Juniors getting incompetent due to AI
Noticed this with the most recent cohorts. Everything is build in claude. Every little request. I.e., I ask can you give me a clean output sheet of market volume by segment A/B/C and I get back a claude table which analytically is fine, but the structure of the output is just not there yet. Can't put it in words but it is always incredibly dense and complex.
Same with qualitative and simple requests -- i.e., send me the 3 takeaways from the mgmt. meeting and then I get back at an excel table with Colum 1 Insight, Colum 2 Evidence, Colum 3 "What this implies". Insane.
I feel they completely lost any sense of trust in their own abilities and use Claude for everything. It works well until it doesn't, i.e., once you start poking some questions around the model it gets extremely obvious that they have zero clue what links to what and how the model flows through.
Prompting issue
Lmao dont even get me started. Guys are giving me research based on claude screenshots. When I asked where they got numbers from, the answer was “Claude, screenshot attached” - my guy didnt even bother to check the actual source.
They are cooked. I think millenials and older gen z are the last intelligent generation.
I honestly think something is cognitively wrong with current generation of teenagers and college students. They cannot problem solve or do deep independent research with pulling out claude like a baby does a pacifier. Many are intelligent but it's surface level only.
It's over for them.
The bar is being lowered for the rest of the aspiring bankers out there. AI is the version of "throw the comps into capIQ and hope they're right".. or "go home early and hope the MD doesn't notice". We all notice. Get lazy and you'll get replaced by someone that isn't (or at least figures out how to prompt AI better).
Agreed
The technical & commercial judgment skills for new analysts are taking a toll due to AI.
In the Pre AI days struggle to find a solution, the process of trial and error and satisfaction of finally cracking it up was what used to hone skills & judgment but AI has taken it all away
The issue with AI is it can be used hands off. If you use it to crunch large data sets, spot connections in research, handle excel grunt work, and still analyze and learn from what you are doing and are critical of the output it’s a great tool. Good analysts can do more work faster. The issue is bad analysts now have a short cut to passable looking work. Eventually that shortcut won’t need a person pushing the button.
At its core the difference between a lazy person and a hardworking person hasn’t changed and that will show up like it always has.
To me this sounds like it’s not an AI problem but a laziness problem. You can go about it in 2 ways:
1) You consider what the analysis is aimed at, what the output should look like, and develop original thoughts and assumptions to feed it. You give AI your approach and guide it, and you sense check / QC the outputs. Also prompt it until the output is clean and easily understood 2) You don’t do shit and have AI do every step above
In my head AI is the problem. A rational human being won't do excess work that feels (to them) useless if there's an easier way. AI adds an easier way, hence to minimize work the first AI result is what you use.
Same here. For me, it was a problem even before AI. People take so-called "efficiency" too far. They want to follow cookie-cutter formats/processes for every type of analysis, and its never really what we're looking for. Classic problem of trying to force a round peg into a square hole. AI just making it worse.
Silver lining: thoughtful people will be needed for a while longer. Everyone back to work.
Whats insane to me is that basic presentation skills are lacking. The model works fine analytically, but there is no clean output where I could drop in and quickly understand the key outputs. Logically and coherent.
It is always some sort of hugely overengineered data dump and I feel like they think they add value by increasing complexities, scenarios and make everything as dense and complicated as possible.
I want one clean table, largest markets, sorted by volume, YoY growth, CAGR - what I get are 30 different sheets with different breakdowns/scenarios/clearly everything build via claude but incredibly difficult to just find what I need.
Think it’s an issue of incentives. What’s the point of grinding out super thoughtful, rigorous analysis and then have 80% be reworked / deleted by the Partners/AP before the client meeting.
Might as well Claude it and get out of the office sooner.
Agreed
... so you learn that stuff, in case you need it later. That's literally the job.
Why do topics get randomly moved around, i.e., why is this now in management consulting when it was posted in IB?
I feel most of you just forget when you first started and were stupid. They will have to adapt eventually. It just will probably be later in their career.
I've witnessed first-hand my analyst's slowly losing the ability to problem solve and give autonomous thought and logic to something because they immediately put it into copilot. It's sad.
As someone who interned I noticed this among my peers too. I even asked them and their response “everyone is using it, it’s just the way Wall Street is going” absolutely sick. In terrified to show up because I feel like all the cracked analyst who were left when I was there are gonna be gone and replaced by Claude abusers. So I decided to take a bunch of classes at my school to hopefully attempt to make up for it
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