Director told me seniors in my team don’t like me because I speak out
Had an honest conversation with a director in my team as he was let go. He said seniors don’t like me because I speak out.
Effectively when someone gives me a task that I don’t think makes sense I will say it doesn’t make sense (too direct). He said it’s particularly annoying because I often turn out right.
I find this very demotivating. I feel like people shouldn’t have such fragile egos and be so frail if an associate contradicts them. I am asking them to explain and justify their logic, I’m not taking away their power.
It feels like such BS that they claim they are trying to make things efficient and improve junior experience and at the same time it’s frowned upon if they ask for things that would ruin an evening for nothing to speak up.
I really struggle to kiss ass. It’s not who I am. I see it as dishonest and unmeritocratic. Am I deluded in this sense?
This is the single biggest reason I hated IB. A significant portion, maybe the majority, of your workload is doing shit that you know ahead of time won't be usable but you still have to do it because your bosses are would rather have you work an extra 40 hours a week than have the burden be on them to operate with any level of reasonable efficiency.
I don't think most people here realize that their little Senior Banker would probably be a complete dud in any other industry that takes any amount of efficiency or pragmatism. Like a ton of those guys are fucking TERRIBLE at getting shit done. Without having a huge team of ivy leaguers around them that are willing to run through walls, many of these MDs cannot innately accomplish a fucking thing.
Maybe ask questions rather than speak out saying "This doesn't make sense". Get reasoning and lead them to concluding it's not needed themselves. Being too confrontational will not take you far, you need to learn how to speak in a way that people perceive as friendly/collaborative. Think of it this way, if you keep pushing these folks and being too "direct" in an off-putting way, will any of those hire you down the line if you need them to?
Fragile egos and the desire to have people under you become sycophants is prevalent in many industries. You think it’s just a banking thing?
You don’t think people like that can also be found in Fortune 500 companies, large tech companies and even in academia
You think any senior, in any professional setting, wouldn’t be annoyed at a junior showing them up in a public way?
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I’m OP and actually I see what you’re describing and I don’t think it is entirely applicable to my situation. I was hired laterally post MBA. As it happens I have worked in finance before, just not in a BB. I’m older than a few of my VPs and by years I have longer work experience.
To me challenging means that you are debating an idea and arriving at the best answer. That being said I often see people rule just by their seniority in banking. And the areas I challenge in is not just to result in me having less work. I see valuation mistakes that my seniors don’t want to flag to MDs sometimes, as an example.
Was in a very similar shoe. I did banking (3.5 years) in Europe prior to getting my MBA in the US. I then joined a BB in NY and saw my fair share of getting dumped with meaningless work by incompetent seniors who think thickness of a deck is what wins a mandate. Tbh I wasn't as outspoken or courageous as you are, but I definitely had times where I had to argue hard with my seniors to cut down on meaningless work so that my analyst and I could get at least 2-3 hours of sleep. Sadly there was nothing I could do to make permanent change, and as an international I felt like I was risking my job/visa everytime I had to argue with someone higher up. In the end I lateralled to a different bank with the help of my business school friends. The new group that I've found was much less BS and more actual work that our clients would take a look. Corporate cultures are very difficult to change and if you're having a hard time fitting in doing what you think is right, best two cents I could give you is to find another bank. Although they might be hard to find, groups with good culture and less BS are definitely out there. Best of luck.
So we had a brutal female MD who would have been long ago fired if she were a man. I was a 3rd year analyst, and all of our associates and some of the analysts went to our group head about her after a secret juniors meeting. I refused to participate. As a result I became the only junior person allowed to work with her. She was actually smart but bitter about life, not great when you are managing clients.
She would ask for all kinds of crazy stuff that made no sense or was actually impossible to produce because the data didn’t exist. My response was always to say, let me understand if this is what you are trying to portray in this analysis? I would then suggest an easier path that would take 90% less time. It worked perfectly, and we had no issues after I figured that out. The mutiny did eventually lead to her firing.
Welcome to banking, where half of what MDs ask for is completely worthless and never sees the light of day. I've been pushing back of worthless work my entire career and one thing I found to be helpful in getting senior bankers to realize what they are asking for is stupid is to "respectfully" ask what is the value add to doing whatever they are asking and why it's actually useful and needed. This typically prompts them to explain their rationale which half the time causes them to realize they were asking for something out of habit instead of actually needed it, and other times you realize that what they want actually does have some value because you now understand their thinking. Good senior bankers will have no problem explaining their thought process because they realize it's important for junior banker development while shitty senior bankers will dismiss you and tell you to just do what they tell you.