Deciding to stay or leave

Does it really get better at VP? Testing the finance sunk-cost promise

7 min read

Almost everyone who stays too long stays on the same promise. Someone described it word for word:

"Surely when I become associate, then VP, the stress is so much less? So I grind for six years and then I'm set for the rest of my life."An analyst describing the belief that keeps people in their seat

It is the most reasonable-sounding trap in finance, because it is not entirely false. Sometimes it does get better. The problem is that "sometimes" is being used to justify years of your life, and you owe it to yourself to check whether it is true for you specifically, before you pay.

When it genuinely does get better

At more senior levels the work can change in real ways: more client contact, more ownership, more control over your calendar, less of the overnight grunt work. For some people the senior version of the job is the one they actually wanted, and the junior years really were a tunnel with a light at the end. If that is your situation, staying is a good decision, not a failure of nerve.

When it quietly does not

But often the promise does not pay out. The hours ease and the responsibility rises to fill the gap. The culture that ground you down is the same culture one rung up. And there is a selection effect people rarely account for: the seniors who stayed are, by definition, the ones who could stand it. Juniors describe lifers as "wired differently," people who "get their dopamine fix" from the work. If that is not you, the fact that they are fine tells you very little about whether you will be.

One line cuts through the fantasy: "20% of my cohort stayed to make MD, and many of them are pretty unhappy." The finish line exists. It is worth asking whether the people standing on it look like they won.

How to actually test it

Do not test the promise against your hopes. Test it against the real people who are living the future you are being sold:

• Look at the VPs and MDs around you. Not their titles, their lives. Do they seem well? Present at home? Someone you would want to become?
• Ask the honest ones directly. Did it get better, or just different? Would they do it again?
• Separate the work from the rank. If the senior work still sounds hollow to you, seniority will not fix it. If it sounds genuinely better, that is real information.

And keep one more thing in view: the promise assumes the firm is investing in your future. Plenty of people who ground through it discovered otherwise. As one put it after eight years, "guess how many times my bosses reached out after I left. Zero."

None of this says leave. It says do not bet six years on a maybe you never checked. The Decision helps you test the "it gets better" story honestly, alongside everything else. The first chapter is free.