UC marketing major graduates, where are you now? What are some pros and cons? Would you have changed focuses or majors?

Stay away from marketing unless you want to do corporate sales for the rest of your life, even then, 2nd grade engineers and science majors will get all the good jobs (i.e. Corporate sales for a materials firm or Big Pharma. Nothing like having a salesman who doesn't know their product and can't talk to the people using it)

I'm going to attract a lot of negative vibes but hear me out.

Graduating class of 2011 or 2012 to keep ambiguity, Haskayne Marketing with a GPA of 3.0 . Top person in our entire Haskayne Class was actually a marketing major, they went onto a Big Consulting firm. Nice story so far right? But they got benched a lot due to technical short-comings (Seriously, there's only so much a marketing consulting analyst can do)

Anyways, the rest of the top percentile, including myself - went onto corporate sales. I got a job with a big CPG manufacturer outeast (Think Coke, P&G, Nestle) and it was sick. I was making $60K+ starting, had a company car, and gas. But guess what, it turned out to be an incredibly glorified baby sitting position. All I did was micromanage my category and it was soul destroying. Ironically, I was doing marketing but with both hands constrained to my back. Honestly, I was there because they needed a human body. It was also something that is incredibly horizontal, and moving up a few layers required decades. Every major region and chain (i.e. Loblaws, Sobeys, Walmart) had their own counter part. Ok now multiply this by every country in the world. Now factor in that H.Q. does not care unless you are USA or Asia, it's simple math. Don't get me wrong, I am not bitter but I am telling you my stark realizations.

Contrasted with my friend who went to a small company here in Calgary, they're now borderline close to managing director because they learned a lot more. Take it from me - stay away from big companies unless you want to be a complacent cubicle/company car jockey. Might sound sweet for the short come but you'll soon realize you're incredibly expendible because there's a million business grads who will work for free (Perpetual internships that are unpaid are RAMPANT out east)

/r/UCalgary Thread