Is ER up or out?

If you’re a really good associate, you’ll rarely be asked to leave since good associates are very valuable. But it’s also rare for someone to stay an associate forever since it’s just not very fulfilling or enjoyable, especially if you know you can be a covering analyst no problem.

It’s possible just very rare because most associates would want to have their own coverages if they stay on sell sides since that’s how you’re able to make good money. Nevertheless, I’ve heard of a few folks like that. This can happen if the head of research doesn’t think the associate is commercial enough to lead his/her own coverage and the associate has worked with the analyst for several years and decided stay in return for a better WLB and job stability. A large part of job for this type of experienced associate is to train newer associates, delegate most of the modeling work and initial report writing to newer associates, essentially helping to run the franchise except coming up with new report ideas and actively engaging with the clients (i.e, role is to act as an executioner and trainer). WLB can be quite good, probably 40-50hr/week at most with a lot of flexibility in their schedules in terms of when/where to work. This type of structure only works if the team has at least a few associates. That said, they will still need to pick up the workload/slack if others are not performing or if the team is short on staff due to recent departures.

I actually have met 2 or 3 people like that in my bank. They just enjoy the role sell side brings and the ability to "speak their mind" in reports. Very intelligent people who are not shy to go against the grain, extremely thick skinned people too.