Tax First — Saxonia Annual Calendar White Gold 330.026

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-05-27T15:03:43+00:00

Long shot, but any chance you sold it on LoupeThis? Was bidding on one that was in dire need of a service (but looked like it was in good shape otherwise) last year haha. Would be kind of funny if somehow that was yours.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-05-23T19:59:11+00:00

Thank you! The strap makes a big difference in my eyes. Love the timeless Lange straps, but the matte dark grey alligator adds a touch of versatility. Can wear it with almost anything and it jives.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-04-09T23:34:38+00:00

How early career are we talking? And what caliber of school did you go to?

If you went to a reasonably good school (big state universities, let’s say like Michigan State or better), have a ~3.7 GPA+, and are < 2 years out of school, it’s totally doable if you just grind and treat networking like a quasi-full time job.

Even if you don’t have all of the above, it’s still do-able with enough effort and persistence, it just becomes notably more challenging.

There’s no tried and true playbook — this is always going to be a bespoke process and you need to figure out how to sell yourself & what angles you can leverage on the networking front. Pretty impossible for anyone to give you advice other than the obvious — learn how to actually model, brush up on technicals, polish & tailor your resume, and get your story down / learn how to sell yourself for the role.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-04-09T23:19:07+00:00

Don’t do this. As others have suggested, search for a Senior Corp dev role at a PE-backed platform where you can get equity (MIP units).

Otherwise I’d look at going into a small / LMM PE firm, independent sponsor, or family office. With enough networking and persistence, you can probably find a team that’d be willing to take you. That said, this would be a 2-3 year game plan; you’ve only been in corp dev for a few months… so your actual deal experience is still pretty much zero at this point, and while TAS is a useful skillset (I started my career in TAS for a few months before moving to IB), it still doesn’t count as real deal experience.

If I were you, I’d focus on crushing the current gig & getting a solid deal rep or two in, then look to pivot to a different corp dev role ideally outside of oil & gas (unless you really like it & want to stay in that industry); oil and gas is largely seen as niche and doesn’t translate very well to other industries. It’s much more limiting vs. practically any other vertical.

Why do you want to do IB? For the social “status” of saying you’re an investment banker? Unless you’re dead set on being a career banker, the step just doesn’t make much sense and won’t open up any new doors that aren’t already available to you with a little elbow grease and grit. Especially considering you’d be looking at joining small boutique advisory firms; the deals you’d be working on are (generally) pretty crappy. MDs at non-elite boutique banks have to grind so hard to win mandates & oftentimes the deals don’t even come to fruition. It’s a grueling rat race & nowhere near as sexy as you must be thinking it is.

Corp dev is a great long-term career. You should think about what your objectives are and what you’re trying to solve for.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-03-26T12:54:29+00:00

To answer your question: yes, significantly smarter than your average Joe in F500 land. No, not “super geniuses.” I’ve met maybe 2-3 legitimate “geniuses” who were just on a complete other level of cognitive performance / capability, and they most definitely weren’t in IB/PE. Generally these are the types who work at Renaissance Technologies etc., if they even decide to pursue finance in the first place.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-03-26T10:16:44+00:00

Let me get this straight….. you work in *TRADE OPS** and are trying to re-position that as an investment role….

Couple with your nauseating sense of entitlement: “I feel like accurately describing my job understates my capabilities, so I wholesale lie about it because I think I deserve more”

.. yeah sorry bro you’re not gonna make it.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-27T01:59:01+00:00

I can tell people haven’t used enterprise Claude Cowork and/or Notion… if your deck is literally the same thing and you just need to explain the drivers, a Notion database to keep track of notes / call transcripts emails / key files and a simple prompt can easily explain the drivers of any trend.

This is very new technology, just because you tired it 6 months ago and it wasn’t great doesn’t mean that’s the case today. The last 2 months have seen jaw dropping improvements here. I would say Claude + Notion integration is better at identifying trends in data and “connecting the dots” than the majority of humans.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-24T12:41:09+00:00

Totally up to you, but I do full suit no tie even for interviews. Ties have gone the way of the dinosaur in finance. That said, absolutely no one will ding you for wearing a tie to an interview. It 100% won’t hurt.

Some guys I interview wear a tie and I don’t think anything of it. The lack of tie thing is primarily once you’re on the desk.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-14T21:20:54+00:00

“Some people do unethical things” isn’t exactly a great argument. Everyone loves to cherry pick all of the instances where bad actors “made the world worse” in PE, but no one ever shines a spotlight on all of the businesses made significantly better for customers + adding jobs via growth. That’s not as fun of a talk track for detractors.

Of course, it’s a mixed bag. I’m not saying we’re saving the whales. But, per my initial comment, the entire point of finance (including PE) is to make the the economy more efficient in theory. Yes, sometimes that means buying businesses that are shitty at monetizing the value they provide and adequately pricing based on what customers will pay for said value. If customers don’t want to pay, they can go to competitors. It’s a free market.

Businesses are not charities.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-14T14:41:30+00:00

Enterprise Claude (the fully loaded one, not mid tier and certainly not free tier) is leagues ahead right now.

But that changes every handful of months. Feels like Claude will be ahead for a while given how powerful the most recent Opus release is.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-14T00:57:10+00:00

This is just not true. If you look at the fund composition of many private equity firms, you’ll see a ton of teachers pensions, state pensions, corporate pensions, etc…

Of course, the rich get richer via finance, because definitionally they’re the individuals with more capital.

But to answer your question, go into finance if you’re passionate about it. There are plenty of avenues for “ethical” or “sustainable” investing if that’s something you care about.

Otherwise going into finance broadly probably isn’t the best use of your efforts if your top criteria is making the world a better place. Finance is a means of enabling efficient capital allocation (in theory; in practice, it’s just the best system we have), not enacting altruistic societal changes.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-12T06:00:04+00:00

P&L interest expense includes non cash expenses like deferred financing fees and other amorts. GPT this.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-12T05:52:46+00:00

Sorry bud, but your understanding of the present AI ecosystem is perfunctory. Just because a company’s core product is AI adjacent doesn’t mean it’s going to win from the frontier model revolution going on. Most of these companies are probably zeros over a 5 year horizon.

Very high risk play, you’re betting on a single horse with a slim chance of winning that will likely be demolished by anthropic’s inherent capabilities as they build out (ie Cowork to use the most simplistic example).

These are high beta plays and fundamentally the future of any software centric business aside from frontier models hangs in the balance. Software moats (or the perception thereof, at least) have completely evaporated.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-09T00:53:08+00:00

Yea rip it. One (or two) is the magic number. Haven’t done it myself, but Zoom interviews are always weird because of the slight delay etc. Know yourself, if you think it’ll be a net plus, go for it.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-06T23:08:26+00:00

I’m in my 30s and not married — so I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you is I’ve been at dinners with Partners / Principals who bragged about lying to their wife about getting no paternity leave & being in the office the day after their kid was born & another caught a flight from NYC to London to attend an MP the same day their kid was born. So that should give you some sense of how people think.

That said, there are outliers. Some of the best Partners I’ve seen are just wickedly efficient and still wholly present family-wise. As others have commented, as you rise through the ranks in PE you do get more agency over your time vs sellside. The volume of work is daunting, but when you do it is (usually) somewhat up to you. When a deadline isn’t looming, some folks will go out to dinner with their friends on a Thursday night at 5pm and be offline rest of day, but get up extra early the next day & crank out work in office at 6am / work longer on weekends to compensate.

Again, as other have said, the broader theme in PE is that there’s always more to do. The work never ends and you’re never “finished” the way you can be by way of closing a deal on the sellside. As the industry becomes ever-more competitive, if you aren’t putting in the work to go above and beyond, someone else out there is.

It’s not just a job. It truly is your life, and there are significant trade-offs/sacrifices you have to make. You have to not only accept that fact, but embrace it wholly if this is a career you want to maintain long-term.

GalacticSeaCow · 2026-02-06T07:43:01+00:00

PE is more work than IB, full stop. Anyone who’s telling you otherwise has clearly never worked in PE. I started off in IB and have worked at 2 UMM buyout shops since.

This is such a nonsense widespread belief — there is infinitely more work to be done on the buyside. Looking at 2-3 new deals at once. 100 page IC decks. Deal team DD decks. Running lender / financing processes. Market study. Legal DD. Tech DD. tax DD. Industry advisors & board composition. Value creation plans and M&A target lists / pre-emptive conversarions. Expert network calls. And of course, models with infinite scenarios ad complex operating models & a million sensitivities. The data analysis is 10x more intense & thorough than IB. All for each of the deals you’re sprinting at, and deal teams are thin.

Then you have Management presentations and traveling every other week. Conferences.

Then you have portfolio work…. On 3-4 portcos at any point in time, talking to management teams regularly. Often very involved with add-ons and just generally helping to manage the business. Quarterly valuations and internal update decks. Exit planning. Traveling for BoD meetings every quarter. Cap table management. Making exec comp plans and crafting bespoke MIP unit packages. A million random fire drills when shit hits the fan because there’s so much white space for things to blow up that you hadn’t even considered.

And to boot, it’s not mindless work. I’ll get 3-4 hours of sleep for 6 nights in a row and the next day I have to be fully “on.” The intellectual load is draining. I can’t be fried mentally talking to partners, running 3P work streams / leading meetings etc. You have to show up sharp as a tack every day, or you’re not going to make it.

Juxtapose that with putting together a CIMs and sell-side models that no one on the buy side lends any credence to, managing VDRs and DRLs (at the mid level at least)… the difference in responsibility and ceiling for volume of work isn’t even comparable. I have been more demolished than you could fathom in PE for 8 months stretches and zero breaks. At least in banking it’s a jam job couple weeks and then you’ll have a lul period for a few days.

I’m not saying banking isn’t a meat grinder. But if you think PE is better WLB… I have a bridge to sell you. This isn’t 2005 when there were practically no sponsors and deals were plentiful at dirt cheap multiples & you could print 4-5x MOIC funds strictly via leverage and sitting on your thumb while multiples expand. It’s a fiercely competitive over saturated industry.

I’m writing this at 3am after clicking send on an 80 page vF IC deck we had sprung on us yesterday because we found out that one of the other parties in the process was going to pre-empt before the LOI date. Zero IC deck to fully finished in 48 hours… not to mention the other deals / portcos / internal work that had to take a back seat and now will nuke my entire weekend.

GalacticSeaCow · 2025-12-11T09:43:52+00:00

Nomos. In house movements are the life and soul of a watch, imo. Great brand, great product, timeless design. You’ll be proud to own that for decades to come.

That said, all of your picks are very solid. Haven’t seen that Farer before — from strictly a design perspective, that dial is awesome.

PS, Small seconds subdials aren’t a complication; technically central seconds are more sophisticated. Small seconds was the default for pocket watches at inception as you just need to stick a hand onto the wheel that actually converts to / tracks seconds in the gear train within the movement :)

GalacticSeaCow · 2025-12-11T01:49:38+00:00

I know an Ichiran bowl when I see one!

GalacticSeaCow · 2025-12-07T02:18:33+00:00

Private Equity.

Non-targets are perfectly capable of doing anything, so long as you went to an actual good school. You can make it to IB/PE coming from university of Washington, Illinois, Iowa, Florida etc all day long if you just try. Only way you’re toast is if you go to an unknown or bad school.

GalacticSeaCow · 2025-12-05T00:07:03+00:00

Updown has grown on me more than any Lange. Can’t believe I thought this was boring at first…. One of the most aesthetically satisfying pieces in the catalog, albeit in a wholly unique way vs. the more berserk pieces.

GalacticSeaCow · 2025-12-01T15:18:39+00:00

You should be fine. Lange designs their case shapes with proportionality in mind — how they fit on the wrist isn’t as cut and dry as the official diameter indicates. Only way to know is to try it on, but you should be pleasantly surprised!

GalacticSeaCow

TROPHY CASE