My Goldman Sachs Analyst Class: Where Are They Now

I was in Goldman Sachs' TMT and Consumer Group. Before that, Wells Fargo investment banking. This is where the people I actually worked with, not a survey, not a LinkedIn scrape, ended up. Every story below is real. Every one is anonymized on purpose, because some of the more interesting outcomes are for people who deliberately stayed off LinkedIn.

Why I am writing this

If you spend any time on finance forums or career content sites, you start to absorb a flattened version of what an investment banking analyst class actually looks like: everyone is the same kind of person, everyone wants the same three exits, and if you don't hit PE by year two you've failed. I lived it, and that is not what I actually saw. I saw an enormous range of backgrounds walk in the door and an even wider range of outcomes walk out. I think that's worth writing down honestly, because most of the people with the most interesting outcomes are the ones you will never read about, precisely because they are not trying to be found.

The expected paths: PE, growth equity, and corp dev

A meaningful chunk of my TMT and Consumer analyst class went into private equity or growth equity focused on technology, which makes sense given the group we sat in. A separate group went generalist PE rather than staying sector-focused. Very few went lower-middle-market PE specifically, most who left banking for buy-side private equity landed at the middle-market tier or larger, not LMM, which surprised me a little at the time given how much LMM gets talked about online as a common landing spot.

Corporate development at a Fortune 500 company or a FAANG-tier tech company was another common, almost default landing spot, and honestly one of the more sensible ones: real strategic decision-making, real deal experience, better hours than banking, and a much clearer long-term ladder than people expect.

The most underrated path: investor relations

Surprisingly few people from my class went into IR, and I think that is a mistake on the industry's part, not a signal that IR is a lesser path. IB people tend to think IR pigeonholes you. It doesn't have to. I know someone currently in my own apartment building in New York who does IR at a megafund private equity firm, gets carry, and has a genuinely strong career trajectory, without needing to be what I'd call a modeling monkey for the rest of his career.

Here's the part people miss: PE-side IR specifically is one of the most valuable skill sets you can build if you ever want to start your own fund. Every PE firm eventually needs two things: a deal horse who can source and execute, and an IR person who can actually raise capital from LPs. If you want to run your own shop one day, that second skill is not optional, and very few bankers ever build it directly.

I've also seen the adjacent versions of this path play out. I went from biotech investor relations into investment banking myself, so I know that direction works. I also know people who went the other way, corporate IR into hedge fund IR, particularly in sectors like biotech where deep sector expertise matters more than a generic banking background. A smaller number went straight into corporate IR and stayed there. All of these are real, viable careers, not consolation prizes.

The ones who stayed in banking

Very few people from my class actually stayed in investment banking long-term. The ones who did mostly went associate, and from there either recruited into private equity on the associate-to-PE track or moved into corporate development, which a genuinely large number of people from IB end up doing eventually, whether directly out of the analyst seat or a few years later as an associate. A smaller number used their banking background to move into go-to-market roles at startups, which is a less obvious pivot but one I saw work more than once.

My Wells Fargo class told the same story, a level down

Before Goldman, I was in Wells Fargo investment banking, in a real estate coverage group. The people I worked with there scattered just as widely. One of the people I was closest to at WF is now building a gambling-focused gaming startup. Someone else I worked with there left, went the startup route, then did an MBA, and is now at a real estate-focused private equity firm, a direct line back to the coverage sector we both started in. Others from that group went the more conventional route into middle-market PE or corporate development. And some, like me, lateraled to a higher-tier bank, in my case from Wells Fargo to Goldman Sachs.

One thing I noticed at both banks: a real number of people laterated internally rather than leaving the firm entirely. At Wells Fargo, I saw people move into groups like their internal Strategic Investor Group, where the bank invests directly off its own balance sheet. Goldman has an internal growth equity fund as well, and I know a few people who joined it when nothing external was pulling them away. If you like the firm and the work but want a different seat, that internal move is a real, underused option.

The off-grid outcomes, which are the most interesting and the hardest to find

The outcomes people actually want to read about are the ones that don't show up in a LinkedIn search, by design. From my Goldman class alone: someone who went on to compete at the Olympics. Someone who left to chase a professional golf career. Someone who became a full-time digital nomad. One of the analysts I was closest to in my own class went back to Asia to be with his family and now runs a genuinely strong business there, deliberately not chasing US prestige, which I think is a healthier read on what actually matters than most 22-year-olds in this industry have.

From my Wells Fargo network specifically, I know someone who burned out of IB, spent a stretch traveling the world, and eventually started a web development agency that is now doing eight figures a year in profit. He operates out of Bali, has no LinkedIn profile, and generates all of his business through Meta ads. You will not find him if you go looking. That is exactly the point. A meaningful number of the most successful people from my analyst class are functionally invisible online, and if you're only benchmarking yourself against who shows up in a Google search, you are working from a badly incomplete sample.

And to be honest about the other end of the spectrum too: some people from my class are unemployed right now, entirely by choice, after their bonus money went into a stock or a meme coin that returned something like 100x. That is also a real outcome. I include it because this article is meant to be a true picture, not a curated one.

One analyst's path from Buenos Aires to Goldman Americas

One of the more remarkable individual stories I know personally: an analyst who grew up with very little in Argentina. His mother worked as a maid for a family with connections in finance. Through that relationship, the family wrote him a letter of recommendation that helped him get into a top school in Argentina, and later, referrals from that same family helped him land a role at a strong middle-market investment bank in Buenos Aires. From there, he moved to Goldman Sachs' Buenos Aires office, where I met him directly, the group there is small enough that I won't say more than that. He eventually lateraled to Goldman in the US. He told me his comp barely changed in the move, since Goldman ties Buenos Aires and broader Latin America group pay to US dollar equivalents. He loves the IB and M&A work and has built a genuinely strong career off the back of one family relationship that opened exactly one door. I don't think you can plan for a path like that. I do think it's proof that the range of starting points in this industry is much wider than people assume.

The range of backgrounds in the room was the real story

What struck me most about Goldman specifically wasn't any single outcome, it was the range of starting points sitting in the same room. One of my closest friends there had a father who was a billionaire activist hedge fund investor. Another one of my best friends in finance grew up in South Chicago and had genuinely struggled to get to where he was. Both were in the same analyst seats, doing the same work, judged on the same output. That mix is a real, underappreciated part of what makes a place like Goldman what it is, and it's a big part of why I don't think there's one "banker personality" at all.

What this actually means for you

If you're early in IB, or burned out, or convinced that missing the PE recruiting cycle means you've failed, take the actual data point: the people who sat next to me ended up in tech PE, generalist PE, corporate development, IR with real carry, hedge fund IR, professional sports, family businesses abroad, and at least one eight-figure agency run entirely off Meta ads with zero online presence. Some are unemployed by choice. A few stayed in banking and made partner-track moves. Almost none of it looked like the flattened, single-path version of this industry you read about online.

I went hitchhiking after my own time in IB, before building multiple businesses and eventually this site. I don't usually talk about that publicly, but it's the same pattern: the path out of investment banking is genuinely as wide as you're willing to make it. IB is a real, demanding, valuable launchpad. It was never a life sentence, and it was never one personality.