1st Year Analyst - What Happens If I Just Stop Caring?
With all of the talk on the forums about 1st year analysts quitting, it has motivated me to finally seek to pull the trigger on doing so. However, I am not going to quit until I have another job lined up, so was seeking advise.
What would happen if I just stopped caring / pushed back on staffings to give myself time to recruit and interview? I'm at a top BB (GS/MS/JPM) and curious how that would play out. By not caring I don't mean literally stopping doing all work, but instead doing the regular work but signing off at say ~10pm and not being as quick on emails, as well as pushing back on new staffings.
Could they fire me? I imagine with HR and the bureaucracy with BBs I would be safe until bonuses are paid in August, but hopefully I'll be long gone by then.
Really appreciate everyone's thoughts here and risks/rewards of doing so.
High risk, high reward situation. As a 1st year analyst who recently quit without anything lined up, here's my 2 cents:
It is extremely difficult to network, research, and apply to roles when you're working 100+ hours and your seniors expect you to be online 24/7, and if you are not dead set on what you want to do next (niche industry or specific role) then you will need to do your homework. No one will hop on a networking call with you at 10 pm ET (maybe you're on the east coast and the guy is on the west coast?). While it is risky to quit without anything lined up (believe me, was not an easy decision to make), you increase your chances of landing something nice. Once you give your bank a bs covid related excuse, you won't be burning the bridges. There is a probability, though slim, that your VP might not tolerate you slacking off till your August bonus and might fire you instead. The last thing you would want is your new firm calling your old bank to find out you were fired...
Just bite the bullet..
Haven’t done it, but it’s very difficult to get fired as an analyst (beyond insider trading, harassment, etc, I think it’s actually near impossible). However, I have found that with the way staffings work, it’s usually all or nothing. You can’t just log off at 10PM or flat out reject staffings without actually dropping the ball and not doing your work. If comments come through at 9:30pm and you log off at 10pm, I imagine it will go very poorly and you’ll end up screwing over the entire team. You can just do a consistently mediocre job in the work you do and eventually you’ll be staffed on less intense projects, but I could never imagine someone actually just not doing the work. It’s a small world and you would be really be letting the team down, so you better hope no one ever calls for a reference if you take this route. Personally I would quit before adopting this strategy—you won’t wreck your reputation and you’ll have more time to recruit. The other strategy would be to just actually do your job but do baseline level of quality so you aren’t put on live engagements and then commit yourself to recruiting in your free time.
Nah had a friend at a BB who tried to cruise control to recruit and was let go ~1 year in to his analyst program.
Did he land a buyside job at least
Plenty of analysts get laid off and lose their jobs in a down market...
People are even leaving top banks?? :0 aren’t you basically guaranteed a sweet buy side gig in a year??
Have you not been reading the plethora of posts on this forum? Literally half of them are about quitting as the WFH experience has exacerbated a lot of systemic issues within IBD at the junior level where people would prefer to prioritize their mental health and getting into a field they're passionate about
Fair enough man, just seems like IB takes so much extra effort (networking, technicals practice, relevant internship early in college) compared to literally everything else except for maybe med school. Im shocked people would leave early after all that.
"Sweet" is subjective. More fair to say "well-paid" gig.
This is basically what bottom bucket analysts do anyways. If you're truly set on leaving, I don't see why not tbh. As another user mentioned, it's very difficult to get fired as an analyst as they only need to deal with you for two years and can just relegate you to price updating books.
I would quit. Off sheet references are way more common and powerful than you think. Better to just quit and cut ties and give COVID as a reason or whatever, than have somebody down the line call your old boss because they were old banker buddies or classmates or something, and then your old boss tells that person you were total shit.
Agree with this. I would quit before just mailing in. You’re not going to learn anything with this mentality so you’re wasting your time while also destroying your reputation. People will be annoyed if you quit but can at least understand and sympathize with the challenges created by COVID. However, doing a trash job and letting the team down isn’t forgivable and will cost you a future job if they look for a reference.
As far as I’m aware, it’s employment at will, so they don’t even need a reason to fire you.
Whatever you do... Don’t drop the ball or fuck the team over. Don’t burn bridges. As others have commented, the folks you would fuck over can have a massive influence on your near term job prospects. I’ve seen it happen twice in the last 12 months. One guy is still unemployed.
How did he fuck them over?
Stopped caring. Spoke down about everybody. Work product became very, very bad.
I've adopted a slightly similar approach. Certainly not logging off at 10pm and turning in sloppy work, but I am putting a lot less pressure on myself to be perfect. Instead of turning my wheels trying to figure something out, I just ask from the get-go. If I was given no guidance on a task, I just turn in quality work based on my interpretation of the assignment with zero guilt. It helps some with hours, and a ton with mental energy since it makes the job less stressful.
That's more what I was getting at. By logging off at 10pm I meant if there wasn't anything pressing to do at that time rather than staying online so I show as "green". Just curious as you're another 1st year, what are your plans?
Yeah wtf lmao logging off at 10pm doesn’t mean you don’t care.
Original commenter here: sorry misunderstood. Thought you meant like going to bed or fully checking out at 10pm lol. If I don't have anything to do, I am 100% on my personal laptop trying to figure out next steps or getting a work out in. Hesitant to go to bed before midnight since sometimes there will be a late night ask even if I haven't heard from anyone since 7pm, but certainly not just sitting around in front of my monitors in the interim. Could not care less if Skype shows me as "away" or whatever atp.
Like you, I do not want to quit without another job lined up. As of now I am planning to stick it out until the summer and then start looking for opportunities...anything with better hours lol. I think your plan of compromising work performance a little for the sake of prepping is really smart and I will likely follow suit closer to June. The only reason I am holding out that long is it took me a whole month to get staffed on a deal (not just pitches), and our start date got pushed to late summer to begin with, so my resume is super lean rn.
Not in IB. But I imagine what you are doing may actually set you up for long-term success in your role. Far less likely to burnout, and have an anxiety attack compared to analysts that crash due to stress.
I am yet to be fired every time I run out of adderal.
Caring 3/4 weeks is still in the nothing happens bucket in my continued clinical trial of at what age I have a heart attack.
You’ll probably get promoted
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