Just let me work my 12-13 hours and go home in peace. I don’t want to grab drinks/dinner and continue to further talk about work with you. I know I’m an analyst and i should be clamoring to go to all of these but honestly I don’t give a flying fuck.
| +67 | What is stressing you out? | 73 | 11h | |
| +52 | BBs With The Hottest Girls | 28 | 5h | |
| +36 | Equinox Membership worth it? | 28 | 14h | |
| +36 | Whomst Hardo? | 9 | 1d | |
| +31 | I want a puppy - talk me out of it | 23 | 1d | |
| +27 | How to make time for girlfriend | 7 | 1d | |
| +25 | Any risk in ratting out a toxic and incompetent VP to your MD? | 12 | 6h | |
| +23 | RBC had 100 IB SA 2025 Spots Across All Offices and 70% Were Filled With Women’s Program | 14 | 3h | |
| +22 | PIF and Riyadh | 6 | 7s | |
| +21 | Don’t Let These 3 Non-Verbal Interview Habits Be The Reason You Don’t Get An Offer | 5 | 5d |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
I would somewhat echo this. Been on teams where it's pretty unbearable to have any conversatoin whatsoever and happy hours only make it worse. On the other hand, if you really really bond with same people your level it can be a fun relaxer. All of the analysts in my group regularly go out. I think this is rare though.
The other analyst on my team looks suicidal every time I see her and the other one is in another city. The associates are alright but one of them I have no interest in hanging out with whatsoever
I genuinely laughed at this. During my time as an SA there was this girl with us who was the antichrist of a team. Petty, really awkward(math major), didn't know how to use excel without using a mouse, and freaked out about anything (would tell us to stop talking shit about our seniors). If I had started FT with this girl, I know 100% HR would have had to get involved because her EQ was 0. Of the 4 SAs, 2 of us didn't return to the group because she was coming back FT. Anyway, we did a team drinks thing during the last week and it was the worst thing ever. I feel for you bro. Fucking hell I hope it gets better for you.
Can second that if you have another analyst on your team who is chill - life is much better in the trenches. Plus if there's ever a non-Friday where you both can get out before 6pm, sneaking out of the office for a few happy hour drinks feels pretty great (for me this happened like once or twice per quarter)
Unfortunately your ability to competently exchange pleasantries with people you dislike is pretty key to this job (or in PE for that matter) so I would recommend you try to get good at it.
I am good at it. Last review my manager told me I’m extremely sociable and the team enjoys working with me, but it’s all predicated on bullshit hence my post/rant
Welcome to Corporate America, are you sure you want to do this job for the next 30-40 years of your life?
Did you see the memo?
It's key to any job, period. For instance, I work in consulting, what do you think that's like? As for the happy hours / dinners, so long as you can keep people within guardrails and leave work at the office and talk about goofy crap like screen sneaking on multiplayer GoldenEye as kids or SEC vs Big 12 football instead, you'll be fine. Also, leave any and all politics at the door. Never speak to it unless the client or management point blank asks you what you think about politician X, and even then pirouette your way out of it if you can with a simple "I'll be curious to see how things wind up, but I don't know enough to say anything right now (even if it's a president in year seven of their eight year two terms)". Like Ice Cube says, chickety check yo'self bef'o yo wreck yo'rself. Take your pick of lyrics from the song for the rest.
The whole idea is to let people be people and not robots. IE, one of the best interactions I've had are talking sports with the C-suite of a F100 bank during happy hour and as soon as the intern turned up and tried to talk business they dismissed him without hesitation and apologized for letting them interrupt our conversation. He wasn't canned or anything, just given a rude awakening to business life. Nice guy though, and good to work with, all things considered. They renewed their annual contract without question, including markup, citing the personability we brought to them instead of the excel/ppt jockey stereotype.
If you keep making up reasons to not go to these events even for just 15-30 minutes to show face time, your colleagues will mark that against you. It's not pleasant, and you may have good reason to not attend, but it's true. If you can't go for legit reasons, "have receipts" ready to share so no one can question your call. Hell, even better if you can't because you're on a call with another client. Those comments may not go into writing in your various files, but people will bring it up in conversations and your management will pick up on the trend. Even as innocuous as them hearing coworker A talking to coworker B in the break room as they're popping in to refill their water bottle. Office politics can suck, but you gotta play to win my fellow monkey. Besides, I'm not sure about you, but at the end of the day I'd rather say I work with friends and companions than automatons behind desks I begrudgingly have to call coworkers.
I have a hard time keeping up on sports and literally get cliff notes/highlights for this very reason. Some people are able to carve out a weekend for college football. Sadly that’s not me these days. But it’s like I have to in order to hold my own with the big boys I work with. Roll Tide.
I have a different take on talking sports. Sure, you had a good time talking about sports with the C-suite.....you and every other Tom, Dick, and Harry out there. It's not a bad fallback, but it certainly doesn't prove that you're not a robot. Almost proves the opposite as that's what literally everyone talks about.
Personally, I don't talk sports unless forced. Sometimes, that doesn't go well and sometimes it leads to deep and insightful conversations that differentiate you from everyone else who can only talk about sports. Intern took his shot and missed. That's ok. If he was talking to me, I'd much rather talk business than drone over last week's football game.
Tell that to Genghis Khan
I don't get why companies with high work hours do this. We avoid it because I feel if someone is working for us 70 hours a week, then I should let them spend time with their family, not more time with each other.
You know what's worse than this?
HR making up events and requiring you to go.
FUCK THAT!
Funny story. There was a team bonding event at a karaoke bar. At the time we had an absolute a hole of a director who also attended. It was painful. As we’re bashing said director over drinks, a new guy (who dressed metrosexual) approaches and overhears the tail end of a tirade. He had a few too many in him and said, “I bet the director has a sense of humor, how much will you bet me?” We were not WSO rich yet, so the 4 of us said “$100 you can’t get him to have an enjoyable evening.”
The new guy puts in a song request for karaoke and is up in a few minutes.
No joke, he’s soon belting out Divinyls, “I don't want anybody else. When I think about you I touch myself. Oh, I don't want anybody else. Oh no, oh no, oh no…”
Our mouths are on the floor on not only how well this new guy can sing, but how he’s randomly dropping directors name into the song snarkily. We look at the director and he’s cracking the f up smiling ear to ear. It was strange, but the new guy pulled one over on us. Director did have a sense of humor and honestly lightened up around work after this event. I think it was the first time someone put him on his heels in an embarrassing, yet funny way.
Cheapskate me is still kinda mad I lost $25 on the deal, but it was worth it.
Describe “dressing metrosexual”
Dude wore dress pants that were a little too tight and often had shirts from Express that had a little too much sheen for your normal office attire. He was really skinny and would have the slim fit stuff.
If they don't get to know you and like you, you won't last. It's just how business works. Especially because you all work such long hours. They want to know who they're spending those hours with. A robot can do the work. They want people!
Has anyone else been invited to a happy hour as part of an interview process? It happened to my friend.
The associate on my team went out for drinks with my MD and VP during his interview process
How did it go for him?
Yep. We've taken groups of potential new hires out to happy hour / gamenight before they signed their offers so they can see we're real people and not a cubicle farm. They all signed and flat out said that kind of attitude is a good part of why they picked us over Big 4 or slop farms like BDO/Accenture. Of course we all went out again to celebrate their onboarding, and good times were had by all.
Did they have their offers before going out?
My final round at a company (after like 3 or 4 phone calls) was 1on1 with 4 different employees in person. Remember having to wait to meet two of them, so it was like a 30 minute interview with Guy #1, then a 20 minute break bc Guy #2 was busy.
After probably 3 or 4 hours, 2 guys said we should grab dinner and I picked a pub bc “Moscow mules are tonight’s special”. I ordered chicken wings and proceeded to talk about Joe Rogan for 2 hours and got the unofficial offer on the sidewalk as we were leaving.
Got a call the next day when I was in my parking deck with base + bonus and verbally accepted.
It’s all about the airport test (once you’ve established base competency). I’m still weird but have toned it down a bit to fit in at the office, but I still say some “out of pocket” stuff
amazing. JRE fan out in the wild evangelizing.
My first trading job, I was taken to a steak dinner and drinks the night before the interview. Had like five rounds of interviews (pretty laid back) the next day, brutally hungover.
Real !
Yeah they can suck, but the secret to success at any job is being able to network well. You might have the best hard skills of any analyst/associate at your firm, or the most in depth technical knowledge, but that won't matter in a few years. Your boss probably doesn't do a lot of complex underwriting, right? But he gets paid multiples what you do: that's because he's bringing in business, and the key to that is being able to relate to others in work and social situations.
So yeah, you kind of have to grin and bear it. On a related note, this is why it's always a good idea to make time for a hobby or interest outside of work and partying. Even if it's not something middle of the road, being able to talk about something other than work in an in-depth, meaningful manner will help connect you to clients, even if it's not something they're necessarily into.
If you're an Analyst, i would also agree with you as promotion to Associate level is 80% your work-product and 20% combination of peer-review, team work and other soft skills stuff.
But as an Associate, you reallllyyy have to find a way to at least make the happy hours to know your VP/D/MD/Partners. Because they are no longer judging you for your work product (you have analysts for that stuff), they judging you on the overall project delivery which includes sucking up to clients, formulating a successful proposal/pitch, and some mind-numbing risk management and administrative stuff. And all those activities are mostly subjective (except the risk management and administrative stuff) to grade upon. One VP/MD might like if you have a spine when clients asks for something out of scope and you pushed back, one might be mad if said anything but "Yes, we will look into that."
The only somewhat reliable way to garner your superiors attention is to spend time with them OUTSIDE of office/work environment. Promotion are as subjective as they are objective. Getting liked by other people gets more important as you progress on your career, but not in a kind of sucking up/ass-kissing type. Especially if you're in a deal originating/sourcing roles, people will straight up hire you just because they "like" you no matter the prestige of your firm (although it helps if you work on a top firm).
Try to find your niche (knowledgeable about drinks/food/culture/hobby) and it could be so much more bearable if they or you were talking about stuff you are passionate about.
Amen
Quite literally every job I’ve landed has had a meal/drinks part of the interview. I know for a fact that all but one (of 5-6) were social tests to make sure I fit in with the team because we did the exact same thing with subsequent hires.
I get that you don’t want to go and yuck it up with a bunch of people you just tolerate but so many important relationships are built over dinner/drinks whether it’s with management teams, potential new hires, vendors, etc. Humans like other humans, especially when they find common ground. It’s like when you’re in the chair getting your haircut - you can be quiet and just sit there and it feels like it’s taking forever or you can BS with the barber and it goes by much faster and a lot of times you learn something interesting. Think about these team functions the same way: how can I humanize my team a little more so I better understand them and can have a better EQ/enjoy my 65 hours a week with them a little more? It’ll go a long way for your sanity.
Hated them at larger firms but genuinely enjoy and look forward to them at my current small firm. All depends on your team and how genuine people are.
Interesting perspective.
Totally depends on your team...
Been at great places and some miserable ones. At great places as long as everyone doesn't take themselves too seriously you can have a banger of a time getting sloppy given that no one is too sensitive, etc. At one of the miserable places I was at it was pretty annoying as you had to behave yourself and just sit there quietly talking about the weather and not delving too deep into any interesting topics due to being scared of offending anyone or sounding controversial. Even then, at these miserable places I always managed to get along with a handful of people and if it's a big outing you can detach yourself from the bigger group and do your own thing after all the bs chat in the beginning with everyone. At my current place I always look forward to dinners within our team and with our PortCo management teams - it's always a vibe.
I think it's just what you make of it, it's your job to do your part to make the night/evening fun and in my view being a hermit can be a solid disadvantage. Some of the strongest connections that I've made at work was through breaking through the professionalism 'shell' at drinks after which work not only became more tolerable but those people would be more open to helping you out in your day-to-day.
I think regular happy hour drinks and casual team dinners are ok, you can get out real quick if you want to - but I'm really tired of upscale dining events with clients, when you're on a road show, or similar. They usually start around 7-8, and take minimum 2 hours , but more often than not 3-4 - especially if you're expected to hang around and mingle with clients and other prospects.
The food is great, sure, but they all taste the same - so it does get old pretty fast. And you know damn well that once you get back home or the hotel, you'll still have to check and reply emails.
I’d rather go to a client dinner than a happy hour as at least the conversation is a little more interesting and you didn’t just spend the entire day with them.
I'm not a fan either. It's not even that I dislike the people. In fact, I like them but a full work day + lunches is enough time spent together.
As others have said, you kind of have to do these early on in your career. As you get further along, you can go to less and less. Also, once you're married and/or have kids, more people get it that you don't want to spend your precious few free hours hanging around co-workers.
You sound like a joy to be around. They probably don't like you either...
The only thing that makes me wake up in the morning is actually thinking about the beers I’m gonna have at night 🫰🏼🔥
Agreed. Eats into my personal time and I don't like every single person on the team enough to hang out that way - not like I can pick who to have team things with.
We already see each other 12-14 hours a day and really don't need to make that any longer
I don't mind it, what grinds my gears is happy hour with people with zero personality who can only talk about work
That or people who have no personality aside from their local sports team. I'd rather be at home playing video games with the boys than listening to you talk about how this is the year your team will finally win the superbowl or whatever.
Gen Z doomed
My biggest problem with happy hours/team dinners is that there is zero choice about where we get to go. I'm tired of going to top golf type bullshit or generic "pubs" where you have to tip someone to pour you a beer that you could have poured for yourself at home. When we start going to tiki bars maybe I'll be more interested.
Quasi velit harum voluptates ratione. Sed totam omnis veniam ut. Ullam cum quae qui ea vero tempore nemo commodi.
Sint maiores perferendis quod eveniet et enim in. Voluptatem quis vel velit similique eum enim. Possimus autem quaerat quos nobis est provident et ea.
Officia aut et rerum voluptate voluptatem ipsam vitae. Consequatur ut sint quidem molestiae dignissimos laboriosam optio temporibus. Mollitia voluptatem recusandae molestias dignissimos ut nemo. Sit sed officia quam aut qui.
Inventore exercitationem sed dolores. Molestiae et ut commodi error officia. Consectetur quasi corporis autem voluptate cupiditate. Amet itaque dolorum et optio sed vero. Quibusdam ut cupiditate cum.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Adipisci minima rem quia corporis molestiae est rerum inventore. Qui quos quis sed omnis sit labore. Iusto omnis at est id voluptas voluptatum voluptatem molestiae. Ullam eveniet sit qui repellat dolores molestiae cumque.
Neque iste dicta eligendi et. Aut commodi laboriosam optio nisi rem culpa at. Tenetur magnam ea unde expedita consequatur. Repudiandae quos laboriosam ea autem. Ipsa et a illum nemo sit eos. Et magni velit et voluptate. Fugiat nihil rerum ab sunt sunt.
Dolore dolorum ut itaque tenetur. Suscipit ab fuga ab enim. Necessitatibus totam et quia sint officia. Non voluptas nam ducimus sit.