Joining investment banking in Sept. 2008 isn't buying low and selling high. It's more like buying Nasdaq futures at 3500 in Oct. 2000.
The industry will always exist, but "investment banking" will lose its rather singular cachet as finance becomes "just another industry", with a relatively normal set of trade-offs and paying normal salaries. What we observed over the past three decades was a bubble wherein financial professionals out-earned their counterparts elsewhere by a factor of 3-10. That's on the way out; finance is about to get much poorer, both in terms of the compensation it offers and the talent it can draw. On the upside, other industries, including technology, stand to get much richer.
I would love to think you're correct and maybe you will be. I do think these events will characterize a major milepost in our financial history. Historically, Wall Street has trimmed the fat during bust cycles and then hired fresh faces when things turn around only to have these new people make the same old mistakes 5 or 10 years into their employment when the market goes through a correction. If what we are seeing is such a cycle, and we are nearing the bottom or the "trough" of this current cycle, then anybody getting hired to start next summer will be getting into the industry at a good time...that's where I got the buying low and selling high. Perhaps this series of events will buck the trend though...you never know.
The industry will always exist, but "investment banking" will lose its rather singular cachet as finance becomes "just another industry", with a relatively normal set of trade-offs and paying normal salaries. What we observed over the past three decades was a bubble wherein financial professionals out-earned their counterparts elsewhere by a factor of 3-10. That's on the way out; finance is about to get much poorer, both in terms of the compensation it offers and the talent it can draw. On the upside, other industries, including technology, stand to get much richer.