Big fuck up at work
Sent a client invoice with wrong subtotal. 2k difference. Our internal accounting team handles invoices but really should’ve been more diligent in checking it. How screwed am I
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You'll be fine as long as you got it fixed. Don't sweat it.
As far as f@ckups go, that’s a 0.5/10, just change the invoice and say apologies, the previous one was sent in error, fix the calc, explain and move on.
Now I’ve seen some real ones over the years
What would you say is a real one
I can take this one. A real one is when you're presenting a deck that has formula errors. Call out the wrong client name in a presentation, reveal internal IP information to client parties, send that same invoice and not catch the mistake leading the client to drag your boss into the matter.
Really, anything where you can't take it back (do something irreversible) or your boss has to get involved becuase the error went unnoticed by you. It's a slide scale, but the higher up the mistake, the bigger on the scale. The biggest one I've seen... sending a client an uncaught involve of $70k USD in which they disputed and we had to hold an internal meeting to figure out who messed up and how to resolve this thing.
Biggest mistake I heard of (preceded me), an analyst (probably from lack of sleep) accidentally sent the diligence list to all the buyers on a sell side process. For those who aren’t familiar during diligence on a sell side process the sell side advisors analysts track diligence requests as well as the target and by extension the sell side advisors responses to them. You’ll typically send period drafts of the tracker to each buyer to show them what’s been addressed etc. but it’s only that specific buyers requests. What the analyst accidentally let slip was effectively revealing to all buyers what other buyers were deep in the process and what diligence topics were being addressed across all buyers.
Believe the process still closed and the buyers were nice enough to delete the email but this analyst probably saw his life flash before his eyes wondering if it was the client or his deal team that was gonna end him.
Why are you sending invoices to clients as an Analyst 1 in IB - Gen
been instructed..
I sent a $10m invoice as an AN1 last year... it's more common than you think.
No my point being, why are you doing admin work
This barely registers as a tiny mess up, let alone a “big fuck up”. $2k? That’s smaller than a rounding error. Sure, you never want to make mistakes, but just fix it, explain it, own up, and move on. The WORST thing you can do in situations like these is try to hide it, lie about it, deflect, etc that will get you in 10x more trouble than the small mistake.
I saw you (or someone else) asked what big fuck ups are, the ones I’ve seen:
1) punching your boss while blackout drunk
2) having an inappropriate relationship with someone who works for you (and not disclosing it)
3) breaking compliance rules on trading
4) messing up an entire model (grabbing wrong assumptions, wrong data) to where the answer was wrong and all the work had to be redone
I once went off mute on a client call for 5-10 seconds. Puked after that one
Major respect to you for surviving.
Any tips as to folks who may have to endure the pure hellish agony that is both speaking and having others actually hear your voice?
One of the accounting people messed up a formula and sent an invoice with 40K less than what was owed then told us weeks later and the MDs reached out to the client with a revised invoice and it was fine. Nothing too crazy don’t worry about it. This is a really small amount
No biggie
Do not sweat this one bit. As others have said, just say that there was an error with the first invoice for whatever reason. And if there is reason, I'd just say that as well. "Sorry, I inadvertently sent you the wrong invoice. Please disregard last email. See attached. Best, [yourname]"
As far as screwups, we had a lateral associate director hire at my bank during 2021, and we paid some money to the bank where he came from to skip garden leave. He essentially went from one job on Friday to start the next following Monday, as he was joining us for a pitch pretty soon after. As we're 15 minutes away from doing the pitch, this guy wants to do some last iterations to the pitch deck, specifically to the investment highlights and "why us" slide, which he felt could be 'juiced' a bit more. Murphys Law applies to banking as well, so in addition to the microscopic details he changes in the investment highlights, he also puts the name of his former bank in the title, a slide titled "Why hire Goldman" in a Morgan Stanley branded deck. Since he was the one working the deck he was sharing screens, but we all had printouts of the former version. However, everybody in the meeting caught up on it, as this guy reads it out loud, and immediately realises what he has done. MD was understandably not happy with that one...
Oh, and we didn't win the pitch.
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