Does your VP give input on slide design?
Currently an analyst 1, and was wondering if your VPs and Associates are typically supposed to tell you the design they're looking for generally for each slide in terms of layout, or if you freeball it?
Do they not give you a shell? Even without a shell there should be precedent materials
I expect my analysts to just figure it out. Easier to react to a slide.
You need to provide genuine guidance to analysts, otherwise you’re watching them flail for hours when a template would have saved everyone time.
Might be easier for you to give email comments from your phone, but that’s how you (literally) kill your analyst. Get back to your desk and help them shell it out, frame the argument, and push it forward to your bosses. That’s how you’re promoted, liked by everyone, and don’t burn out the poor 22 year old under you.
In this hyper efficiency era I’m so glad Goldman is firing useless VPs and associates. When I need to call the analyst for diligence questions because no one more senior knows anything it’s just embarrassing. Do your job.
- A former IB associate, and a current buyside associate with analysts still under him
Can you guys stop downvoting me? Just my 2 cents. I’m unable to post in off topic now
Fr dude: when I was in banking had an Lateral Asso join from a LMM boutique to BB and decided to just coast
I was a first year only a couple months on the job and got staffed with just this dude on a very big project. Would get comments from the VP and this Aso would just say sounds good we will get it done and then not do or say anything at all. Legit 0 communication with me. Then every 2 days he would ping me:
“How’s it coming along”
“Can I get an update”
Like dude, I don’t even have a fucking shell, this is my second month, the only projects I’ve been staffed on are with experienced analysts or stuff where there is plenty of precedent material so I can easily lift.
This staffing was completely starting from scratch everything including a model which I didn’t really know how to do
Every single fucking day he would sit at his desk and walk around the office doing fuck all while I was struggling to get started and put something together. I’d ask for guidance and he would just say things like “I’ll get back to you later” or “Use the notes you took when we talked with VP / D”
Screw this dude, I put together a shell: company deep dive, product stack, market analysis, ASC, the regulars you know. But for the model, after pleading for help that I didn’t know and if I could get some pointers and no response, I just didn’t do it. Kept on getting pinged….. I’d just say yeah latest is saved here, without having updated it…. He would never check it. 1 week before client call. He finally checks it and freaks out bc there’s no model all the while he’s been communicating to VP, who was also a coaster who wouldn’t do anything or check any work, that’s it’s all good and will be ready.
I did everything else and was fine, except the model which I just couldn’t handle. Dude got yelled at by the VP and then I got yelled at by him and I just had to nod my head and say sorry but fuck this guy made me so mad.
I communicated so many times about I didn’t know how to do it, sent him drafts of the model for comments, and pointers, asked for any precedents, and he would never reply or help.
Turns out this dude didn’t even know either so it got restaffed to an A2A who knew how to do this shit. Aso ended up lateraling 5 months later.
May have went off track a little but moral of the story is that Juniors can’t grow and develop without mentorship or direction.
And when you have sleazebags that just leach off juniors, it makes them burnout, resent their job/coworkers, and lowers the quality of work.
To be fair, I sucked at being an analyst too and glad those years are behind me, however, at least I TRIED
Del
Kids, don’t do this if you become an associate. It comes back to haunt you in numerous ways…
lol found the trash associate right here boys
A2A here and for 1st year analysts, definitely need to give guidance around what slides should look like. Given they are new to the job, need to be understand in helping them get up to speed and what a good slide looks like.
For 2Y analysts, I stil give guidance but at that point, the good analysts already have a rough idea of how things should look. At that point, most of the edits are more around messaging / theme which I tend to work more on vs just pure number outputs.
Senior bankers who give poor guidance on materials really do themselves a disservice. So much time is wasted developing materials that have a high likelihood of being scrapped, which then puts the team in a bind.
As a junior, I’d always ask for for guidance. If someone tells you to pull together comps, share price performance and asset overview pages, that should be enough for you to crank out, given you’ve seen a few precedent pages that your team likes. For highly new create—bespoke pages—you really should push for clarity.
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