So I met some guys who worked in Private Equity the other day and who couldn't stop complaining about THEIR jobs !! For the uninformed,  private equity is the holy grail of every banker - you go into banking thinking that 2 years of this pain and soon after that I will be cruising towards the holy Mecca of life.  You tell yourself - ofcourse I want to do PE - great lifestyle, more pressure but I ll be doing something more meaningful, making a real impact, making investment decisions, more entrepreneurial, more money blah blah blah .... . What you dont realize is that a flunkie in a bank i.e. analyst and associates when they quit a bank, they go and become flunkie's in PE funds instead.

It doesn't matter if you are now in PE and all the desperate bankers look at you with pleading eyes begging you to take them with you the day you quit your bank - you are still going to be somebody's b$%@#h elsewhere.
These guys I met talked about how they work less hours but the work is way more painful - they have Friday night 9 pm " exit " calls to discuss how the week ended and then Saturday 10 am meetings and then finally Sunday 6 pm " entry and work allocation into the week" calls.
{Now one may wonder that when you have so many calls and meetings - when does anyone in the financial world get any work done. Well, I have a theory about that - Im a big fan of the Dilbert cartoon strips, so one of them went as follows - Dilbert to Catbert - " Im feeling lonely" ; Catbert : Ok - why dont you call for a meeting then or even better have a pre-meeting meeting." !!}

Now these guys are all talking about Venture Capital as the next big step - they were telling me how much impact they ll create, how meaningful the role is, how work is more entreprenuerial...hmmmn, sounds familiar...

I meet my friends from business school all the time and apparently most of the people I meet one year after business school are all somewhere between discontentment with their current jobs to absolutely loathing it. The folks in industry talk about much more bureaucracy, less challenging work, mind-less politics, slow decision making. The people in banking are frustrated with their hours and lifestyle. The guys in consulting are sick of their travel. Even people who are semi-satisfied with their jobs or entrepreneurial ventures are unhappy with their location, their boss, their commute, the lack of income etc etc ....

And that really makes me wonder, is there anyone who made that perfect jump or found that perfect job - or is the quest for perfection in itself an illusion? And if not - then are we conditioned to constantly have " the grass is greener on the other side" syndrome for the rest of our lives. Are we destined to go through life constantly being dissatisfied. ...
When do we finally tell ourselves -" This is it, I have arrived and there is no place I'd rather be " .....