What happens to the shitty analysts?
So what happens when banks mess up and take in lateral hires that did SA elsewhere for full time and they end up being terrible [bad attitude, weak technical skills, arrogant, etc]? Do analysts actually get fired or do they just keep them on and not staff them on anything besides dead end work?
It would be interesting to hear any stories !
soylent green is people
To Serve Man
People don’t talk about that enough
IT'S PEOPLE
It's actually somewhat harder to fire someone than most would think. The company needs to establish a paper trail of bad work, maybe a bad review or a warning to an employee. They know how to play the game these days.
Also, shitty analyst just get staffed on lower level jobs or less desirable ones until they quit. That happens a lot at the big 4 accounting firms. They keep people in audit but just put them on the jobs no one wants. Eventually, the person ether leaves or decides its the best they can do and are content.
There are lots of jobs out that for people who don't necessary want a career but want to earn a living. Open a small business, work for the state, get a sales/retail job. I'm sure this happens to professional sports players after the leave the league. Recently the guy who played the son on the Cosby Show was revealed to have a job at Trader Joes.
Makes sense, +1. Interested to hear if you've had any experience with this? Maybe a bad apple in your group and how the team responds to it given you still have to deal with them, even if they are given low priority work?
I've seen it happen at firms where they hire people, they don't work out or are bad, and they can't get rid of them right away.
Personal story, kinda long if you don't want to read: (One personal story I have was about 2 years out of college. I worked for a regional accounting firm in a group/project that was mainly people around my age. They had one guy basically running the whole thing while we worked under him, and we built the whole thing from the ground up. We did such a good job, we started getting more and expanded contracts. The work was kinda specialized, so whoever came in really needed to be trained. As the workload got heavy, they decided to bring in an older person to serve as a manager. Problem was this person was a bad people person and technically bad. Like, didn't know how to use Excel (we items we had to count in Excel, this person literally did it by hand line by line in Excel.) I think the firm didn't want to promote/have a 23 year old running the project. I always asked our first manager, why we couldn't just fire the new one. Was told you have to go through channels, the firm didn't want a lawsuit. )
In my accounting days at big 4 I knew they couldn't outright fire you, apparently it was easier to "coach you out". I never went through it, they can't just fire you, it's levels. They give you a bad review, then you had to sign a "PCP" (performance improvement plan) basically acknowledging you did bad work and will "work to be better". It's really just more of a document that they can use to fire you and not get involved in a lawsuit.
We had a guy join our group as an analyst that had FT experience at two other larger banks. Only one MD saw the job jumping as red flags at the time. He was mediocre and after about six months sent bizarre emails out about how he was working too hard, etc. Fast forward like five years, he is now like living on a commune on the west coast. Strange dude.
Another guy was a third year when I started, so I thought he would be good. No clue what his story was in the first two years, but he started turning off his cell phone and going home at 6PM. After a month of this, he was told he better find something else to do as he would be canned shortly. Meaning, he was managed out. He ended up leaving to go to a tier two b-school.
lol +1. thanks for sharing
They get the goose egg bonus and a kick to the ass. And then they go do something easier, like med school.
Med School is easier?
lol this is WSO
I think it's underrated how easy it is to fail upward repeatedly in the finance industry. There's so much jumping between companies at the Analyst/Associate level that as long as you look like a good candidate on paper (ie, embellish your resume) you can always find a spot to fill, often for a promotion or pay increase.
In addition to having to start a paper trail, nobody likes having to fire someone, even if they're not a great fit. Easier to give the person dead end work and let natural attrition do it's thing, especially at the junior level, when there's already so much turnover.
depends on the specific team and the level of care by the managers. don't be surprised, if you join a large team with several analysts, that there will be one or two analysts that are able to fly under the radar w/ minimal work and a general lack of care. reason being -- there will be one or two analysts that take on the excess work that should've been distributed evenly.
on smaller teams, i would have to assume the analyst would get canned / get spoken to. but yeah... on larger teams dont be surprised to see bad analysts stick around.
its an endless cycle -- bad analysts don't get actively staffed on deals b/c no one wants them --> they take their sweet time working on minor stuff, 9-5 life, --> fly under the radar.
friendly tip: if your'e that lucky analyst staffed on the deals that should've been distributed evenly to someone else, and you aren't getting the proper recognition for the extra work, I would recommend finding employment elsewhere. because as someone else said, sometimes people fail upwards in this industry. if you're a hard worker, why be part of a firm that doesn't recognize it? it's imo the #1 talent killer
In your experience would you analysts/ people fail to get the recognition they deserve good or bad often? I've never noticed it myself the strong analysts / associates always tend to stand out and the shit ones disappear usually after the two year period
analysts can stand out, but not get recognition. the definition of recognition differs from person to person - someone might want a little extra in bonus, another person might want their work publicized, and yet another person might be working hard to move laterally.
in my experience the good analysts have left my group (and the bad ones). almost no one is making the transition to associate b/c the churn is that bad, this makes the relatively worse analysts who stick around long enough desirable by pure luck.
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