Business Insider spoke to some of these young people and learned why banks like Goldman Sachs have become a “backup plan” for them. “A monkey could do the job” of a junior banker, said one Ivy League student who’s currently interning at a hedge fund. At investment banks, interns tend to be Excel jockeys, filling in spreadsheets, creating PowerPoints, and generally doing less fulfilling work. At hedge funds, on the other hand, the interns said they have a bit more responsibility to make real decisions about investments…The buy-side interns we spoke to agreed that “banking isn’t the most intellectually stimulating job.” And, they said, anyone who’s gunning for a career on the buy-side would be “taking it slow” by first spending two years at a bank.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2950827&forum_id=2#28453018)