The “doesn’t take notes” analyst
Anyone else have an analyst like this? No matter how insignificant their value-add is to a team, they can’t even do the bare minimum and take notes on a call. 95% of the time they have no clue what’s going on / how to do things and end up messing up the model / CIM / data room. What a waste of a firm resources / a junior seat.
To analysts out there - why the fuck can’t you do the bare minimum. The bar is on the floor and you should help the team out however you can
The worst is when you find out they’ve been dodging staffings and work. Like dude, why don’t you try to learn from the experience and try to improve yourself and your knowledge
I know this is at least half joking in response to the other thread, but aren't a lot of analysts lined up for the PE gig before they even hit the desk, or soon after?
I don't know what we can realistically expect from someone being asked to do mindless gruntwork at level 10 perfection/quantity when their only incentive is some soft bucketing that may or may not pan out.
On most threads that cover the topic of today's young finance kids vs prior generations, I'm on the side of the old guys. I do think the current generation is softer, more entitled and so forth.
But employers have to take responsibility for the deal they've agreed to. You sign a kid to a 2-year deal knowing he has his next one lined up in his first month on the job, I think that's a you problem (you being the bank). You're giving the kid every incentive to go through the motions and particularly under-perform on tasks like note-taking that have zero developmental value and are pretty painful.
Would largely agree, but I don’t think it’s the banks’ fault that PE recruiters run their process so early.
At the same time analysts know there is no incentive to stay from the start with the expectation that they’ll just get crushed their whole junior experience with mostly mind numbing work. But that’s just the nature of the beast, can’t add much value as a fresh grad.
It’s always been the case that analysts have something lined up. In the past, most would put the work and maybe check out the last 3 months when they start rolling off stuff.
I think there are various things at play. Maybe less sense of teamwork, maybe less understanding that grunt work is also training (wtf do you think you’ll do in the buyside?!). My friends at PE shops also complain about their juniors.
Yeah agreed. I mean with any career - you realistically have to start by shoveling the shit.
Once you become an expert at shoveling, you’re able to manage the people shoveling shit.
Once you get good at that, you get to take the dumps and tell people to shovel your shit, while you’re focusing on eating the right foods to take healthy shits.
Covid has definitely reduced quality in people. Zoom U industry wide jrs are seen as less than quality and people that worked post covid are definitely seen as lacking certain experience.
It's not always been the case that analysts have a job lined up in the first month on the job. Or even the first year. Its only recently moved up this early.
so if you were the bank/CEO, what would you do disincentivize this?
Not sure if you can unless you change all of Wall Street’s culture. At this point - ever associate in my group is MBA and there’s a reason for that…
Career switching as an MBA means you get to skip the analyst years and it’s harder to burn out.
Transparent Analyst bonus tiers. With one being the worst rank ($0-10K) and five being the best rank (idk? $115K+). Analyst 1 and 2 should be on summer bonus schedules. Payout rates revaluated, set, and published every summer.
Every manager I had in banking had really poor skills in leadership and morale-boosting. This could be an area of improvement for sure. It wouldn't be that hard for a VP+ to send a nice email once in a while, recognize improvement, give props for good work, or let them know how important your role is on a project. Seems small but could go a long way.
This begs the question of why PE firms are recruiting analysts a month into their jobs. In the past, the IB to PE pipeline made sense because analysts had enough time to work on a couple of deals and develop technical skills. There's no way any analyst can do all of that in a month, so that defeats the whole purpose of transferable skills.
They lock up analysts in the top groups where they will surely get good experience and learn the necessary skills
They don’t start working at the fund right away you dolt
Caveat emptor
Has not always been the case that analysts had things lined up. At all. PE recruiting has gotten way more accelerated and pronounced. Remember that PE hasn’t been around that long in the scheme of things. People switch bc of how crappy banking is. Classic bankers taking no responsibility and stupidly blaming the weak juniors or whatever
Good point. IB it's not as attractive as it once was, that's why people leave. I'm sure that IB could retain way way way more people if they just raised their salaries/bonuses, cut the hours, and worked on cutting the toxic culture (e.g. masochist VP/MDs no matter how good they are). That's the only way I see it. If you want to compete with PE, embrace better hours/pay/culture than PE, but expect PE to do the same - that would also be an interesting battle to conclude who cares more about its employees (IB vs PE) based on who spends more to retain them.
Who tf brainwashed you for you to believe that PE has better culture and hours
I really wonder sometimes what was going through the OOP's head - what eaxctly is "mind numbing" about the Analyst work in comparison to literally any other entry level role at any other company, whether it's law, consulting, SWE, FP&A, Audit, etc?
I think it's more than valid to have concerns about team culture, such as your team not helping, throwing you under the bus, or being abusive. But complaining about the nature of the work in today's information age ... I'm really struggling to figure out where the disconnect between expectations and reality is.
That's the bank's fault/recruitment process's fault. Instead of recruiting people who know what they sign to (Wharton / Finance undergrads) they recruit kids from HYSPW History/Linguistics/BS degrees, students that are clueless about what they're getting into and don't need to do much research/prepare because their brand does the job for them. Their first contact with IB was from hearing others/info session on IB about how IB is the glory land. Once they hit the desk, it's not so about hating IB, but generally hating their past and current decisions (and maybe their future) because useless degree --> depressive job/not what they expected to do --> leaving finance altogether
i've never heard of someone who was dead set on finance/IB/PE to talk about the tediousness work of finance. Every time I hear/read sht like that it comes from people who got into IB at the last minute when they had planned from the beginning to go on completely different paths (CS/engineering/medicine/liberal arts), but status/prestige/money dragged them into the wrong path/not what they really want to do
I believe the disconnect is that in college there was novelty in the material, it was intellectually stimulating. You get to learn new concepts and gain new knowledge about finance & accounting. Yes, there is taking notes but it was to service a final goal of proving oneself capable of the rigors 'high' finance. Then it turns out all you do add yet another logo to a page with 100 of them, or change 'market' to 'sector', or a myriad of other menial tasks. Sure the money's nice but how nice is it if you're getting assfucked for the 30th day in a row by that douche MD flipping over a 200pg pitch that you know you have no chance of winning. That's the disconnect, expectation was glory of high finance reality of shoveling digital shit from pile 1 to pile 2.
Was about to say this lol - as a web dev turned infra M&A consultant there absolutely is tedious admin shit in the early stages of every career, but college was in fact a lot more interesting and enjoyable than being a junior in client advisory.
That analyst sounds like they're bringing about as much value to the team as a screen door on a submarine
Yes agree with you 100%. Am almost awstruck when I get an AN1 that actually wants to learn and grow. Issues being WFH - major decline in analyst quality, most AN1s don't wanna stick around, low morale - more this year and I think some of it has to do with tech. Literally feel like too many juniors are entitled/want tech to do everything for them. Many have no clue how to use MS products properly and think everyone is gonna change to GSuite for "collaboration." Cant collab irl idk why they act like this. And some schools have professional note takers not kidding you AN1 from Harvard thought note-taking was beneath him. The trad nepotism hires don’t gaf about being here/rep like they used to. Those that get in on daddy’s connections don’t wanna be independent at all. MBAs are hit or miss (some have no idea about banking and leave don’t see many potato heads tho) but on avg. fare better from my observations - ymmv.
crazy that nepotism hires that never went through any struggle don’t perform in situations where they have to struggle first. Who could’ve seen that one coming?
They dont carry as much fear as the middle class strivers generations before
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