1st yr analyst at a bank in NYC on the debt side of CRE. Not BB but well known and respected. I’m on month 5 and feel like i barely understand anything in my role. Honestly just doing my best and trying to learn as fast/ much as I can. I was hired out of undergrad, which is what my group wanted. I often feel like people in my office are annoyed i don’t know things and think I’m messing things up. For example we’ll get a deal in with a really complicated structure I don’t fully understand. I ask a VP to clarify some stuff and instead of walking me through it or answering questions they refer me to a previous deal they’ve done that’s similar and basically tell me to figure it out on my own. Inevitably I miss some stuff (because every deal is different) and that’s when shit goes down.
I’ll get a flurry of emails from different VP’s saying I cannot mess these things up and then another VP will come by and say hey VP1 emailed me that you messed this up in the model you cannot do that. It’s gotten to the point where work gives me extreme anxiety to the point where I dread sending in any finished deals for fear of the ridicule I’ll get for missing a tiny tiny detail I didn’t know was a thing. The VP’s email each-other back and forth behind me and the other analysts back talking about our mistakes but don’t help us work through them. Maybe I’m waiting for things to start clicking in my role or maybe my office is just really toxic?
Leave
Sounds like a toxic culture. You’re 5 months into the role. It’s not you. It’s them. Keep doing your thing. Keep trying to learn. Don’t let it get to you. They should be sitting down with you and saying, ‘Let’s discuss x, y, and z. They should have been in the underwriting. Let’s discuss what they are, teach you the concept, and make sure you understand it.” The people you work for don’t sound nice. If this keeps up, find a better cultural fit. 99% of being successful is being in a culture that allows you to succeed.
I’ll go against the grain here and suggest we’re not hearing both sides of the story. If the firm is a larger firm and hired out of undergrad, chances are the seniors aren’t just saying “go figure this out and come back to me when it’s correct.”
More realistically, they’re probably telling OP to take a stab at it on their own and come back for a follow up discussion with questions / run through it together. The latter situation is extremely common to deal with - I’ve literally never had anyone above me in my career flat out teach me things without having me try on my own first.
So, first a caveat.... I generally agree with the above responses above that say you are in a toxic work environment. TBH, most banks in NYC are, just some are shittier than others. You could also be uniquely sensitive to the situation, and taking worse than is reasonable (which is understandable first job out, colleges treat kids too nice, then they hit the real world, and get rekt for a bit until they figure out how to swim with the big kids.... to be clear, I'm not saying this is you, just saying it happens...).
One way to judge is to assess how much turn over the firm has, if few people are staying past two years..... its prob an uber shitty toxic place... and you shouldn't stay longer than you have to!
All that aside. First year (or even first 2 to 3 years) in a competitive field like banking can royally suck, you do get treated shitty and are often 'hazed' in semi-professional ways. This happens in banking, law, and I'm sure lots of fields (don't have to be high paid either). So, the reality is, the best strategy is often to stick it out and survive. The pressure can actually make you learn and grow, and overcoming it can be a great personal achievement.
In fact OP, I think by the way you titled and wrote your post.... you totally get this and see it also! So, I wouldn't necessarily run too fast, you can actually learn a shit ton from a place like this. Including how to do with (and even sustain) toxic shitty assholes (guess what... they are all over this industry, won't change, and NYC is over allocated with them!). Should you make a long career there? Probably not, but can figure that out later. I'd stick it out, and hopefully you do legit "get it".
A final note, kinda unrelated, but maybe offers some value...... I'm in late 30s, and one common trait of people I've known (both as peers and people who came to me for advice) who seem to be "sub-optimal" in their careers (like under achieving vs. what you think they should/could do), is they seem to leave jobs quickly and often. And many have said things to me like "they didn't teach me enough", "I wasn't being given real work", or "they just expected me to learn on my own", or "I wasn't supported enough". Those are all paraphrases, but you get the picture. Part of being successful in this field is just doing what ever it takes. Again, not really sure this is you, but just wanted to drop it here as something to consider.