When I leave work last Friday after an 80 hr work week, I go out. Half an hour into my night, I get a call from my MD and I step outside. He needs a draft of an global and regional industry overview, as well as a company overview by the following afternoon. I kiss my girlfriend goodbye (I don't apologize because she understands), I say bye to two friends (they don't) and I leave. I walk 4 blocks, I grab Starbucks, a can of pouches and a cab and I'm back at my empty apartment. I work until 6 and I send out my draft and fall asleep. My 9700 wakes me up at 8:30 with corrections requiring what seems to be a ridiculous amount of data mining. I roll out of bed, and shower and I'm business casual within 10 minutes. I decide I'll make coffee at the office. I get there around 9 and I put in until about 4 am this time, sending along my best work and final iteration at the end of the night. I go home, set my phone's sound profile to Loud and I fall asleep. 5 hours later I'm woken up again, this time by an email. I don't shower and I'm in the office again for another 8 hours.
When the MD and I sit down this morning, he tells me that the document is shit and that if I really put in the time that I say, he is actually worried about me. Then he tells me that the client pushed back the RFP's submission deadline another 3 weeks.
I smiled briefly. He said it wasn't funny. I apologized and obviously didn't try to explain, but I will now.
Throughout my life, I attributed sub par results to a lack of effort (grades, girls, athletics, etc.). Two months into my analyst stint, I think this is the first time in my life where I can't do that because I actually put in all of the effort I could, and it simply wasn't enough. So, I had to laugh at what an utter failure I was and of course, at the subsequent marginalization of my efforts.
Lesson learned: I'm glad as all hell that I can laugh at this.
Don't take it to heart, just move on.
It happens to the best of us.
At the end of the day he's just a worthless MD who kisses client ass for a living and is probably just upset with the failure that is his own life (probably divorced with few friends and no hobbies, just work). Do your time and get out of the industry as fast as you can, don't worry about the abuse you have to deal with in the meantime.
Do better.
Understand what you did that was lacking and make sure it doesn't happen again. Thats the way it works. Or take it to heart and be down on your luck and be a failure. It all comes down to resilience and emotional intelligence/fortitude.
You don't have to be terribly bright to be a banking analyst and get by, you do have to be pretty sharp and determined in order to get in the door though, so by virtue of you being in banking, one can assume you possess the very little aptitude necessary to do whats expected of you.
Suck it up.
Agreed and thanks, but I'm definitely not taking it to heart - hence the "lesson learned." Consider it sucked up.
Deal with it and kiss ass until you have the resources and connections to be your own fund manager or whatever it is you want to do.
It'll be like this for a few more months. Your first year in any new career is always tough. And your first six months on any job in the same field are usually pretty tough, too.
After that, you develop some confidence and start pushing back.
After a year or two, you've become moderately indispensable, and YOU get to push them back as hard they push you. And it's fun to turn the tables and finally get yourself a little more respect like you deserve. Just be confident in your work and make sure you've got a very strong thesis on why they're probably wrong and you're DEFINITELY right before you get too pushy. To a manager, there's nothing more irritating than insubordination AND incompetence (mild insubordination behind closed doors is OK if your employee is ultimately fixing your mistake.)
One other neat trick when someone is giving you a hard time- and this is just fine for new joiners- is to innocently ask them a REALLY tough technical question. After that, they will try to avoid you until they have an answer. In research, this keeps people away for at least a few hours or maybe a day or two, but given the typical technical skill of managers in IBD, this could potentially work for MONTHS if you keep reminding them of the tough question every time they stop by and give you work.
In the meantime, you've got to learn the system. Sleep on it a few days then go back and look at what you did in the context of the big presentation and see if you can understand where he's coming from. If you can understand what you did wrong, it's usually pretty easy to fix. Focus on understanding what the presentation needed to look like and why it needed to look that way, and you've taken your first step to getting your vindication/pushback moment. Don't get mad, get even.
x
Don't work so harder than you need to. How did your product not fit your MD's expectations? It usually comes down to little things that aren't necessarily more time consuming, but you just need to reshape your thought process.
Similar story happened to me - my advice is to try to take some distance between you and your work and to ask the right questions at the beggining of the process.
You are very junior so don't blame yourself and try to use the following advices: 1. Ask what your MD/VP/D/Associate wants (sometimes they don t even know themselves, so don't be afraid to ask EXACTLY what do they expect) 2. Manage the process (send updates, questions to associate or somebody above you throughout the process) 3. Ask your peers ("hey bro I have to do the analysis for XYZ sector, do you have any ideas what do he wants?") 4. Don t reinvent the wheel: Try to find an overall market study or market research on internet or on Thomson One and use this as your outline for your market research. ("If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin...")
>And remember, most new analysts are "tested" in their first months...this is, IMO a test designed to "break you in". For example, if you had worked with me I ll have give you all these advices on Friday night, you would have worked maybe 5 hours on Sat, I would have turn your work in the evening and on Sun I would have turned it again and on Monday, I can garanty that your job would have been well received.
> So, at the end, keep you chin up, hang in there and in a couple of months you ll laugh about it...
maybe the OP just isn't that smart or talented
Haha Great point.
Disagree with the "they're just testing you" statement. No one has the time or willingness to "test" analysts. The fact that you're capable of delivering whats requested in any particular time frame is a given. This isn't middle school. At best, you'll be given something with an embedded time cushion because your senior is assuming you'll need to go through more turns than usual since you're still wet behind the ears. In the OP's case, it sounds like thats what happened and even with that cushion the final product wasn't where it needed to be and thats why his MD was pissed.
As for the last comment about talent/smarts, I'm interested to know exactly what type of talent or smarts are required to do any of the responsibilities expected of a banking analyst (e.g. regurgitate language from the MD&A section of a 10K)? More likely than not, OP just over-thought what he was supposed to be doing and missed the mark as a result. A pretty common mistake early on since you're eager to over-think things that are pretty simple and trying to over-deliver.
hang in there -- first few months are often the hardest because you are not as efficient in Excel or PPT. In 6 months working 80+hr weeks you will be a machine.
Hang in there - take the time to figure out if the job is for you as well.
As long as you can walk out of there laughing at yourself and the job - you're still sane. I had the same shit my first few weeks - suck it up and learn everything you can. The day you leave will feel awesome - but those experiences will make you appreciate leaving that much more.
He who endures, conquers. Hang in there.
" I will prepare....and one day my chance will come " - Barack Obama, 21, Occidental College Student.
and hang-on to that girl......rare to see understanding gals
It's all part of the learning curve.
Someone made the point about not reinventing the wheel - always look at other completed work that the MD liked and try to replicate it in terms of style and content.
I don't think he was trying to break me in or test me. I saw the RFP and the deadline was tight, so the work needed to be done.
Thanks for the tips and encouragement. In retrospect...
I should have just pulled straight from research/10k. That would've saved hours and limited the amount of colloquial language I used throughout the entire document - his biggest complaint. I also took it upon myself to do a SWOT analysis on the company rather than "develop its prospects and challenges logically" - sounds vague but this was his complaint. It was a pretty strong SWOT, but nonetheless it was, agreeably, "monkey work."
He just sent me a write up that he did on something else. Will use it for future reference.
Thanks again!
If I can offer up some advice, just do what your told. I know it seems bleedingly simple, but with thing that I think really hurts you from undergrad (if you have a harder major) in banking is this constant extrapolation of information that isn't there. I did that at first to and it cost me a lot of sleep: trying to show everyone how "smart" I was by digging up some obscure guidance number from a lost analyst day recording or whatever. Just have your file room print out all the financials from the time period, and throw them in.
Part of the trick of this job is knowing when to put in the extra effort and when to just be a monkey and enter data.
Last line is very solid advice. Choose your battles even more carefully than with the missus.
"develop its prospects and challenges logically" - Whatever that means.
Haha! Reminds me of the day in the life of an analyst videos.
http://www.businessinsider.com/cartoon-a-day-in-the-life-of-an-analyst-…
One thing I have found in banking, lack of objectivity. Let's face it, these MD's are measured based solely on money, aka how many deals you close. If you write the perfect pitch book and don't get mandated on the deal then "you wrote a shitty pitch book".
Just do your best and know that these guys are just spitting bull shit. Be open minded to accurate criticism and laugh inside at the rest.
LOL what a crybaby ... 2 months....
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