Brown Gibbons Lang (BGL) Honest Experience

My first post on WSO and I've been wanting to write this for a while now after working at BGL for 2 years and seeing some ridiculous posts about the firm on WSO. Some of the posts on this platform that I've seen are just absurd and I don't know anyone who is actually a normal, reasonable human being and somewhat good at their job who has had these horror story experiences that I've seen people write about. I did my summer analyst program at BGL in summer '22 then joined full-time in June of '23 and stayed ~2 years in the Cleveland office. My experience at BGL was honestly really positive and I hope I can serve as a credible source of truth for what it's actually like to work here. I'll provide some context into the two main components of my experience here: 1) Culture: pretty much everyone here is great to work with (obviously you have a few outlier exceptions at every bank) but I really enjoyed everyone I worked with. I spent most of my time on the Tech team (~1.5 years) and can say that the group's culture is phenomenal. I've spent time in the other groups too (Industrials and Services Infrastructure and Environment (SIE)) during my 6 month generalist period and can say the same for those groups too. My analyst class in Cleveland was 3 other guys and I who were best friends while working there and still remain super tight after 3/4 of us have moved on. The other Analysts, Associates, and I would hangout whenever we had free time and I thought of them as friends, not co-workers. Yes you work some long hours here but nothing unreasonable and outside of the banking norm - I've heard many stories of much worse situations at other banks. Protected weekends (1 every month from 5pm Fri - 8am Mon) are also a huge plus and are 100% respected. I always traveled during mine and never had to work on one - and that also doesn't mean you are always working the other 3/4 weekends a month. 2) Work Experience: deal teams are generally more on the leaner side and Analysts are given a ton of responsibility. As an Analyst, I actually did meaningful work (ran the model on deals, led deck creation, worked directly with our clients, hopped on sponsor calls with my MD, etc.), which I would much rather have than being a VDR-only monkey. There is a direct correlation with work ethic/talent and your success/promotions here. I definitely punched above my weight class to get into the PE firm I'm at now and a huge portion of that is due to the experience I got here. The firm has also had a ton of momentum while other banks who we've been able to take a lot of talent from have been contracting (built out Tech vertical, new subverticals like A&D, etc.) So in summary, I really enjoyed my time here and honestly think this is one of the better experiences you can get in banking - culture is great, get a ton of experience, growing firm, etc. I know trolls are going to say this is HR writing this so feel free to reach out to me if you don't believe me or have questions. I now work in software private equity in Boulder, CO and graduated from Penn State - not too hard to find me.