Am I Bad at My Job or Do I Just Work With Psychos

3rd year analyst at a (Jef/RBC) type bank. Want to get some perspective here because I think it’d be valuable to hear about other people’s experiences. This job has completely destroyed my confidence and I feel so paranoid about sending any sort of work product out. I have been reprimanded by my VP and director multiple times for, in my opinion, very small things. For example, forgetting a period in a footnote or using an Oxford comma when our group “does not use them”. These mistakes have all been in working drafts btw. I have been told I “lack attention to detail” and “do not have the drive and ambition” to do this job. That is not hyperbole btw, that is verbatim what I was told - for missing commas. They have also told me it would be “an embarrassment” to send out this level of work product. Really trying not to come across as a softy here, and I guess they are right, but I feel like there are better ways to say it?

I have always printed out my work and triple checked it before sending anything but now I am at the point where I am spending hours reviewing shit every day in fear that I am going to get yelled at or fired. I dread working now because the only feedback I ever receive is terribly negative. Maybe I am a total idiot and by now I should not be making these mistakes but this sort of environment is incredibly draining. Wondering if anyone has experienced anything similar?

 

I'm sorry to hear you are going through this and sympathize. I wish I had someone like you working in my group. My opinion is that you are working with either old school or "intense" bankers. I know in the older days missing punctuation was an offense but I think in 2024 generally that sort of stuff is not really considered a big deal as long as the numbers and substance is right. At least at my bank I rarely see juniors actually checking work diligently anymore. Putting aside the verbal stuff, if they are paying you well I would assume they think you are valuable and are just venting.

 

what the OP described was not basic nor important grammar. he or she was talking about a period at the end of a footnote or an oxford comma. in the latter case that is a subjective thing that actually makes zero practical difference to a reader. in the former case it is a period in a font size 6 footnote at the bottom of a slide that no one cares about either. in either case, even if it was an egregious grammar mistake, it does not call for a freak out on somebody. if either of these things are that important to flip out on somebody and you think that is normal or okay, i dont know what to say to you. 

 

I don’t understand the monkey shit getting thrown on this topic. Were the people here not raised in a system that valued education? Were they never taught that proper poise, grammar, and presentation were absolute necessities when in a professional setting? Maybe this is only something some of us do, but I and the people around me are constantly checking and double-checking any product we put out for grammar mistakes, spelling errors, or ambiguous writing. Investment banking has long been a “standard” for white-collar professionalism. Maybe it’s the changing perceptions of younger generations with a deeply entrenched reliance on smartphones and IM apps that promote poor spelling and grammar, but I struggle to believe that this thread is indicative of banking’s view on creating polished work.

 
Controversial

I’m a VP and was trained in a culture where missing periods and not being consistent with Oxford commas were not ok. Not to sound like a hardo, but Perfection is expected after a couple of years.

I dont mean to be harsh, but if after 3 years you don’t instinctively do those small things correctly, then your attention to detail might be indeed lacking.

Like if some FNs have periods and others don’t, it looks sloppy and amateurish.

I would never be rude like your senior people and I always take a very constructive approach to giving feedback. Reason being is exactly as you had mentioned — if analysts are working in fear, then it’s really going to cause more issues and create more mistakes and make everyone miserable.

Edit: completely understand the controversy here. To clarify, I personally don't think little formatting things like that will win / lose a pitch at all. But if your clients sees these little things, they will doubt in the back of their mind the bigger things as well. This is a highly competitive industry and each set of materials is a reflection of the quality of the firm you are at. At the end of the day for me, it's about having pride in my work and in the firm that I'm representing. Feel free to call me a boomer as I also understand and to an extent agree with the Gen Z idea of doing the bare minimum as well and not caring about your firm since they won't hesitate to fire you etc. 

 

I get this point of view as ultimately we get shit on by those above us even if the asks are ridiculous. But I want to point out that teams that try to go for "perfection" in the form of oxford commas and font size 6 periods are why investment banking sucks. Clients either don't care about stuff like that or don't give a shit enough to even notice. I say this having been on the other end of the table before.

Stuff like this are just OCD, try hard standards that do not do anything in actual practice. It is classic bankers losing sight of what matters. Even when I was in banking the very best bankers never cared about things like this because stuff like this are not in the equation on why bankers win mandates. If you really think this sort of stuff is even noticed, you are delusional.

 

Not saying missing a period on a slide matters. Though attention to detail is a very important skill in transaction execution (and thus banking), where a small mistake can have material consequences (e.g., a number is missing an "0" in definitive agreements in the final draft, which happens from time to time). And if your pitch / book has grammatical mistakes and formatting inconsistencies throughout, it probably doesn't give the client confidence that you will treat their transaction with the level of care it requires.

It's not the period on the slide that matters. It's the overall impression that your work products gives your client. When you're trying to win a mandate, a lot of things are outside of your control and too late to change (how much does your bank lend to the client, your historical institutional relationship with the client, your creds in the sector, etc. -> if you can change those, by all means) but making sure your book is spotless to give the best impression of your professionalism and attention to detail is something you can do to put your best foot forward. 

But all that aside, in general, you should exercise discipline in all things you do, and that's how you ensure you don't drop the balls at important moments. 

 

No, this is a big gap I've noticed between a veteran workforce and a generation that seems to lack an understanding of how business works at the absolute lowest levels.

If I get a deck with a glaring inconsistency, even small, I don't care how good the work is, Im doubting the contents because if you didn't care to be detailed on an actual presentation, subconsciously I'm going to assume the product itself, which took a lot of time, is riddled with errors. A client is going to be the same, business is won, not handed. Same goes on a resume. Every detail matters to win a pitch, its psychology 101. It's that simple, and no, its not overreacting. There's a reason for the focus, look at the big picture.

The whole team suffers because of these things. It takes years to build trust, and 5 minutes to lose it. Understand it's not about you. Should you get berated? No. If you were told 5 times to do some edit and you keep missing the same things, yeah, something is wrong.

 

If you think anyone reads your slides closely enough to spot a missing full stop or comma you’re delusional. I barely read your slides at all

 

Exactly. Nobody actually reads banker decks closely. It’s all taken with a grain of salt anyways. The key is the MD connection with management. Everything else is fluff to keep that going.

 

No one gives a shit about any of that. Not clients, not prospective clients - no one. We would look at pitch decks from IBs (real IBs like MS/JPM) and catch math errors, spelling mistakes, etc., and no one cared. Also, when we got a 100+ deck, we would look at maybe 5-8 pages. These are simply fake hurdles, created by crazy people.

 

I’m a VP and was trained in a culture where missing periods and not being consistent with Oxford commas were not ok. Not to sound like a hardo, but Perfection is expected after a couple of years.

I dont mean to be harsh, but if after 3 years you don’t instinctively do those small things correctly, then your attention to detail might be indeed lacking.

Like if some FNs have periods and others don’t, it looks sloppy and amateurish.

I would never be rude like your senior people and I always take a very constructive approach to giving feedback. Reason being is exactly as you had mentioned — if analysts are working in fear, then it’s really going to cause more issues and create more mistakes and make everyone miserable.

Edit: completely understand the controversy here. To clarify, I personally don't think little formatting things like that will win / lose a pitch at all. But if your clients sees these little things, they will doubt in the back of their mind the bigger things as well. This is a highly competitive industry and each set of materials is a reflection of the quality of the firm you are at. At the end of the day for me, it's about having pride in my work and in the firm that I'm representing. Feel free to call me a boomer as I also understand and to an extent agree with the Gen Z idea of doing the bare minimum as well and not caring about your firm since they won't hesitate to fire you etc. 

who the f cares about commas? lol get a life dude. vp2 at a bb

 

I think this is the super-cope.  It’s a BS job, more collusion than competition, and it’s really just sales.  You’re not lawyers where the comma may matter, this is just silly.  A couple fixes in a 50 page deck doesn’t matter.  The obsession for perfection is just a false standard to make a job that is essentially a tax on society with little value seem critically important.

 

Tell my PE clients that. In my previous role (B4 FDD) we would send out our report (vFinal) and they would send a pdf back that was marked up lol - they'd comment on spacing, whether something was not aligned correctly, etc

 
Most Helpful

I think you just work under unreasonable morons with sticks lodged up their behinds. It's their job to catch mistakes in drafts after all. If they are ignoring 99% of the work product that you did correctly and nitpick microscopic details like punctuation preferences (which are subjective) to insult your character, I would stop taking them seriously and keep submitting work as normal. Losing confidence in yourself because some bald joe schmo got his panties in a twist over a period on a footnote isn't worth the calories your brain uses to generate the subsequent emotional response. 

 

I think you just work under unreasonable morons with sticks lodged up their behinds. It's their job to catch mistakes in drafts after all. If they are ignoring 99% of the work product that you did correctly and nitpick microscopic details like punctuation preferences (which are subjective) to insult your character, I would stop taking them seriously and keep submitting work as normal. Losing confidence in yourself because some bald joe schmo got his panties in a twist over a period on a footnote isn't worth the calories your brain uses to generate the subsequent emotional response. 

If you basically got everything right in your draft and your boss is throwing a tantrum because of your use of commas, which you probably didn’t really get wrong either, your boss sounds incompetent and should look into mood stabilizer meds

 
Funniest

LOL I remember one time when I was in intern, my VP got angry and embarrassed over some slide I put together regarding some transaction from pre-2005, and he was like “this doesn’t sound like something you’d know, how did you come up with this?!” and I said

”Yeah, you were the one that told me. Remember in the conference you went into some pretty high level of detail to our deal team so I wrote down what you told us and summarized it concisely onto 1 slide”

 

Is that more a cosmetic or old school thing or are the places in which you are missing out on punctuation ending up changing the meaning of the sentence/s? While trivial, it does look sloppy. If you are getting negative feedback repeatedly on the same type of error, you should add it to your checklist of things to verify before sending your work product to your manager.

A separate issue is the manner in which feedback was provided to you. You are unfortunately working for people who should not be in people management. If they don't ease up, you should look to move to a different job otherwise working for these nasty people long term, will take a toll on your health.

 

There are 2 possibilities:

1. You work with dickheads and socially inept seniors that get hung up on immaterial content. 

2. They don't like you as a person for some reason and purposely shafting you for every little mistake they can find.

You can probably tell if it is reason #1 or reason #2 depending on if your seniors treat other analysts/associates the same.

 

Your manager sounds like a slimy rotten POS dude why are you still working there

 

OP, don’t let this neurotic behavior get to your confidence. Let it be your sign that you should work elsewhere and make that jump at the right time (whether that be a certain point due to bonus timing, after receiving an offer for what you think is the right next step for you, etc). This behavior is exactly why these guys are still stuck in banking. They focus on things that truly do not move the needle at all. Sure, having true sloppiness in presentations is not good and should be fixed, but any legitimate client is not thinking about why the footnote on pg. 38 was misaligned. They care whether the math makes sense behind a deal/capital raise, the strategy behind whatever you’re pitching, and so on. Your current VPs and Directors have no perspective of this because they’ve never been in a position where they’ve had to develop true conviction behind making a decision, standing behind that decision, and then living through the good, or perhaps bad, results. They’re advisors and will only ever be advisors. They need to realize they’ll only ever be pontificating scum and deserve to be held in contempt for acting like assholes when that’s all they’re good for. 

 

You have shit bosses. That tends to be the case in finance. Here’s how I would handle things:

  • make sure you know I have your back and want you to improve and you feel comfortable making mistakes and asking questions
  • Give you pointers and let you know when there are errors it’s a normal natural part of the process. However, it’s not ok to make the same error twice. If that’s happening we need to both talk and think about why and strategies on how to improve it. The most common ones: 1) stop listening to music or working distracted 2) you need to slow down which really means going forward, you need to budget a 10 minute break of going for a walk then coming back and reviewing each deliverable 3) you need a check list and error log so you can be more thorough and not keep making the same mistakes and 4) you should be printing things out

My advice is 4 things:

  1. Your bosses suck. If you are losing confidence they are bad at their jobs full stop. A good boss makes you feel uplifted and more confident not gun shy. A good boss makes you know a mistake isn’t the end of the world it’s like a coach that says, “hey, you are better than this, but you are also a junior employee and this happens. One day you will be great and won’t make these mistakes. I expect more from you, get out there and show me I’m right.” Sadly, again, welcome to finance and specifically IB. bankers are the worst managers in i think any career I’ve heard of. If they could manage, they likely wouldn’t be a banker.
  2. Separate things that are your fault and not mentally. All errors are your fault and you need to accept the blame to your peers and bosses, but making a mistake for the first time is different than making an error for the 3rd time. Making an error for the first time is ok, just learn from it. The 3rd time, you really need to examine your processes because it’s not working.
  3. Give yourself a little grace if you are starting out. Have a short term memory and realize most the people around you are also screwing up and are more focused on their own performance than yours. As others have mentioned, your bosses should be catching these mistakes and training you to not make them. It reflects poorly on them when you screw up and they are just incompetent and can’t figure out how to manage you properly. So they instead get mad.
  4. Remember this feeling and realize when you see them handle things poorly or make you feel badly, it’s because you are comparing how they handle it to how you would handle it. You would likely handle it better.

Finally, if it gets bad enough, quit. Seriously. The point of the job is to boost your confidence, not undermine it. If you are in an environment that makes you feel worthless or terrible, you should leave and find one that makes you feel like you can do better. Shitty bosses really set you back, working with great bosses spring you forward. Working with a shitty boss for a bit is healthy though because you learn what not to do.

 

You have shit bosses. That tends to be the case in finance. Here’s how I would handle things:

  • make sure you know I have your back and want you to improve and you feel comfortable making mistakes and asking questions
  • Give you pointers and let you know when there are errors it’s a normal natural part of the process. However, it’s not ok to make the same error twice. If that’s happening we need to both talk and think about why and strategies on how to improve it. The most common ones: 1) stop listening to music or working distracted 2) you need to slow down which really means going forward, you need to budget a 10 minute break of going for a walk then coming back and reviewing each deliverable 3) you need a check list and error log so you can be more thorough and not keep making the same mistakes and 4) you should be printing things out

My advice is 4 things:

  1. Your bosses suck. If you are losing confidence they are bad at their jobs full stop. A good boss makes you feel uplifted and more confident not gun shy. A good boss makes you know a mistake isn’t the end of the world it’s like a coach that says, “hey, you are better than this, but you are also a junior employee and this happens. One day you will be great and won’t make these mistakes. I expect more from you, get out there and show me I’m right.” Sadly, again, welcome to finance and specifically IB. bankers are the worst managers in i think any career I’ve heard of. If they could manage, they likely wouldn’t be a banker.
  2. Separate things that are your fault and not mentally. All errors are your fault and you need to accept the blame to your peers and bosses, but making a mistake for the first time is different than making an error for the 3rd time. Making an error for the first time is ok, just learn from it. The 3rd time, you really need to examine your processes because it’s not working.
  3. Give yourself a little grace if you are starting out. Have a short term memory and realize most the people around you are also screwing up and are more focused on their own performance than yours. As others have mentioned, your bosses should be catching these mistakes and training you to not make them. It reflects poorly on them when you screw up and they are just incompetent and can’t figure out how to manage you properly. So they instead get mad.
  4. Remember this feeling and realize when you see them handle things poorly or make you feel badly, it’s because you are comparing how they handle it to how you would handle it. You would likely handle it better.

Finally, if it gets bad enough, quit. Seriously. The point of the job is to boost your confidence, not undermine it. If you are in an environment that makes you feel worthless or terrible, you should leave and find one that makes you feel like you can do better. Shitty bosses really set you back, working with great bosses spring you forward. Working with a shitty boss for a bit is healthy though because you learn what not to do.

Easily the best comment on here, only helpful if people actually listen to the advice given above though

 

If RBC, then I would lean towards you’re making big mistakes, not just formatting nits.

If Jefferies, that’s just the type of people they hire and I wouldn’t worry about it.

The best way to tell is just to see how they interact with other juniors. Do they rip on everyone or just you?

 

Eh, I have a close friend at JEF M&A who tells me this is par for the course in that group (The Group Head was notoriously the protege of Eric Gleacher - former head of / founder of the M&A group at Lehman). However, those who last eventually learn to produce at that level - or - figure out the meaning of "CYA" / blame others for their mistakes.

Here's an anecdote on Gleacher's "management style" from Steve Schwarzman's "What it Takes". Note, Steve was one of Gleacher's juniors at Lehman.

[This after Gleacher spotted a numerical error in a pitchbook prepared by Steve Schwarzman (the founder of Blackstone)]

As [Gleacher] spoke, he all but launched himself across the table grabbing our presentation books from the [prospective client]. “I can talk you through without any numbers.”… Steve could have melted under the table. We left the company, got in the cab, and rode back to the airport. Not a word. Right before they called the plane, Eric turned to me: “If you ever do that to me again, I’m firing you on the spot.

Toxic, hardo culture is in that group's DNA.

Not as sure about RBC's culture as I don't know anyone in their M&A group. 

 

ahh yes - i know exactly what you are going through - trully feels like you are living in hell.

One thing i will say is that having a boss like this early in your career is great - > really forces you to deal with all the shit and it will only make you better going forward. when you leave, you can deal with anything and your standard of work will be much higher than everyone else just because you were under super old school bosses. feels like hell right now but trust me looking back it will be a positive you went through this.

 

Honestly unless they are complete psychos (certainly possible) I would be shocked if you are not making other more material mistakes (or have in the past) that are the real reason they are lashing out. Especially because it’s two people who feel this way, not just one.

I can tell you when I review work from analysts, what pisses me off the absolute most is when the numbers / analysis is wrong AND the formatting / stylistic items are wrong. In my mind it’s like - at least get the basics right. I would never speak to my analysts the way they have to you, but if that was the situation I could see why someone might.

 

Not in the industry yet, but I do get the concept of perfection as IF a mistake is caught, the client could think there are errors of the rest of the important contents. But is it egregious to freak out like that on an analyst? Yea dawg. Sorry to hear that man but I’d continue on, making less mistakes and giving them an f-you as you lateral to another bank.

 

In PE now, I constently see seniors do small typos when writing out emails, and sometimes even in materials. The funniest one was some straight up boomer garble an IC member sent to one of the deal team emails to approve something. No one gives a shit as long as it is isn't egregious,substance is correct, and you have made a decent effort at proof reading yourself

 

Is this just how NYC is? Everyone’s just a dick? Don’t want you to overthink this but are you well liked? Because my colleague had a similar situation but obviously less egregious in the way he was talked to. This person was not liked and basically anything this guy did they would pick apart like no other. 0 leniency…idk I’d find another team or bank tbh. 

 

Had similar experience at a pizza shop in high school and it helped with prof exp. Owner was coked out all the time and unreasonably flipping out on Friday nights. I ended up getting fired/quit junior year after about 2 years there, I called off for a soccer tourney, and boss called me a f-g. Ended up getting a much chiller summer job and wish I quit sooner.

End of the day, whether you're a teacher, chef, or banker, there's gonna be bosses like what you're dealing with, theres gonna be better and there's gonna be worse. Were all just human with different limits and priorities. I wouldn't stress about a boss telling me my drive sucks because of an Oxford comma. Pizza shop, banking, research, nobody gonna die from our mistakes

 

Had a similar experience, what i can tell you is this - once you’ve gotten to a point of complete fear, the no job is no longer worth it. It was a long time ago, but when i got to that point, i moved banks and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. Didn’t realize how toxic that environment is for your long-term mental health (and if any old people are gonna say that’s part of the job, you’re specifically the problem so stfu).

i would sit in fear almost unable to move as bake-offs for sell-sides were going on, expecting a lashing upon their return when we found out we lost the pitch (for the 10th one in a row).

In reality, your seniors are yelling at you because they’re bad at their job and likely losing all of the pitches they go on - so blaming you for the small details is how they cope with it. I recommend you move to a winning bank, and start with a clean slate.

Good luck

 

Loser mindset makes whiny loser bosses. I tend to notice it’s the midlevels who are constantly criticized for underperformance that tend to go on psychotic tantrums towards juniors over stuff like commas and footnotes. Everyone has some rough days or weeks periodically, and sometimes you may actually need to improve or find other places to work but a lot of the times the guys freaking out are merely projecting their insecurity onto you 

 

There is ZERO excuse for mistreating someone even if this someone is underperforming. What is expected of managers is to be professional and deal with a situation, be it work that needs improvement or worse, professionally - this does not seem to be clear to them.

As to your situation, if your superiors think you are underperforming, there are professional ways to communicate this. I don't know your performance so I cannot comment. But I can tell you this - in published academic research papers which go through tremendous scrutiny and review, mistakes, while rare, are made - spelling, punctuation and even formula mistakes. I've seen leading US banks make factual mistakes with figures in research documents for client dissemination. Now, if you have been told about the same mistake again and again then this is on you to correct but mistakes in writing happen. 

 

I’m not a fan of juniors getting berated, but I’m also of the opinion that if you’re missing periods in footnotes and “group rules” like the Oxford comma after being with the team for 2-3 years, that’s also unacceptable. Your seniors are probably frustrated with having to call out 1st year level mistakes from someone that they are hoping to promote relatively soon. Time that should be spent catching conceptual errors is having to be wasted on fundamentals that you apparently don’t have down yet. Just my two cents as a 2nd year ASO that went A2A.

 

Where in the group rules do they ever mention punctuation in footnotes? I also don't see periods often in the footnotes section, they're like bullet points, not sentences

 

I interpreted the issue as being that the punctuation should be consistent. I.e., throughout a deck you should either stick with having periods at the end of footnotes or not.

I don’t understand this apparent backlash from juniors/interns against consistent formatting. That’s like a first-6-months-on-the-job fundamental and if you can’t get it down then this probably isn’t the space for you. Presentation is a huge part of this business.

 

wow that oxford comma shit is stupid (oxford commo >). But i've dealt with this stuff at work, you shouldn't take a defensive attitude and just get with the program. sounds harsh but life is easier when you just submit and really try to do those little things properly

 

In cases where juniors get chewed out for Oxford commas, it's usually because the numbers in the pitchbook aren't tying or something else more serious, otherwise even the top bucket juniors mess up on punctuation all the time and it's never an issue. I suggest you focus on not messing up the key content - numbers, analysis etc which I what I suspect the issue really is.

Put yourself in the shoes of the MD - from the perspective of a client if there's some annoyance on the page that catches their attention, then suddenly anything the MD may be saying in the meeting at that point gets drowned out because the client's focus in on something stupid like an Oxford commas (this is rare) or worse, numbers that don't tie (this is serious, since it throws into question whether the client is just wasting time going through the rest of the deck which doesn't seem to be sanitized for accuracy).

Been in your shoes, but 20 years later you look back and you see why it all makes sense when the MD's career is on the line.

 

I strongly believe this aspect of the job is both counterproductive and inefficient. Having majors in Finance, Economics, and Creative Thinking & Innovations, I draw from principles like design thinking, emphasizing the importance of not fixating on perfection during the prototyping phase of product or service development. Expecting extreme perfection in working drafts, as you mentioned, is impractical and contributes to unnecessary stress and waste of time. This expectation also poses challenges in fostering a diverse team, given that only a small number of folks can meet such rigid standards. Think of it like this: biology shows how educational capability comes in all shapes and sizes. Two people can have the same level of high intelligence, but it can play out very differently across various disciplines. So, expecting everyone to nail grammar perfection in drafts will not match up with what each person is best at. It's better to appreciate different strengths and keep expectations realistic in my opinion. Also, the overall reaction shows a clear indication of which morals are most important, revealing this is not a team I would ever want to work for. I would much rather get paid less, than work in any such environment. I imagine a lot of great talent gets turned away in this environment. Overall, insisting on perfection in working drafts is a waste and poor decision. In my opinion, such expectation indicates a clear capability bias and poor/immature managment. I’m sure you would see many other problematic cognitive biases in such a manager.

 

Not sure what to tell you. I'm sure your senior colleagues would tell a very different story, so I won't criticize or compliment anyone.

Note though that you might not be aware of all your errors. Once I've given up on an analyst or associate (this takes a long time), I start fixing their work directly or just redoing it altogether without giving feedback.  

From my perspective, there is nothing worse than an analyst that does not pay attention to detail.  Paying attention to what you're doing isn't rocket science. So its frustrating when people make avoidable mistakes that can seriously harm themselves and others.

It sucks being held responsible for all the landmines and embedded errors in an incompetent analyst's work product. If you don't care enough to try, i'm perfectly entitled to pretend like you don't exist.

 

Regardless of the various pontifications on what should / shouldn’t be cared about in banking (periods, Oxford comma, etc.) - yes, you work with psychos. Half of the time my director forgets he got promoted and labels himself as VP on the team page, just to show you the level of detail he generally cares about. We still win deals all the time because if your book is being flipped page by page, you’ve probably already lost.

 

There's a few key perspectives to share.

1. I'm with everyone. Checking for commas and periods suck. Full stop.

2. Checking for commas and periods is - unfortunately - important. Here's an example we can all relate to. Let's say you get a resume from Columbia for an analyst job. You see some nits. You've got a limited number of hours in the day. Are you going to set aside time to talk to this student, or are you going to delete his/her e-mail and assume they don't e-mail you again? We obviously can't speak with everyone so even small errors like that make it easy for us to cut people. I don't know for sure, but the same applies with a subset of companies talking to bankers (unless the bank is a trusted #1 advisor...but if you're #2 or #3 or worse and fighting, then it matters). Some might say "I don't care about that stuff", but the bank isn't concerned about you...they're concerned about the companies that do care!

3. Your bosses sound awful. Full stop. They're bad mentors.

4. OP - you should work hard to develop an eye for nits. Set aside 30 min to scan just for nits before handing your work over. I did that and got better over the years. Now I'm at the point where people tell me "font changes and commas don't matter"...what new generation doesn't realize is that it takes me 1 tenth of a second to mark that. It's muscle memory. It's instinct. Conquer your shortcomings head on. Keep a timer and pace yourself. 

5. My experience says that there's few bankers that will give you a markup with just commas/font nits. If someone does, either they suck to work with, or they're putting finishing touches on a very important document. When I see that my markup is only comma/font nits, I tend to hold back unless it's an important meeting.

6. But let's say that same banker gives you a markup with comma/font nits, but also with real comments on content...now you lose your privilege to complain. In fact, when I give such markups, maybe 75% of my comments are nits from muscle memory, but 25% are content. The content is why you're getting the markup, like missing a debt covenant that is important from a business or operating view, errors in depreciation schedule, or even something embarassing like misspelling the company or CEO name, etc.

 
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were not doctors, no one is going to die. take a breath and just brush it off. its just a job. it will be ok

 

Remember, this is a shitty industry with shitty people and those facts are the main drivers of the compensation premium you have in IB. If you got a job in virtually any other industry you would likely have a better attention to detail than every one of your coworkers. Keep that in mind and don't let these people mess with your brain.

 

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Career Advancement Opportunities

April 2024 Investment Banking

  • Jefferies & Company 02 99.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 19 98.8%
  • Harris Williams & Co. New 98.3%
  • Lazard Freres 02 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 03 97.1%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

April 2024 Investment Banking

  • Harris Williams & Co. 18 99.4%
  • JPMorgan Chase 10 98.8%
  • Lazard Freres 05 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 97.7%
  • William Blair 03 97.1%

Professional Growth Opportunities

April 2024 Investment Banking

  • Lazard Freres 01 99.4%
  • Jefferies & Company 02 98.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 17 98.3%
  • Moelis & Company 07 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 05 97.1%

Total Avg Compensation

April 2024 Investment Banking

  • Director/MD (5) $648
  • Vice President (19) $385
  • Associates (87) $260
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (14) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (33) $170
  • 2nd Year Analyst (66) $168
  • 1st Year Analyst (205) $159
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (146) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

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