How to help DS to stop being hard on himself

[MontyPy]

DS is final year Oxford. Initially wanted to go into IB but wasn’t able to land an internship despite getting close.

He has got a corporate consultancy job paying 45k start next year London but he still feels really down that he could have been earning a lot more if he tried harder.
How do I tell him he’s doing fine and to not be so hard on himself. It’s hard when some peers will be on multiples of his wage.

Comparison is the thief of joy. I also have an Oxford graduate DC who has peers earning much more. There will be other career opportunities.

Had this exact conversation with DS last night. He wasnt down about it per se as he is not at Oxbridge and doesnt want to be a banker! But he had been on linked in and reconnected with school friends and also had some conversations with a housemates boyfriend who, along with many mates, is signed up to do law conversion at a top firm.
DS has a grad job secured for a major supermarket in a career area he is interested in, they have a good rep as an employer, it will allow him to network with companies in areas he is more interested in. Its a first step. That first step is often the hardest to achieve.
Even having a grad job in this climate is an amazing achievement.
Agree comparison is the thief of joy.
Time to get excited about his own role.
Mega bucks roles tend to come with awful hours and little life
Hardly anyone stays anywhere for life now
He can use this as a spring board.
Money does not define your worth

I can still see IB grad jobs advertised (although starting salaries look nearer £60k rather than £100k+). Is he still applying? Is he still eligible for next summer's internships (if he plans a masters or says he is)? One of mine was successful for a high paying scheme (not IB) 2nd time around.

Maybe help him see the positives of the job he has secured and to have a plan B (and C/D etc) so he's more resilient. Might be an Oxbridge thing too. When my DD started her grad scheme in September those complaining about salary etc were mainly Oxbridge (maybe expectations are raised by going to an elite uni).

Those corporate high paid jobs don’t come for free; there will be lots of pressure, long hours and politics. Money is not everything and 45k to start is a really good job, plus is only the start, he can move up. If he didn’t put the effort to get on those jobs maybe it wasn’t for him,

Congratulations to your son. He should be proud of himself.

Not sure what IB is but I worked for a big 4 and the pressure they put on those graduates is a lot; they have a goal on when to finish exams, become managers, on top of learning a new job. I think it is quite a stressful start for your career and may lead to burnout earlier; but maybe I am a bit soft. I did ended with burnout myself but I am early 50s

IB sounds very glamorous but trust me there would be no work life balance (all work) and he would be under tremendous pressure to perform and deliver . If he wanted to progress there are also professional qualifications which are needed. Like the big 4 the grads are also under constant review and the “bottom” x percent are let go at regular intervals. There are big rewards to be had but the reality is that is very competitive and overall not a large pool of jobs / roles and it’s only the best ( an even smaller number) that really make the headline salaries. With a finance background I have seen many grads over the years get laid off from IB and then have to look elsewhere. IB is very competitive, even more so in the current Grad recruitment market. Succeeding at getting the internship isn’t just based on academic success so he still may not have been successful even with a double first. It may be that he doesn’t have the personality for IB which the I/V process will have picked up alongside the various assessment activities ( which might not be a bad thing ! )

We all have friends who we perceive to be doing better it’s a fact of life we all learn at some point, but their daily life may well be non existent outside of work. Corporate Consultancy at £45k starting is a good graduate starting salary which many grads would love to have got. We all feel down if we don’t get what we want but he has a good plan B which in the current Grad and wider recruitment market is a good plan.

And some will be on just over half that, if anything at all. An Oxbridge degree doesn't aways end up in a high flying, highly paid career. Many are struggling to find a role one or two years after graduating. A quick reality check might help him put his good fortune into perspective.

Yeh I agree. £45k is frankly an amazing starting salary, even for someone who is at Oxford. He has done really well to secure a good role at that kind of level. Yes it is in London so you need more ££, but a lot of the recent graduates I know went into teaching (starting about £30k) or much lower-paid roles than that.

I don't live in London and I do understand that so much is so much more expensive there, really I do; but not many people I know (many of whom are many years out of uni) will be earning that kind of salary. Lots of us are toddling along on £35-40k. I am not complaining btw - I made choices in my life - but just for some perspective for your DS. I think it’s easy if your immediate peers are about to start earning £100k+ to think that everyone earns that. In truth most do not. You should be very proud of your son.

New grads studying for their professional accountancy qualifications are starting on between £25 - £40k across the UK, including London. Their salaries go up nicely over their 3 year training contract, but they also face exam pressure

Thanks for your messages guys. He is grateful for getting a job in this market but I suppose as a perfectionist he always wants to push himself. Tbh his personality doesn’t exactly lend itself to IB- he isn’t the most confident esp under lots of pressure. Think he found the adversarial IB interview style quite hard.

Hopefully he’ll get more excited for the job he has. Progression is good, if he does well he will be on close to 100k by 26 ish so there is room for him to grow.

A graduate joining the profession I still kind of belong to – journalism – might expect to start at about £25k if they were lucky enough to find an actual paid role.

Well done to your DS getting an excellent job. He should be really proud of himself though hard to tell someone that if they are feeling otherwise. As you say it sounds as though consultancy may suit him better than investment banking. And he will get good training and can switch to something else later.

My DS left Oxford July 2024 and his first job for the last year has paid just over £30K with huge responsibilities. He finishes next week to start training as a social worker. Newly qualified social workers are on £35-37K. Maybe by the time he is 30 he'll earn what your DS is starting on. We are super proud of DS and his commitment to his career. He has friends from college in a range of careers - teaching, local government, consultancy as do I from my time at Uni. And some on 4 year courses have just finished and only finished this year and are still looking.

While I can see it is hard looking over the fence I'm keen our DC can celebrate the diversity of paths their contemporaries take - the key is to not try and keep up with the Jones in terms of expenditure on social life when starting life in London. Also the whole gushing LinkedIn culture of young grads isn't my thing and quite intimidating to those not wanting to play that game.

So OPs son will be on £100k at 26.

@redwinecheeseandothersnacks No. possibly not. This depends on area of work and how the promotions are structured. I know a young person working for PWC. However he’s going to do pretty well but he might need to be very personable to get on. Client relationships will matter and around 20.% don’t stay on either. They leave as the jobs aren’t for them. So it’s partly down to being in the right slot for you. Big money isn’t guaranteed for all, but there’s promotions on offer in some areas of wotk but less in others. Theres no guarantee.

Easy to feel at that age like everything will be defined by your first job and it will likely be impossible to convince him otherwise. Over time he will figure out if he wants to push for it or if in fact the money isn’t worth chasing. Sometimes I think you have to learn how to be disappointed so you can pick yourself up and use it as a way to motivate yourself. The money is only worth it to a certain personality type - i don’t mean that negatively. I started out in law at a non-magic circle firm and stayed out of the heavy hitters but then kind of jumped over my peers when I went in-house (which is rarely the case). Too early to be defined by any choices.

Sounds like he dodged a bullet - IB is better suited to the thick skinned, ruthless and self-centred, not anxious perfectionists who never feel good enough. I think he also needs to learn there is an extremely tenuous connection between trying hard and earning more. It’s not so much about how hard you try as about whether you focus exclusively on what’s in it for you, or also consider what’s the right thing for your employer, their clients, or wider society. Looking at it from a broader perspective than what salary he’s bagged for himself, hopefully he thinks what he will be doing is interesting, worthwhile, will develop his skills and understanding of the world, will pay him enough to be reasonably comfortable, and will mean he is productive and making a contribution to society through good use of his skills and paying tax. Hopefully he will enjoy it. What’s not to like about that?

@Walkaround Many young people who do these jobs are fantastic people. They aren’t think skinned, ruthless or self centred at all and it’s unkind to say they are. The few young people I have met doing this work are charming, exceptionally bright and lovely. They aren’t monsters but they do work long hours and exceptionally hard. Characterizing them in a negative way is not fair or pleasant.

@OhDear111 - having worked in the City as a young graduate, I am simply saying it as I saw it. It’s not negative to be ruthless, thick skinned and self-centred if those are useful characteristics in the field you work in and they protect you from otherwise chronic stress, exhaustion and anxiety, it’s only negative if that is not you and you do not want it to be you. The anxious perfectionists did not last long, the pay and bonuses were a major motivator in doing the work at all (far more so than in most other careers), and it really helped to be ruthless, self-centred, obsessively competitive, and thick skinned. There was plenty of charm, wit and intelligence, but niceness was not remotely a requirement for success. Being thin skinned was definitely not good. This is of course true in many fields but, for obvious reasons, was magnified in investment banking and corporate law. Things might have changed in the last 30 years, but I do not think they have changed that much. The gentler personalities voted with their feet.

@Walkaround You have now qualified it by saying the characteristics as necessary for success. You seemed to suggest the people with them were not pleasant and dc had dodged a bullet by avoiding them. It’s just not black and white like this, in law or IB.

@OhDear111 - I have done no such thing. You are the one who interpreted what I said negatively. I haven’t changed what I meant to say at all.

@Walkaround Who was talking about success? Only you in your later post.

I think 45k as a starting salary is fantastic, I thikn maybe it's worth having a chat about shifting perspective...
But I can relate, I have a DS who is doing amazingly well but he can still be so negative about what he could be doing.

DS is applying for IB internships at the moment. He’s reconsidering what areas he wants to go into though. He’s thick skinned and ruthless enough to tackle it but he’s in a strong long term relationship and will want that work life balance moving forward. So we’ll see where he eventually ends up. He’ll figure it out plus his GF will be busy with her own job once they leave uni.

@OhDear111 - ?? You appear to have a problem. I haven’t changed what I meant. There is no point arguing over it, as it achieves nothing for anybody. What bit of me thinking it is not a good career if you are an anxious perfectionist do you not understand? Is your problem now that you think I have said anxious perfectionists cannot be successful at anything? Because I didn’t say that, either.

Perhaps point out to him that many of the academics with PhDs teaching him at Oxford won’t be earning that. Does he think they are all losers?