What firms require face time?

From what I've seen on the boards and from talking to alumni, no banks require face time. That's obviously not true or else the term wouldn't exist. What firms/groups are notorious for "face time" and which ones don't?

 
Best Response

By and large, the tolerance towards your "eccentricities" (occasionally wanting to work from home, coming in a bit late) is directly proportional to the quality of your output. If you do great work that is always in by the deadline, people care less about how much they actually see you around (team tasks being an obvious exception).

All firms require face time initially, you're building a reputation. Once you have a reputation (good or bad), the amount of liberty you can take is commensurate.

 

This is probably group dependent and this is the last thing you should be worried about if your about to start your career.

"Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."
 
Gekko21:
This is probably group dependent and this is the last thing you should be worried about if your about to start your career.

Dont understand why you say that ? facetime really sucks. I personally like to go to gym at 7ish and then stay till I finish my work. Sometimes i cant do this cause my entire deal team is in etc and i kno i could get all the work down that night.

 

I agree with all of the above. It shouldn't even be a concern, and if it truly is, banking might not be the right place for you. Face time is a weird thing that isn't "required" by any firm, but is certainly present, if not because of the long hours and fast pace, then by the analyst working there trying to appear as if they are harder working and more dedicated.

I realize this is a crappy answer, but the only place you won't experience fact time is at very, very small boutiques and that's only because there it's called alone time because you are the only analyst working on that deal and everyone else has gone home for the night...so you aren't staying late to impress anyone, just staying late because you have to get the job done.

Regards

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
 
cphbravo96:
I agree with all of the above. It shouldn't even be a concern, and if it truly is, banking might not be the right place for you. Face time is a weird thing that isn't "required" by any firm, but is certainly present, if not because of the long hours and fast pace, then by the analyst working there trying to appear as if they are harder working and more dedicated.

I realize this is a crappy answer, but the only place you won't experience fact time is at very, very small boutiques and that's only because there it's called alone time because you are the only analyst working on that deal and everyone else has gone home for the night...so you aren't staying late to impress anyone, just staying late because you have to get the job done.

Regards

Ditto. Face time is often used to "impress" and happens when there are over-achieving, or more so brown-nosing, analysts that try to stay late to have the image of working hard when in reality they have jack shit to do. What's even more ridiculous is that I've encountered a few that would set alarms in the wee hours of the morning to send "update" emails to their respective groups/deal teams. So please, don't do it, and only stay if you have to. Easy way to ruin relations with your fellow analysts.

 

Here's a little secret. Face time is almost as much a factor of the pressure you put on yourself as the group does.

Why? Because let's say you finish your work at 7pm. Do you go home? Probably not. Why? Because you worry about what everyone will think. So you hang out, grab some dinner. Then you wait for your MD to finally leave (does that *&^@ hate his family or what??). Then you think about sneaking out. But then you see your staffer, and decide to hang out for 10 minutes until he goes home. Only you get 10-minuted to death, and it's 10pm by the time he heads out. Then you are about to go, when your associate swings by to talk. Frick. Then it becomes a waiting game for him to buzz off and leave. By the time you're sure he's not coming back, it's midnight.

This is facetime. If you had just gone home at 7pm, would anyone have noticed? Maybe, maybe not. If they did, they'd probably think, ah, maybe he went to another floor to talk to someone, or he's traveling. But you didn't leave, because you were worried that they might think you are just underutilized, or lazy. So you wasted the time anyway, for no good purpose. The higher the level of snideness in a group about "lifestyle", the higher the anxiety you feel about this is. But even in a relatively forgiving group, this dynamic is pervasive, and unavoidable.

Because you're not really fighting group culture. You're fighting your own fear, and ambition. and you got your job and got where you were because you have both of those traits in excess of the average person's levels.

 

If this is the case, then when answering "why x bank", saying that one of the reasons you like this is bank is because it doesn't require face time, the firm fosters a culture that emphasizes quality of work, etc. is a safe answer? Or does it just show that you haven't done your research because no one really requires face time.

 

Let me put it this way - when I was a VP, I felt an intense amount of pressure to sit it out for another hour or two at 8pm. I felt a palpable sense of anxiety going to the gym at 7. I did not work in a particularly bad group (a tough one, yes). If I felt that pressure as a VP, how do you think an analyst feels?

When I was promoted, I figured that pressure would mitigate. It did, but it did not go away. In some ways, it lessened the number of people whose opinions I had to care about, but it only brought me under higher scrutiny from the ones who still mattered.

When I reached the height of my profession (at least from a title perspective), I found that was probably the first time I didn't have to worry about face time. But habits are hard to break.

 

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