First year analyst here so this is my first time dealing with bonuses, am (probably unreasonably) very worried about getting lowballed despite a ton of positive feedback and 2nd year analyst level responsibility being given to me. How do you guys read the room when it comes to bonuses/how are they actually distributed? This bonus season will be my first rodeo
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Prepare to get underwhelmed looking at the post tax value lol
Would say generally that no one (all the way up to and including MD) is typically “happy” with their bonus
Lmao very pumped to give the tax man more money but that’s good info thanks
On a more serious note, while positive feedback is great - ultimately your bonus is the ultimate barometer of how well you’re doing (bottom, mid, top bucket). I always found it more useful as a way to sus out how the team felt about working with me vs verbal feedback.
People can give positive feedback to your face, but the numbers don’t lie when it comes down to dollars and cents (not saying people are like maliciously lying to you or anything, more just bonus is where rubber meets the road and people literally get ranked top to bottom)
This might be a very stupid question, but are you explicitly told that you’re in top/middle/bottom bucket? Or some other indication of ranking? Or is that something that I determine vs what other analysts got
At my bank, we weren’t told bucket or ranges, had to sus it out (and people were largely not very forthcoming). Could be different elsewhere
When I went to a top MBA program this was one of the things I wanted to make sure of, that I would control my own destiny, not someone else, which is why I founded my company
And now your annual bonus is $0?
Hopefully you didn’t go to HBS… kind of a crappy mba program apparently
I wouldn’t worry. There are a lot of factors at play. Depends on size of bank, group performance, personal performance, and optics. Know guys you closed multiple billion dollar deals and got a near zero bonus, and some guys who did no work but got a good bonus. Really bank dependent though
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