Number one thing I hate about investment banking: the congratulations you get after pushing an all-nighter to get a book out.
Spent last night (and most of this morning) pushing out an important book for an IPO. This morning, I got a hearty round of high fives and back slaps for my brave and hard work. Lots of 'Good Jobs' for getting a perfect book out the door. Worst one was from the guy that effectively put us in the position where I had to work all night.
Fuck... We shouldn't be celebrating working all night like that was the good bit, we should be looking at what went wrong and why it turned out like that. Rather than me getting a bunch of congratulations, I'd like to see my MD take the fucker that fucked up behind the wood shed and tear a strip off him (you know the meetings, where they go into the breakout room with the glass walls, and everyone pretends not to look). I'd like to hear my MD ask the other bank about how much of their fee they are going to give up since we had to save the day in front of the client.
I fucking hate that when someone, or someones, fuck up a process or a timeline, the person that saves it gets a hearty pat on the back, and 1) there are no repercussions for the senior bankers that fucked it up in the first place, and 2) nobody thinks 'hey, we can learn something from this, and avoid a similar situation in the future'. But I guarantee that every banker here has at least one story of shit going sideways, and a junior, or a team, getting fucked over trying to keep the pile standing. Some of them will even wear it like a badge of honour.
deep breaths, tis the nature of the beast. This was your judgement call when you decided to forgo the buy-side my good sir.
For clarity, I'm not pissed that I worked late, I'm angry about the hypocrisy.
If, as a junior banker you mis-prioritise something and miss a deadline, you're fucked. As a senior banker, you just throw juniors at it until it's fixed... And then we celebrate the juniors' hard work and dedication rather than call out the senior banker for creating the situation in the first place.
It's like when you get an email from the MD on Friday asking for something on Monday, but if you read back through the email chain, he knew about it since Tuesday. I get it that weekends aren't yours, but I'm annoyed that the scenario was either created or exacerbated by the MD's fuck-up.
Brah that's nothing. I do revisions IN the squat rack between sets of... uhmm... curls... I have my laptop neatly set up on the gym's only bench...
To the guys throwing monkey shit:
A good friend of mine is VP in Infra at a BB. He pulls an epic late night with some guys from a regional office, they literally finish printing / binding and hand to the MDs walking out the door at 9:00 am. After the meeting, cue all the emails from the MDs congratulating the juniors on what a great job they did. The reality is that despite this being a 'Top Priority' for both teams, the MDs postpone, or can't be bothered to start work on it until it's almost too late, resulting in the late night.
VP sends a request asking to discuss the process to develop the pitch, and what events caused it to be so last minute, in the interest of improving bank processes and avoiding a near failure in the future. As a result, he gets monkey shit thrown at him:
One MD asks "Who the fuck do you think you are?", another one says "If you're afraid of working long hours, maybe banking isn't for you!" etc.. it goes on.
Basically, the culture in banking is that if someone senior fucks up and the result is that some juniors have to overnight to fix it, we applaud the effort and take no view on the MD's fuck up. If anyone wants to evaluate what happened, or dare say, point out that the MD could have started work on this a week earlier, we chuck shit at them for not buying into the culture.
Just the idea that a VP gets shot down for process improvement ... wow. That's the problem though, lots of cannon fodder just lining up to be treated like that, they have no need to change.
I'm not sure how it is other places but at my MM nobody even bats an eye if you pull an all nighter on a pitch. There are no 'congrats' or 'back slaps'. It's more or less expected that you got it done.
I completely agree with your criticism but AT LEAST you got a thank you. That's the other thing that's terrible about banking - everyone expects you to throw away your life to get a shit pitch out for a company that you'll never win (with or without a thank you)
I think this problem exists for two reasons.
Many MDs were juniors themselves and were treated equally as bad. They have no intention of treating their juniors differently because, in their mind, why should they? They worked the system and climbed the ladder. Others must do likewise or fall out. No one gets special treatment -- it's a self-perpetuating cycle. To some degree it may even be a matter of respect for the effort. You don't put in the effort and/or suffer through the climb, you don't deserve to be MD.
Reality is that unless you're bringing in solid revenue, you don't really matter. Full stop. You can be replaced in a couple of weeks, and on average the bank couldn't care less about you.
Make no mistake, I'm in no way saying this is right. It is what I observed though.
Fact. You can be replaced. Even at the MD level they are breaking between 'Franchise Players' guy that gets the deal because he's part of the bank, and actual rainmakers, re: guys that would get the deal regardless of where they are.
A well known MM paid shit comp one year, and lost c.25% of everyone below MD. Chatting with one of the guys that stayed, and he says "no, this will be good for us next year, because we'll be rewarded for our loyalty...."
Next year, they drop comp even more, because they figured out they don't have to pay, and they can replace everyone that leaves.
Not to display a lack of sympathy for the OP and others in this thread (as I have been there as a junior before) - but to play devil's advocate:
Why should anyone make a big production of saving a junior's time? To roll with the "cog in a machine" metaphor, juniors are the smallest cogs in the machine. You have to move more to generate the same movement as any of the other cogs, you spin and wear out faster, and you are the most replaceable by far. I know many here have a psychological complex about the value of their work around here, but realize that even the best juniors are pretty easily replaced.
The senior people, on the other hand (even some of the bad ones), are hard to replace, have specialized knowledge, and bring in the business. Everyone here seems to regard inefficiency as some inexcusable fuck-up of the management that ought to be fixed - have you considered alternatively that there is a certain level of screw-ups and inefficiency that is unavoidable in a business that is driven by small teams earning fat fees? And that part of the job description of a junior is the role of cleaning up when these inevitable inefficiencies come to pass?
Put yourself in your MD's shoes. If you think you have it rough with some Associate calling you constantly about "where's my X", imagine how it is to be an MD with the paying clients calling you constantly with the same question. Everyone has to cut corners at some point or another in this business - maybe the guy fielding the hard questions with the paying customer should pick his battles and we should all realize that "thinking ahead for the junior's sake" is not the best use of his time or energy.