Silly question guys, but I never worked in IBD - I presume the staffer is the person who gives you tasks - wouldn't that be just your associate?
thx
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doesn't have to be associate. generally its the person who shits on you the most
thanks
In my office, we had a designated VP (called the staffer) who was tasked with figuring out everyone's workload. When a senior banker contacts him requesting a pitch/deal team, he'll see who has capacity and assign an associate and analyst to work on it.
From my experience, there is a senior staffer and a junior staffer. The senior staffer is a VP and the junior staffer is an Associate. Both can "officially" staff you on deals and/or pitches. Anyone higher than you can try to unofficially staff you on projects as well (sometimes you can get out of it depending on how busy you claim to be, but this gets harder the higher up your unofficial staffer is). Hope that helps.
Like the people above have said the "staffer" is the person in charge with figuring out how much work all the analysts have coming up and then divying up the work based on availability, capability, etc. The senior guys are supposed to always go through the staffer when they have a new pitch or deal, but they often try to cherry-pick certain analysts. For the analyst this has its pros and cons.
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