How badly did I fuck up - 1st year looking for advice

Hey guys, 

Long story short - sent wrong version of a deck multiple times to the team (once is usually fine, but messed up due to a combo of trying to be fast & sending out multiple things at the same time). Additionally, didn't catch something that shouldve been caught on the first time (did realize it but after sending last version - was flagged).

Generally try to do good work, but can't be making such mistakes at this level. I know its not the end of the world, but really just disappointed with myself. Is top bucket pretty much gone? Do seniors usually remember these things? 

8 Comments
 

Would agree with this, with one addition / exception: don’t become known as the guy who keeps repeating the same (small / medium / large) mistakes over and over. 

These things happen, shake it off, next time have a better double-check procedure in place (opening attachments, working with printouts etc.) and work under the assumption “I’m the last one to see this before this goes out”, usually this does the trick vis-á-vis attention to detail… fingers crossed.   Single incident certainly no biggie…

 

Don’t even sweat it, I’m in the same boat as a first year making countless mistakes. It’s just the nature of us being rookies and the grind of the job

 

It’s ok - everyone who has been in banking for some time has done that at some point

Indeed don’t do it again - draw your lessons on speed vs quality and let them guide your judgement in the future

Seniors won’t remember most likely but juniors will. If there were juniors in the loop (including VPs), those are the people you will need to prove in the next few months you are not a retard, simply made a one-off mistake

 
Most Helpful

You can still get top-bucket. Seniors may remember this stuff particularly if they were once junior bankers or high-paid junior professionals like a lawyer, consultant or the like. I would advise you to heed the above comments around not making this mistake again. You can turn things around and don’t want to be remembered as a mistake, bottom-bucket guy if you want a future in this industry. If you want to climb the ladder, then best to be known as a top performer at whatever level you are at. That will allow you to level up and get promoted accordingly. That said, I had friends in my IB analyst class who were at the time mistake guys and bottom-bucket who have since gone on to great things and reached heights in their careers albeit outside the four walls of traditional investment banking. By many metrics, they are crushing even the once top-bucket kids in their classes. Good luck

 

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