Chillest Groups - SF
Just wanted your guys’ thoughts on the chillest groups in SF. By chill, I am mainly referring to culture, people, and hours worked.
Anyone with anecdotal experience is a plus as well! Thanks!
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WF SF is chill af -- great culture and hours are good for banking.
Cause no dealflow
Exactly but OP just asked about culture so didn't bother mentioning the deal side.
Anecdotally, I heard from a former datasite provider salesperson that now works for me that you'd always catch the Citi and RBC analysts at every sponsored event.
Probably RBC coverage - M&A gets crushed
Interested... Can you expand on this?
It's really that simple. Datasite providers (Merrill, Donnelly, etc.) will host happy hours and other events and invite analysts from multiple banks to attend. This salesperson who would host these events for analysts would tell me that the banks with the largest groups most often in attendance were from RBC and Citi. So if these analysts can make these happy hour events often, you'd assume they have quite a bit of free time.
Lincoln International's (TMT) SF office is known to have great culture with little emphasis on facetime and strong work/life balance.
Culture: Seniors encourage analysts to have an actual personal life and do alot to send out comments/deliverables efficiently and in a timely manner. Very very rare that you will get comments dropped off on Friday 5PM with the expectation to get it done by Saturday morning. Tons of office happy hours, lunch events and team bonding activities that are actually fun to attend. Culture really does start at the top imo as the head of the SF office is an amazing MD to work under.
People: People in the SF office are great to work with overall. Everyone from the analysts all the way up to the MDs are colleagues that you will enjoy working with. Collaborative culture that encourages people to work as a team. Anyone like the recently infamous EB VP that sent out that email to his team will not last long at Lincoln SF.
Hours: Hours are very reasonable as no one wants to be in the office 24/7. Facetime is heavily de-emphasized and everyone works efficiently and actually gets work done rather than just appearing to get work done by staying late every night.
I hope this helped!
This is absolutely untrue.
Why do you say this is untrue? I'm curious what you've heard about the Lincoln SF office.
I always thought Lincoln had a terrible culture all around ever since that one intern who unfortunately went through a lot at the firm. Really goes to show how culture can differ between groups.
Lincoln made a huge 180 on culture after that unfortunate event. I believe management realized how bad things would go if it ever happened again.
Keep in mind everyone that chillest groups just means that they wont' have as much deal flow...that's unfortunately just the deal
That being said, STRH SF is pretty damn chill. You're on pitches most of the time but still chill as you're out by 6 or 7 pm most days. They apparetnly haven't gotten a deal in a year or two...
I'd argue that a bank with great deal flow could still be chill. I think it is more about the people. Chill people will attract other chill people, and build a culture around that. I think some of the people at Qatalyst for example are super chill, yet they are still a top bank within the space.
Because I define chill more so as being a genuine, sociable person that I wouldn't spending my days with (which the amount of work should have no bearing on). But if you define chill as never doing that much work than I suppose you are right that chill = less deals
You can’t talk about FTP on this thread can you Richard?
Depends on how we define chill...if you mean by temperature, then it's one of the chiller offices in SF. People like it cold there all the time. I always have to wear a jacket all the time and everyone comments on how cold I get lmfao.
Laz SF tech, has the best culture by far of any group in the whole company. I roomed with a summer analyst there last summer and he didn’t have to go into the office a single weekend. Not really any FaceTime culture so if you’re not staffed on something live, you can realistically be home by 5 or 6 on thurs/Friday. He liked his experience and is going back.
Dude, what? I heard it was a total sweatshop for Google through and through. Do they get a lot of deals? I know HC gets wrecked...
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