MS Menlo is Going to Shit
Many many problems with this group, including the below. This group is going downhill, and frankly, just doesn't get the best talent anymore.
- Absolute sweatshop, hours are the worst in tech banking, consistently to 3/4 am everyday. One of the analysts recently got sent to the ER after a near heart attack from 9am-6am for 2 weeks straight
- Huge facetime culture, including name call (yes, like in elementary school) in the mornings
- Group COO is incompetent and bringing back bad culture. Covid policies like work from home and other perks are being taken away, culture is headed in a bad direction
- Recruiting is biased, diversity focused, and terrible at screening for good talent. Interview questions are a joke compared to boutqiues like Q and EVR. Somehow top analysts & talent get offers at other top banks (Qatalyst, GS, etc) but can't even get an interview here despite many referrals. Meanwhile group keeps pushing diversity hires from total non-targetville. The lateral full-time hires from boutiques like EVR are consistently the best analysts, showing 1) other banks have a better screening process for talent 2) they were better trained by their old bank
- Most of analysts are frankly braindead, some can't even build a LBO model, and have a very peripheral interest in tech. Interns/new analysts are horrible technically, can't stay awake during training
- The only good thing we got going are the weekly basketball sessions hosted by the ED at the local middle school LOL
Hope changes are made.
The repercussions of aggressive diversity recruiting is finally in full-effect.
Not just that. Low deal flow and getting ran by Q/GS in pitches right now.
They were good at IPOs but now that's dried up they're suffering.
lmao a simple scan of MS's linkedin filtered for menlo park and investment banking proves that >2/3 of the team wouldn't even count as diversity, and that's only if you count every single woman as diversity. and @OP, i guess chicago, wharton, yale, and stanford aren't target schools anymore? if only you didnt include this tired rhetoric against diversity, your post would have so much more credibility
Congrats on uchicago
Maybe the diversity hires spelled Morgan Stanley wrong on their LinkedIns, and that’s why they don’t show up
Just because their skin color doesn't scream diversity hire doesn't mean they aren't claiming to be LGBTQIA2S#%&()^=+ or "neurodivergent" (literally know a straight white guy who got in through a diversity ramp claiming Autism, OCD and ADHD). It's CA, there's no limit to the stupidity of their politics even if it is/was a top banking group. That these programs even exist incentivizes that exact type of behavior.
Women are diversity
are asians considered diversity? they are basically white at this point.
Recruitment is inherently biased. There are almost always multiple people who more than satisfy a junior role's standard requirements, so it all comes down to the decision maker's objectivity or lack thereof. I'm not a fan of forced and skewed diversity policies that disadvantages talent and merit, but the repeated baseless whining and blanket blame of diversity for all of a company/team's perceived problems is moronic, ignorant and borderline far-right. To categorically blame a group of people for a not-proven-to-be-meaningfully-statistically-correlated event is the typical racist loser playbook. It's as if people of one race/gender are entitled to these roles that are "taken away" by others, and that these issues would not exist if ppl of a specific race/gender filled all those roles up.
Now I'm not saying the initial comment poster is specifically the above, but on many occasions those who pile on in the comments drag humanity's bar even lower. There is a legitimate criticism of certain affirmative action policies and diversity hiring, but only a select few actually engage in such debates in an intellectually honest level.
this is the most articulate takedown of anger people have about diversity recruiting on this site
If this post was even close to being true, then how do you explain the group's outsized compensation?
Congrats on the MS Menlo ding, I guess?
What is the bonus there at AN1 and ASO1 levels? I’ve heard they have their own pool, but how is “outsized”?
Congrats on the MS Menlo rejection
100% agree with this based on my experience recruiting with these guys. Super unprofessional and a huge sweatshop. On top on that, Menlo Park is one of the most boring places on planet earth (live in the Bay Area, so I can say this for a fact).
How can you agree when you couldn't even get past the interview to work there?
Who says I didn’t make it past their interviews… also, even if I didn’t, I have more than every right to say that the office is generally unprofessional when it comes to recruiting candidates
Can confirm on the super unprofessional nature of their recruiting, lots of ghosting...
Lmao you still would’ve taken an offer should they have given it T you
no g
menlo park and the area near stanford is the nicest part of the entire bay area bro.. atherton..ect
the rest of it is complete sh*t now, homeless everywhere. thugs robbing stores with no repercussions. non target people in a non target location all around
Heard the same for MS in HK.
Though top group, they literally work like slaves and churn so much work. Friend quit because he passed out after some drinks after a late night.
Not surprised. Living as a junior in Menlo Park blows… even SF is much much better
Sounds like MS Menlo have multiple laterals from EVR? Wonder what their stories are. It's really surprising that's all.
The basketball was a great time tho ngl
Crazy how the interns with 10 weeks of job experience (or less because they never got an SA offer) are always the most well-informed and strongly opinionated on what defines a good or bad group.
I assume 100% of these posts are made by either A) People who got dinged from IB and work in Corporate Banking now B) Interns who complain about how much their fellow analysts suck, because they hear Associates doing it, but don't realize that they're in the category of people who suck
Did an analyst really have a near heart attack?
Not trying to undermine that person but there's really no such thing as a "near heart attack"... It sounds like he got sent to the hospital for exhaustion, sleep deprivation, maybe some caffeine overdose or anxiety as well all causing elevated HR.
all to say... your average MS analyst is not at risk of a heart attack unless they have some rare genetic condition like long QT.
I interviewed for this group and came from a subpar bank but am a decent candidate but point is I think it clear sucks given that
How are the hours so bad with low deal flow?
constant pitching that leads no where.
I'm pitching a lot too at the moment but it's nothing compared to deal flow hours from 2 years ago. 9am-6am every night for pitches sounds absolutely nuts to me. Not saying it isn't happening but it would be absolutely nuts.
h
Can confirm. GS and MS (JPM being a close third) has probably the worst face time culture among West Coast banks.
9am - 6am for two straight weeks..bruh
OP surprisingly does a good job going over some of the reasons I left the group…culture and talent has unfortunately been going downhill
Hopefully this marks the beginning of a shift back to better hiring practices that don't sacrifice talent for diversity
I'll talk about our new and 1st year associates. All except 1 amongst the past 2 incoming classes received some sort of diversity bonus or treatment (female, ethnicity, military). I passed forward many candidates from HBS/GSB/Wharton with solid professional backgrounds (law, consulting, even banking) but most of them didn't even get interview invites from our office. Hate to say this but the quality of our juniors' work is continuing to go to shit. Our management's push towards diversity has really gone out of hand.
Heard the same for GS's TMT Group--from my top target, consistently takes kids who know nothing about banking (the analyst quality is much worse than Q, EVR, Laz), heard the PE exits suck these days, only 5/20 first-years have placed, most got cut in on-cycle processes
You got -4x ratio how that even possible
Opinion instantly invalid
Evercore menlo shills going crazy, just look at his posts
Same, I’ve heard FIG/IND at GS place better than TMT nowadays. GS TMT is just filled with nepo babies and diversities.
FIG has historically had top exits anyway…
will confirm that the analysts/associates are boring pretentious assholes
Can also confirm that some of them have no humility. Q analysts/associates can come off as really grounded when you talk to them, but the same isn't true for MS analysts/associates, although the VPs I spoke with seemed fine
This is so true
Facts, Q analysts are much more grounded/not egotistical in convos. Like leaps and bounds over JPM/GS tech
MS will always be a sweatshop because the firm is too traditional and too proud of their 1500s wall street heritage. Imagine having to prepare 200 random memos and 200 random emails to random DLs before you can even onboard clients.
JP Morgan is less formal of a culture, and JPM is actually running circles around MS. idk why MS continues to think they are the most prestigious.
I’ve also read about complaints on diversity recruitment in Jefferies in another post…but based on my observation MS and JEF are the two most “white” shop I’ve ever seen.
Care to show statistics of how much % diversity hires were brought into these two firms?
Sounds like another witch hunt post for minorities by a white male who already enjoyed all the privileges but still can’t get a banking job and now whining.
Btw lot of investment banks don’t even hire international students for banking jobs(as opposed to a lot of quant investment jobs , which required much more technical skills, send lots of green cards each year), meaning that they don’t need to select the ‘best of best’ because literally everyone can do a banker’s job.
What do you believe would be a constructive approach to enhance the situation for MS?
.
Brutal truth.
GS TMT and Q went after them too, MS yield terror just stopped them from taking the top kids who then ended up at GS TMT and Q anyways.
Roll call in the morning is CRAZY
Can't be real, right?
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