Can someone please explain this? Why is there so much hate for MBA associates?
I’m a PE Analyst at a LMM fund and I’m hoping to get my MBA soon so I’m curious.
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Ts gotta be rage bait
It’s high expectations put on someone with no experience. They have to sink or swim and everyone hates the sinkers. Some sink because they don’t do the work correctly, ever. Others sink because they want analysts to do the work for them.
So post MBA associates that have prior experience aren’t really an issue?
Why would they be?
Most are going from IB > MBA > PE, not the reverse.
Dude why would a team not have faith in an associate who already did their time in the AN position, successfully exited to buyside, and then came back to a better bank?
Everyone shits on the initially incompetent MBA associates that act as if research or fp&a and an MBA qualify them to run work streams and develop investment memos over an analyst who has more experience in deal making.
First associate year post-MBA is a very tough job. If you want to evolve into a “good” associate and future VP, for your first year you basically have to act like an analyst, without the cover of an analyst. There are simply too many people who don’t want to grind and take that step, so they “review” from day 1 without knowing the ins and outs of how to do the work. In my experience ~50% of post-MBAs are good/competent, ~25% fall into the “review from day 1 camp” and are hated, and ~25% try hard but simply don’t get it. The hate of MBAs stemmed from buckets 2 and 3 which amounted to half of the class.
They key is recruiting the MBAs who will do the work and appear competent, but it’s surprisingly difficult to predict.
By VP, most of the crappy MBAs are gone (not all), so the performance delta between A to As and MBAs at the VP level is de minimis. Most MDs are MBAs.
Spot on. I'd also add that a lot of MBAs don't really appreciate how many hours and how bad the workload is, even after spending years trying to get into banking
They have limited exits in years 0-2 compared to analysts who have lots of options around the 1 year mark, and it's hard to take a paycut into those next roles when you have massive MBA loans to pay off... many of your buckets #2 and #3 become miserable, stuck people who just stick around adding minimal value until they are told to leave. The analysts in this situation can usually jump ship more easily.
this imo
Bc they're retarded. End thread.
In my opinion, most analysts (Wharton kids are different) do not actually know what the fuck they’re talking about and can’t even begin to graduate to the level of being an actual “person” until like their 2nd year of being a PE associate minimum (or banking equivalent).
That doesn’t change, usually, just because you have a Booth MBA. So these people are often just extremely smart but sort of knowledge-less and very technically weak, which creates consternation.
That said, some obviously become absolute superstars and pillars of Wall Street. But, others try to manage people while knowing nothing and being useless.
Honestly, I really respect good MBA associates. I have never been someone that can exist in a space and enjoy myself without really knowing the nuts and bolts of what we do. Being able to operate in uncertainty is a powerful, powerful skill for those who have it in earnest.
They’re retarded early school / career fuckups but they think that the fact that they paid $200k to eat crayons and look at a chart of Michael Porter’s five forces makes them more competent than the second year analyst who has 30 IQ points on them.
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