I was promoted from analyst to associate last year at a global BB in the US. Manager just informed me that my overal pay will be the same as analyst 3 because the group is ending the year flat to slightly up, so everybody will he paid flat to last year. This means bonus is going to be in the $10k area, and just the base/bonus composition has changed. Effectively it’s a pay cut due to inflation.
It was my understanding that being paid flat only really applies to VP and above, who are already on a higher base. Is this correct? Otherwise I could be paid flat forever and be stuck in the low $100k area for the foreseeable future, regardless of individual performance, because I don’t see my group getting more than 10% growth yoy due to the nature of the business.
Definitely not normal. At a Tier 1 BB S&T typical base comp is 85K, 90K, 95K then 125-140K base with 20K increments for each year as an associate. My group VP comp starts at around 200-225K base. Can discuss more just PM me.
What are typical bonuses in S&T like across those ranges?
Highly dependent on group, sales vs trading and even firms. In my case when I was an analyst bonuses were 25% - 75% of base comp. I was in Sales Desk in FICC. Associate bonuses was between 60% - 150%. Definitely less than IB, but pretty good when you consider that I work about 50-60 hours a week at most.
Well that’s a slap in the face
I would see if you could lateral to another BB as an associate 1 (unless the product you are in had an extremely bad year). FYI VPs and Director at my desk saw comp go up 5-10% last year. In my firm's case they are rapidly growing our desk hence revenue is increasing way faster than the bottomline.
my base salary stayed flat for years....but my bonus was 4% of my PnL
So, go make 20mm trading, and then get paid an 800k bonus.
Mind telling us your product and if sales or trading?
Sales, FICC derivatives. Focused more on structured/strategic trades. I work about 70 hours a week.
I used to do more flow and worked about 50 hours tops. My overal comp from day 1 to today has been pretty much flat. I earned $120k in year 1 and I earn just over that now.
I’m getting pretty sick of S&T. The hours are getting longer, the teams smaller, and the pay worse. The big bucks that are always promised never come. In a down year they say wait for a good year, and in a good year they don’t pay either. And I’m not talking about middle market banks either. These are top banks that college kids would kill for. Unfortunately, exit opps are pretty limited. I’m getting contacted by recruiters for ops roles FFS.
If I had to do it all over again I would’ve gone into IBD instead. Marginally worse hours, much better pay and exit opps.
I’m surprised kids are still joining S&T these days - are they just still selling everyone the ‘dream’ when everything is just burning behind the scenes? Also very true that there aren’t many exit opps.. the risk reward is skewed very negatively and that’s pretty ironic given people who join are supposed to become good risk managers
Basically everyone i know in sellside s&t has either left, gone to bschool, or is planning on leaving in a few years
Might want to change your username man. Way too easy to find you. Cheers
It’s still a $100k+ job out of undergrad. And many parts of it are doing fine. It is true that teams are becoming leaner and comp might be down across the board, but it isn’t not worth it by any means.
Plus the job remains incredibly interesting.
Yeah, but I can get a $120k job at pretty much any company and not work 70 hours while taking massive personal legal and regulatory risk, not to mention the long term health impact from the constant stress and not having any time to sleep/workout. There’s no upwards mobility either, as current MDs try to latch on to every single dollar they can squeeze out of this business while it lasts, so they’re not leaving anytime soon. They’re not hiring any analysts either, so management/leadership experience is non existent. At most you get to manage one associate as a VP, and that’s it. In the meantime you still have to do all the mind-numbing analyst tasks on top of your associate workload.
I don’t find it interesting anymore either. Every day it’s same damn thing, just different markets. There’s no growth, no challenges, no new skills to learn. It’s all been there, done that. I can’t imagine doing this for another 40 years, because at this rate I’ll never make enough to retire early, let alone make enough to afford a house.
S&T is a raw deal and I’m hoping I can leave come January. I was sticking around for the bonus, but $8k after tax, of which half will likely be in stock anyways isn’t worth sticking around for anymore.
I'll agree on this.
As a quant trader on the sell-side, I'm believe there are a wealth of opportunities to gain market share, increase PnL. I trade a highly liquid asset. Day to day, I consider what the optimal PnL I can extract from each trade. Is it your alpha, your spreads, your risk management, your traded markets, your asset focus?
Opportunities are there. And the work is interesting.
Are you saying this isn't better than 99% of jobs for students coming out of undergrad? They are coveted for a reason and the salarys still dwarf those of most jobs out of undergrad. Also S&T jobs at BBs still have great exit ops, you could realistically go to an MBA business schools">M7 business school, HF, or AM if you wanted to. Don't think it's fair to compare every job to banking and banking's exit ops because I'd say this job is still pretty damn awesome and compensates well and most kids would kill for it.
I agree it’s better paid than most jobs straight out of college, but I don’t really care about that. It’s more about the long term prospects.
Being a number of years out of postgrad I have many friends in “regular” corporate jobs that make more than I do while working less than I do. They are also starting to manage teams, and are on track for C-suite. They rotate around the company learning new skills and tackling new interesting challenges. Moreover, they’re not jeopardizing their health.
For me, the prospects aren’t so bright. I might make MD in 20 years, I might be stuck at VP managing one associate for the rest of my life. Work/life balance doesn’t get better as you become more senior. My MD still works 70 hours a week. Does being a VP working 70 hours a week for the next 30-40 years sound like a good deal to you?
Comp after a few years sucks. You work your ass off the entire year only to hear that while you did great, the rest of the firm didn’t, so you won’t get paid. And the little you do get paid is in stock that doesn’t vest for a long time.
Exit opps to HF and AM are non-existent as sales. They’ll trade on the back of my ideas, but when it comes to hiring they all want either trading or IBD experience. The only job offers you’ll get are in ops at HF and AM. I have friends who started a few years after me in IBD, did 2 years of 80-90 hour weeks and now earn $250k+ cash doing 70 hour weeks. It’s an infinitely better path. Companies are also eager to hire them for Corp dev roles at $200k for 40 hour weeks. No such opportunities exist for me.
Monkeyfaces, I can’t agree more with what you’re saying. It’s as if you’re reading my mind. I was/sort of am in the same boat as you. It’s massively frustrating being in S&T, getting ranked ‘top bucket,’ grinding you ass off all year and sacrificing your life and then getting snubbed on the bonus/career progression/exit ops/quality of life. I am 100% on the same page as you and can feel exactly what you mean.
As for being gyped on a raise/A2A signing bonus, unfortunately you aren’t alone. A buddy of mine who I used to work with was just told he is getting promoted to associate when he gets his bonus in a few weeks, except there will be no immediate raise and bonuses are going to be down about 20-30% because of ‘headwinds’ in other areas (aka they need to pay 2 multi-billion dollar regulatory settlements, cover $100M+ losses on an equity desk, and hire an army of developers to overhaul their platform). He got $18 last year and is expecting $12-15 this year. They aren’t hiring any new analysts and he’s not getting any new responsibilities, just stuck in the same role doing the same shit. I’m in the same spot as him (top bucket and grind my ass off with no prospects for growth/exit ops/worklife balance/more responsibility) except I’m getting a halfway decent bonus this year.
I understand that people would kill for this job and am not denying it’s great to make almost $100k right out of school and that’s it’s amazing and all, but I agree with monkeyfaces that intermediate and long term prospects are bleak at best and the job doesn’t compare to what my friends and other people a few years out are doing.
The golden rule of employer/employee relations is to only pay the employee enough to get him to keep showing up and that an employee is only as good as what someone else will pay him. These are no longer the golden days of S&T where it rains $$ and every seat is a great seat. Comp is going to continue to grind lower and there will be less seats. All that being said my comp and experience over the last 6 years in FICC sales at a US BB has been very similar to what average joe has described. I was an analyst for 3 years and an associate for 3, and will make VP next week. Once I made associate I given my own accounts and was free to work on them as I pleased with minimal supervision from "boss" and had an analyst to pick up the grunt work I was previously doing. I have very rarely worked more than 50 hours a week in the office, there is travel and entertainment which was a different sort of grind but for the most part I enjoy my job and consider my work/life balance to be pretty good. I was lucky in the fact that there was attrition on the team I was on that made my path to moving up pretty linear, but I have seen several other analysts move up in paths that were not as linear as mine provided that they are capable.
Monkeyfaces and Simon Says- You are underpaid, and if you want to stay in S&T you should start networking and talking to headhunters. If you are looking to get out I would recommend looking at sales roles within asset management, cap markets at a fintech company, or sales @ one of the major tech firms. These seem to be the most common exits that I have seen sub 5yr S&T people make.
I had my own accounts worth about $2-3mm as an analyst at another bank, but now that I’m an associate at this bank I’m not given anything.
I have to grow my own book, so new client relationships only. I also don’t have an analyst, so I spend 90% of my time doing grunt work for the VP/MD and 10% trying to gain new client relationships.
It’s very difficult to gain new clients if I can’t leave the office to actually meet them, so I feel like I’m being set up for failure. I’m generally in the office for 12-14 hours straight, not even taking 5 minutes for lunch. I do work from home as well after that, and have the occasional all-nighter.
No one above VP is leaving either, so there isn’t any room for upwards mobility. They’ve all been in their seat for 10+ years, and from what I see they don’t make nearly enough to retire.
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