Top 10 Ways to Avoid Work from Your Staffer as an Investment Banking Analyst
10. Send you phone straight to Voicemail so that you can screen your calls
9. Pay your assistant so she screens your calls and says you are in a meeting -- pay her bonus to make her comment how stressed you look and how hectic your week has been
8. If you leave the office by 9pm, save an e-mail that is not urgent, set your alarm for 4am, wake up, log onto the server using remote access and send the e-mail to your team. Bonus points if you can justifiably cc your staffer.
7. Leave at least 10 empty red bulls on your desk at all times
6. Have a pillow and/or sleeping bag visible in your cube
5. When one of your associates / VPs asks for a deliverable, tell them you have "no bandwidth" since you have X, Y and Z due as well and you will try to stay all night to finish it...but you need them to let the staffer know that you are tapped out.
4. At 5pm on Friday, make sure you are away from your desk in a meeting or taking part in a "fire drill" already
3. Never let the staffer know when a project is complete
2. Don't get caught going for coffee and/or lunch breaks. Eat franticly at your desk -- especially if they are around and can see you.
1. If the staffer does get you on the phone (mistake #1), make sure you have a huge laundry list of tasks ready. Preferably, they are urgent and you are just starting on most of them (even if you are almost done with some/most of them). Proceed with the following,
"I'd be happy to take on this additional project, I just won't be able to start on it for about 72 hours because of a,b, c and x, y and z. If you want me to move that ahead of [insert name of big hitter MD]'s work just let me know."
....any I missed or variations on the above that any of you found helpful? thanks.
Good suggestions. There's a couple I use frequently though:
When I leave for the night always make my desk a bit mess (scattered with papers) to make it seem I'm busy.
Staffer sits right next to me so I periodically pick up a pitchbook I'm working on, vigorously scrawl on it with a red pen, sigh as if frustrated and officially get up w/ pitchbook in hand as if I'm visiting DTP (desktop publishing). In actuality, take 10 minute nap in bathroom stalls (no shit, I do this all the time).
Put on headsets while nodding intently as if I'm on an important call.
ahhhh~~~~ that was my favorite moment , especially 1 hour after lunch and I feel sleepy
Yeah, this is probably why every day after lunch, every bathroom stall where I work is occupied for about 15 min.
LOL this reminds me of Costanza when he tries to look annoyed to seem busy:
I love that people do this and others advice on ways to look "busy". Here is some advice for you: don't ever expect to move up the ladder playing pretend at work.
remember harold and kumar.
You are right keeping a balance to stay sane is important, I bite my words and take what I said back.
its a balance of doing good work and avoiding some work to keep you sane enough from crashing and burning. That is true in any job, not just banking.
On number 8, really no need to wake up at 4 when you can just set the email to auto-send at a certain time.
You can set your Outlook to send emails automatically at a certain time, that's great.
9, really?
Maybe buy her a drink or something. Giving her cash may lead to trouble down the line.
how'd they get caught?
His superior checked the files he was "supposedly working on until 3am" and saw the last Edit Time was like 11:30pm.
what if they email you back and you dont respond till 7?
Analysts who send out stupid automatic emails at 4 AM are idiots...I promise you that your superiors do not appreciate getting emails at 4 AM, esp. the idiot senior guys who cant figure out how to turn their bberries on silent during certain hours of the night. Plus many of the senior guys are so cracked out that they wake up in the middle of the night when they receive emails, they wont be too impressed with being woken up by your stupid email.
We had one moronic IB analyst on one of our deal teams during crunch time of the DD process who would always send out late moronic emails (i.e. updated DD check list, updated working group list, shit that could wait until the next morning). People were not pleased and the analyst was made aware during one of our daily update meetings heading into the close.
Pretending to be busy is an important part of being efficient
I don't understand why you'd WANT to avoid work. When you signed that contract, you should have known what you were getting yourself into. As an investment banking analyst, you do have certain duties and responsibilities, and if you won't fullfill them, there are many other wide eyed young people who will. My bad if this sounds corny/naive, but that's how I feel.
That being said, I like to buy copious amounts of starbucks, and scatter the empty containers outside of my office. It says “I'm tweaked as fucked”, and “I've been working my ass off.”
This isn't about avoiding work; this is about managing your bandwidth, so you can work more effectively.
You are corny and naive.
Like useless alluded to, it all depends on the type of analyst you want to be. While your staffer may respect the fact that you're busy working on other projects, there will always be an analyst that is willing to take on additional work. It doesn't take long for the staffer to find out who that analyst is and that analyst will be given a top bonus. Now, that doesn't mean you have to go balls-to-the-wall to make it as an analyst. Most analysts are just looking to "get through" their 2 years and get out. That's why people are constantly trying to just get it done and get out -- hence the list above.
Perception is reality
*Delete
so true
Speaking as someone who does his fair share or work but would avoid unnecessary all nighters (and I am generally perceived as a "top" performer in my group), here's what I would add to the list:
Walk quickly and hurriedly as if you are rushing off to a meeting - especially when you are walking past your staffer or COO's office
Never shut off your laptop if you head off early - leave the screen saver on and if you can. leave your bag in the office to give the impression that you are coming back later in the night
If you know that your COO always comes in at a particular time during the weekend, you could make an appearance during that time too.
Late night emails do work, but don't overdo it
get sick.
Just say "no."
You can't produce good work if you don't know how to turn on "cruise control". If you're constantly at 100% then you're going to burn out mentally fairly quickly. Being able to coast at 85-90% and then gun it when you need to is key.
There's a diff between being lazy and rationing for long term efficiency.
Best advice given was by way BlueofSpirit. Learning to avoid bullshit tasks is key and taking on tasks where you know you can excel is just as important.
I knew more than a few star analysts who learned to hate their job because they were essentially depended on for everything. I also know plenty of mediocre/lazy analysts who are now at decent pe firms living a very happy life.
Universal Rule:
The more work you do, the more will be handed to you regardless of what others do. Essentially, if you allow yourself to be used, you'll be used. These people will never be valued proportionally to the work they put in.
It's easier for a superior to always push work unto those who do it rather than look to strengthen the weakest links. They're too busy themselves and there will always be those that you could push work on.
Damn beat me to it!... Totally george at yankees :D
nothing too clever but create a screen saver that is an excel sheet. don't want to have people coming by and them knowing how long you have been away from your desk.
Ok, people I got your point. But what about bonuses ? I thought if you do lots of tasks and do them nicely, your bonus will increase. If you hide from work, is not it noticed ?
If you do lots of tasks and do them nicely but do not get noticed or appreciated or remembered for it, then it practically goes to vain when it comes to bonus. No one vouches for you at the table, and your bonus will not be at the level that you expected or deserved to have.
Thanks for informing; I will keep it in mind.
Is it never acceptable to just tell your staffer that you are too swamped right now?
Is it possible to avoid the 100+hour/week as an analyst? (Originally Posted: 10/12/2016)
IB is where I always wanna be once I am finished with my undergrad degree. I was very thrilled and can't wait to take my ambition to the field and rock it. Until I've been hearing about the working hours in IB, I start to have no idea where I'm going to take my finance degree. Consulting doesn't pay as good and I can't go to PE or HF without experiences in IB at first place (Even thinking about adding applied maths as a minor for backup)
I just wanna know from you guys who have been through the analyst years or still doing those years, do you really work until midnight weekdays and still have to sacrifice another day of the weekend for work? I'm willing to work until pretty late on weekday, but to work on weekend as well? Hell yeah I might have to find another field with more reasonable working hours.
Is it possible to be more efficient about scheduling your work time? I mean, ways so I can compress the timing at one time, take very short break, focus on the job, and come home earlier with absolutely no attendance on the weekends. The thing is, you don't know when will a client come to your boss with a M&A project and you still have to be present on weekend, or if your team can't work effective enough to wrap up early and cut the working hours.
I need to make a decision soon enough, and I don't know if these things are possible. So I would appreciate it if bankers who have experience share tactics to cut working hours and improve efficiency in getting the job done, especially at analyst/associate level.
Will you be working 100 hours every week? No, probably not. You might expect something closer to 80 hours/wk with the occasional 90+ hour week.
To put this into perspective, 80 hours per week looks like this: M-F: 10am-midnight (+/- 2 hrs.)
That weekday schedule already puts you at 70 hours. Assuming you take Saturday off (by "off" I mean doing a little work from home, not coming into the office), that leaves you with 10 hours to accomplish more work on Sunday before hitting 80.
Now imagine that you have something urgent to work on. You simply add a few hours to your weekdays and work for a full day on Saturday. This will easily put you at around 95. That's what a "busy" week looks like. And to answer your question - no, this is not possible to avoid.
is 10am about the time most analysts come in?
It is possible to avoid at smaller firms for the most part, but hard to know going in. Some lesser known boutiques the average week is in the 50-70 range. Of course the downside is that lesser known boutiques won't have the same exit opportunities that you're talking about. If lifestyle is your main concern, I recommend searching for roles at the smaller firms.
In my opinion, applied math is pretty irrelevant for a transition into hf/pe (only specific strategies are that heavily math based, and even then, they would rather hire a pure math / graduate student than a finance/applied math combo)... only pursue applied math if you're actually interested in the topics, not because you want to seem "more impressive" (unless you're really good, it will just hurt your gpa)
Depending on the group and the firm, this will vary, but i would say the norm now for anl to come in is around 9-10 for sure... pair that with the fact that you're working in spurts, the hours are tolerable (unless you absolutely hate with a passion what you're doing).
If you're so worried about the hours, I would probably say IBD is not the job for you-- most everyone who comes in understands that the hours are long.
Investment banking is not a project-based career, so planning for when you are in the office does not work. Work tends to to randomly pop up.
That being said, you can minimize your hours by doing enough networking to identify groups that have less hours. My first year in IB was at a "no-name" boutique, where I worked 45 hours per week. I then lateraled to a top MM, where I rarely worked more than 60 hours per week. I got very lucky. Other groups at my MM worked 90 hours every single week.
Out of curiosity, what was the correlation between hours worked and bonus at your MM?
60 Hours in IBD?!?! Curious to hear why you left to corp dev? Burnout?
Easily. Second-year analyst at an elite boutique (non-NY) with strong deal flow, and very, very rarely top even 90. Probably average around 70 (10 am - 10 pm during the week, additional 10 hours over the weekend)
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