How do you know if you're underperforming as an analyst? My performance reviews appear to be middle bucket but I definitely have some weaknesses that have been pointed out. On the other hand, I've heard in the bullpen other analysts also bring criticized for things, so am not sure if my weaknesses (type/amount) are a normal level for an analyst finishing their first year.
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Everybody makes mistakes once in a while, receives harsh feedback once in a while, hears areas for improvement in their performance reviews. Impossible to avoid that unless you only do the bitch staffings and bitch work that’s incredibly simple and impossible to get wrong. Ironic, I know, but if you’re at all doing complex work, you will get flamed once in a while.
This is a competitive fucking career and guess what, not every new analyst is gonna be God’s greatest gift to their bank right away. True signs of underperformance tend to be either very subtle or very specific. Over long periods of time:
- You don’t get many good staffings (live deals, important client pitches, high probability bake offs)
- You get many bad staffings (unimportant or Hail Mary pitches, internal procedural bs memos and presentations)
- People above your level don’t really respect you, talk shop with you, joke around with you or ever make fun of you that much (straight up treated like a professional employee nothing more or less)
- This one is some pussy shit I know but it needs to be said: if senior people NEVER gossip with you or never make side comments to you that clearly need to be kept under the wraps
- You don’t get trusted with the hard work on staffings and only get asked to do the most basic portions while other people handle the difficult and interesting stuff
- You consistently get bad feedback on work products, consistently sense frustration from your peers and seniors on deal teams with your work or speed
- You directly get told your performance is not up to par and you get put on a PIP and asked to leave the bank
Or long story short, your intuition tells you you’re truly underperforming. Gut feeling is almost always right. I have only been around a couple years, but 100% of the time I’ve seen an analyst get fucked for performance, they had a gut feeling way way beforehand.
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