Why bankers really get paid (it’s not hours worked)

I shared my personal and honest opinion about money, we even did some calculations, and today I want to talk about skills that create value, therefore making you money.

When most people think about pay in banking, they assume it’s about the hours.

80-100 hour weeks. Nights in the office. Endless grind.

And sure — the hours are brutal, especially at the start.

But here’s the truth: bankers don’t get paid for time. They get paid for generating revenue.

That’s the unspoken rule of finance compensation.

If you’re connected to revenue — sourcing deals, executing deals, supporting revenue drivers — your pay accelerates. If you’re not, you plateau.

This is why often you can get traction faster than they think.

Let’s say you’ve been in consulting, engineering, ops, or IT. On paper, that doesn’t scream “banking.” But if you’ve:

• Managed serious budgets

• Delivered cost savings or efficiency gains

• Negotiated with senior stakeholders

• Built financial models to drive decisions

… then you’ve already proven you can impact the bottom line. That’s revenue language.

And once you translate your background into banker terms, employers see you not as a trainee, but as someone who can support revenue creation right now.

That’s why it doesn’t always take 10 years to hit six figures in finance. If you can tie your skills to revenue, you can skip the slow lane. And this is something I’ll uncover in my next message probably.

I learned this the hard way when I broke into IB in London. At first, I thought it was about who could grind the most hours. But the people who accelerated were the ones who understood this rule: revenue = reward.

That’s exactly what I now build with my clients inside Charter Mastery. We strip their CVs down to the core proof points, highlight transferable skills in banker language, and frame their story around how they’ve impacted money. That’s what recruiters notice. That’s what interviewers respect. And that’s what gets offers.