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The Hardest Corporate Job in the World

Do you have what it takes to be a corporate police officer?

John Polonis
7 min readMar 1, 2023
man in a suit
Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

Prior to starting my life as a stay-at-home dad, I was a line of business compliance officer on a Wall Street trading floor. I had worked on trading floors for almost a decade before “retiring.” In my opinion, the life of a compliance officer is the hardest in the corporate world.

Don’t get me wrong though. There are many challenging and demanding jobs from the executive to entry levels. CEOs have to keep shareholders happy, boards of directors have to check CEOs, and entry level workers have to learn quickly with little to no experience. None of it is easy.

A compliance officer’s role, however, is uniquely challenging. You have to work at the crossroads of revenue generators, operations, and backoffice staff. In short, you have numerous stakeholders to support, check, and satisfy. All at once.

A compliance officer who covers a trading business has to simultaneously assist and regulate traders. The ability to do this with integrity determines effectiveness. It’s this delicate dynamic that makes the compliance officer job the hardest in the corporate world.

The trading floor police officer

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