Investment Banking Seniors are Terrible Managers
This has been discussed in some capacity, but need to rant.
If a MD/Director was not clear on an ask, the analyst/assoc asks the VP for clarification, and the VP does not know / cannot provide relevant guidance, why in the hell does the junior team need to spend 8+ hours iterating on an unclear ask, only to have the MD rip it apart and say it’s not what he wanted, and the junior team spend another 8+ hours iterating again? It would take the VP 5 minutes to ask the question, and would take the director/MD 5 minutes to think of an answer and respond. Are people’s egos in the industry really that big that it’s beneath them to spend an extra few minutes ironing out key issues upfront?
I’m convinced that if higher ups had a shred of managerial competence and issues were dealt with upfront, juniors would only need to work 60 hours/week rather than 80-100+. In literally ANY other industry, this type of behavior and lack of communication would not be tolerated. What is going on?
Seems like if something inconveniences seniors by 1% or makes their lives slightly more difficult, they have no problem grinding the juniors an extra 10-20 hours per week to spare themselves. But even that argument doesn’t hold - if the seniors communicated issues and were clear upfront they’d need to spend less time on the back end iterating and reviewing.
Have other people experienced this frustration? I’ve been here for 3+ years and as I sit in on more meetings with the seniors I find it boggling how hard juniors get abused and how preventable it is with some basic communication skills that are quite frankly a requirement in literally any other profession.
The idea we need to manage up is ridiculous. No..you manage down effectively like a real manager, so make me do your job. It's just a saying for seniors to push everything down, expect everything to be perfect without them having to lead or manage anything.
I was in the military before and mindset did not exist. It was of course good to proactively update seniors about timelines and progress but it wasn't your job to "manage up" your commander.
Congrats on Coast Guard
You folks crack me up
My 6 year old daughter asked me for three candies. I gave her one - she was happy and I went back to the golf simulator. Just like managing junior bankers.
I never made this association before that the reason MDs always have rotten children is because they're bad leaders. Fantastic point.
Ok so I will stop trolling and try to add something useful to the conversation.
You are absolutely right. Management skills aren’t really valued in investment banking (note, I’m not saying they are not important as you will read below). Typically the skills of a rainmaker who has the confidence / arrogance to advise clients well and deliver for them and not the skills of a good manager, and ultimately we value delivery for clients and revenue over anything else.
This having been said, I would encourage people to turn this reality on its head. Management in investment banking is and always will be weak. How do you use this to your advantage? A few examples from my career below; I’m not saying these are prescriptive and you need to adapt to your own circumstances.
When I was an analyst, there was one group head who was both a major rainmaker and an asshole of spectacular proportions. There was the other group head who was a great guy. Everyone wanted to work for the latter whereas no one (even Directors / VPs) could work for the former. I realised that the asshole had very specific pathologies that could be managed around (he wanted everything five minutes from when he asked but didn’t care about the numbers as long as they were directionally ok and the client didn’t complain). I found myself directly working for him a lot because others couldn’t and got a ton of exposure (was presenting valuation to public company Boards etc). I got screamed a lot and eventually quit but I got what I wanted out of it.
As an associate, I was in a team of very nice, very capable senior bankers but who were all totally detached from reality (spent their whole summers in the Hamptons and St Tropez and shit like that). Wound up managing the analyst pool for them because they were so removed and built a lot of loyalty from below and support from above.
As a VP, I took responsibility for analyst recruiting so by the time and helped bring in a lot of the junior talent around the bank so by the time the hard Director years set in, I had supportive people in a lot of places (pitch with the LA office? girl I hired is now the associate working on it etc) that made a lot of difference.
As a non group head MD, the loyalty I engendered from people working for me made sure that I had the political leverage to become group head
As a group head, I manage a bunch of MDs that are all very good bankers but couldn’t manage a lemonade stand. The fact that the trains always run on time, we have the top juniors in the bank, low turnover, people are well paid means it’s a very stable place for people and clients. Of course, I have to make it rain but being a capable group head def adds 1mm+ a year to comp annually.
The takeaways are that since it is what it is, learning to work the system can be a superpower. You can learn a lot from bad managers as long as they are good bankers, being a good manager can take you very far when everyone else is shit.