Which Houston banks have the worst culture?
Hi,
which banks in Houston have the worst culture?
thanks
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JPM, and I say this as I guy in Australia that doesn’t even work in IB (or finance).
JPM
Gotta be JPM.
Any other banks besides JPM?
Goldman is hell.
wait elaborate
anecdotal but had a buddy who didn't see sunlight for like a month straight.
What makes JPM and Goldman so bad? Any specific examples?
GS: Analysts to VPs are all pulling 3ams 2-3 times a week no matter what the workload
huge FaceTime culture. Literally go in 6 days a week even post pandemic
I am talking about the way people are treated. Hours is not the same as culture.
Face time culture is bad culture
Going in on Sundays is wild to me, guess I should consider myself fortunate
JPM
From what I’ve heard, definitely JPM
JPM
Wells Fargo
RBC
Jeffries
Moelis
Scotia
Lazard
CS
How is Moelis!
Have heard good things about Wells and Moelis...are they gaslighting me?
The other names check out
Moelis is good culture wise but sweatier than probably justified by deal flow (though not sweatier than JPM, GS etc.)
When restructuring season hits the group makes a ton of money, everyone burns out, then half of the bullpen quits.
Good place if you want to mog your IB friends on bonus day (Moelis never disappoints on comp), have a good finance brand name on the resume, not want to strangle your coworkers and bosses (too often) etc.
If you want to rack up deals on the resume probably not the place
Anyone know how Jefferies is these days?
Any insight on Truist or Mizuho? What about BofA?
Love that I’m not seeing Citi on this list these days hahaha, I was a junior there for a few years during a brutal stretch of deal flow (2017-2019) and it was probably as rough as it gets
Trauber retiring might've saved an entire generation of Junior Citi guys lol.
Houston has horrific culture across the board. Not sure what it is that attracts some of the sweatiest and most aggressive types to these specific groups, maybe it's a Texas thing or that you don't have other groups/HR around... but if you're headed to Houston IB prepare to get grinded even at the lower MMs that don't do much.
Have seen multiple people go from Houston to "sweatshop" NYC groups and significantly improve their hours
Would you say that this is confined to the analyst level and then normalizes at the associate level? I assume that the sweatiness at the junior ranks doesn’t affect the VP+ staff
Nah, it's bad at the associate level too. Still not great at the VP level. Basically anyone involved in materials creation from production to direct "management" is impacted. It's about too much analysis demanded on too short of a timeline, regardless of actionability. The upside of it is that you were probably tutored by experienced, quality people, you get more reps yourself, you grow an immunity to the garbage personalities that float around in finance but are more common in Houston IB and so on
If you can push through the bad years you will be better off for it.
No it's without question awful at associate (seen multiple straight-up mental breakdowns) and bad at VP+ too - if anything sometimes worse... no protected weekends or protected vacations, you have ownership over mistakes as opposed to the analyst who has a lot of cover, more deals so there is basically always something blowing up. I think MD is when people start to chill out and not work absolutely unreal hours.
Again from my experience this seems like a Houston thing, NYC it tends to calm down around VP. I can't rationalize why Houston is so bad but it's likely one of the reasons there's always moves to NYC. If your analyst buddy goes to XYZ NYC sweatshop as an associate and his hours are 30% better, makes more (pretax to be fair) and has better exits, why wouldn't you move
It’s not just a Houston thing, it’s an oil and gas thing. Banks in London and Calgary are sweaty af as well.
Models are complicated, there’s a lot of data you can source and there are a ton of companies. That means they’re a lot of mid and senior bankers who rely on over complicated analysis to “add value” (usually doesn’t) which means a ton more work.
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