Is associate all that?
Was curious on everyones opinion who has made associate. I have been an associate for about half a year now and honestly find the job way harder than being an analyst for completely different reasons (Might sound like a duh of course thing but a lot of people make out associate to sound like the grass is so much greener). I work at a firm where deal teams are structured extremely lean so this may skew things.
As an analyst the biggest difficulty was the technical learning curve and your first exposure to just bad hours. I have a high work tolerance but I don't believe anyone who says getting cranked 16-18 hours a day doesn't suck. I was a top performer in my class so was able to touch on more associate lite tasks in my final analyst year but it was still primarily focused on grunt work, analysis and making deliverables, and admin work. Basically the typical do as your told by this time exactly like I ask.
As an associate, I find no task about the job is really difficult anymore. That model you spent a week on can be completed in an afternoon. VP needs some obscure analysis, easy give me some time to think it through and I can tackle it on my own. However, my hours have honestly gotten worse and the responsibility given is more stressful/ has significantly more impact. Ton of time on calls and workshopping with seniors about positioning and how do we want to frame this and iterating non-stop on things before an analyst even gets involved. MD or VP has a late night or weekend crisis and Im the one who gets the call to fix it or crank stuff out in crunch time on my own. Being our teams are so lean I spend a lot of time functioning as an actual associate (Shelling out and writing decks, thinking through and outlining the model, prepping for every scenario that could come up on calls, buyer and marketing calls/ outreach, and managing the process) but I play down a ton in an analyst capacity carrying a heavy load of analytics. I am a first year and have no problem with this because I couldn't stand when my associates left me stranded, but it all really adds up.
Was speaking to some of my VPs about this and they said it gets better as your associate stint goes on but the first year sucks. Anyone else had/ going through similar experiences adjusting to the associate role? At what point do things become more natural and ease up?
Bump
I thought associate was meant to be easier, hang in there though. The benefit I suppose is that you’re seen as the go to guy, which as the saying goes, when you do a good job you just get rewarded with more work. I hope you can find a way to frame it as an AN1 performing far beyond your duties to at least make it worthwhile
Experience as an associate has been much much harder
Like you said bigger workload and more responsibility. I don’t know how the associates back when I was an analyst did it
I find these days I’m covering for my incompetent analysts and end up just doing everything myself
Since we’re so lean I’m staffed on deals without even an analyst and our analysts I’m staffed with are green. It makes it difficult because I’m having to review and teach a ton while also learning my new role. Basically ends up where your seniors view you as the fixer and the guy to push things forward so you end up trying to learn to be an associate while still being an analyst 3. At the end of the day part of the job is teaching the analysts and you’re in a position where an analyst not being up to par can poorly reflect on you. At least at my firm. So you end up fighting tooth and nail to cover up for them while they learn.
Are you A2A at the same firm? I had a similar issue as you when I was promoted to ASO, also on a lean team, especially in the first year. Since I had worked with the team as an AN already, they were confident in my work product and would assign me things to do with short turn times since they knew they could rely on me to get it done in time. The problem was that with the short turn time there wasn't enough time to have an AN iterate on it and get reps on it, so I had to act as a "super AN" to crank out work, while also having to deal with ASO responsibilities of shelling things out, thinking through pages, etc. Especially earlier on as an ASO it felt like they forgot I was an ASO at some points and still treated me as an AN.
After my first ASO year I actually ended up switching firms (unrelated reasons to the above), and found it easier to be an ASO because my new team hadn't worked with me before, so starting out they didn't have the same confidence in me that my old team had which gave me more lead time on things. This made it easier to downstream work to my ANs since now I had time to get them reps and iterate on deliverables.
Yeah I’m an A2A at the same firm. Exactly what you’re talking about. I have a close relationship with a Director and MD at my firm who request me for everything. I essentially only get staffed with them. My Director views me as his go to guy so he essentially just blows me up to handle everything for him. Would rather have me do an analysis real quick or make a deck for him then waste time having an analyst iterate on it. Basically they trust me to try to do my associate work without micromanaging (which ends up in more work because they don’t feel the need to get super involved) but prefer I do all of the analyst work still because of the trust we’ve built.
Are you at a MM firm or BB?
Any recs on how to deal with this? In a shop w lean analyst staffings, feeling like a lot of key work is shifted to associates who don’t have time to teach. (Trust me I’m very forward w asking for reps or doing any ask in general, just feel like not getting true reps compared to analysts in other offices). For context am at very lean eb in t2 city
Hot take but "newly minted associate" is one of the toughest jobs in banking. Gets better though as help arrives
If it makes you feel any better, the move from Associate to Senior Associate in PE is the exact same, but potentially worse given the already hyperneurotic, skin-in-the game nature of PE. My hours have increased significantly and the stress even more so.
A2A here in a top BB IB group. First few months were hard, got staffed on more teams but this time with analysts however had to grow into delegating effectively. Acted as a “super analyst” my first month or two until I eased into the role and started focusing more on the bigger picture process items. Now have ~4 active deals and several other projects with ~6 analysts across them. Your analysts are there to use them, as an associate you should be aiming to drive processes, identifying potential road blocks before they arise, and thinking critically about what actually needs to get done.
Now, you can’t just dump work on your analysts, you need win their respect. For me, it was being the “super analyst” for 2 months post promo, but now it’s by driving things and making sure analysts understanding the bigger picture of what needs to get done. Easier for an analyst to want to follow someone when they see that person driving things, such as running client calls, having VPs defer to you on calls, etc. Job is still very challenging, but hours slightly better and more autonomy, but different type of stress.
As a VP on a lean deal team I am often directly in excel models, drafting ppt slides, leading legal and DD calls, group staffer, coordinating execution across internal groups, and have my own sector coverage where I need to cover clients and create new pitch ideas.
No matter what they say, a good VP is still hands on since any bad analysis or errors in the materials falls on my shoulders and not the juniors - I own the pages.
It’s all bank and team dependent but responsibilities only increase over time until you are truly a senior banker. With hundreds of reps at this point I typically can quickly review work from juniors and identify the mistakes or additional work that needs to be done but it compounds across different simultaneous projects. It’s tough but if you’re good at your job you eventually acquire strong muscle memory for small and medium tasks.
There’s no shortcut or cheat code, it’s really just about grinding and getting rewarded when the people above you acknowledge your value. It’s a hard job.
AS1 feels tough because there's definitely a learning curve that comes with your new responsibilities, but you're still doing a lot of the work. I'd say AS2 became easier simply because I had a better grasp of workflows and what my seniors were expecting. My analyst help was not particularly competent for most of my AS2 year otherwise it would've been even better. At AS3 you have to start preparing for VP. The actual work I do becomes easier since I've done everything before and I've gotten more competent analyst and even AS0 help, meaning I have to spend less time actually doing the work, but I have to spend more time actually thinking through things and keeping everything on track. Still, at the end of the day I think it's kind of the sweet spot. You don't need to bring in revenue, you're usually not the last stop when it comes to checking things, you usually don't need to lead calls unless your VP is conflicted, and you get paid 2x what analysts do all while being able to push the most menial and annoying tasks down to them. I wouldn't mind doing an extra year at associate.
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