How hard is it to become/remain a VP/MD?
Assume you land the job out of undergrad as an Analyst. Now someone correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read, the Analyst to Associate promotion is relatively (compared to the senior levels anyway) automatic given you're doing a decent job and not messing up. After this point though, the only consistent information I can find is "it's harder than the An to As promotion." I've seen posts of people claiming that the path to VP is "automatic," and I've seen posts that say that the As to VP promotion is only for MD candidates deemed by the bank. (One poster even went so far as to say the As to VP promotion is harder than the VP to Director promotion.)
I've read that you can remain as a VP indefinitely and, contrastingly, that it's an "up or out" culture -- that you'll be asked to leave at some point. Same case I've seen for MD. Something along the lines of "being someone's execution bitch" and keeping the job because of it vs. constant stress/pressure of having to produce fees or else you'll get fired. Now, I'm sure it varies/depends a lot by firm and region, but is there any consistent conclusion that can be drawn as to how hard each promotion is, and how easy it is to remain at each level, other than it's just "harder than the last one," or is this literally the only truism?
I've also read (on M&I) that IB is noticeably less competitive than something like PE/HF, and so it's easier to remain in that industry. But seeing as the actual competitiveness and perceived difficulty of these industries is so warped and constantly under- and overstated, I don't know if any of these statements I've read/restated here carry any weight.
Sorry in advance if there are already topics on this, but I've found so much conflicting information it's disheartening to say the least. Hopefully some more concrete answers can be made.
BUMP, very interested as well
Well, it’s a little bit as follows. And this is coming from someone who got the promo at MM.
The VP promotion at a smaller team is based on two factors:
if you are performing well (which is a given if you know how to interact with clients and run a process).
If there is room from a revenue / headcount perspective. This matters because you have to pay this frankly generally useless non revenue generator 500-700k per annum over the next three years for the job a very strong associate can do. Guess who gets cut first in a downturn...
Not going to chime in too much because I'm not senior enough to know, but the reason there's such a range in answers is that every bank is going to be different. The promotion process at a BB vs EB vs MM is going to be very different, and even within banks of the same caliber every bank will be different. One bank could be really passionate about internal promotion and try to promote a lot of associates to VP and so on, while a different bank will prefer hiring outside candidates for senior positions. There's no one size fits all method that all banks use.
Being in the right place and the right time should matter at all. If there is an open VP spot and every associate wants to become a VP, promotion will be much harder. However if all the other associates decide to leave and you are the only one left the chances rise dramatically. I think the up and out thing is more prevalent at a BB where they can find many VPs willing to go to MD level.
Has to be some senior monkeys out there who could share personal experience. Would be very interested in this!
MD promotion is by far the hardest one. Until then all or most of what you are doing (this depends a little on the bank and market conditions, but is generally true) is execution and supporting coverage. Those things are not easy, but their difficulty pales in comparison to what it takes to assemble a roster of clients who collectively are going to pay you, the MD, millions in fees every year.
Oh and keeping the MD job? Easier, but only marginally.
What about keeping the VP/Director job?
VP is up or out title after 3-4 years. Director is more flexible (could be in a director role for 3-6 years from what I’ve seen, some rockstars might be only 2)
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