Yesterday, I finished a model end to end in two days that would have taken me at least a week otherwise.
AI agents like ModelML, Hebbia and Rogo have made life far simpler for analysts / associates. The hard part of the job has always been figuring out things that seniors knew automatically, while you somehow had to learn everything through osmosis. AI has commoditised this.
On a broader scale, my concern is that capital will flow away from workers and towards AI companies / asset owners even faster than it already does. This will accelerate further when humans figure out physical AI, which feels like the logical next blue ocean.
So, are we cooked, chat!? I personally don’t know how I would have felt if I were still a student, so let me try to think of it this way.
I still see a need for MDs and Partners. But “someone needs to manage capital” isn’t a good enough argument on its own. AI could probably do a lot of that too.
The stronger argument is that having the answer and getting people to act on it are two very different jobs.
I can see AI taking over more of public markets. In private markets, the information disparity could shrink enough that parts of the market start looking more like publics. But knowing what an asset is worth doesn’t mean you can buy it. Someone still needs to convince the owner to sell, get an IC comfortable, negotiate terms and keep the whole thing from falling apart when someone suddenly decides they don’t like the deal anymore.
And by natural extension, there is still a job for MDs in banks.
AI might know that the partner at KKR absolutely abhors this other dude working at Bx. But knowing that and getting the two of them to transact anyway are different things. MDs know which egos need massaging, which conversations need to happen off the record and when “we’re not interested” actually means “come back with a better price.” It is their job to know.
Rubbing shoulders and grifter sales. Somehow, still a moat.
There is also the question of responsibility. An AI can recommend a deal. Someone still has to put their name behind it, defend it when it goes wrong and ask the same investors for money again. You can automate the analysis much more easily than you can automate being the person everyone holds responsible.
At the end of the day, I love the irony that some of the little inefficiencies and flaws in the job might be what helps humans keep their jobs.
Being technically good still matters. It just becomes less of a differentiator when everyone has access to technically good.
And for you all, the world still needs Partners and MDs, which (un)fortunately means it still needs some of you.
Just marry rich man
what has this site become
Never was much
AI becky detected
The interesting part is that AI is attacking the exact skills that used to justify the junior-to-midlevel apprenticeship. If an analyst can build in two days what used to take a week, that's great for productivity, but it also raises the question of what they're actually learning during those extra three days.
I agree that relationships and execution are harder to automate. But I'd be careful assuming that protects the current org chart. If a VP can supervise twice as many deals with AI, the firm may not need the same number of VPs, even if it still needs the same number of MDs.
The bigger question isn't whether finance survives. It's whether the traditional path to becoming the person who owns the relationship and makes the judgment calls survives intact.
Simple, more gets done in a shorter span of time. More aggressive origination than ever seen before. Judgement needs to be built. Just because AI is speeding up the work, doesn't mean an AN/Assoc doesn't need to have an understanding before sending something to the VP. Defending one's work is more important than it has ever been.
Agreed. Dealmaking and salesmanship will always require a human element.
Sure but this is the case for almost any senior role, how does it create protection for juniors?
How will you ensure a supply of seniors in the future? 40 y/o MDs don't grow on trees
Yes, but still doesn’t help the case for trimming down the number of juniors (not saying it invalidates them entirely)
Technical skills were never a moat. All you ever needed to be successful in this business on that side is some arithmetic and an understanding of how things directionally impact each other. If X goes down does Y increase or decrease is all you really need.
At this point in time, I am not so sure anymore. I used to downplay the effects of AI but the recent work outputs have been pretty nuts, tbh. Not as good as a cracked analyst for sure but better than the majority of meh-to-average analysts.
I am surprised at this myself but basically every task I handover to my juniors gets clearly done by AI. I am talking about a lot of side-hustle analysis that would normally take significant amount of time. I.e., business plan assessment of management plan where you put market figures beside mgmt. and find rationales for them being above/below plan.
They don't model anything themselves anymore first instinct is always AI.
The funniest thing happened last week -- I was asking one analyst to jot me down the 4-5 main points of the management interviews and I kid you not they returned me a full excel workbook (basically fed the notes to claude). It is a bit concerning because they clearly don't feel secure to bring in their own judgement and just take FREAKING 2 min to jot down the 4-5 main points.
It is interesting to watch, because the same thing is happening with our analyst, I think it is on par with our average analyst historically, but in a weird way making our analyst weaker as a whole.
We will have to see what the total cost to use AI ends up being, because if it gets to costly or if there are additional compacity constraints then I think our analyst will probably have it taken away for certain task and then we can see how things really shake out.
I agree it is scary to see in real time and if you take a moment to reflect thar recent grads started their undergrad ~22/23 it gets even more evident how 'cooked' this whole generation is.
In terms of work, they never had to build a scary model from scratch, i.e., do the necessary ground work, check the right sources, think critically about potential solutions/mitigation factors, clearly understand the sensitivities and how the model flows/functions.
This feel of desperation under stress while you have to finish something on your own with little guidance was immensely beneficial, as I have a completely different understanding when evaluating models and/or pages.
They don't have that -- they seriously use Claude like a slot machine.
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