Thoughts on Analyst scheduling emails to send late at night to give the impression he’s working harder? Genius or stupid?
Was wondering what this forum’s take on this would be. I’m a new AN1, and I went to drinks with an AN2 on my team who described his “hack” to help get top bucket / be liked by his seniors. His strategy is the following: whenever he finishes a deliverable for his VP/MD (obviously that was assigned to him sometime in the afternoon, or else this wouldn’t be believable) he schedules the email w/ his work to send at a later hour (think 1:30-2:00) even if he actually finishes it at like 6:00. He claims that this has resulted, multiple times, in getting extra praise from the senior on the deal as it’s perceived that he’s burning the midnight oil. Thoughts??? I thought this was interesting.
Works just fine until the senior is also awake for whatever reason and responds immediately with "Thanks - few small text comments, can you turn these and send back real quick?" and you don't respond / your teams is Away (4 hours). Also possible - phone calls to discuss and you don't pick up.
Have seen people get burned by both of the above. I see this as pretty high-risk, low-reward - this alone won't change your ranking, but you could get seniors noticing you're doing this.
1-2am nights are also so common in IB I don't think people are getting extra praise just for that.
Good point.
Agree with the above and would add that if the tasks are pretty straightforward and you’re consistently sending revised materials at 2am, it may look like you’re struggling with the work and/or poor time management. Especially if they know you aren’t getting grinded elsewhere
At best, you are trying to be deceptive for optics and at worst, you are lying to your direct reports.
I have watched this blow up more than once and at two different firms. It reflects incredibly poorly on the individual and is a certain way to make people think you aren’t cut out for the industry or upper management material.
While I understand the temptation having been an analyst, watching the reputational damage personally this isn’t worth it. I think the individuals above covered it great, this is a “high-risk, low reward” move. I also firmly believe it’s a slippery slope of doing something like this and then being not truthful to superiors and counter parties, which makes people not want to work with you.
wouldnt they think hes retarded for taking an extra 8 hours for something that they expect to take 3-4?
1. We can see the file timestamp in drive
2. Questions like below pop up and you’ll get burned
During this rotation, Cardwell worked with Partner Sophia Hudson on two matters. Pl.'s 56.1 Response ¶ 80(b). While working on one of them, on November 8, 2015, Cardwell emailed Hudson work product at 4:03 a.m. Id. ¶ 73. Hudson forwarded Cardwell's email to a more senior associate working on the matter, and wrote: “Why do you think he was up until 4:03 working on this? I think he could have just included my comments rather than copying them over (if that's what took him so long).”
It’s a good read on how you’ll eventually get rocked for being inefficient, doing late night work that just shows you are slow and also putting in hours that don’t make sense
https://casetext.com/case/cardwell-v-davis-polk-wardwell-llp-5
Point I agree with but the case says associate literally was handwriting the partner's comments verbatim, and partner confused why he did it that way rather than doing own deliverable.
This case and summary is a great read even beyond the point you're making - thank you for sharing
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