Ok.. here my story.. nothing interesting... you may treat it as a bedtime story.

More than 10 years ago, graduated with an finance degree with good honours, I thought the whole world is at my feet and the same aspirations like trader, fund manager in BB banks come into mind and are as determined as many bros here to break into these sectors... however economy is very bad during that time (from Asian Crisis to 911) and I cannot even find a perm job and end up as a photocopying/faxing boy in BB bank backoffice operations. After which , I move on to another BB bank middle office operation and thought that it is getting closer to FO dream only to find out the "glass ceiling" was unbreakable (else all hell broke lose and every single man in BO and MO will ask to transfer to FO). So this method does NOT work. Still, lots of the bros in BO and MO do not give up and try CFA, CPA, MBA, MFE and whatever you can find to break through the glass ceiling but all resulted in failure (and that was 10 years back when it is slightly easier and some ultra lucky ones really manage to sequeeze through). THen I thought that with the BB name, I can easily get a FO job in a 2nd tier bank e.g Merril Lynch BO to say BNP Paribus trader... that was wrong too and it did not work as well. THat was a great debate then " is it better to do a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier bank or a 3rd tier job in a 1st tier bank ?" and I was a great supporter of the latter because I really thought the brand name will see me through. How naive that is! I forgot the old saying in banking ops " you start in Ops, you rot in Ops". It was after many hard knocks then I appreciate the wisdom of "doing a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier organization" which I did gradually and since then, never leave the dealing room or other FO enviroment..