Scheming IB as an Analyst
First year analyst checking in - have been on the job for around 6 months now. Considering I intend to leave after 2 years, I'm almost 1/4 through the stint. I'd like to share some thoughts on how I have maintained a good WLB in a sweaty group while building goodwill with all my colleagues:
-WFH is great. I wake up around 7:30 and the hit the gym almost every morning. This gives me two hours to workout, shower, read the news and hang out until work begins.
-Usually, half my day is filled with Zoom meetings, which I never have my camera on for. A lot of these don't require my full attention, so I hit the dab pen and scroll through Twitter, or read up on interesting subjects.
-I try to to be as vague as possible when describing workload to my staffer. This has allowed me to maintain a reasonable load of staffings; only have worked past midnight a handful of times.
-I am very fast to respond to emails or Teams messages, which gives the facade that I'm constantly working. I programmed my computer to make my Teams appear online at all times. Most of the time however, I'm lying in bed or out somewhere else. I usually take twice as long to hand in a deliverable than it actually takes me. Quality work that takes longer is better than work littered with mistakes handed in quickly.
-I make sure to have light-hearted, personal conversations with MDs, VPs ect, and have good friendships with most of the analysts. It's very important to have a good attitude and bring a sense of humor when appropriate. When your colleagues see you as a good human being, they are less likely to throw unreasonable requests your way, and treat you better overall.
My philosophy is that it's better to be competant and in middle bucket, than being the top bucket bitch boy for incremental after-tax pay. Serve your time as pleasantly as possible, and then exit. Curious if anyone else has similar tips to expand upon in the comments.
Would this have any effect on you being promoted or exiting into MF PE? Or is it something that you’re not really worried about?
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How would it impact your exit to the buyside? This isn’t the NFL draft. Blackstone and Apollo aren’t sitting around reviewing your stats from IB to make a hiring decision…
If you have time to hit the gym every morning, you aren’t in a sweaty group.
This has future rainmaker MD vibes. Not even kidding, good for you!
Have you thought about going A2A? I’m in a similar situation, like my group a lot plus it hasn’t been as sweaty since we’ve ramped up hiring. Also trying ~70% as much I did when I started which has been huge for my health. Feeling very content. The pay as an associate is great, WFH has provided a ton of flexibility, and overall the job just seems less stressful and more stable than some of the potential exits. It’s not as interesting obviously but I don’t really care that much about finance, it’s just a job not a passion. Though it does seem like very few associates really get to coast like I am now, but that could be because most are MBAs trying to figure it out. Feels almost too good to be true at the moment. Defintiely comes in waves and there are periods that suck, but overall its been fine. Would appreciate any perspectives
Im not as fortunate as you (VP at Apollo), since I'm an actual big boy and not some invisible Excel monkey nobody wants to see or speak to. So I actually have to talk during meetings and keep on camera on so the women see my pretty face and are motivated to do their best work.
I have taken the liberty of working from home from Ibiza, which makes my entire work "day" during the night. Frequently, I am clapping some 9s and 9.5s while "working".
Dam bud, I bet you pack 9 inches on the rollout too
Can someone please footnote to read OPs username before his actual comment?
You think you are clever, but you just haven’t been staffed with assholes or staffed on a hairy project yet (I pray you don’t during your stint).
Staying up past midnight is the result of a bad manager and or culture. It’s not something you can weasel around like you describe. Although you can pushback eventually as a second year and some of what you describe is correct, it’s not always in your control and more often than not isn’t. Just a few examples:
Point being, yeah, what you say is true. Be middle bucket try to craftily dodge work, but also count your blessings my man. You clearly aren’t working with wildcard MD’s who demand 6am calls and ping analysts individually at odd hours in the night and fully expect responses/ will cc the entire team after you don’t respond at 1am with things like, “it shouldn’t take this long for me to get an answer” From my experience, this isn’t most MD’s, but every shop has 1 and if you have to work them it’s hell.
You have so much to learn and I’m both excited and sorry for you. Not trying to be patronizing, just this is a question anyone with banking experience will chuckle and be like “what an amazing question.”
First off, the structure of an investment bank’s employees:
Intern
Analyst
Associate
VP
Often, analysts begin right out of undergrad and there are sometimes, depending on a banks structure, 2nd or even 3rd year analysts. Being a 3rd year analyst doesn’t mean you are bad, it might mean your bank just has different levels they draw experience for new titles (think Citi might be like 2 year promotes with centerview and evercore being like 3).
Now a 3rd year analyst likely faced a very competitive undergrad interview process and had a 3.7+, learned the technicals, and now has 2+ years of working at the bank they have been at.
A VP might have had not great grades, gotten a job at a random consulting or accounting firm for 3-5 years, gone to business school (bottom of the m7) and became an associate at the investment bank, worked there for 2 years and got early promoted because the bank has a hard time keeping associates.
The analyst understands the industry better than the VP due to being there longer and is naturally just smarter. You also can have a situation where people lateral in from worse banks where they maybe have seen less processes, so they aren’t as aware of what goes on or lack confidence, so they defer to the analyst. Lastly, as an analyst, all the work eventually falls on you, so it’s easy for a vp to just say, “hey analyst 3, I want you to create a rough draft of the model and I will review it.” The analyst then might create the model and the VP not actually know how to model, but just sanity checks everything the analyst did.
In theory, you are exactly right! How the hell did the VP end up making almost a half a million dollars a year, while not really understanding how investment banking works. The truth is, banks and many large organizations promote on seniority not understanding or effectiveness. So, VP’s are often just people who have been in the organization post MBA for 3 years and who haven’t left. Personally, my view is generally really talented people eventually leave and the people that don’t are the people who are equally as surprised as you are that they are making a half a million dollars a year because they know they aren’t really that sharp or clever.
But also, VP is a weird role because at that point the job begins to switch from being an analysis person to a salesperson. The directors and MD’s are tasked with talking to people and bringing in business, not really understanding the model or helping the execution of a deal get done. So a VP might be crap at doing the execution, but eventually a very strong director or MD because they can bring in clients.
So in conclusion, how the hell does a VP get to VP without knowing how to do their job?
Off the backs of the competent analysts and associates who carry them and make sure nothing goes wrong. And this skill set is what an M7 MBA teaches you.
Probably just not in a sweaty group or you work with really considerate people. At least in my group, there is no way to "scheme" your way out of a heavy turn of comments dropped off at 9:00pm for a meeting the next day. Or working with a client across time zones with early morning meetings. Or an associate that turns comments at 11:00pm consistently. I've met people that can dodge more staffings, but just one staffing with the wrong person can derail this whole plan. Hope you are able to maintain this though--very envious.
Sounds like someone has some capacity