Great story, thanks for sharing, but there seems to be an obvious remaining question: why in the world did you do it for so long? What could you possibly do with $165k a year that is worth such pointless torture?
Ha, good question. In my first year, I learned an absolute ton. A huge portion of the work I'd be doing was mindless, but there was some really interesting stuff interwoven. I now know how to build complex financial models. I have a deep understanding of corporate finance. I know how the sausage is made for both public and private financing (including IPO) and M&A transactions. I got to have conversations with CEOs and CFOs of major companies about their businesses.
The second year was very different. I stopped learning new things. I started thinking about what I wanted to do next, but all of the traditional exit ops seemed like more of the same bullshit to me. I started thinking about doing venture capital, then realized I'd rather just start a startup myself. This all took several months to figure out, and I needed income (I have massive student debt), so I stayed in the job in the meantime. I also didn't want to prematurely cut ties with the people I was working with (leaving before your two years are up is highly frowned upon). I spent any downtime I could find reading about startups. In late winter/early spring, I convinced a couple friends to work on a startup with me, and we used applying to YC as a means to focus our work. We actually got invited to interview, but didn't get funded. At that point, it was May, so I only had two more months to go to finish out my two years and get my bonus, so I trudged on and closed it out.
Maybe it's a stupid question, but why they don't hire two guys to work 10hrs for $80k instead of a one working 16h+ for $160k? Especially since you mention working on multiple unrelated projects simultaneously. This is just insane for me.
Leaving a job, even a crappy one, is never easy. On top of that you have the psychological "sunken cost" effect plus all the other stockholm-syndrome-like effects that make people stay in hellish environments.
