- K
- Jul 23, 2020
- 8 min read
Updated: Nov 18, 2025
The world was a very different place in 2006. We were two years out of the SARS crisis, I had finished my final exam papers, and completed presenting my engineering thesis involving a weather forecast mobile app running on a 2G cellular network.
Shortly after and to much surprise, I came across a French IT consulting firm on LinkedIn. The firm at that point of time, was being engaged by Philips TV to develop a software prototype. The job opening was a software engineer role that needed to be filled urgently.
After a couple of conversations with the team and some deliberation on my part, I took up the offer and showed up to work while the rest of my peers were still in the middle of their graduation trips around the world.
The product prototype being developed then was meant to be used for all of Philips' clients in the hospitality and healthcare sectors. My work desk looked like this:
I was a fast learner and picked up stuff quickly by working closely with the Chief Engineer. I had gotten proficient at writing code, good enough for demonstration to the Philips CEO during his visit to Singapore.
But I ended up leaving less than six months into my role. I needed to get out. My motivation was driven by:
The fear of being stuck in an engineering job, working from 9am to 5pm everyday for the rest of my life, and perhaps more importantly:
The want of earning more money by getting into a banking job.
That was primarily how banking and the world of corporate finance appeared to me then. I was told fresh graduates were taking home 8,000 dollars a month. No other career offered that kind of money, definitely not in my field of study.
But I was not lucky.
My grades were less than mediocre and I had been in the 'wrong' field of study - engineering.
I wasn't cut out for investment banking. I didn't even know what a Bloomberg terminal was, how to calculate a series of discounted cash flows, or the definition of enterprise value.
I didn’t get my 8,000 per month dream job but with some luck and the help of a school senior, I eventually managed to join the valuations team of one of the large accounting firms.
Trial by fire.
I will never forget my first day of work. The office was on the 23 floor on Hong Leong Building just next to the iconic Lau Pa Sat in Raffles Place.
As I walked from the lifts and through the swinging glass doors, I saw my new colleagues, probably twenty-something of them, looking smart, well-dressed, some with ties, all seated behind their cubicled desks.
I wasn't given a desk of my own. Apparently the firm had over-hired due to the overwhelming number of assignments, and the only space they could put me up to sit was a narrow corridor next to the printer where two other new colleagues sat and shared a long table. One of them was a graduate from the prestigious Yale University, the other was an audit senior of five years who had been seconded to the corporate finance team.
All eyes were on me as I turned left and walked to my space. Despite being a fresh graduate like most of everyone else, I had finished my studies a year later than all my engineering peers, thanks to an additional year that I spent overseas in Shanghai.
This made me two years older than the guys who had graduated from accountancy and four years older than their female peers. In short, I was the "uncle" of all the analysts in the team.
And for the longest time, no one could understand why I had chosen to take a 33% pay cut from my job in Philips to venture into the unknown from a zone of comfort and familiarity.
Many times, I even had to clarify where I worked at previously:
"Not Phillip Capital the securities house - Philips, the electronics company..."
It was also much later into my role that one of my colleagues revealed to me that they were all wondering why I had come to "steal their jobs" as an engineer.
So, it was with the combination of a bit of dumb luck, a vacant junior position created by the timely departures of a few analysts, and sheer persistence that landed me into a corporate finance role.
Truth be told, I was incredibly scared during my probationary six months.
I had come from a working culture that involved going to an office in a techno-park to write code five days a week, to a place that required retrieving stock prices on Bloomberg while discussing which companies were raising capital, or running a sale process to a consortium of private equity investors.
The closest I would ever get to writing code was visual basic in Microsoft Excel. Other than that, I was a fish out of water.
I was so afraid that my line managers would deem me unsuitable for the job and ask me to leave. However, what they did do was make a bet that I would voluntarily leave within those six months.
This incident was later unwittingly and awkwardly revealed by a stranger who crashed one of our team drinks. I remembered him saying:
"Hey! You lost your bet. He's still here!!"
It was just one of those things people in banking like to do. It sounds condescending and insensitive, but you pretty much got to have thick skin in order to survive.
Investment banking isn't just about getting through the gruelling late nights and delivering on the number crunching. It was also about the harsh and toxic environment that one has to be prepared to put up with for many years to come.
No shortcuts, no straight paths.
Today, I get a lot of questions on how to break into a corporate finance career whenever I teach at the Singapore Management University.
"I don't have any accounting or finance background, how do I get in?"
Ironic as it seems, most of the people asking me these questions have better credentials and working knowledge about the field of investment banking than I had during my time.
My attempt to learn about the workings of financial markets was through punting in stocks during the bull market, which peaked shortly in 2007 and went bust later towards the end of 2008.
I dabbled into the markets not to make money, but more so to experience first-hand how it was like to invest, trade or punt.
It sounds unusual given younger people today are more investment savvy and have even more access to investment and trading platforms.
Unfortunately, I don't have a straight answer for how to get into an investment banking role. I guess the willingness to work hard beyond the stipulated 8 or 9 hours a day was definitely a plus, but beyond that, it had been challenging to also prove how you could get the job done eventually or the value you brought to the team.
For most of my peers it was mostly due to the fact that they were familiar with navigating the culture, having done similar internships before.
In my case, it was probably my posturing as the go-to-coffee-boy for all the work that no one wanted to do.
Mostly, I attribute most of this to being at the right place, right time and meeting with the right people (天时地利人和).
That said, everyone has a different trajectory.
In 2006, I had found myself then in a somewhat employees' market in which banks had been actively poaching from the accounting firms, creating a vortex of hiring, and I had been lucky to get dragged into the process.
Revisiting "the want of money"
Bankers during those hey-days were also raking in deals (most notably from the many S-chip listings) and taking home multi-year bonuses.
I recalled hearing someone from one of the local banks earning thirty six months of bonuses. Even if his base pay was mediocre, the absolute quantum still sounded crazy.
At that point of time, it was even common for bankers who got less than a year's pay in bonuses to jump ship just because they felt they weren't compensated enough. What a crazy world.
To contextualise this to a working person with an average pay, just imagine:
Bankers typically earned in a year, the equivalent of what everyone else outside of investment banking makes in 3 to 4 years.
It also implies that after working for 7 to 10 years in investment banking, you could possibly retire for the rest of your life. It makes everyone else's job look like a joke.
And yet there are still those in the industry who continue to complain about working the long hours and being under-paid.
Fast forward 10+ years on, the frenzy of hiring and huge bonus payouts have significantly subsided. But the brutality of the work environment probably hasn't changed.
Many fresh graduates today continue to worship the altar of corporate finance, chasing the money and prestige of being accepted into the bulge brackets. It is important to realise that there are many careers out there which pay decently well (but may not pay as "fast and furious"), if you stick it out consistently.
It is obscene that bankers are paid so much for the work they do compared to most other careers.
Therefore easy for me to say "do whatever makes you happy" or "be open to other well deserving jobs" when I have personally gone through and benefited from the system.
No guarantees
At the end of the day, everyone has to make peace with whatever career you have landed into.
Many of my engineering-schooled friends are doing very well today, even having not gone into banking roles. Some are in sales, business development, entrepreneurs, etc. After all, not everyone who lands an investment banking career is guaranteed to make lots of money and the promise of working on exciting deals.
Most of the day-to-day work in investment banking tends to be iterative (and sometimes even borderline mundane). These include stuff such as research, spreading numbers and window-dressing a company's profile.
As a junior or mid-level banker, you'd be lucky to get involved in and be a spectator in deal negotiations. Be realistic, you won't get to be portrayed a hero or a rockstar deal-maker. This is not the movies. However, you will be paid well and most likely be a target of envy for most of your peers who are probably earning only a fraction of your salary.
By the time you reach director or managing director level, chances are that you will feel the mighty burden of revenue targets and also deal with the complex politics that come as part of the job. Hopefully during this time, you stay grounded and haven't gotten too used to a lavish lifestyle that will put you in golden handcuffs for the rest of your life.
More important than the prestige that comes with investment banking, you really have to love what you do. The dots really do connect backwards. It is not so much about simply earning the big bucks, but whether you also appreciate the dynamics of the job and find a way to sustain yourself in that line of work for an extended period of time.
As I look back on my cover letter dated in 2006, I recall of how starry-eyed I was when I applied for a role in investment banking.
I had been lucky, yet, at the same time, it also reminds me of how far along I had come. I had applied for the money, saved some, spent some, invested some and lost most of it. I'd gained knowledge of the subject matter, technical skills and the experience, including the network of people, intangible resources built over the years, and spat out by the system.
But. No regrets.