How to Coast in IB

It’s pretty simple really, 3 things:

• Don’t do work unless explicitly asked to
• don’t do work past a certain hour (12:30am)
• state that you will be out of office when social events come up—give advanced notice, but don’t budge at all/ state “I will be out of office from 6-9pm this Thursday, thanks for all your understanding.

Otherwise, do your job and do it well so you aren’t screwing anyone over and you are still considered a solid analyst just by the fact that you have been there long enough you likely are still a very helpful employee to the firm and your managers.

The key to coasting is not half assing work and still being reliable during the hours you work, but setting boundaries and drawing lines in the sand that are very predictable. Eventually, assuming you are competent, people will optimize around you and just assume you are smart, but kinda lazy (which is fine, because you aren’t going for employee of the month and are admittedly coasting). If you stay sharp and just limit the hours you work/ push back on unreasonable demands if someone calls you out, you can be pretty assertive on what is going on/ stating you are still doing great work and owned x, x, and x deliverables, you just feel your team members are pressing unrealistic timelines. Although realistically, the best approach is just saying, “ok, going forward I will try to be more proactive/ take initiative etc. (even though you won’t). 
 

reread your post—on the weekends say you won’t be available. If they push back, say, “sorry, understand this is inconvenient, but it is important to me I go.” They won’t fire you and realistically the rest of your team will begin carrying the burden or your VP (or whoever is leading execution) will communicate slower timelines. Also, start being way way slower to respond in weekends—maybe check your email twice between Friday and Sunday.