Got told to leave earlier
I had my performance review today and the strangest feedback I received was to "leave earlier" as in I'm leaving the office too late. Apparently it makes it look like I can't prioritise my work.
Hence, I left by 5pm today. My bosses didnt say a thing. (LMM fund with only 2 seniors and me + back office).
I'm gonna try out if I can continue to leave by 5/6pm. Any thought on rhis?
It's an odd one for sure. I once got the same feedback. Long story short, was not real feedback but made sure never to give any indication after the fact that I was staying late at the office. Did you get any other negative feedback?
Some possibilities:
What I would do: Probably should attempt to time your departure with that of your seniors if they're leaving after 5. Very occasionally leave a bit earlier. Try to never be the first out of the office. Never be noticeably last. If you stay late, never admit to it or let anyone see you doing so.
Nah I'm often done by 5/6pm just browsing the internet not too make a bad impression.
Feedback was good when it comes to technicals and quality of work. Things to improve on were to act more mature. I'm in my late 20's and most guys I work with in my current gig are 20-30 years older than me. But they offered to pay for professional coaching as age doesn't need to be a determining factor.
They are political but seem to be good people by heart. Told me to get rid of the face time mentality.
Yeah then somewhere between points 1 and 3. Definitely - I think being the youngest there's a much higher standard not to fuck around. You don't really enter their zone of consciousness unless you mess up. If your seniors make off-color comments or behave in a more relaxed way, they generally see it as though they earned the right to do so. Concomitantly, they'll think that you haven't. Basically, act 30% more professional than they do (have to walk a fine line though to make sure you're not being a somber robot). As a very obvious example, I've seen seniors get drunk at events - you can drink ofc, but keep it to a couple beers - last job had wasted partners at events, who next day would positively notice how serious I was about limiting drinking at work events (even though they were totally shitfaced night before).
Nothing to add other than this happened to a friend at my prior firm. As in your case the seniors took it as he was bad at prioritization and couldn't figure out why he'd "need" to be working so much. Don't think it's a career killer and was probably just given cause they didn't have too many bad things to say about you, but important to remember that optics and politics are important in the industry (don't want to be seen as the cultural outcast)
Yeah I didn't really understand how important politics is in this space. In my early 20s I was slaving away on my desk and doing shit for giggles with other juniors.
Same type of behavior is completely uunacceptable in my current gig.
At least you weren’t told to leave, earlier
I mean your thread comments make the feedback seem a lot more sensible than the original post. If you really are done at 5/6 and “browsing the internet” just for appearances, then your bosses can see you’re doing a 40 hour week’s worth of work but weirdly imposing a facetime rule on yourself. Don’t do that. Even Moelis analysts leave at 5 on the one blue moon they have a slow enough day.
And the feedback about being more mature paired with an offer to specifically get coaching is raising a bit of a yellow flag, unless the coaching resource is some kind of norm or mandatory process that everyone at your level is supposed to go through.
I don’t mean to be critical about a stranger but I genuinely think the story is leaning toward your feedback being perhaps more solidly grounded than your perception of it and the company behaving more rationally than you’re portraying it to
I was literally told that that I I do a good job on the and that the only thing holding me back is my maturity/age. Issue is that most people are just old and getting on with them is difficult.
While we are a small team, b9th of the guys are billionaires imo they are able to spent 20-30k on individual coaching for how to negotiate etc
I'm going to be straight up with you, hopefully for your own benefit, and say that it seems like your acceptance level is much lower than it needs to be to have your reputation materially improve internally, and that taking the feedback as true is going to be a more productive exercise than trying to fight it.
The facetime thing is an easy concrete fix--you've admitted you do it, and the firm doesn't like it, so you should stop.
The maturity part is going to require some soul-searching. To be honest, pretty much everyone here has worked with significantly older employees who we don't "get on" with, but being called "mature" is actually pretty low-hanging fruit if you're responsible and even a little buttoned-up or shy. Clearly there's some kind of disconnect as to why you're not only not getting that feedback, but getting nudged toward firm-expensed corporate counseling, which frankly is not that thinly veiled a red flag.
There's something out of step: Is your attire less formal than the more senior employees? Are you talking about things informally that make it seem like you're too "kiddish" in the coffee room? Are you not taking social cues well as to what seniors are or aren't interested in conversationally? What kind of language level are you using personally, or in emails? What is your approach to deadlines--are you asking for last-minute extensions often or slightly slipping? What is your approach to promising? Are you speaking up too little or too much on the merits of an investment thesis? Are you incurious about investment theses beyond your immediate deliverables?
Any or all of these things might result in "yes," even if your work product is good and your models are all complex and tied out, but there's no one on here who can do the introspection on your behalf to figure out what might be driving the issue here.
OP also left out that he’s browsing for gimp suits.
I could see them thinking you staying is you trying to earn brownie points but instead you’re just deteriorating the culture.
I’ve heard kids from South Korea / Japan instantly ruin a culture as they immediately make it a FaceTime culture where everyone else suddenly has to stay late because they are, else they look bad.
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