Landed Your First Job? EXTREMELY Important Thread: Office Politics

Mod Note: Each day we'll be posting the top WSO forum posts of 2014. This one was originally posted on 3/22/14 and ranks #14 for the year by total silver banana count. You can see all our top ranked content here.

Ahhh so you landed your job. Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t deserve it because you absolutely do. The recruiting process for Sell-Side Wall Street is brutal and has significant merit attached to it (unless your dad is the CEO of a F500 of course). But lets cut to the chase. You need to read this post very carefully or you will never ever get paid at the top. That is a bold statement but anyone who has spent a meaningful amount of time on the Street knows the following:

Without solid political positioning I will never get promoted and I will never be ranked at the top

This point is so important that we are going to write it again. Say it out loud to yourself. Say this as you walk into training. Write this on your iPhone as a calendar invite every single morning for a month before training… until it sticks.

Without solid political positioning I will never get promoted and I will never be ranked at the top

This applies to Investment Banking Analysts and Associates. It applies to Sales and Trading Associates. It applies to Equity Research. It applies to your entire Wall Street Career.

Backdrop:

You are a bright eyed twenty something. Your entire life you put in the work. You deserved a shot to make some money on the Street. The problem? Your entire life, performance at school drove your results. As soon as you sign that dotted line and rake in that 5 figure signing bonus, this is no longer the case. You need to have politics and performance. Without politics? You will work longer hours. You will not get ranked as top bucket... and you will not be offered the promotion. Period.

Don’t mean to beat a dead horse but please don’t waste our time saying that this is false. If you have never worked a day on the Street, you don’t have the right to an opinion.

Does this sound incredibly intense? Is the tone much more aggressive than usual?

Yes and Yes.

Why? It is that important and we want anyone who reads this post to take it seriously. Unlike our fun post on “Attention to Detial is Overrated"… There are no jokes in this post. Simply the truth... If you want to get paid and have a life.

Now that we’ve made this as serious as possible please read the below and we will outline a high level view of how to get good at politics assuming you have zero experience.

Overview:

The truth is you must do the following: 1) find the people within the office who are going to help you get placed into a hedge fund/PE shop - eg. Any exit ops apply, 2) manage multiple tasks prioritizing those with more political weight over those with minimal political weight, 3) respond aggressively to important tasks on the fly and 4) get all of the important people in the office to like you as a person.

What does this all mean? It means on day one you better figure out who matters and who does not. There is no excuse for not knowing who the important figures are within the office by the end of the first month. Luckily you’re reading this post, so we’re going to make your life a whole lot easier.

Day One - Who Matters?

You’re walking into the office with your brooks brothers T-shirt and your oversized suit and sit down at your desk. After the first 8-10 hours the office begins to clear out. While every other Analyst/Associate is sitting around staring at the screen to show “face time” it’s time for you to become the CSI of your investment bank.

Investment Banker: Open up the most recent pitchbook with a “qualifications” section. There should be 1-6 slides explaining why they should bank with your firm. Guess what? On the slides there will be Tombstones. Tombstones tell you the most recent deals that have closed and include major deals as well. Circle and highlight all the major deals and transactions over the last 2 years. Now go on your Company’s internal contact sheet and find the Managing director responsible for those transactions.

Follow the money and you’ll find who matters. Follow the money, follow the money, follow the money.

Sales and Trading: This is the easiest one. When everyone leaves the office pretend that you are reading research reports to understand what your Analysts are saying… when the dust settles immediately go through the Account list. Quickly look for the major accounts. Fidelity, Capital Group, CREF, Invesco, Wellington, Citadel, SAC Capital, Soros…. You get the idea. Now all you have to do is find the sales person in charge of these accounts.

Follow the money and you’ll find who matters. Follow the money, follow the money, follow the money.

Equity Research: This is a cross between investment banking and sales and trading. Go through the IPOs that have occurred in the past and see which analyst is constantly being asked to cover more stocks. As an example: Analyst 1 seems to be adding companies over the past 2-4 years versus Analyst 2 who has covered the exact same companies. Why? While not related to IBD due to the Chinese Wall many companies will request a certain analyst cover their stock instead of analyst number two if the stock is between two spaces. Finally, the two other ways to find the good analysts is by looking at 1) call log of clients (if large accounts mentioned above fidelity/CREF etc. call in he is a good analyst) and 2) institutional investor is the trump card. If the analyst is ranked in the top 3, no doubt you want to try and become part of that team find all ranked analysts. If you are on a rotational program shine bright. Shine as bright as possible for the best analyst when you work under him or her. That is where you want to end up after the rotation is complete.

Follow the money and you’ll find who matters. Follow the money, follow the money, follow the money.

Analyze the Data:

You have the dirt. It is time to look at the food chain and figure out where to position yourself within the investment bank. Again no time to waste. If you choose incorrectly you will have a 10-100x harder time getting promoted compared to choosing correctly. If the guy pulling for you can pay for your promotion as a rounding error compared to the revenue he brings in, you better believe the firm will promote you to keep the managing director happy. It isn’t even about you at that point, a big guy says he wants you to stay, this means the firm will make sure you are paid enough to stay.

You got the names in your hand. Lets say there are three important managing directors. How do you know which one to latch on to? Look at what has happened in the past. Find all of the people within the investment bank who have been promoted over the last 3-5 years. Which managing directors did they work for? Of the three that are amazing, hopefully at least two are kind enough to promote within. Now you know who to keep happy.

Lets look at this from a basic business perspective. If your boss is making it rain and is a golden goose to the firm, why would they care about paying you an extra few thousand dollars? A top tier Managing director is making in excess of seven figures. The bank actually works for the managing director, the managing director does not work for the bank because if he is a top MD he is in charge of the relationships and uses the bank for leverage and/or its balance sheet.

(Side note this is a bit of an aggressive example in italics but the point is simple the top MDs are constantly getting job offers from other banks, so the top guys are not worried about getting laid off one bit they are primarily interested that no one wastes their time)

They will do what is needed to keep him happy and part of keeping him happy is keeping his team intact. If you are an analyst about to get promoted to an Associate there is no way the firm is going to say no to an extra $50K a year in expenses… if it means the managing director will stick around. The number of good analysts/associates is small, so this same logic applies to the Associate to VP promotion however the skill set you need to sell is certainly different. They will simply refuse to promote the other analysts/associates and let them exit the firm. Cost structure unchanged, top tier performers are still with the firm. Sounds like an intelligent business model.

Simply put, by now you know who you want to work under because you have correctly done your research and see a path to that promotion everyone wants.

Positioning and Performance:

We’re making a rather large jump now we assume you know how to do work without making major errors. Please note this post is NOT saying you can turn in work that is subpar. The point is that anyone can do the entry level job. If you went to MIT and got a 4.0 or you went to a Non-Target and got a 4.0 we’re pretty sure you can copy paste numbers into an excel sheet without making mistakes. If there are major errors in your work you also won’t get ranked at the top, but lets be honest, it is not incredibly difficult to make a price volume chart, spread a comp table or update a merger model.

So lets get to positioning.

It’s time to strategically drop quality by ~2-4% on the lower ranked managing directors and increase quality on the higher ranked managing directors by ~2-4%. This is going to take serious concentration and will help you immensely.

For investment banking this means you have a few extra formatting errors on your low level work and for the high up MDs you have none. Simple, your quality simply goes up a bit with the people who matter

For Sales and Trading this means you are slightly faster with your requests from the top S&T MDs. If you want to position yourself under sales guy #1 and he asks for something that will take 30 minutes and sales guy #2 wants something that will take 15 minutes… Ignore Sales guy #2.

For Equity Research this means a mix of quicker speed and quality of information and data requests. This is a bit easier to do. If you know Analyst 1 matters and you are currently working under Analyst 2… Show up slightly later to work and leave slightly earlier. When you work under Analyst 1 burn the candle on both ends. Respond immediately, work harder and be visibly pleased to work with him/her.

Why would you do this? Well the answer is clear. If everyone else is trying to please every single MD with the same quality of work, you know with certainty that they are giving 9/10 work to everyone, instead you’re giving 10/10 work to some and 8/10 work to others. We’ve said it before and will say it again, what is everyone else doing… probably a bad idea.

Guess what will happen? Slowly you’ll end up doing more work on the right team.

The Transition:

You must be able to change gears if you hope to succeed long-term. Lets say you’ve correctly landed yourself more responsibility on the right team. Lets say you’re heading into that important annual review. It is time to listen to all of the criticism because if you don’t you’ll miss the train.

Here is the explanation:
At the bottom of the totem pole your movement to the next level is generally a function of likability and error free work. Notice we now assume that you are working under the **right** team/group/analyst/sales person etc. Make everyone like you AS A PERSON within that team. There are no excuses, no matter how much you may want to kill that one Director or that one psycho Vice President... It is simply not worth it to lose the momentum you’ve created.

With that said, the best time to find your weak political spots is going to be… during your review. Take copious notes on any negative feed back and immediately triangulate who made the comments. Do not shirk on this step or you will regret it. This is because your life is going to be chaotic at this point. Simplistically, if 8 people reviewed you at the end of the year, you need to be certain that person 1 and person 6 are the ones that made comment one and comment 4. Why? Now you can remember this specifically for their projects. No matter what, do not let this error occur again on their projects.

Everyone makes mistakes so don’t beat yourself up over some minute errors in the beginning… But… you need to dial in on these comments to win their affection when it comes time for that promotion.

If you’re doing this good well guess what? You’ll gain more traction. If everyone likes your work and you are on the best team in the firm your only job is to be happy in the office

“The first to complain can withstand the least amount of pain”
”The spoiled child cries first”

You’re going to want to complain a lot by year 2. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. It is simply not worth it. If you need to complain, go take a walk and call someone you care about, you can cry as much as you like at home in your bed or out at the clubs. Don’t bring it to work. Separation.

The Home Stretch:

So you have the office situation locked up like a death row inmate.

The key is to remain on the gas pedal and continue to ask a smart questions once in a while and receive minor actionable feedback. Why would you do this? You’re validating their belief that they are good leaders. Again this is not about you, no one cares about you, this is about slight nudges of validation after you ask an innocent and intelligent question.

Here is an example unrelated to Wall Street.

You want to gain a few pounds of muscle but you’ve hit a plateau. You read a few books and still can’t seem to jump the gap… You find someone who has done this before. You contact. No answer. You contact again. No answer. You contact a third time and the person finally answers.

“I know you’re a busy person and I have been researching this topic for a few months and learned xx and xx, to cut to the chase I’m trying to gain another 5 pounds and have hit a plateau. Would you mind sparing me a few seconds so I can troubleshoot the issue”

Guess what, you’re going to get an answer and then they are going to hang up. 9/10 they are hoping you don’t contact them again because they are extremely busy and don’t have time to waste. 2 months go by. You send them the following

“Didn’t gain just 5 pounds of muscle, gained 10. Thank you for everything. (attached photo)”

Want to take a guess if this person will be willing to help you again?

The TL:DR Version:

There is no TL:DR. If you are unwilling to read this long post you will not make it. No joke. If you were too lazy to read this long-winded and accurate post you’re simply ruining it for yourself. We have no interest in seeing you drown, please take it seriously and remember…

Without politics there is no performance

We are trying to make your career run as smoothly as possible. There is always some luck involved in life, but luck favors the prepared.

If you need clarification, glad to help!

**

Addendum:

We know what the question is going to be. What if I screwed up? What if I didn’t play my politics correctly and messed up in this process?

Hate to say it… But it is time to leave. The chances of undoing significant political damage is extremely difficult. You are relying on a lot of luck at that point (too much luck). You should stick it out for a year or so and try to switch firms. After that you can learn from your political mistakes and move on.

Don’t become bitter, become better. Learn from the mistakes.