Pushing Back on New Staffings?

Pushing back and saying no is an art. The longer you've been there the easier it is to actually say the word "no." When you are new (basically when you are a first-year without an exit plan) you don't have much say in the matter. What you need to do is make a bit more noise about how much you work. This can be done strategically, in a way that does not piss people off or make people think you are annoying. Every time you are asked to take staffing make sure to tell the staffer how busy you are and that you might be able to fit this in to help out the team/group. When a VP / Associate / Whoever asks you if you are busy, always say yes, you are pretty busy but you are "surviving" in a slightly sarcastic / joking way. People may tell you this makes you look bad or like you can't handle it but you'd be surprised how effective this is in communicating your lack of capacity. Never ever complain about work to anyone at work that isn't a trusted fellow analyst, always just say that things are really busy but you are doing alright or you are surviving but you've had a busy few weeks. After some time, this will make it's way back to staffer, people talk, people gossip, this is IB at the end of the day. When something comes up, they won't think of you as the first person they go to with something. What you don't want to become is the office bitch who can never say no, is always getting fucked, and it impacts your quality on other projects. Assuming you started last summer, you should now have worked at the firm long enough where you can say these things. I would say the first 60 days you want to be extra careful about even saying you are too busy, but now that's probably 6 months in the above approach should work. Everyone likes to pretend IB is a team sport, but I've never met an analyst who actually believes this in 2020 at a major BB / EB bank. They may exist, but I don't get to socialize with them because they probably never leave within 50 yards of their workstation. Everyone tries to avoid the shit work and wants to be seen as a top performer, this status can be achieved with precision execution in a far more effective way than overloading your plate and never sleeping.