Is your group a meritocracy?
Why or why not?
Would love to hear perspectives across the street. Specify bank or group if possible
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Yes. Do a good job and you get paid. Make your bosses happy and help them and they will reward you for it
No. My (now former) group was all about the optics. Setting an autosend email for 11:30 PM was required for the group head to think you were grinding.
You mean 11:27, right? Uneven numbers are more plausible.
Psycho behavior.
student here - if there's no meritocracy in groups, what is there to judge performance? purely curious
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.
I feel like something is getting lost in translation, but first years mess up all the time, over and over again. Even the best ones.
It also feels off that as an analyst, there would be no one in between you and the MD, unless it's a tiny group or that the MDs would have the biggest say in year end reviews. The vast majority of roundtables I've been in the seniors defer to the Associates/VPs given they have the most direct experience.
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.
wait...you were fired for taking recruiter calls?
Yeah please expand on this in regard to getting cut?
At the junior level, yes. At the boomer level, fuck no.
What kind of shop are you at?
Think Rothschild
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
I have absolutely no problem with that, I actually believe in employee loyalty & don't see it as "crooked politics".
From a recruiting perspective, there was one well regarded boutique firm that really stuck out as a meritocracy / mentorship from bankers at the level above you. One of the few firms that has way stronger deal flow than a lot of their peers.
I will not disclose which bank.
How unusual for an MBA Consultant in training to say a lot of words without providing anything relatively substantive.
Consultants and politicians are great at that
Comparatively, it’s more of a meritocracy than other industries. I worked in Big4 and Corporate pre-IB, and politics factored into reviews much more prominently there. In IB the seniors tend to value juniors who work hard, produce quality work, and do not complain. People worked less at big4/corporate, so more emphasis was placed on looking busy, optics, relationships with seniors, etc.
This isn’t to say politics doesn’t exist at all in IB. Being buddies with the seniors and optics help a lot, but comparing to other jobs I’ve had, politics matters less.
Echoing what people have said above - meritocracy carries more weight your first year, then you can use your good reputation to coast here and there. This is similar across all types of jobs I’ve worked in.
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