WealthSpike: All those stressed free people working for family officers

Family Capital has always been struck at how relaxed people working for family offices look. None of them appear particularly stressed and all seem pretty happy with life.

If this is the case, might it just be the perfect career choice for those trained in the dark arts of finance? Well, according to a recent anonymous post by someone called ibanker for the careers website, efinancialcareers, the answer is an emphatic yes.

ibanker reckons that working for a family office, which he or she has apparently done, is more rewarding in three ways: less stressful; more interesting; and you get to meet more interesting people. The last point sounds like something out of an army recruitment site – but you really do get to meet more interesting people working for a family office, says ibanker.

The less stress bit, says ibanker, is to do with the money side. At family offices you don’t need to “constantly beg clients to do deals in order to collect fees. They already had money – plenty of it”.  And when it comes to being more interesting, ibanker says that’s because the variety and types of deals family offices typically are presented with. Investment banking deals, says ibanker, tend to be very samey, and after a while that becomes boring.

Of course, those that work for family offices normally have gone through some form of stressful financial/law/accountancy sector-type work before they get the chance to move on to less stressful jobs like family offices.

And jobs at family offices come with their own set of stressful challenges, often linked to working for a very powerful family. There’s always going to be an element of a master/servant-type relationship between professional hires at a family office and the family with all the money. This could present career barriers for the ambitious financial sector employee.

But once the family office professional accepts this, like most have, a family office looks like a very nice place to work.

Expect more people in the future to be applying for jobs with them…