Seeing chatter about UBS, boutiques like Evercore/PJT/Lazard, and BBs cutting back?
Is it AI that's driving this, or is it just spending on senior talent that is making it more difficult to justify?
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Speaking from my experience with interns across my bank this year, quality has been very low. I’ve heard of other groups going below 1/3 return offer rate
what do you mean by low quality out of curiosity? are they just awkward or bad work?
Work quality related, sometimes attitude too. I don’t think anyone would hold awkwardness against an intern though, at least not in my group
Ignore title but case study as well. None of the numbers tied and we can see material difference in the analysis they presented. Couldn’t defend their thesis / straight up used “conservative assumptions” with no assumption.
Since 2020-2022, interns have gotten legitimately dumber / more useless every year. No idea whether it’s social stunting from COVID, cheating during COVID, over reliance on AI, brain rot from short form video, but the average intern/analyst is pretty retarded now. Some exceptions and super strong interns/analysts of course.
Really? I only know what exists from my own experience but at my school, (granted it’s a non target) the bar for what is expected keeps on getting raised higher and higher. I mean significantly too, when I was a freshman many of the seniors who were going FT IB were somewhat dumb, but now the senior class contains some of the smartest people I know Wondering if this dynamic you’re seeing exists within a certain group or area.
Probably a case of the non-targets who break in getting sharper and sharper, since it’s probably more competitive in absolute terms for them to break in.
I think the median quality at targets has declined significantly due to DEI (+legacy and athletes). We’ve had DEI interns from HYP who can’t even figure how to make a bar chart in Excel.
Quality has declined as we decided to take UAlabama retards over Harvard kids in 2026.
College admissions are an unfair lottery, involving fabricating your personal statements and exaggerating everything you have done, not to mention DEI and legacy. Additionally, the U.S. school system is so poor that practically anyone can get perfect grades in high school.
Let’s step back for a moment. Why do you think a bank filled with people from ivy leagues, would ever choose to recruit from places other than Ivy leagues?
1. Nepo + Frat Pipeline + Effort to Expand Into New Footprints (literally just for the sake of looking like you’re not an elitist firm hiring from elitist schools)
And/or
2. People realized that the intellect threshold required for IB is not as high as it seems. As a result they started to recruit people that they like. At the end of the day, a few of those so called UAlabama Retards, actually s aren’t that dumb and it turns out they can actually think and work just like you (another human is just as capable as me?!? No shot!) And at the magnificent finish line of a long ass deal, you can go grab a ice cold miller lite with the guys from the bullpen instead of circle jerking each other over a bottle of cristal at a private table with people who can only complain or talk PE exits.
Guarantee you the kid from bama 1) grinded their ass off to get their seat and 2) is more fun to grab a beer with
-
I guess anyone who isn't a white or asian male is DEI. The default to blame DEI for quality declines is definitely something, considering the industry is still dominated by white and asian guys (Which isn't an inherently bad thing), but trying to scapegoat them as if to imply that if those policies didn't exist no one else would be in finance besides the aforementioned groups is exactly why those policies existed in the first place.
I mean you can pick any year at any financial institution and look at their summer intern class, AN1 class, all the way through to the MDs and see who makes up the majority of those groups.
Can confirm. They also seem much less interested/curious in the work we do , which drives me fucking nuts when I need to train some of them and it feels like I'm talking to the walls (ie. I want to hear lots of questions during ur internship to see that u give some fucks)
At a top BB. I asked our intern what made him choose our vertical (corporate banking) and the kid goes “it was a bad market. This was the best I could get”.
He’s getting paid like $45 an hour. The unprofessionalism is horrifying. I wouldn’t dream of saying something like that as an intern.
Prestige has destroyed minds. Lack of appreciation, they all want the next best thing.
Don’t necessarily want to say wealth is probably the main driver for this. But you would almost never see someone from a humble background or non target background ever pull this shit. Genuinely embarrassing for that kid. Hope he kicks rocks realizing he’s making 90th percentile earnings per hour as an intern.
while i agree its unprofessional- to be fair to him, if he was from a target where the median get more desirable roles, he may be tired of having to answer why X? questions with fake answers, when the person asking knows its a second choice
My question for you is that you wanted to do corporate banking from the beginning?
hiring filter must suck
Hm. Maybe its time to rethink hiring practices.
What do you think happens when you recruit start of sophomore year for an internship that basically starts 16 months later?
Can u give us a hint on ur bank?
Are the other 2/3 going to be re-recruits or are there no other FT offers?
bump
Weird, return rates at my bank seem very strong this year vs last.
People don’t give a fuck anymore because it’s not a cool job any more and the money is meh
Interested on the BB side. Is this true?
Analyst at top team in BB in London
Intern quality is quite high - one intern work two full days at office for ~30 hours over the weekend. And finish one workday at 4 am while getting up early for the 7am meeting
Made minor mistake but really minor. Most of the times great delivery quality
Associate in the team also says this class is very strong because we recruit mostly European interns with continental internships on the belt
Our team is consistently high return rate in history
Congrats on MS!
not MS haha. Think MS has a stronger European culture. Our team culture is quite diverse
This is just sad
yeah, not a good position. But it is what it is. At least we give return offers in London. In certain boutique in Frankfurt, interns are expected to grind 100 hours or more weekly with no guarantee in return. In Paris, certain bank offer 0 return offer for the whole intern class. In Italy, there are not even many intern positions.
Not really sure why people here say intern quality is low.
Hey! I am coming to London next week to start the MFA. I have one year worth of experience from a PE fund in Scandinavia. I would love to get smarter on the industry. Would you mind me asking you a few question in DMs?
IB is the new accounting. All the good talent went to tech now given the AI boom and thats where the money is at. IB pay is equivalent to accounting pay now adjusted for hours and the retarded work. why would anyone sharp or smart go into this retarded field lol.
haha then UK big 4 pay will be shit - hell and torture
I take it you didn’t get a return offer
i went to an EB and now working at a HF. i can educate your stupid ass that bankng is retarded
Ignore title. Based off my group (and generally the undergrads/people I went to school with), the prestige of schools we hire from deteriorates every year because the kids from T10 who do come lateral or leave afer a year before they finish out the 2 year contracts and are realizing that the pay/hours/"knowledge" you get from this work is diminishing with the onslaught of AI. The smartest kids in finance go straight to the buyside and the others look for work life balance jobs that pay a lot such as tech/quant or do startups which is prob more fulfilling. This leaves only the dumber kids of T10 schools and less prestigious state schools in IB.
You can’t lead with “based on my group” then proceed to generalize the entire industry. I’ve been doing this job for a little over 5 years now and the truth is that it’s an exercise in futility to assign competency to anyone based on their undergrad
I think the whole "the smartest kids in finance go to buyside" perspective is beyond played in 2026.
The kids who go to the buyside in 2026 are not really uniquely intelligent at all, imho. Certainly some very smart ones in the bunch, but realistically they are simply the latest buyers of the extremely crowded trade that is IB>Buyside>B-school>Buyside>???>Profit. If I'm being honest, the majority of the smartest kids I have seen join my desk over my decade+ have ultimately been the ones that either stayed with us or stayed in our vertical and moved to another bank. On the contrary, many of the most underwhelming juniors I've known are the ones that left for flashy buyside offers only to find them washed out of the industry when I check back on their LinkedIn after two years.
Ask all the hardcapped VPs getting pushed out old boy funds that won't hit hurdle about how their career underwrite was the smartest, lmao. Buy side strong side, right?
Man, you must be insufferable to work with lol.
"rogo this, rogo that"
all i heard this summer - we are so cooked.
On god, every intern just rogo’d everything, including spreading comps. I was shocked lmao
Lol Rogo is actually pretty good at it, I like to start with it then tweak from there. Why waste time?
Analysts and associates today get paid the same nominally as back in 2018-2019. See old comp threads here. I knew someone who started as AN1 at GS in 2018 and her expectation was to make $150k all in first year. Median 1BR rent in Manhattan was $3k back then. We are now seeing news that it’s reaching $5.5k. Comp is deteriorating relative to inflation each year yet people who have been doing this job for 5-10 years expect newcomers to be just as good / committed as they were once upon a time. Banks expect unreasonably good commitment / quality while paying only reasonably good money. The only solution to attracting better talent is to pay more.
Base was 85k back then…GS and definitely MS were not paying analysts ~90% bonus
I don’t believe your rent estimate for a 1 bed is correct either...unless it’s a specific remark about Fidi / downtown
When salaries went up in 2020-2021, bonus as a % of base went down with it. I know a director who made $400k as an AS2 in 2019 at a top BB. As AS1 he cleared more than $300k. Hardly any AS2 at top BBs get $400k today (even top bucket). Also see Corcoran Group and various news outlets published the $5,500 number earlier this year. Or are you saying banks are keeping up with inflation over the last 10 years? Everybody knows pay hasnt kept up with inflation since the GFC but many don’t even realize even over the last 8-12 years pay has deteriorated across top BBs
Unlikely to be AI, I think most leading white collar firms (not just IB but consulting, law etc) if anything are gearing up for an arms race that will primarily involve direct AI spend but will also need to be bolstered by good juniors as companies want every resource possible to make sure they come out ahead and not behind.
Usually when companies have low return offer rates its (i) company-wide problems where they are looking everywhere possible to slash costs and the future FT class is just one of many cost cuts, and (ii) an issue of intern quality, which causes the firms to recruit hard in the FT fall class.
Not gonna get me any love on a website where the average poster is 19, but jfc this self-pitying from Gen Z is getting so unbearable.
d
Think Summer Analyst classes across the street were quite large as HR would have set the headcount target in late 2024 or early 2025 (pre-tariffs), when future outlook was generally very positive for IB. Still pretty good market for IB, but with AI and large classes I think returns could dip. If I'm wrong correct me. My bank had a huge class but not exactly sure how it shook out.
Going to be contrarian to the intern bashing in this thread- it’s because of AI and the fact that more analysts are staying after their 2-year stint. They don’t need as big of classes this year. The interns at my bank are roughly the same quality as previous years.
On what basis do you say it's from AI?
How do you think it will affect the upcoming SA 2027 / 2028 classes
AI is zero percent of the equation right now nobody is trusting a model to build an LBO without an Analyst sanity-checking it 100 times.
WF got fucked
how bad
50-60ish across all groups
This is just not true, avg 70-80 across groups
My friend in the CLT office said it was 50% across all groups
can someone explain why they would give low returns and then proceed to run a full-time process?
Was 70-80% in most of the NYC groups
Why is it tho? AI headcount or just low quality intern class
AI has nothing to do with it. Our interns were so unprofessional and clearly had tik tok rotten brains. BB tech group
What kind of unprofessionalism did they display? Was it just basic manners, or attention span or basic respect?
All of the above.speaking to VPs like they were there friends, doom scrolling throughout the day
we had best intern class in years and had 100% offer rate
hire better and be more involved in coffee chats etc. instead of outsourcing it to HR
Was nearly 100% at EVR — apparently one of the strongest classes in recent years
Did the kid who had a seizure get one 😂
What was the acceptance rate for Capital markets at EVR?
are interns getting cut bc they are so terrible or cuz ai is taking jobs
My group’s interns were top notch. Probably the best in recorded memory. 100% offer rate. That said, this year, we opted out of our firm’s campus recruiting and rely heavily on referrals from existing juniors which has made a huge difference in getting people who know what they want and what they are getting into.
This is the way
Interns in my group generally had a lack of “understanding their audience”. E.g., coffee chats with seniors and asking inappropriate questions, poor self awareness, generally hard to hold a conversation with, etc. Work product was fine, was what you’d expect with an intern and we don’t over index to it (we can teach anyone what they need to know once they join full time). Not sure how returns offers will go but would guess any that don’t get it will be for cultural reasons (not because of AI or not having the room to hire)
Can you give an example of an inappropriate question? Are we talking like personal or out-of-touch?
Asking deeply personal / inappropriate questions to MDs, PortCo CEO they just met. Bluntly telling MDs/Directors that their investments were poorly thought through. There’s more but these were the worst offenses. If we can’t put you in a room with someone and trust you not to say or do something embarassing… it’s tough, doing good work can’t save you from a lack of social aptitude.
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