Catch more errors reviewing work than doing?
Hi - I’m an associate 2 in a product group. I’ve gotten good reviews generally and am well liked. A2A. Our group is lean so associates “do more in the excel and ppt” than likely in a traditional coverage role (I could be wrong about this).
I’ve noticed that when I’m reviewing work, I catch almost everything that’s silly / little nits. At the same time, when I’m doing the work and sending to VP, I find that nothing is ever “incorrect” I.e. the analysis, but I find myself making tiny errors that piss me off - forgetting to change the year on the cover, not capitalizing a company name properly that may have multiple capital letters, not shading the right date of a minor catch up on a timeline page, etc. I want to “blame” that the work is high volume for us so you sacrifice some quality, but that feels like a bullshit excuse.
I’m not sure why I’m able to catch almost all of these and send “clean” work but when I’m doing the work, I find myself making these little errors and it bugs me. It’s not all the time and it’s usually just a couple per ~15 page deck, but it irks me. Again, people like me on the team and my team I think is more nice than others about it, but it bugs me because it’s always “the dumb shit” vs. the actual analysis. Maybe I’m overthinking it.
Rant over
Look at yourself in the mirror. Look at your reflection. The way you see yourself is not the way others see you. It's flipped from left-to-right and vice versa. You never see yourself exactly as others see you (unless you flip a picture of yourself or change the setting on your phone).
In much the same way, you can't see your own work the same way you can see someone else's work or someone else can see your work. We have to remove things from ourselves and externalize them before analyzing them deeply.
Said differently, bro, print out your work.
The act of printing makes things "not you" and puts you in the seat of the reviewer rather than the maker who is incapable of seeing their true self in the mirror (only the reverse image).
That may have been the deepest most thoughtful response to “just print it”. You’re either a genius or stuck waiting for comments pondering life rn for sure.
All jokes aside, I think you might be right. The thing is, it feels like nobody on my team at the ASO level prints their work and has this (maybe self perceived a bit) issue. Maybe I just gotta keep it simple stupid.
I write how I feel, so I started with the zen stuff, then thought "you're laying it on thick, yank these guys back into the real world," so just print the blasted thing.
Relentless focus on quality waits for no one, so I personally have no qualms about printing. Confound the environment if means my P&L ticks and ties.
I don't think this is a unique experience. I was not great with making errors as a junior and now they jump out to me
I think it's a mix of 1) experience and seeing the same pages over and over, and 2) what sounds like the situation for you - having fresh eyes. As the reviewer you didn't spend an hour in the Excel backup and just miss updating that footnote, so it's the first thing you notice. If you spend forever updating the page, much more likely you'll make little text errors. Recommend taking 5-10 min and looking at your work with semi-fresh eyes, or print a version before you send it
By print do you mean print to PDF or actually print
Physically print it. For whatever reason it's often easier to review things on paper
Don’t sweat that stuff. Yes you could print your work out and spend another 15 min reviewing each time for typos, but as long as they are not horrendous no one is going to judge you for them + that’s the reason there are layers in this job anyway. It may feel hypocritical to pass off small mistakes that you would surely comment on if it came from your analysts, but think of the MD’s who hit send on the most ridiculous typos in emails internally / even to clients (I’m sure you have them). That stuff doesn’t really matter once your rep is established and your time can be used more wisely.
Not sure I agree with this - checking work ends up saving you time down the road. It's not like your MD is going to go turn those text nits, and if your Aso or VP is tying a deck and nothing ties and there's typos everywhere, they are not going to be too happy with you. An analyst who delivers quality work that requires little hand holding to check is very impressive.
Constantly making typos, tying issues, etc where it's clear you don't check your work is one of the quickest ways away from top bucket. It's also just a practice thing, so might as well build the muscle early. An email sent quickly from a 50 year old MD's phone is not really comparable to a deck that is supposed to be throughly vetted.
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