How early can I lateral?

Just started as a new Analyst. I had previous banking internships so I knew what the job was going in and don’t hate the day to day. What I most certainly hate is the group and the people I work with. Before you MS me and say I’m soft, I work in a group that’s pretty notorious around WSO for its terrible culture (everything you’ve read is true). I naively thought I could overcome it but I should’ve listened to the WSO community and went somewhere else.

I’ve read in previous threads that you usually need to stay in the seat for ~1 year before lateralling. Given the frothiness of the lateral market, would it be possible to get away with a shorter timeline of maybe 4-6 months in the seat before I start to shop around? 

5 Comments
 

Definitely don’t need to stay a full year, but would encourage you to stay for at least 6 months to say you gave it a fair shot (at least for interviews). Plenty of first year analysts lateral around the 8-10month mark, so that timeline is not uncommon at all.

Some places will buyout your signing bonus, but others won’t. Even if they don’t, I wouldn’t discount an offer solely based on that, and also your current firm may not even come after you for it anyway.

 

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