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Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

> Getting advice on which fields to study, which schools to apply to, what friends to make who also know which schools to apply to, and which companies to apply to all count as “right connection”.

Or you can "just" get into a top 5-10 MBA. Still hard, but at least you're an adult at that point

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It's actually really hard to go from sell-side to buy-side, post-MBA. I went to a top-5 business school in the US and everyone recruiting for banking wanted to eventually move to the buy-side. I think out of a group of ~100, <5 might have made it into a decent buy-side job. Top private equity funds put their best analysts through business school and then just hire them back. Breaking in at a post-MBA level is really hard. You really have to know "the path" early in college and get into a top bulge bracket right after college graduation, put in your two years of 100 hour weeks, and then get on recruiters' radars for PE and HF.

Agreed. I was referring to breaking into sell-side from outside Wall Street. Apologies for the confusion.

Geez really just 5? That seems super low. So that implies 20ish non-prior-buyside people in North America break in post-MBA? Basically impossible?

That was just my school, 5 years out of graduation. That might change in another 5 years as bankers get to MD levels, and then have a client and relationship roster that they bring to the buy-side. There are also people who switched to Tier 3 or Tier 4 buyside firms, but then don't make the kind of money you make at a top PE or HF.

Also, I did not go to Harvard, which typically sends more people to the buy-side then the other top-tier programs (but is somewhat self-selection, because HBS tends to accept a lot of pre-MBA buy-side people from top firms)

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