Does anyone here work with Sage Kelly at Cantor? Would love some feedback.

Hi everyone. Want to see if anyone here works with Sage Kelly at Cantor. I know he had quite a reputation back at Jefferies. I'm currently considering an offer for Cantor and would love some insight as to how intense/shitty it is to work with this dude. Obviously he has a LOT of red flags, but want to see if he has changed at all. 

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I networked with a (I assume) colleague of yours recently who was trying to convince me that culture has changed and everything is great. But then when I talked to former employees they said it was "dogshit". I asked that person how or in what capacity was it dogshit and he literally said "everything". They're now a VP at a great shop but it could just be a one-off bad experience. 

Anyways, what's the truth? Things better now and were never that bad? Or are/were things truly pretty tough?

 
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There is a good reason you posted this and it's because you've likely heard the same thing everyone else who knows anyone at Cantor has. Horrible, horrible culture. 

Super trigger happy layoffs, their book of business is very light on real advisory assignments, Howard Lutnick is pretty plugged in with all the MAGA guys which brings unneeded drama to the scene, it's a sweatshop (without doing M&A deals somehow?), supervisors are micromangers and dicks, staffers will leave office then have sycophantly underlings report back to them on what juniors are still there at midnight so they can fuck anyone who left before that the next morning, etc. 

They even acknowledge these things to a degree but sweep it under the rug as "We're very old school New York". It's also a total individual hustler type of culture, which equates to bad hours. There's no team workflow planning. It's just each MD fending for himself, which means they have to be ultra aggressive in keeping their juniors focused on their specific deal. To the Analyst/Associate this translates into having conflicting marching orders from 3 MDs at once all telling you it's top priority and you're FUCKED if you don't get them their deliverable by morning. 

TL;DR: It has the culture of JT Marlin and the dealflow of Nomura

 

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