I work for a buy side trading desk. I recently saw a position at one of the brokers with whom I deal with every single day that I am very interested in. My sales coverage is director level and has been at this company for 10+ years. Having said that, he/she knows everyone on my desk very well. Can anyone advise on how the etiquette works here? I really want to ask my coverage a bit about the open role to see if I would be a good fit to potentially interview. But one thing I do not want, is for it to get back to anyone on my desk.
Does the sales coverage typically keep these kinds of things confidential? I know its probably on a case by case basis, but maybe some of you can chime in on what you would do if you were in her/his position. I have a good relationship with this person, but again, I've been on my desk only a couple of years, while they've known the more senior PMs on my desk for a decade or longer.
As someone who has experience on both sides of this situation, this will absolutely be kept confidential. People are very understanding of exploring other career options, especially when a junior guy is looking.
The bigger question is will he help you. If he thinks the senior PMs on the desk would be pissed about you leaving and thinks that he could potentially lose business if you left then he might not be so inclined to help you. When I made the move I had to re-assure my manager on the sell-side several times that it would not effect business. The other side of the coin is that if he thinks that your new role could help him in any way then he will be sure to push for you.
Just out of curiosity why are you looking to leave the buyside? I have seen very few guys at Tier I or even Tier 2 type accounts look to leave for the sell-side recently, some of that is a lack of jobs but they seem all be pretty happy with things on the buyside. Also what product/strategy/size shop are you at?
The shop I work at has 5 senior PMs and 2 of us juniors. The way the senior PMs are currently setup, they are all lined up in the proper spots in their respective experience/responsibility spectrum where no one is expected or incentivized to leave for at least the next two years and most likely a bit longer. As the junior PM I am still responsible for dealing with all the ops/compliance/accounting/sales-flow issues that you can imagine. Anything goes wrong with any of the trades executed by seniors or any other portfolio related issues, we have to deal with whatever BO/MO/sales teams that specialize in those areas if they need any desk support. So to work on investment ideas, read research, perform technical analysis and so on, you need to pray for a day with minimal issues that are beyond your control.
So the reason I want to move, is that I feel that I am ready to do a pure investment role (can PM you about my experience). There is a job that I believe I would be a solid candidate for at the broker that I was describing before which is a pure trader role that does not require any of the sales responsibilities unless you have a client that needs to talk techs/macro/market-action/whatever with more granularity. I am more interested in getting good experience to be able to talk trading ideas on a very technical level very naturally and think that this role would accelerate that learning curve exponentially. Past that, I will find my next role when the time/experience level is right. So, the fact that sell-side is shrinking and will get automated and any related concerns are just past my time-horizon. From experience, the sector I specialize in, is a long way from automating. We still execute a lot of our fixed income strategy over the phone, BBG chat etc, so the sell side isn't disappearing or even materially shrinking in the next 3 years in my area in my opinion.
I will PM regarding product/strategy/size, I'm in a rather niche sector that I do not want to reveal publicly at this time.
Would love to discuss in more detail, looking forward to your PM.
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