Better Social Experience: BB or EB??
Hey y'all,
Wondering what you would consider to be the better experience socially for junior bankers (analysts and associates) - being at a BB or an EB? For example, would you prefer the closer-knit class of the EB or the larger class of the BB where you can find friends among various personality types?
Have also heard anecdotally that EBs tend to have better social events (higher budgets, etc.), but would love to hear your experiences. Just thought we could get a fun discussion going, since we're spending so much time with our colleagues anyways :)
Also interested
BB culture > most EB’s culture. Think about how sweaty moelis, Lazard, evercore, etc are compared to the big banks. You won’t have the time to socialize with your class nearly as much as BB analysts.
Fair enough, though I've heard that Moelis' junior team does have an awesome time (nights out, parties, etc). Yes everyone works very hard, but then plays hard too. This is second-hand info, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. That being said, I do see your point!
Eh kinda, I had a buddy who summered there and they didn't hang out once as an entire class over the summer outside of work.
Think these kinds of things are generally hit or miss, but when you're recruiting its impossible to tell because the people interviewing you are going to be gone soon and you don't know who'll be in your class.
Heard MM banks often are the best from a social/culture perspective. Often smaller class sizes but they feel a little less nerdy/bookish compared to EBs
At a BB. Advantage of EBs is that better budget for events and if the class composition is solid then you'll have a great tight-knit group of people. At BBs, the advantage is you'll likely find at least a few people you get along with because of much larger class sizes, and there are some groups known to have different cultures, whereas I think the variance between different EB classes year to year is big and a few duds can really change a class culture. Anecdotally have heard that of the BBs, Barclays, MS, CS, and DB are on the frattier side, but because classes are big there are plenty of each type of person at each bank. At EBs, CVP, PWP, and Moelis are known to have really tough working hours but some great camaraderie, Laz same tough hours but not as good camaraderie, Evercore isn't that cohesive since its a bigger class at this point but hard-working culture, heard anecdotally the analyst class is "cliquey."
Interesting! This is good info, SB'ed
It's really worth breaking down the BBs into their respective product / coverage groups because outside of training and the firm-wide events (which happen every few months), you would very rarely interact with analysts / associates outside of your group after getting started on the desk.
The groups tend to hire from specific schools / specific personality types much more than the overall banks themselves. For example, trying to generalize to the entire Barclays analyst + associate class (probably 300+ people) is a pretty useless exercise, whereas commentary on Barclays Healthcare, which probably has been 20-30 analysts + associates at any given point in time, would be more appropriate.
In this way, surprisingly, as an analyst at a boutique you would likely interact with a far larger number of analysts / associates on a regular basis then you would at a BB. Take Centerview or Moelis, where most people come in as generalists, you are working alongside 50+ other analysts (across different classes). This would be far more then the number of analysts in even the largest FIG groups at the BBs (which tend to be their largest groups).
As has been mentioned, the boutiques generally have larger budgets for corporate events and are more likely to splurge on these types of things (holiday parties, summer off-sites, etc), though that is really much less of an indicator on social experience compared with the day to day interactions you have with your team.
Fair point. Something that I've noticed though is that Barclays in particular, and to a lesser extent MS / CS / DB, at least from where I went to undergrad and my colleagues (I work at one of these) have a much frattier vibe overall. I think Citi has a reputation of being relatively nerdy (again, from when I went to undergrad) and BAML was sort of a mixed bag of people. GS and JPM had a lot of URM and diversity hires, and a few academic superstars, boutiques were more random and year by year there could be a large amount of variance in the class composition by year.
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