36 Comments
 

No. At BBs, associates do not get their own office.

Generally, VPs have their own office, but I have seen a couple of places where they do not.

Of course it all depends on the type of firm.. I have seen boutiques small enough where even the analysts have their own office.

 

With all the work that analysts and associates have to do, not having your own office so you can actually get some work done must suck.

 

I thought open door policy was in effect in most places at work. Where everone gets a cubicle.

Except that vps and MDs would get the corner and big cubicle

 

there is one md that is simply the man and loves the pit. people actually act worse because he is there. hes that uncle everybody has.

 

Depends on the company. I've visited some firms where VP's had their own private, enclosed offices and others where Directors (not MDs, just Ds) were sitting out on the floor.

 

Nope. For starters, it's not a policy per se. It's based on how much space each office has available for the teams involved

Second I haven't visited even close to every firm. Not that many firms invite candidates up to visit the floors, so I couldn't tell you about every area.

Finally think about that. Am I REALLY going to dox myself just to satisfy you being curious about a relatively trivial point?

 
Best Response

Dishing specific details about individual banks can quickly reveal your actual identity. Which I'm sure a lot of us at the junior level have no interest in because then we are limited in our ability to be candid in our responses.

With that being said, associates and above at firms I have worked for had offices for the most part. That varies by office though as some were still in cubes. I have a friend who got an office as an analyst because there was way more room than headcount.

To your prior point though, offices don't buy Bentley's, so why do you care?

 

At grad level I had my own office.

At director level, I sit in open plan. So do virtually all the directors I know.

OP, you seem to be looking for a pattern that is not there.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, post threads about how to do it on WSO.
 

I've been to companies where the C level execs sit on the floor with everyone else even though they have an office. I've been to firms where every employee including assistants have individual or shared offices. To me it seems like the OP wants to join a firm that will get him an office sooner thinking the bridge and tunnel girls (or boys?) will be falling all over him for it.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

It really varies from group to group more so than firm to firm at the big banks. It's all about how many offices your team is allocated relative to the number of mid-level and senior people in your group. It also varies by market cycle. When the economy goes down and banks lay off a bunch of people, more offices open up. I'd bet that in 2009 you had analysts occupying some offices at BBs. When the economy is doing well the banks hire a lot more people so there is a greater likelihood that even more senior hires may end up in a cube for at least a while. The number of offices are more or less fixed, but the headcount is always fluctuating.

S&T is completely different, and often people who have offices still have seats on the desk. When I was an analyst at GS we had a partner who sat two seats over from me.

 

In London its mostly MD and up that get's their own office.

Source: Have worked at 4 Investment banks

You know you've been working too hard when you stop dreaming about bottles of champagne and hordes of naked women, and start dreaming about conditional formatting and circular references.
 

I think it's dependent on the firm and the individual. In one of the firms I worked at, the partner sat on the floor with everyone else.

 

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