I left S&P for J&J corporate finance. Did I just derail my path to the buy side?
Looking for honest advice from people in credit research, asset management, hedge funds, or corporate finance because I’ve been thinking a lot about my long-term career path lately.
I have around 8 years of total experience. I spent 6 years at S&P as a credit analyst covering pharma companies, where I worked on issuer analysis, financial modeling, ratings committees, management meetings, and industry research. While working full-time, I also completed my MBA part-time.
About a year ago, I left S&P and joined Johnson & Johnson in a corporate finance role as a Manager. At the time, it felt like the right move. I thought getting company-side experience at a major healthcare company would broaden my skillset, improve my long-term compensation trajectory, and give me more strategic finance exposure instead of staying in ratings forever.
But recently I’ve started questioning whether I accidentally moved myself further away from what I actually enjoy most, which is markets, investing, credit, and research-oriented work. Even outside of work, I spend most of my time following macro, reading credit research, and thinking about investing. Long term, I still think I’d ideally want to end up in either buy-side credit research, sell-side credit research, or potentially even a hedge fund seat one day.
My biggest concern is whether moving into corporate finance changes how Wall Street views you. I’ve seen a lot of people online say that once you leave markets-oriented work for corporate finance, it becomes difficult to transition back into investing roles. I’m not sure if that’s actually true or just something Reddit exaggerates.
I’m curious how people would view my background at this point. Does the S&P experience still carry weight after moving corporate-side? Is having deep healthcare/pharma experience actually valuable for credit investing roles? And what would realistically be the best path from here if I wanted to make that transition in the future? Would networking and positioning be enough?
Would really appreciate honest opinions from anyone who has worked in credit research, asset management, or corporate finance and has seen similar career moves play out.