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Nice post.
You ever try to hit the gym right after work before the dinner/drinks started?
I would usually go straight from work - unfortunately, even though most of the big banks have gyms, its hard to get your end-of-day stuff done as a junior on my team, which was relatively short-staffed (making sure risk is correct, P&L is submitted properly, all the trades have been reconciled) before most people are already heading out. I always tried to make it a priority to get to events alongside senior staff - its already awkward enough being the only person under the age of 35 at some events, its even worse showing up late/not having a seat/missing introductions.
Prior to trading I was in research (same team, different role) and even then you get stuck with double checking stuff at the end of the day. Worst thing to go along with a hangover is to come in and get told you made errors the night before.
I do know some people who hop off the desk from noon to 1pm for a quick work out, but I was always too paranoid to do that.
Love the "man my head hurts" comment
Don't drink beer. Stick to spirits / red wine.
If we order a round of beers and you order a merlot.. that kind of thing earns you a nickname real quick
Pro tip: you don't want to be that guy
Damn Americans. Here we crack open the red straightaway.
Some of the Asian men/women I worked with were allergic to beer or something and so they drank liquor instead. No respect lost there.
However, I don't recommend ordering a red wine if everyone else is drinking beer at a sports bar or something. Thats a quick way to stand out in a negative way. Instead, do exactly what your more senior colleagues do at the beginning of the night.
Total relate to the only junior comment. It makes me wish I'd done a IBD stint, sometimes. But i found it great to get senior exposure (client and internal) straight out of the blocks.
Awesome insights and an overall great post!
Obviously the firm where you work at isn't selecting the right people if the guys you just described land jobs that require socializing and they don't socialize at all.
Xway00 - That is totally correct - basically, most BB trading desks have a two-step hiring process - you hire the person in the the general "Sales and Trading" program, either as sales or trading (or structuring or research). Then, the next step is the product. So you get hired into sales, then you get put in either equity or rates. Or you get hired into trading, and get put into equity derivs or HY bonds. The judgments made to place you into a product group are primarily made off of your resume and a few short 15-20 minute interviews, whereas you have 3-4 interview days and +20 hours of interviewing to get the initial offer. This makes no sense, given your product placement (rates vs equities vs credit) has as much to do with how well you fit as your role placement (sales vs trading vs research).
Outside of the inherent errors within the BB S&T recruiting processes, it also seems that BBs just don't reward raw intellect as much if you don't have the full package.
Unfortunately, junior traders in many desks get rewarded more if they have decent skills in a number of things, as opposed to being really good at one thing. For example, my colleague 'The Whiz' was great at understanding risk and knew every relevant corporate/macro news story, but he was not good at relaying his thoughts or making people feel happy about working with him. He would have been better fit into a role in equity derivatives, where the product trades less on a relationship-basis and more on a 'true best offer' basis. But alas, he was screwed by the recruiting process.
When people saw Da Whiz's resume and saw "Oh man, a kid who went to MIT/Harvard/Stanford and majored in econ/math", they didn't ask the more important question which was, "Will he fit in with us, despite what he thinks as a 22 year old with no actual work experience."
Its actually tragic how many awesome, smart kids get put into roles that are fundamentally wrong for their personality, and so people write them off as having a poor work ethic or being unpleasant to work with.
Part of the reason I am looking forward to contributing to this site is so people can look at the things demanded of junior sales/trading staff at the BBs, outside of the intellectual side. Its a tough job from a social/personality perspective.
You know, this is uncannily accurate. You basically described my situation to a T. Must happen a lot more frequently than I thought.
I think it would be incredibly helpful if you could list which products fall into the "relationship-based" and "true best offer" categories respectively. It's tough enough for someone in the business to source that info (you only really know about your own desk, and asking around arouses suspicion), much less for the college kids who are trying to figure this stuff out.
Thanks
Great contributions already OP.
An easier way with drinks is to drink on the rocks drinks. This way you can avoid the calories of mixers as well as hide that your drink is empty with the melting ice. Well that's if you can't handle your liquor, if that's the case man up.
Quickly digressing into a drinking thread
The fact that you Americans require an article explaining how to drink in a bar is a pretty damning indictment of your alcohol laws. A 21 year old in Britain has genuinely been drinking in the pub for 5/6 years and would be in no need of such instructions.
Also my advice (I put on about a stone when I started working in the city and it has taken me three years to get rid of it) - is a really simple one, drink slowly, take smaller sips from your beer or if at a restaurant drink your wine slowly - no one will notice, you will drink less, feel less hungover and put on less weight.
I really take issue with this comment, given that most of the British kids I know are soft (ie can't drink a lot, get really emotional after 3 'merlots').
I'd love to see the average British 22-year old hang out with state school frat boys in the US.
I was focusing more on how to drink appropriately in a work setting with senior colleagues when you have not had that experience. The reasoning being in college most people drink like alcoholics, but then there are also some quieter types who don't drink in college at all, and wouldn't drink in college whether or not they are in the US or Great Britain.
Its a balance between fitting in and not being an unwanted center of attention.
I should add, always have a tie handy
Lies, heinous lies. I could drink you yanks under the table! It's indicative of the US when they see blacking out (a term we don't have in the UK, only know it through TV) as being too drunk.
Challenge accepted. No light beers allowed.
Sensible advice here.
i have worked in nyc and london and no london finance person should never claim that brits are "better" at drinking then americans. I am a client and won't even go out with london sales people unless someone can vouch for them in advance because I find the london culture of getting obliterated after work in crappy pubs that have zero women in them to be appalling. I like to drink but not like they drink in london pubs.
Business Insider just picked this up.
I drink dirty gin martinis and I don't care what people think. Three of those will get you pretty juiced up real fast. I think the olive brine adds a bit to the total cals.
If I don't watch ma drinks, I be giving bj's under the table.
we made it brahs
http://www.businessinsider.com/trader-explains-avoiding-getting-fat-2014-1
haha exactly what i would have said gjdm
Relatively sound advice; although I take exception to some of it.
You make it sound like you went on binges with clients every night of the week as a junior. As a junior the people you will be going out the most are your work colleague and your grad class. It seems there are also always "leaving drinks" or occasions to drink at work NOT with clients. It's perfectly acceptable not to hang out too long sometimes, just make sure you do stay on occasions and go on the lash so that people think you are not just an anti-social twat.
Trader going out with clients - sales do bring traders along sometimes - and if you are a junior trader your best bet is just to drink in silence. No one is expecting you to talk much, you are not a sales guy - so you will be excused if you don't. If you do not get smashed it does not matter either if you are a trader, your job is not to suck the cock of the client, but not to piss him off either as in your example.
Research geeks - you don't have to get smashed either in this role, you are supposed to be saying smart things and adjusting your excel to fit with the corporate deal pipeline. Some banks have the sale/research hybrid role, that's a bit different.
You make it seems like everyone from research to traders has to drink. It's not true. If you are a sales trader, or a sale you drink - and I fully agree with you on this point. In the UK you drink beer as well, I've worked here and when you are at the pub you don't order wine, you order a pint. We do a round each with some pork scratchings and repeat until drunk and beyond. You don't have the option to drink slowly, as you order in turns, also we don't drink the piss you yanks call beer and it hits you harder. I am more senior now and get away with ordering a slim gin tonic, I get stick for it and get called various names, as a junior I wouldn't have dared do that; now, I don't give a fuck. And even so, that's because I am in equity and we are at the bottom of the social totem pole, in fixed income hybrid structured double derivatives they probably don't drink as much.
The only advice I can give is don't listen to anyone on how you should handle your drinking, everybody reacts differently to alcohol and deals with it differently. Just don't stick out like a soar thumb, and do what the seniors do.
For the gym, go before you go out if you have a client meeting, they always have to wrap shit up and usually stay in the office one hour more than the sell side. That's what I used to do. I am also one of those "muppets" on the treadmill for 30 minutes not going fast, and I am perfectly fine with that, it works for me. Great if you lift weights if it works for you, to each his method. I am not fat, and do triathlon as that's what you start doing when you've worked in banking for a while and are approaching your thirties. Getting in the gym and exercising your body is what counts. Monday is the best day to go - Friday I always went out with my friends, didn't have time for the gym. Saturday and Sunday punish yourself for having gone out and go for a long cycle or a nice heavy hitting run. Saturday, Sunday, Monday - 3 days of sport and you just need to fit in something Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
One final note - you don't have to order 500 grams of steak, even if the company pays for it! Just order smaller portions, fuck the heavy starters as OP said. Eat normally - simple porridge in the morning, light lunches, and light dinner. Kill the snacks and avoid them at all costs. Basically: live like a responsible adult, and be aware your metabolism changes with age...
Totally agree with the 'you don't have to order the biggest steak' - even if its paid by the company, its your stomach that has to do the digesting. Also agree that every situation is different, though usually the sales coverage should have a good sense for what to expect at the client event so that everyone is on the same page.
I know this moved to a drinking thread, but to add some to the staying fit aspect, get in the habit of doing body weight exercises which can be squeezed in at home whenever you have time.
Push-ups, plank, burpees, a pull-up bar, etc can do wonders for your overall fitness and don't require a trip to the gym. They require discipline since it's harder to "get in the zone" at home than at the gym but they also void the excuses that come with "I don't have time to make a trip to the gym."
Short, intense workouts that engage your muscles and push up your HR can keep you looking like brad Pitt, while getting paid like, well, I guess Brad Pitt....
Having said that, as I believe has been stated, what you eat is more important than the exercise when it comes to keeping a lean body.
Sneaking in the gym 40 minutes before heading to the office is a great way to flush out the alcohol from the previous night as well.
Some of my more senior colleagues would go to those morning spin classes after a big night out - I have no idea how they do it. I really can't do anything when I'm hungover besides complain. But mornings are a great time to get some fitness stuff in, since your schedule becomes uncertain once you get in.
interesting
Morning workouts are the only way to do it. Wake up early and slam a preworkout, your body gets used to it after a few weeks and its not difficult to get up anymore.
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