Should I Abandon an Economics Degree?
Hi all,
I am currently a rising junior at UC Berkeley pursuing a degree in Econ and I'm lost. Since sophomore year of high school I thought a career in high finance would be ideal for me. I think I'm an apt critical thinker and a hard worker, but after working in a sell side shop this past summer (in S&T) where I focused mostly on credit analysis I've decided this path is not ideal. I was the hardest worker, knew the most about finance going in, but was still overwhelmed by the lifelessness of it all. I love money and the cool shit I could potentially do with it, but judging from the conversations I've had with juniors in IB/PE, the grind will not necessarily pay off until I'm 30. Recently I've been turned on by potentially working for a startup somewhere in the industry where I can be more engaged in what I am working on and hopefully feel passion in building something bigger. I do not know how to code. I do not know the first thing about recruiting for these types of jobs. However, I feel like jumping ship from my current path at this point in time may be more worth it than entering the industry and then leaving after a few years in the event that I can't take the heat of a 100hr week. Any advice would be much appreciated.
I’m just confused what this has to do with an econ degree? You can learn to code and still study econ…
major doesn’t matter and you can still learn to code
No point in switching this late. Just add CS as a minor.
I was a Finance Major and Minored in CS/ Entrepreneurial Studies.
hey dude, close to the same story, biz econ at ucla and thinking of tacking on a stats minor and squeezing my way into tech
Glad to know I'm not alone. What year are you? I'm also Bus-Econ & think the best way to go is with a Bioinformatics or Data Science Engineering minor. Been looking into it a bunch today. My fear is that these classes mess up my GPA, then I'm fucked. Feel free to message me, the job search can be a lonely, cutthroat one.
You can always go into consulting.
Econ is a pretty good degree, you can do more than IB with it. Keep it. In fact if you suddenly wanted to become a doctor, you could do so with an econ undergrad. Learning to code has 0 correlation to econ, learning to code is literally free now and you can take certifications if you really wanted to. Startup life can be raggy and has a lot of uncertainty btw (although huge upside potential) so know what you might get yourself into.
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