Hot take: All layoffs are at some point personal and performance related
I’ve been seeing a lots of posts over here this past year from people who got laid off and blame market conditions, lack of deal flow or major restructurings. All of them say “my firing was not performance related…”.
Here is the truth, unless your group laid off the entire analyst or associate class, it is indeed performance related at some point. No bank is stupid enough to fire people randomly - they will always keep top performers or at least those people who are more liked or play the politics game very well.
If 40% of analysts in your group were laid off and you were among them, then I am sorry but you were in the bottom 40% percentile.
That does not mean that maybe in other years, you would have kept your job, but if you were laid off recently, it means your bosses had to choose between you and other people and then they decided to keep others.
This take might seem harsh for some people, but it actually comes from someone who lost his job 1 month ago, who had good reviews the past two years and who was told he was a top performer by HR and his boss the same day he was let go. I have been wondering why all these weeks, and the truth is probably I was not as good as I thought or as I was told.
This was not a hot take and also you're not hot.
In what situation aside from bad market/firm conditions, does 40% of an entire group get laid off ? since when does being in that bottom % necessarily indicate a poor performance? they're obviously not the best in their group but it doesn't mean they under-preformed to the extent where being laid off was natural.
If your firm didn't have a cutthroat history of firing everyone who wasn't stellar, the standout year they decide to do that is probably due to external conditions.
You're missing the point. If the firm lays off 40% of its staff, and you're one of them, it means you were in the bottom 40%. To the extent you weren't outperforming your peers, or even achieving average performance, that means you aren't as good at your job as others.
If you get laid off and someone else doesn't, it means you aren't as good or as valuable, and yes, that comes down to personal performance. People are just bad at accepting that they aren't the main character, and generally aren't good at estimating their own value, and so they come up with other excuses for why something bad happens beyond "I couldn't hack it"
You haven’t been at the table when those decisions were being made
Can you elaborate please
basically you weren't in the meeting room when decision were made to really know why someone was fired
not much depth beside that
Ok? Did anyone ever think otherwise?
It depends - if you were in a 20 person analyst class and 7 were let go, you were likely mid tier at best or bottom
If you were the only VP or director in a 5 person group and you were the only one let go, you were surely fired due to performance (happened a couple months ago at my group unfortunately).
Revenue generation also plays a large part of this stuff, especially in small firms / boutiques which are typically less stable for this reason.
Just be top bucket in a bear market and middle bucket in a bull market
"If 40% of analysts in your group were laid off and you were among them, then I am sorry but you were in the bottom 40% percentile."
Whoa bro. This blew my mind. Never thought of this that way.
Seriously. Bro said “if 1+1=2 then 2=1+1”
please can we add somehow an Interstellar soundtrack to what OP said?
This is a great post. Even if you were laid off and the market was bad, you should always frame it as your fault, even if it isn’t because someone else was able to stay. Obviously, you weren’t good enough to stay. This is gonna be harsh, but analyst who are laid off and like myself have to take full accountability for what we are in control over. All because the market sucks doesn’t mean we have to go through life saying oh the market is why I’m not employed. This is a hyper competitive industry, and you need to constantly be improving. You can’t operate right now like you’re in a bull market.
I was at a firm where leadership would frequently lay off anyone with competence that they deemed as a threat to the crown. Essentially the VP's were constantly laying off their competition. lol. This was a multi $B firm.
The best way to survive was to do slightly above mediocre work and avoid ruffling any feathers.
Yeah as someone who was laid off just about one year ago this is pretty real. I framed it as the market in interviews and was able to find my current role, but deep down I know I could have done better as an analyst. I’ve reflected a lot on mistakes I made and have tried to apply those lessons in this role.
I was initially pretty miffed because I was let go after only a few months on the desk. Told myself I didn’t get a chance to ramp up but the reality is we need to be sharp from day 0. They cut a lot of analysts but not everyone.
Same man. You may have been laid off and that could be a fact but that doesn’t mean you can leave without blood on your hands. From my personal experience, there’s a lot of things that I could’ve improved on from day one. Attention to detail is one of them, staying engaged and following up on things that I don’t know, is one of them, as well as being more prepared for an industry coverage group is another. It’s a tough market out there for sure sure but I do believe that markets like this expose where you actually stand in this industry versus starting in a bull market.
Were you let go after your probation? Or during your probation?
We didn’t have a probationary period as far as I know. We trained in July and got on the desk in August. I worked from mid August to mid December so just four months. Part of me wished I had more of a chance to prove myself. But I could have performed better, ramped up faster, been sharper. The bank just wasn’t a great fit overall and I’m happier at my current shop.
I was laid off from Citadel. Years later, I closed a multi-billion dollar natural gas deal with them.
My boss at the time apologized to me and said my boss wanted to become a trader and you were better than him so he got rid of you. I didn’t want to do that.
Nice try though :)
Really ? This is fresh story
His boss apologized to me*
That definitely happened.
Well, good for you. Good for you, pussy boy.
It's a James Bond character. But thank you for the kind words.
Out of all the things that didn’t happen, this didn’t happen the most.
Ask Andy and Patrick at WSO. They know the story and have asked me to do a write up about it when it's over.
don't doubt Pussy Galore, he's a WSO OG bro
You’d be surprised. Trading is a way different world than IB/PE. Far more ruthless IMO.
If 90% in your group is laid off and you are one of them, then sorry mate, you’re in the bottom 90%. And it’s also your fault not being DEI and therefore not having the DEI protection umbrella.
Fyi I’m doing sarcasm if you can’t tell it
I agree to a degree - however I have seen groups that have laid off 40 percent of their analyst class but some people didn’t get fired even thought they were bottom bucket due to dei initiatives
.
Perhaps industry dependent, but absolutely not the case for IB.
DEI is not a protection umbrella in this economy, and let's be honest, most positions of power still skew heavily toward a very homogeneous group. As my bank was going through mass restructuring this year - the first-round of layoffs was a bottom bucket senior analyst (white, male), who was truly an underperformer. However, in the second-round layoff and subsequent layoffs, those cut on my team included a COO (female & minority) who was in charge of DEI initiatives, a new associate (minority), and a top performing MD (female & minority). Many laid off in my associate class were non-citizens and on visa - they were first to be let go following the merger. IMO, banks mostly care about DEI during bull markets for appearances (read publicly traded banks).
DEI has only improved representation at the analyst level; but if you look at VP and above, female x POC especially are few in numbers, and tend to have way stronger backgrounds (objectively speaking - education and experience wise), to be able to hold the same senior roles.
I will caveat that in corporate they often fire entire divisions that are missing top line or bottom line projections, rather than individuals.
Sure, if you ignore DEI protections that can protect 50% of a class at the analyst level, then it makes sense I guess. It would be a really weird thing to ignore though.
I was laid off along with 5 other lateral hires at the same level who started around the same time (my class). This is the same number of new college hires starting in 2024. I was told it was not performance related during my layoff meeting and everyone was offering to help me find work. I wasn’t a top performer but there was no indication of my name being on chopping block. Of course I blame myself but in no way advertise that recruiting.
Ive heard two things:
1. Boutique is PE backed and needing to sell
2. PE firm is shitting the bed and needs to maintain covenants
Context - smaller boutique, firm is loosing deals to competitors and my team cut only at my level, other teams cut vertically
You worked at a boutique that was owned by a PE firm? How is that possible?
Its main line of business is turnaround work, but it has a broker dealer.
Think A&M / AlixPartners / FTI
Dead wrong. When you graduate 4th grade your perspective will change.
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Bruh I’ve seen people laid off where the boss didn’t even know their name. Welcome to the machine
Yes, but ‘performance’ is not always a perfect meritocracy. So many firms hardly use performance reviews. Sometimes you have a bad manager or a colleague you don’t get along with. In some industries (consulting) you may be unstaffed for months giving you a lack of opportunities to prove yourself. Often firms have to get rid of people, so they’ll adjust the scale accordingly. If you get laid off or fired, brush it off, learn from your mistakes, and push forward. So many people have failed at one place only to do well somewhere else.
My sister was a top performer at Restoration Hardware and then a PE firm bought the company and laid off the entire R&D division, where she was a Manager of Product Design. She didn’t do anything wrong - they probably needed less expenses to service their debt. She had a top design degree as well from Stanford.
O hey there
There are always things you could have done better. Owning the layoff outcome is healthy so far as you don’t let it impact your confidence. Much of the result is luck or a lack of it though. Having done layoffs before, the committees deciding the fate of people were not deciding based on meritocracy and much of the decisions were based on whim. Both times individual rating or reviews were not brought up.
I can’t say what I experienced is representative of all layoffs. However, in any case, the person or people who laid you off spent very little time thinking about the decision vs. your reconciliation of it. And the bigger the layoff, the less thoughtful it will be as you can’t discuss the merits of every single person in a meaningful way.
To anyone who has been laid off, just know that what happened is a normal thing that impacts almost everyone once if not multiple times in their career. If you work long enough in corporate, you will continue to face career setbacks. Maybe you don’t get laid off again but get softly pushed out as you climb the ladder. Maybe the market tanks and your project/division becomes redundant. The point is that all of these things are normal and don’t necessarily speak to your competence.
This! Most of the people in finance I know well enough to talk about this subject by now have been laid off once. Seeing it happen to other people I respect has really brought the point home. Focus on what you can do better and start afresh.
True to an extent but not always the case. I know I’ll get MSed, but if you are one of two straight white males and the rest of your class are considered diverse, see you later even if you are marginally better. Have seen this happen multiple times, and is more common than you think given new initiatives which demand 50% female x% POC.
Unless the nepo hires stay behind.
I’m kinda old so I don’t get the latest slang.
Does hot take mean something obvious?
Like, hot take the sun is big?
In your experience, do you think personality/fit has anything to do with the random layoffs you mentioned in the short term?
Also, I imagine rank somewhat matters in those decisions. The mid-level folks would probably be more likely to get cut because they have higher overhead than a junior person but may not provide the value a senior-level brings.
This absolutely isn’t always the case. I have seen an entire cohort of “most recently promoted” let go, regardless of performance. In fact, I have seen teams cut anyone promoted in the last cycle when they’ve got the “N/A - not enough time in role” performance rating.
Yes yes work hard little peon , slave away, constantly compare yourself to your peers and make sure you are putting in the most effort and hours. And then when the time comes where we have to get the axe out and reduce headcount I 'promise' you will be saved because you are such a nice little top performer arent you
Now back to work!
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