Tips on How to Purposely Lose a Bakeoff Pitch Without it Getting Back to Me?

Hi,

I just got staffed on a bakeoff that I am very much not looking forward to.

The Director and MD and senior associate on it are horrible.  The last time I pitched with them was absolute hell.  Outside of the fact that they grinded the team for no reason on pages no one wanted, they were both very unthankful and overtly toxic/rude to the junior team(dealbreakers for me). Tons of attitudes.  Just pure misery to work with. Worst experience I've had in banking by far.

Anyways to my great dismay, I was staffed on another "huge opportunity" bakeoff with them.  My heart sunk immediately when the staffer notified me (tried to push it off but no luck).

If we win this deal I will be beside myself (and will consider quitting).  Cannot do an 8 month process with this deal team.  

How can I crater the pitch without it coming back at me or making me look bad (as a senior analyst that is running the model)?

Only thing I could think of is to share the dial in/zoom access details on 4chan (behind 3 proxies of course). Perhaps a cosplaying nazi skinhead joining the bakeoff unexpectedly would kill it?

Or I could leak the company financials on wallstreetbets or something (but that probably involves the FBI or something, and there's only so many deal team members they could accuse...)

Anyone have success killing a bakeoff in the past?

8 Comments
 

The thing is if the seniors are as bad as you say they are, which I don't have a hard time believing, If and when something goes wrong, they'll always look to you- the senior analyst- to take the fall on it. If you sabotage too hard the seniors are gonna make sure to fuck your career. If I were you, I'd just put that shit on the backburner and do the 'ol analyst shuffle. Take as long as possible to reply to email/texts and sit on files. Don't do anything too stupid bro, it's not worth ruining your life just to get back at some dicks. 

 

I guess what I'm saying is that you should give up on trying to actively kill the bakeoff. The risk is too high imo and given how small the team is, if you do try to do anything too aggressive it will end up back to you. Skiving on people I dislike is how I get through the day.  

 

How about you bring this up with the staffer that the experience was horrible, give specific details why it was bad.

It's hard to give an MD or Director a hard time, but maybe you can not kill yourself for them, ex ignore all emails after 12 especially if you know if it's an unreasonable request?

I would also suggest calling out the associate's bullshit cause the guy is not that senior to you and has no right to be a dick. Director and MD is a diff story. You can also cal out the director and MD but practically speaking, won't be too good for your career prospects at the bank.

 
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