Working more than my 1st year analyst
Hey all, I'm a second year analyst with a PE job lined up starting in June. I want to take my foot off the pedal but I am staffed on a few non-live projects, for which I am able to push things down to my 1st years, but the live deal I'm on has been hell. I have been working on all major deliverables significantly more than the 1st year. My senior team doesn't seem to care. I think it's a bit unfair since a year ago when I was a first year, around this time the 2nd years started to just significantly pull back on actual work & it was completely okay from the senior team. I cranked till 3-4 am everyday on my live deals while they just reviewed stuff and maybe helped out with 10% of the slides.
Anyone with any thoughts? I just want to make it to June so I can jump ship, but this is unsustainable. I fear it's still a little far to tell my team i need to check out so would appreciate anyone who was in a similar boats advice
It's January... That is very early to take your foot off the pedal, especially on a live deal where your first year has ~4 months of experience and can only do so much.
If this is still the situation in April/May, that is one thing - but expecting to coast for 6 months is unrealistic. I would not push too much on seniors.
I would also maybe have a friendly chat with your 1st year - from the angle of this is a great experience for them and want to make sure they are getting quality reps on a live deal. Would be good for them to start working on X deliverable and taking over the process on Y item. Sometimes you just need to be very clear on expectations of how to split the workload, rather than automatically doing everything and just wishing your 1st year would help more.
The live deal reps are what you should be after. If you need to take a few days off to reset or push back on other staffings, you should, but that is literally the most valuable piece of the analyst grind. Also you should not be comparing to analyst class from last year…at my firm the 2 analyst classes that started during COVID were atrocious. If the expectations were low for them during live deals, it was because they weren’t trusted / someone figured they weren’t worth the investment.
its a live deal this is literally what you were hired and trained during your first year for
Disagree with the others as someone who’s been in your shoes. You need to be saying no when you’re swamped and try to enjoy life a bit before you get absolutely fucked again in PE.
There’s literally no point for someone who knows he/she is about to leave to grind it out for entire months when there are other junior people on the team working less than you.
Agree with this wholeheartedly. Everyone else talking about why reps are super important and I was trained for exactly this - yeah, this isn't my 2nd or 3rd deal. I have had my fair share of banking deals and know how the process runs from a jr execution level. I also was a first year on my first deal and yes I was given guidance on the first time I did things but I was never given the choice to sit on the bench and watch my associate do everything.
Taking the foot off the pedal doesn't mean I send 2 emails a day. It literally means me not working til 2-3AM for most days of the week, being able to have dinner with my girlfriend in the city during the week and perhaps unplugging for the majority of the weekend unless impending deadline. That is still a higher contribution than the work-life balance afforded to the class above me at this time last year.
I think what you are missing here is that the class above you exited during a historically low deal flow market. Their bonuses absolutely reflected it. You can't compare yourself to that class when there were basically zero deals for them to work on.
In 2021, 2nd years around the street got absolutely smoked until the day they left because deal flow was so crazy.. you do not just as a rule get to coast for 6 months unfortunately. The norm is typically to roll off/start "chilling" about 4 weeks before your departure. But your expectations - coasting for 25% of your analyst stint - are just really unrealistic. Take a few days off to decompress but you need to mentally prepare yourself to work for a few more months, your seniors are not going to let you stop working on weekends/have your weeknights just because the class above you got lucky with softer M&A markets.
Not trying to be rude, just realistic.
Lol at all the IB associates and VPs MSing because they’re scared their analysts are going to start slacking off.
PE is still an absolute slog. I would absolutely not keep doing 3am/4am nights in your IB stint that effectively barely matters. That’s how you end up burning out by 26. You come before the firm because these firms would fuck you with a shit bonus or can you in bad times in a heartbeat.
Also the morons who are telling you to get your reps in - your learning experience is fucked when you get that little sleep. Obviously don’t dip at 5pm every day but no need to stay until 3am/4am anymore. Good luck.
LOL at all the banking hardos throwing MS. Keep chilling man. There is little to no benefit from getting “live deal reps” and burning yourself out. This is really just a job at the end of the day and is not with your sanity
Better to sit down with your analyst than raise this to anyone above you. I wouldn’t cycle off your deals until 1-2 months before you leave at the earliest. Imagine how your associate or VP would perceive you stepping back in January even if it’s common. They hired you for 2+ years not 1.5 years and a half-assed H1 before you dip to the buyside.
Why would I care about my performance when the bank can't screw me on my bonus (I would take $10k because I literally do not care after what they gave out last summer albeit being top-bucket). I also think there is nothing they gain from letting me go 4 months before I'm supposed to depart anyways - why pay severance? Only way I see that happening is if I am a net negative, which I don't think is possible unless I go underground.
My issue with the advice here is that the basis of most of it is, the bank hired me to work the 2 full years. While yes that is true, I have seen my own bank, my own team treat many employees and many of my colleagues extremely poorly. People who did not deserve it have been let go at the drop of a hat and so I unlike many others in banking do not drink the "I owe anything to the bank" kool-aid. I made it this far because I worked my ass off, for which I got very little return (on a relative basis). Now that I am about to transition to the next phase of this journey, I want to do it in a way where I am not continuing to make sacrifices for things that I thought would be a result of me working hard at this job, i.e. staying up all night preparing meticulous guides for every call my MD has the next day (which he will miss anyways for whatever reason).
My first year has the chance of an actually good bonus seeing as during his time here we have way more optimism and # of deals closed. He doesn't have to deal with all the market outreach primers and publications I had to make when the market was dead. I bet he couldn't handspread a comp since his entire job is just taking call notes and uploading redacted information to the VDR, which I prepare. I don't think it is standoffish of me to go voice my concerns to my VP about the work split.
As a fellow AN2, why would you voice this to your VP unless your first year is refusing to do work??
Yeah - they should be more proactive and try to take more of your plate. My goal as a first year was to take as much responsibility as I could and as a result I ended up as top analyst.
BUT also need to recognize that your experience & perspective /= their’s. I was able to succeed and take on a lot of responsibility because:
1) I tried very hard to respond first / be proactive so I could get reps on the more “interesting” stuff
2) I did good work and knew I could handle it, which made me confident in myself and my work while building trust / reputation among my deal teams
Your normal “mid-bucket” analyst will probably lack in one of those two aspects - and if paired with a top analyst, it becomes intimidating to try and take on responsibility.
The way you balance that out is just by having an honest conversation with the first year. Or if new workstreams come up and they aren’t volunteering just delegate to them, not like they will push back.
My life has become immensely better and I do so much less work now because Ive built the reputation and have many people that will go to bat for me come reviews, so I don’t have anything to prove anymore.
I still do great work on everything I’m involved on - but I let other people do the lifting unless someone explicitly asks me (or I’ll hop in and lead if I notice things are being poorly managed / slipping).
This is great advice, thanks and noted
If you go to your VP about this, at least frame it as wanting to elevate yourself to the associate level. Say you would like to build the reps thinking about broader direction of work, framing advice given, leading process steps, teaching the first year analyst. “Work split” is poor framing and just implies you want to be responsible for less. There is no way to read that positively.
Completely lol’ing at some of these idiotic responses - for people who have a buy side offer, you should prioritize learning and refining your skill set but within a reasonable set of hours in the day. Do not work past midnight unless you’re behind
A good system I had was working until around 11pm to midnight, sending in the latest completed draft of any deliverable I had and then logging out on most evenings (obviously don’t do this if you have a meeting or something more urgent the next day).
Usually if there’s a pitch that’s 2 weeks ahead, just log out and call it a night to get your 8+ hours of sleep.
There’s really no reason that you should be working significantly more than your first year unless it’s doing things they aren’t capable of or they are busy on other projects, which makes me think that you need to train your first year. Obviously this takes effort and time to do, which can be extra painful if you’re already working late, but you have 6mo left, so still time for it to be worth it
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