Is your group a meritocracy?

You mean 11:27, right? Uneven numbers are more plausible.

TBH, it is a bit of a meritocracy and a bit of optics in most groups. For example, I have seen analysts get staffed on one brutal pitch and get praised for working hard on one project. vs analyst who has been staffed under an MD that pitches non-stop and messes up one thing, and then they are in a hole for the rest of their time in banking. To do well you need to have a near 100% batting average for the first 6-8 months to get on good standing and then it becomes a lot more optics based. 

It’s been said already in this thread, but meritocracy exists in the first 6 months to a year. Once you have a reputation for good work, the coasting starts.

In my situation, the perception of my “happiness” really mattered. I did good work, and in 2022 was on 3 deals where it was me and an MD…so essentially a deal team of 1. All of them closed, and they were the ONLY deals my group closed in 2022. But since I admitted to taking recruiters’ calls when they come in, I was the one out at the end of the year. The other associate in the group did nothing, but he is good at looking busy…thems the breaks.

What kind of shop are you at?

Swag King

At the junior level, yes. At the boomer level, fuck no. That's one of the things that pisses me off about IB. There are completely different sets of standards for juniors versus the "made men" MDs. We have two MDs who are nephews of the group head, that never bring in deals, but presumably get paid a lot. We also have some old fart that all of the old boomers love, because I guess he used to be the life of the party or something, but in his 3 years of working for us as an MD he has not brought in one deal. This guy is still allowed to take up a massive amount of resources and pile a god-load of work on the Analyts/Associates (despite the fact he hasn't brought in $1 of revenue since 2019). 

So yeah, at the junior level, as somebody else stated, 100% batting average is expected. For the old farts who are all buddy-buddy with each other, they can get away with pretty much anything. Such as making your Analyst/Associate stay up until 2AM changing minutia in the deck such as whether or not to use an oxford comma on page 47, only for your boomer MD to then proceed to send it to the client with several spelling errors and grammatical inaccuracies in the body of the email. It's like fuck dude do yall even try to meet the standards you demand of subordinates? 

I've gone on fishing trips with our bankers and it used to be even a lot more buddy buddy than that. So yes if someone delivers solid advice for 2 decades, shows up to my wedding, bachelor party and when it matter, I'm gonna hire him as long as the workoroduct is reasonable