Anyone have any insight here? Of course seems like a phenomenal group from an experience and prestige standpoint, but how is it to actually work there? The recent email leak makes it sound like a tough culture but would appreciate any thoughts.
| +191 | Change My Mind: Banks Shouldn’t Hire Foreigners at All | 50 | 4m |
| +123 | Article - UBS’ Investment Bank Keeps Losing Ground | 21 | 25m |
| +60 | An Exhaustive Guide: How to Solve Every Single Accretion/Dilution Question | 6 | 3h |
| +46 | When to Leave Office as Intern | 5 | 14m |
| +41 | Best IB Group Overall? | 25 | 10h |
| +30 | Would you rather be a Touse Squid or a Bouse Mogger in IB | 2 | 1d |
| +29 | STEM student lost in London IB recruiting | 16 | 14m |
| +25 | What do you say to ppl who don’t know EVR/LAZ/CVP/PJT | 22 | 14h |
| +20 | Still recruiting SA'27 | 12 | 1h |
| +20 | Help a Rising Sophomore at Non-Target | 7 | 23h |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
I thought the email leak was from the m&a side not the restructuring group? Don't know for sure so feel free to correct me. I have a friend who works at PJT and he said that before covid the restructuring guys had one of the best work/life balances on the street for top groups (regularly worked 65-75 hours a week, had a saturday or a sunday off each week, much better than the strategic advisory group). Have heard great things about culture there so if the email was from the restructuring group, that would be surprising, and probably an isolated incident of one bad apple as most people pointed out in the other thread anyway. Still would give my left nut to work there for exit ops alone and not to mention that comparable top groups (Evercore M&A, Goldman TMT, MS M&A) also get worked pretty hard because the reason top groups are top groups is because there's always an abundance of live deal work.
Have a couple friends who are analysts and interviewed there when I was recruiting for SA. Culture is one of the best imo but not for everyone. Analysts are given a lot of responsibility and expected to deliver (actually, not just in a blanket statement way that every boutique tells when recruiting) and seniors are demanding but chill guys to talk to. Everyone there is hella smart but humble, group as a whole is far more formal and academic than other groups edit: good hours earlier this year/last were due to the slow RX environment, can confirm they had good hours before COVID
Humble? I've found the people I spoke with there douchey but not in an I've-always-been-cool kind of way-- more of like a nerd-trying-to-overcompensate kind of way. Meaning that if I were to find them in an environment outside of finance, they would absolutely not be cool.
Ymmv, but that's been my experience with them.
See, you'd think so, but I don't think that generalization necessarily holds true for other strong groups. I've always found that EBs tend to carry forward the hardo culture that's propounded by this forum (i.e. the likes of Moelis, PJT, etc.). It might be unpleasant to say here given everyone's fondness for the boutiques, but I'm not entirely surprised by that correlation.
Now with that being said, I think certain groups are the exception (i.e. HL's restructuring group seems like a solid group of people, as does much of Lazard). On the BB side, I think things are completely different. Take MS for example (sponsors, P&U, transpo). Those folks are basically the second coming of Yale DKE. To an extent, I think similar things can be said of groups at GS, JPM, BAML, and Barclays, from the people that I've met and spoken with. Again, this is all perception, but it's certainly something to consider.
Have worked with a number of these groups from a buyside perspective (PE now distressed HF) and generally tend to agree - the Laz RX guys are chill people and great to work with or across from (even though they can get aggressive but that's part of the game). Also had great experiences working with MS Sponsors, though that was only on one deal, but definitely seemed like a great group of guys. Only one where I have experience and would disagree is HL RX - analysts / associates seem to be overcompensating to some extent (my favorite experience was chatting with an analyst who continued to remind me how much better HL RX was relative to other RX shops), and the VPs I worked with (not all of them, so may have been a few bad apples) didn't strike me as the most intelligent bunch.
They are not cocky by any stretch. Every analyst in their group will be having top exits, and they are relatively humble when taking this into consideration. Smart, nerdy guys with a ton of responsibility and exposure. Fun guys to learn from.
The quality of exits isn’t an excuse for being cocky. Realistically, they’re analyst bankers who know almost nothing about investing. The culture of PJT RSSG isn’t good.
Guys and girls
Girl*
Lmao I love when people get on here and talk about something as subjective as "culture" and use that to shit on groups they dont work at or hype up the firm they do. If you want to know about a firm or group's culture talk to people there while you network, interview, or consider accepting an offer. If you're at none of these stages, then don't worry about it because the odds you'll be one of the ten kids a year that gets an offer here are essentially 0. Nothing anyone here says changes the fact that RSSG continues to be the consensus top choice for undergrads recruiting for restructuring roles and nobody that's actually worked in the group that I know seems to have anything bad to say about their time there.