The absolute WORST stuff you have gone through as a junior/intern/analyst at a BB
As an intern at a trading desk at a BB, I had numerous fuckups. too many to elaborate on. However, I still held out hope of getting, If not a full time offer by some stroke of luck, then at least some interviews with other desks as the previous douche bag intern had done. complete f**ko that guy.
Anyways, the icing on my f**koff cake, was when I, rather innocently, followed my teams tradition of emailing everyone on the desk in regards to a couple days off. What I had failed to notice was that previously, nearly everyone on my team, from the balding analysts to the obese MD, had given at least 3 months notice and REQUESTED permission to fuck off. no more than 2 people could be off on holidays / long whoring weekends at one time.
Being an innocent little beaver, my email read as follows: 'HI guys, just wanted to let everyone know I have a small exam next week and will need to take 3 days off. Hope this is fine with everyone. Just wanted to let you guys know in advance. Thanks!."
One of the analysts was assigned the task of straightening me out the next day. Instead of me performing my usual, humble yet extremely important duties, he made me print out every single email over the last 2 years that any member of the team had sent in regards to holidays and summarize them in a page long essay. He then stated in plain words that I had just erased any possible chance I had of becoming a future BSD / gold-shitting goose and if I continued like this, any reference calls to the desk in the future regarding me would simply be answered with one word: USELESS.
The story did have a somewhat decent ending at the end of my internship but for a while there, i was seriously pondering going on anti depressants.
Would love to hear other tales.
What the fuck were you thinking? At least lie and tell them it was the biggest exam of your life, Jesus.
yeah dude i have no idea wtactualf
MD hands me a stack of papers (double sided) to scan and email to the west coast office at around 10pm. He leaves and i'm now the last person in the office. I couldn't figure out how to set the scanner to scan both sides, so I scanned the odd pages first and then the even ones. I double check the scanned odd pages to make sure no pages were skipped. Start to do the same thing for the even pages, but stop about 10 pages before the end. I send the e-mail and head home. Get a call from a strange number around midnight---don't pick up. Turns out it was the team I had scanned the documents over to. 2 pages did not scan. MD had to go to the office during the middle of the night to send those papers over. R.I.P.
Worst disillusionment stories and cases - IB analyst years (Originally Posted: 03/16/2013)
Some recent semi-related posts made me curious about this subject: what are the worst cases of disillusionment in terms of feelings, thoughts, mindsets, or even actions that you guys have experienced or witnessed others experience as regards to their IB analyst stint? Several former analysts that I have known have some pretty negative feelings about their time in banking. Two that spring to mind are:
1) MBA classmate of mine said he was close to quitting a good dozen times during his analyst years; though he did end up finishing his time. Several times he told his parents to expect him home soon because he was “this close” to turning in his resignation. During b-school, he was one of the more vocal opponents to people considering the associate IB career path telling them: “it just isn’t worth it.”
2) Former colleague told me he was seriously considering going back to Hawaii (where he was born and raised) to start a food stand on the beach because he that’s how fed up he was with his experiences. He had several informal talks with others in his group conveying the mindset of: “guys, this isn’t what I signed up for...”, etc.
I guess there's a third case (and probably the ultimate example) and that's John Rolfe and Peter Troob and their need to document their stories in the book "Monkey Business"......warning any prospective banker of what's in store for them. Though it was technically their Associate roles detailed in the book, I think the concept/idea still holds.
Now I understand there’s probably some self-selection here as the more embittered people are more likely speak up and make their thoughts known, but at the same time I haven’t really met anyone who speaks fondly of their time spent as an analyst. As such, again, just curious about stories others may have.
Lastly, sorry if this is a repeat post but my searches didn’t reveal any hits; though I know this topic of misery during one’s analyst years has been alluded to in one form or another in other posts.
Manually binding pitchbooks at 2am. Cleaning the office. Fetching dinner for a director at 2am from a restaurant that stopped delivery. Really nothing too horrible, especially considering how useless we are as interns. Got a return offer though - having a great attitude matters.
3rd day of internship at BB- made a minor mistake in the lunch order for desk of 10+ traders.. got reamed for about 10 min in front of everyone on the floor about how I was a complete f-tard.. was then allowed to go back to my desk and mope about how my chances of getting an offer were gone.
moral of the story- mistakes cost money/time.
the sell side seems pretty messed up
a competent analyst fits in time to study regardless of their working hours...if you couldn't even schedule your masturbation sessions around reading a fuckin book then you really should think twice about this career. calling someone a "fucko" and "douche bag intern" and yourself an "innocent little beaver" in this situation already tells me the kind of person you are
lol wow. easy homes, you sound like my analyst. some of us mere mortals were not born bankers. jeeeeeeez
depends on the bank/industry group and the exam I guess
yea had skipped a semester but had a compulsory course which was only being offered at that time. had to do the exam.
this happens all the time in S&T don't blame for being fucked by assholes handle the pressure tat's what really they are teaching you develop a good attitude and stress handling ability then you will gain respect
the worst thing i had to do in finance was be an investment banking analyst. mortifying
LOL! This doesn't bother any of you? You'd really put up with being treated like shit and sucking metaphorical dick just for a shot at a high income salary? And we're not even talking about much of a chance for "fuck you money", but just like a few hundred grand a year in most cases.
ED of the team at a BB had an important client meeting and planned the preparation of the presentation very last-minute. So while the others on the team where finishing updating the slides, my main task was it to prepare the "logistics" perfectly (printer setup, be fast in binding it etc). Since it was the first time I did this, I did some practice runs. HOWEVER, I did them with a PP version as the ED told me. Big mistake. When the presentation was finally ready, 1 hour before the ED would have to leave, I had to print it from the PDF version. And then the mess began: The slides didn't come out collated, irrespective of what settings I would change. Since the printer for presentations was about 200m away on another floor, I had to run backwards and forwards to try out different settings, but it just wouldn't work. In the end, 20 min before the deadline, a VP came to help me to sort the slides in the right order (#slides per presentation ~50), but it was too late. ED had to leave, had only 1 copy instead of 8. VP chases after him in the city to bring him a second version... Worst day ever.
Board meeting the next morning. 11pm, the EM finally emails the deck, as the most junior guy (intern) binding is for me. Well, all I remember is that the no. of pages was slightly above the maximum size of the metal o ring thing you are supposed to bend around them, and I had a limited supply. And the hell that was this small room in an empty building, heated by a bunch of printers. Took a taxi back to the hotel for a couple hours sleep, leaving the stack in our work room at the client site. Standard getting laughed at by the night guard. I swear he timed his night round with the time my (Mercedes S class - client's paying...) taxi was waiting outside the gate. Of course the client took 8 weeks to get us electronic passes. Collapse on bed, "sleep", wake up, down coffee and some pickled herrings on fresh muffins (those Germans!), taxi back to the warm comfort of Ikea-coloured desks and naked laptop cables.
An analyst spots that I punched some of them sideways, you can clearly see the paper sticking out from under the glossy plastic cover. They frantically go through the pack of 20 or 30 or however many there were, and single out the bad ones for team use only (consulting being mostly about appearances and all that). Judging by the frosty air in the room at this point, this was the Worst Possible Crime. Hell, even when the EM used an old - wrong - set of figures (also yours truly - errare humanum est) in one of his 200 slides for a weekly board meeting, it wasn't as bad.
5 weeks later at performance review. Everybody knows I got a trading offer and didn't give a crap, at this point. The partner didn't know. Smug German accent of the small man who finally has power: "Ja, you did good work, ja, but we are concerned about your reliability. Ja you learn fast, wunderbar. You program better than people who did zis for 2 years. Good insights on the case, too, regarding the use of ABC by the customers. But reliability, cannot trust you with basic things, like preparing the client decks. You know, we need people who can do the little things* well. And I talked to Y and Z, we agree that we shouldn't make you an offer."
Good times.
*In the next job, I traded over 5,000 times according to my BO software, billions of USD. In that time I got only 1 wrong - one of my first three. Ja, little things.
OP, it sounded like the group was full of dicks. I mean, yeah, common sense to ask for time off earlier, or discreetly ask an analyst what the protocol is. But it's a pretty innocent mistake, definitely didn't warrant what they asked of you.
maybe the Swiss have finally learned to exaggerate.
who takes off time during an internship for an exam? Studying is for after work and weekends.
Doesn't even compare to the doomsday I created for myself. I had to arrange an off-site presentation between my deal team and a client. Had an invitation list of about 15 people to blast over e-mail. I put the wrong fucking address of the location on the invite and sent them. Eventually, everybody got there in one piece. Luckily, the MD is the boss of all bosses and chalked it up to "It's all fun and games anyway". I felt like the biggest dumbass in the world, but surprisingly got a return offer for this summer. Shit happens. Bankers are human after all.
Lol, this sounds like a good prank to pull
lol best one yet
When I was a new graduate (analyst) at my large (c700 employees in the London office) asset manager I managed to humiliate myself in front of the CEO and my entire team (Lat Am equities at that stage).
The week before all the new graduate class had a sit-down lunch where the CEO gave us a little presentation. smoozing etc for about 45 minutes. Fast forward one week and I was walking along the corridor towards my desk when I realised the CEO was three metres in front of me. He looked in my general direction and said, 'Hi how are you, great to see you last week, how are things going at your end' .... I was seriously impressed that he remembered me so I stopped right in front of him and said 'Hi Ian, I'm great thanks, how are you?'. He then did a fairly awkaward shuffle in front of me, gave me a weird look and barged straight past me. When i turned round to look at him I realised he had one of the hands-free bluetooth attachments on his ear and was mid-way through a telephone conversation.
Needless to say my team rinsed me for about half an hour and from then onwards the CEO was referred to as 'Samoan's mate'.
.
Don't want to be a pedant, but the thread title does specify that your experience should be something you went through as a 'junior/intern/analyst at a BB', not a made up story that sounds like a faintly amusing scene in a straight-to-dvd teen movie.
Also welcome to the website.
I was an intern at the time ;)
/thread.
Swiss Ninja, you sound like a complete fruit cake. I would have fired you.
Once, I was so tired, that I slept in the chair during the earnings conference of some bricks-manufacturing company (super boring btw). My associate was sitting next to me... she told me after the conference that she saw me sleep... needless to say, she wasn't happy
I had a feeling it was only for a second... from that point on, I always drink a red bull if I'm not sure... No more "Its all mental/in the head bs or thinking that cold water could help after all-nighters...
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