I like my associate and I think he helps to move deals along, but I find myself doing a vast majority of the CIM and model for the deals that we are on, with him just serving to double check my work. In all fairness, he’s a great work checker and doesn’t let too many mistakes go un noticed, but is this customary at other banks?
Just feel like I’m drowning in the work load sometimes when he has capacity, but he still only just checks my work.
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My first two years as an associate, I split a lot. As a third year, I'll occasionally jump in if there's a time crunch or if I feel like the analyst isn't going to get it across the finish line, but try to minimize the amount of things I do myself. A few reasons:
1) We frankly get a much better work product if someone else does it and I check. It's harder to catch your own mistakes, and I find analysts rarely catch my mistakes even if I ask them to check. As I get more senior, the patience of my seniors for things slipping through drops pretty exponentially.
2) There's a lot of random stuff seniors ask that the analyst will never see (both projected related and non project related)
3) I'm also expected to be able to jump in and present to clients with no notice, which means every presentation, I need to spend time thinking through how to explain each slide, which takes up a lot of time
If I see you're drowning I'll do my best to get someone else added, send markups directly to our graphics team and iterate with them instead of you or ask our offshore team to do the first cut.
This is exactly it. When i became Assoc 2 I made this transition, moved away from 'doing' and focused on reviewing and messaging. The thing that takes up a lot of brain space (aside from often designing and reviewing slides) is, how would I explain it to the client and what are the key points to get across.
The number of times an MD/ED (who themselves are focusing on other things) have asked me to run through materials from start to finish, and I have not really spent enough time thinking about the above and having to literally bs my way through...
Ever been on a call and someone asks you a question and you dont know the answer? If you are an analyst it is not ideal but its not going to be career limiting, but there is literally no escape if you are the snr Assoc and their is no VP to give you cover + the ED/MD don't know in enough detail themselves to run through. Do or die at that point and it's why as an Assoc you should be focusing on reviewing and thinking, instead of physically doing slides (or doing minimal amounts). At a point (usually by mid Assoc 2) it is literally not your job anymore and the time you spend doing an analyst job is going to detract from your own effectiveness, with potentially bad consequences on your performance / reviews / comp.
The above are the textbook, theoretical and descriptions associated with the job descriptions of an associate. In reality, MDs and VPs do much of the thinking through and won’t even let associates do much of the talking and the associates should absolutely give you a hand if they have capacity and you’re tapped.
You genuinely sound like a great associate to work with as an analyst. Would you be able to elaborate on #2? I understand this happens, I just want to understand a bit more of what these senior requests look like.
Be careful what you wish for...
To answer your question, it honestly can be anything from "hey, I forgot I had a meeting this afternoon, can you do your best to pull together a book in the next few hours" to "this is taking to long, can you fly out to Atlanta tonight and lock yourself in a room with the management team until they get the new model updated?"
If your associate is consistently DOING rather than checking, and is above a first or maaaybe second year, they are not using their time well and will be underwater. The best associates know how to jump in at crunch time, but unless you're on an immediate deadline the associate's main role is checking and project management.
And this is coming from an A2A who really struggled with handing over the "doing" aspect
Agreed with above.
The issue is when you are staffed with bad analysts who are incapable of outputting high-quality deliverables that don't need to be completely redone every time. I'm an associate with analyst-level responsibilities and am getting crushed hour-wise because of it. I've made my staffers aware of this but there isn't anything they can do because of recent firings / group departures.
Well, how much are you tipping him?
this latest generation of analysts, 2020+, is as bad as there has ever been. unless you are at a top group that attracts the best junior talent, expect to be heavily involved and doing analyst work as an associate. because the majority of Gen Z analysts are not going to get it done
as long as IBs choose to not pay top $$ to attract and retain the best talent coming out of undergrad, it is going to remain a downward spiral. add on to that woke/diversity initiatives that funnel in unqualified people on the basis of their race and gender. plus a generation of kids who are addicted to social media and cannot function doing real work. and you have a recipe for disaster
Can 100% attest to this. VPs and Ds have been playing down a lot to make sure stuff gets done.
I believe in treating people with respect and mentorship, but some of these analyst are coming out of school with some liberal arts degree, getting a $110k+ salary + bonus and no real world experience and complain constantly. I see some of the juniors at corp clients work just as much (often more) for a fraction of the comp — now that is a bad deal all considered.
I expect associates to help if they have capacity. Especially at a BB where work goes through multiple stages of review.
However the job of a senior associate isn't to do the work. Its to make sure it's client ready. It's also to understand the real value and point of the work and communicate it.
Sounds like you have a lazy associate though. We all roll up our sleeves from time to time. Doesn't stop when you become a Senior. I've made edits directly to a model as a director.
Fully disagree with the above points on associate primary role being that of a reviewer and occasional contributor in a crunch.
Main goal is to be efficient -- if associate can do something quicker and better than analyst or VP, then they should do it to push the job forward. Doesn't matter how much it might be "analyst work" -- that whole concept needs to die.
Associates who assume they are only there to check work are the least valuable.
I don’t understand this at all. if everyone took this approach, the analyst would never do anything and would never learn.
I get associates who just review but AN2s who act like associates but don’t have the responsibilities of associates are the ones we should all be complaining about. I have an AN2 who goes home before everyone because he basically does nothing. Delegates everything to AN1s but sends the finished product as his work alone because he was expected to do it alone in the first place. I get it when it comes to deal work since the AN1s have to learn but the team gives a bunch of administrative analyst tasks on top of deal work with the idea that all the analysts will chip in and get it done but since he doesn’t help with anything, we end up doing everything and unnecessarily sleeping late when it doesn’t have to be that way at all. And worse, no one above sees that he is doing nothing. If you have capacity and it’s in your job description, no need to always leave it to the AN1s.
It’s really simple. If a task has to be done by EOD and you’re the only analyst with capacity, doesn’t matter that you’re an AN2, it’s much more efficient for you to do it and send it out in the next hour than sit there and do nothing the whole day but check in with the AN1s to see when they will be available to do the task…which will be late in the night when they could be going home if you were a little more helpful.
COVID and WFH really created some expert work dodgers. I like WFH personally but it will always generate free riders and bad behavior because the staffers can’t see.
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