if you start at a smaller firm where the work is more manual you get more of an insight to how processes run and how you effect reports/recs etc at my new company it's a lot more automated but we haven't fully been integrated yet with the rest of company so I'm aware from the rest of operations but tbh they don't look like they're doing much compared to us.

tl;dr work is tedious but not hard, start in smaller company as manual work will benefit, essentially it's a stop gap career for ambitious individuals

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 10

TSR King

OP

13

Original post by Makka4

Currently work in Future Ops for a small boutique firm after being bought out and we did a lot of our work manually as before we were a small company and whilst we did have macro spreadsheets we were & still do use tickets and clear trades from tickets, run reports manually etc.

I only see it as a short term position and as someone who came out of secondary school with avg grades to work in a middle/back office role at small company the work is not that challenging although it is tedious as others have mentioned and I'm looking to make the move away from this role and would like to do my trader/broker exams (whether or not I pass or not is another story) but at least I'm showing some ambition and incentive to better myself which has been recognised.

I'm not sure if OP would but I think if you start at a smaller firm where the work is more manual you get more of an insight to how processes run and how you effect reports/recs etc at my new company it's a lot more automated but we haven't fully been integrated yet with the rest of company so I'm aware from the rest of operations but tbh they don't look like they're doing much compared to us.

tl;dr work is tedious but not hard, start in smaller company as manual work will benefit, essentially it's a stop gap career for ambitious individuals

finally someone in this forum who actually knows what they're talking about!

Reply 11

Joinedup

20

Original post by TSR King

finally someone in this forum who actually knows what they're talking about!

why ask if you already know so much?

Reply 12

TSR King

OP

13

Original post by Joinedup

why ask if you already know so much?

Because you can learn a lot from other peoples knowledge and experience.

Reply 13

goape

15

Original post by TSR King

Because you can learn a lot from other peoples knowledge and experience.

You wanted someone else to tell you Operations is dull?

Reply 14

The Banker

I've worked in ops and its dull. The money is good for what you do but all banks and FI's want to automate as much as possible. If you combine a solid understanding of the technicals with good vba/software knowledge you'll go far in ops. But there will always be that dullness compared to FO. And don't forget people in ops are easily replaceable whereas a star trader or smooth deal maker aren't. It can be a good startin point but you'll want more of a challenge within months and this is good drive to strive further. Ops from my experience is full of people who wanted to get into FO but either couldn't or gave up and those that just wanted a job. At the bigger banks it'll be much harder to get into a more FO role. But you will get better salary and experience which you can transfer to a smaller firm. Completely up to you. Hours are usually when the markets are open but can vary - depends on what department you end up working. I know ops managers who work longer hours than those in FO in some cases but it really depends. While junior 9-5 is a safe bet. At most 8-6. Worst I had was 8-7 and that was a one off.

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Operations in Investment Banking

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