My analysts are not qualified and they are becoming associates
VP here and I am getting very frustrated with how the situation is racing to the bottom at my MM shop. I have gone through the process myself and by "not qualified" I meant really unqualified so read below before trashing me.
We have a few analysts and most of them are promoting to asso in this coming cycle. MD said we have headcount so regardless of situation we will promote them. And my MD basically does not fire people as long as you don't try to lateral or propose "internal mobility" crap to him.
Things my analysts do are:
- Spending 2 hours EACH for lunch and dinner on most of the weekdays while away from desk
- Does not reply emails on weekends
- Travel for a short trip over weekends when Friday WFH was still a thing (I found this out as we need to print some research reports for a client over the weekend and they couldn't pick it up in the office)
- Push back on work and said "I am swamped" when they are having 2 hour meals while getting offline at 930pm
- Notifying you of leave / sick leave plan 2 days before due date and told you sorry I wasn't able to do it earlier
- Does not exercise common sense judgement when creating slides. For example, showing GSAM as a strategic investor and putting Coatue as a buyout PE. Best part - executive summary put the wrong client's name
I am sick of this shit now. I don't even think it is about generation gap or whatever. You just need crazy luck to get a nonchalant MD with a team of PhD in Slacking.
unc tweaking
I was semi with you on the title until “print research reports for a client over the weekend.”
What a sad, sad industry
Bro the research report crap wasn't assigned by me. My MD asked them to do and they told me they were out of town while WFH. I agree printing research over the weekend is BS but shouldn't analysts at least WFH while WFH instead of traveling?
they are free individuals not your slaves lol. Should they be chained to their chairs at the desk so that you get your research deck on the week-end? If it is that urgent, go to the office and pick it up yourself. What is the issue with them WFH whilst traveling? They are working nonetheless no matter whether they are present in the city of the office or not... It is ridiculous that you want their freedom of movement constrained...
Canadian bank?
100% Canadian bank and high chance analysts are females (entitled as usual) because work daddy (MD / Group Head) calls them future super stars
Your comment is very sexist, I know a lot of women who work hard and dont do ANY of the afformentioned above
lmafo what female analyst got top bucket over you and why are you still so bitter? Grow up and stop whining.
That doesn’t sound too extreme you just sound like a hardo. You only really listen one mistake they made allegedly.
I have a few more but some of them are way too obvious that they will know I am pointing at them given they also read WSO bro.
But to give you more examples:
Yeah they may just suck idk.
Alternatively, if they are otherwise good, you may be the sucky one and they are just not wasting time dealing with your crap. Have seen both scenarios play out so no way of telling.
your analysts sound based asl
Whoever wrote this post is a fucking boomer
lol what did you expect, you’re dealing with Gen Z here—more power to them.
Why am I getting MS on this!?!
edgy MD tries WSO for the first time but ends up getting MS for implying Gen Z are lazy
They have severe brainrot from overuse of social media and are conditioned not to care about you or anything
Ur analysts sound like shit and I’d want to bang my head against a wall if I worked with someone like that.
Does your team / group have slow deal flow right now? I’m trying to wrap my head around how they can take 2hr lunches and no one say anything / need them during their absence.
Also the weekend thing is absurd, are they at least getting shitty bonuses?
They sound like a bunch of boneheads
Things are slow but this is tbh beyond reasonable expectations. Not sure why some others here disagree.
They are likely getting top rating this year - communicated with MDs and was told they need top rating to promote in current environment so they can get top bucket bonus in coming cycle. Jokes and I now want to be the analyst myself
Edit: the worst part is I think analyst should know their shit and be accountable. If they can't even be accountable to their work and at least gone through this. They cannot be an understanding associate. If you just dump all your work to others as an analyst and blow things up here and there, what stops you dumping work to next analyst and hide everytime when shit hits the fan
Are you not seeing why most rational people would do what they are doing (beyond dumb mistakes)? Top bucket is just the icing on the cake at this point and they aren’t slaving away.
Maybe do your job as a VP and communicate expectations, give feedback and resources, develop rapport so they want to do good work for you. Blaming everyone else because you can’t lead a team is never a good look.
I have tried this and I can tell you other VPs have tried in my team but it doesn't work. Another VP told me he is now trying to do most stuff himself and rely on M&A team analyst to drive some of the more important stuff. The analysts are making asocsiates soon but we think they can only do team pages or creds. Jokes
Tell me you work for a Big 5 Canadian bank and your analysts are mostly superstar females with top ratings who consider any constructive feedback as misogyny.
Jefferies?
Has to be. Sounds exactly like it
The 2-year A2A program leads to useless Associates and needs to be abolished.
As opposed to the highly regarded MBA associate?
MBA Associates often develop into far better senior bankers than your stellar analyst monkeys. Analyst job / skills have limited value, however, their ego is blown out of proportion by VPs in order to retain them.
Tbf u do work at an MM. Lateral to an EB or top BB group if u want to work with people that have some sort of self-respect in their work product.
.
These are legitimate gripes and not sure why every situation about incompetence is met with comments about being a boomer
The analysts lean on the boomer meme and accuse ppl like OP of being a hardo. Then when they end up as associates and VPs they get fucked just the same and lose their shit even worse. Can't tell you how often Ive seen this happen.
This thread is a perfect example of how WSO skews towards delusional analysts. In what other industry, in what other country, can you effectively tell your boss to fuck off? The answer is none. Sure the demands in IB are higher than those in a “normal” job, but that’s why you get paid a premium.
This sounds like a MD problem, and you shouldn’t be stuck in the middle. Leave to another bank that actually makes heads roll / whips analysts into shape (they exist) and leave this MD to hold the bag and make it his problem.
This behavior mostly occurs on teams desperate to retain female Analysts. MD is aware of the situation but won’t do much and in fact lay all the blame on the AS/VP.
I think you should leave to another bank since the MD loves these analysts. This website is catered to a younger generation with no respect for people more senior than them, or worse, any respect for themselves at all (judging by their work products and the comments from analysts in this thread)
bro got Genz employees
What I’ve learned about managing analysts.
I can’t do it because I’m too soft and too removed. My VPs can’t do it because their incentives are fundamentally misaligned.
My view is also that analysts care a bit about money and a bit about advancement but mostly they respond to peer pressure. An analyst pool works well when you have a culture of senior analysts and A2As who set the tone, set the work ethic and set the quality standards and the junior analysts have to fit in with that to be culturally relevant.
It’s not hard to identify those analysts (and there’s normally one or two every year) who are well liked, have leadership qualities and are good. I’ve found those, worked really hard to retain them, pay them, promote them and those guys become the “street bosses” that set the tone for the junior culture. Once you do that, you hand over recruiting to this group of individuals and pretty soon you have a new generation and the virtuous cycle perpetuates it. I’ve also had the opposite vicious cycle so I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum.
Note: I’ve had significant exposure to both totalitarian states and benevolent authoritarian regimes
That's probbaly the way to do it. This is more or less how analysts were managed when I worked in economic consulting.
Bro, look at the other replies in this thread - it is wtf considering how many of them justifying making mistakes, not replying emails, pushing back work, etc.
well your team has created a culture of mediocrity. Junior bankers respond to incentives cultural cues like everyone else. When there’s an environment where high performance is rewarded (and it’s not just money), people will be incentivised to perform. As a VP you are too senior to just be a passive observer in a bad culture. I suggest you work to change the people and the culture, just doing the former won’t help you,
This actually makes sense. I’ve seen bad analyst culture and it’s not pretty.
Similar level of incompetence at my team in another major bank. Many analysts are like chatgpt with worse attitude and lower productivities these days. Basically have to be told exactly everything / every number to make simple pages correctly. I have met sector team associate 0's who do not know how to pull some quick CIQ comps without a pre-existing backup.
Idk why the hardo VPs (and it’s always the VPs for some reason) get so fired up about this shit.
1. Getting mad at analysts for going places during non-working hours because they can’t pick up printouts? LOL why don’t you go pick them up? Do you honestly expect people just to sit around on the weekends eagerly awaiting an email to do work? That’s probably what you did, OP, but we do not get paid nearly enough to do that
2. Getting mad for pushing back on extra work / leaving at 9:30. Pay us more and we will work more. It’s been 3 years (bascially post GF actually) of shit bonuses at the junior level. No real incentive to kill our selves here - people are starting to notice that putting up with dumb made up facetime formalities are a waste of time and energy
3. Getting mad at slide creation. Bro no one reads or cares your shitty MM sellside slides anyway
4. Getting mad at not responding to weekend emails. Boundaries dude. No reason to kill yourself for your job
I can tell you for a fact, you won't go far in the industry with that attitude.
It's a client based industry where over delivering for the client is how you put bread on the table, so to speak. If you can't deliver (talk less of over delivering) for your first client as an analyst - your associate / VP, I promise you, you will never succeed in the long term.
Your heart may not be in the industry and that's fine, you may just be in it for the prestige and money and will bounce in a year or two but good luck making a career out of this, or any real career with that attitude tbh
Are you sure about that? Feel like it’s a relationship driven game. I have MDs who obsess about books and certainly “over deliver” and win nothing. Have others who don’t really care what I hand them and generate significant business.
Honestly, not everyone's goal is to claw their way to the top of the ladder, especially if it means sacrificing every ounce of personal life for years on end. What you're describing might be standard in IB, but step outside this bubble and in 95% of industries, those expectations are flat-out insane. No one in their right mind is asking employees to be available 24/7, and demanding half of this would probably get you a lawsuit or fired here in Europe. And sure, maybe a few people think they'd actually do this for free because they 'love finance, but come on no one actually enjoys grinding out pitch decks, endless models, and playing servant to demanding clients. If you're truly passionate about that, then congrats, but you've definitely drunk the Kool-Aid. People push this whole 'IB culture and passion' thing as if it's the norm, but to most normal people outside of finance, we probably look insane. Life's short, and l'd rather not spend every waking minute glued to my phone, stressing over a client request. There's way more to it than work, and I'm not burning out just to make someone else look good.
The best thing you can do is just step back and let the promotion go through. Why fight a battle you're not going to win?
People like this never understand that with bigger titles and pay comes more accountability. It's all fun and games and big talk/egos when you can hide behind senior analysts and associates. Different scenario when you have actual responsibility.
Sounds like a great place to work. Are you guys hiring?
Lol result of banks' HR's diversity hiring
Hi OP - the responses you've gotten so far are interestingly split (roughly 50/50), and to be honest I think both the people agreeing and disagreeing with you have some fair points.
Firstly - I fully get your frustration, these analysts do sound very mediocre at best. I don't rate myself as a genius by any means, but in my time in IB/PE I've worked with a few mediocre people so I feel your pain. When it comes to mediocre colleagues, it's rarely intelligence that is the issue (since let's be honest we're not building rockets) but usually a combination of laziness + lack of interest in finance. As an analyst/associate it is frustrating to see average colleagues get similar bonuses to you etc, but I think it gets much worse at the VP level (where I am now) - as you have all the responsibility of managing juniors but without any real power. I.e. yes you can complain to your MD but that may a) have limited effect anyway, and b) look bad on you for "not being a leader". So VP is a tough position as you have to manage up and also manage down - trust me, I know this from experience.
Having said that however, you have to realize that everybody responds to incentives, and what incentives do these analysts have to work weekends or till 2am? Firstly, your MD promoted them to associates! So from their perspective there's zero downside to doing less work, and in fact that's the smart move for them logically! I.e. why burn yourself out working 80-90hr weeks when you can get promoted by doing far less work?
You might then logically say "well what about their bonus" - but as others have already pointed out on here, bonuses have been pretty mediocre ever since 2022. So from their perspective, many analysts will think it's simply not worth working all the extra hours to get an additional $20-30k before tax. Now that might sound like a privileged position, but then equally an extra 20hrs of work a week for a year to get another $20k is basically $20 an hour - hardly a great salary. Add to that the ridiculous housing boom that took place 2019-22, even a top-bucket analyst/associate is probably going to struggle to be able to afford their own place in a HCOL city. Even PE is probably not the holy grail it once was given the new high interest rate environment, which means analysts might be even less inclined to stay in finance long-term these days (i.e. there's much less of a long-term carrot to justify all the hard work).
So whilst I appreciate it's frustrating for you, I do also get why Gen-Z kids in banking are "checking out" to some degree - as unlike in the glory days of the pre-2008 era, working 100+ hr weeks in banking these days is no guarantee of living a "baller lifestyle" anymore (for most anyway). So I get why these kids just don't think it's worth it (I'm nearly 35 now but might do the same thing if I was starting in this industry at 21 again). Also your MD is to blame as he's created an incentive structure that actually rewards this behaviour i.e. by promoting them to associates.
The only thing I can suggest (as someone else mentioned) is trying to "soft manage" them, i.e. do your best to create a culture where hard work gets rewarded in "soft" ways i.e. working on better/more exciting deals, more respect from seniors etc. Although in the hybrid world I think this is a lot harder compared to pre-Covid. Anyway good luck OP.
Great response.
Exactly. What’s the incentive truly? When these seniors were junior bankers back in their day they were at the top of the social hierarchy in terms of both status, income, future wealth, etc. All they had to do was perform and they were guaranteed a top 1% life within one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Today you have influencers, Ecom, online agencies, crypto guys making an entire analysts salary in an hour off shitcoins in their pajamas, etc. and thus junior bankers in NYC or other major metro areas are nothing special. Making the claim that “oh it’s such a small group of people to compare yourself to” is a complete and utter cope. Even if the claim that it’s a small group of people is true (skeptical) it’s very much in your face everyday and its translation to social media, dating and feelings of inadequacy in a competitive world are real.
You're the problem.
Woah - I thought I was doing a shit job but WTF is this? Best of luck to you. This must be unbearable.
Fuck you 😂 non-respectfully
Frankly it sounds like you’re being outmanoeuvred by your analysts. They’ve figured out that end of the day you’ll fix their shit, so they don’t bother. They’re playing a game of chicken with you - and they all know you’re the chicken. You need to either win their respect (which sounds like it’s going to be hard) or you need to start to be much smarter about your interactions.
As an example, you keep mentioning that some analyst ‘made you print a book of a deal you’re not even on’. You can simply not respond to them and claim to the MD you missed the email on Monday. Gets the analyst in a tailspin to get home or they have failed visibly in front of the MD (who might still ask you to print the book - but then it’s the MD asking out of frustration instead you getting managed upwards by some analyst). As soon as you acknowledge the email / chat you’re ’not a team player’ by not helping out (which is also somewhat true). Also besides don’t understand why no one else on that team could help but whatever. Bottom line is that you’re socially / politically not acting smart.
Same for your logo gripe. Tell the analyst you’re at the dentist, travelling or some other stuff and that they should send out the book to the MD, with the note that you’ll review in parallel. Just send the MD a note that you’ll review first shortly. Then come back to the entire chain with a list of their bullshit errors. Now your MD sees the shit you’re dealing with and the analyst is publicly embarrassed. Instead of you suffering in silence and the Analysts telling the MD behind your back that you’re some sort of petty formatting maniac.
In short - sure they’re shitty analysts, but you also have a lot to learn as a VP - start there.
Yeah super common nowadays
Yeah I was an intern this summer and they were pretty relaxed and inefficient throughout most of the day
Xxxx
Reading all of this
People in banking at all levels are often so short term at all levels and when it happens it hurts everyone - it hurts the seniors who never get the benefit of a productive junior team and it hurts the juniors who become robots and miss out on the real learning in the job (which happens when you are able to step out of the junior bubble and actually see how deals get made and financial markets work).
To the OP - I could put this back to you. You are a VP. You have agency. What have you done to build a culture of excellence in your group.
Cultures take time to build. If it was me, I would have found the one or two best analysts that wanted to stay in banking, mentor the hell out of them, pay them top or above top bucket and actually give them real exposure to clients and deals and real agency (ie treated them like real partners). I would have got to them and forced them above the mediocrity of your team culture to see that there is another way and being good at your job has real tangible benefits. I would have promoted those people and built a culture around them. It’s a 3-4 year process to transform a culture but it can be done. Whining about Gen Z is not how it’s done.
As if I could actually change their bonus or rating, I have flagged this to MD and D a few times along with another VP. Nothing changes.
My team has 4 analysts and 3 are due to promote. It is not like a team of 10 analysts and I can groom 1 analyst. Two of them explicitly told me they don't plan to stay long and if there is a layoff, so be it. My MD still give them top bucket because they are "due to promote in a difficult market", bizarre. But then I received a top rating just 2 years ago for the same promotion reason. So I guess it is what it is.
I don't really give bottom rating to anyone throughout my career as it sucks to be rated bottom. So I gave them median every year and I gave analysts who work closely with me from other teams top ratings. But then relying on M&A to support me is creating tension in the long run as my own team is now well known on the floor for having analysts cruising. I couldn't give a fuck to this because at the end I can still fallback to M&A and LevFin for backups. But then ignoring all these will eventually create a bunch of useless associates who only know how to dodge work and throw the staffing to others and go home at 7.
Maybe your firm is different because I think you’re grossly overstating the impact VPs have on junior compensation, particularly if the overall bonus pool is poor.
In my team, we go above and beyond and would never do ANY of the above YET promotions are super difficult to get (they would only promote to associate level when the analyst is ALREADY capable of doing the Assocate's job 6 months in advance.)
LMK if you're hiring :)
Dude, hire some MBA associates! They're way better
womp womp
God forbid someone takes a 2 hour lunch after working 12-16 hour days booooo fire the VP, destroy capitalism
.
It is not just even 2 hours of lunch. It is 2 hours of lunch and then 2 hours of dinner.
Literally these guys come in at 10am and go home at 9pm once they can claim taxi.
Stacking 2 hours lunch and 2 hours dinner it is working 7 hours a day. 10-12 then 2-7.
Ridiculous
You must be going through hell. Those kids just don't care. I've had this type before. They 100% take their job for granted; no clue. They don't realize that for each of their jobs there are 10 other better candidates out there. (I know based on how many good CVs I receive every single day). You and your MD (and the Analysts) may not realize it, but their terrible attitude is the death knell for the whole firm. Clients, prospects, colleagues, candidates will all pick up on their terrible attitude because attitude is like gas...you can't see it but you can sure as hell smell it. Any top player who wants to remain on an elite sports team must be "all-in" - willing to commit 100% - or you're out. OUT. Everyone knows that.
My advice? Fire them and (a) hire analysts in India and (b) use AI instead for the grinding. You will be so much happier. Good analysts in Indian outsourcing firms are just as smart, they are hungry, eager to learn, great attitude and they cost 50% of what you are paying the entitled local kids. AI is so good now you can use it for all the grinding. Your minding and finding spirit is being ruined by their jobsworth attitude on grinding. If I were you I would man-up and just do this, despite what your MD says, because you are doing it for the good of your clients and for the good of your firm, and you would be showing boldness and leadership...everything you need to show to become an MD...either at your firm or someone else's firm...
The analysts to OP rn:
Does your bank start with C?
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