Lazard Clarification

Felt like I should make a post on Lazard since there is so much incorrect information on this site. Some kid who went to my school told me he read that Lazard was a brutal sweatshop with a horrible culture on this site, which inspired me to make this post. I recently started working at the firm and feel like an idiot for believing everything I read on this site. Lazard gets destroyed here for having a bad culture, but that's simply not true. I can confidently say that the culture at Lazard is actually great and people are very respectful of your time, even at the analyst level. It's less of a sweatshop than the other elite boutiques based on what I hear from my friends at other places, and Lazard's deal flow is obviously very strong. The one thing Lazard could improve on is comp (higher than BB but lower than the average EB), but other than that it is undoubtedly one of the best firms to pursue IB at. The exits are as good as can be (all EB's have very strong exits), culture is awesome, and Ken Jacobs is a great CEO. This is not the pre-2008 Lazard anymore.

Believe me, I enjoy shitting on the firm and I'm not gung ho about it or anything, but people need to stop posting false information on this site and incorrectly shaping views of people looking to go into banking. Lazard is no more of a sweatshop than any other EB (if anything it's less of one). I feel like an idiot for being of wary of this before starting and hopefully this helps people not be scared of the culture of the firm.

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Everyone I've talked to at Lazard has at some point said "we know we've had a lot of issues with our culture in the past..." it seems like they're very conscious of this and have made a lot of efforts to improve since the printer assault era.

 

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