New Associate - Feeling Extremely Overwhelmed/Anxious
Hi all,
As the title says, I am a new MBA associate who got hired 2 months ago at a banks S&T department and feeling extremely anxious and overwhelmed by my situation.
Its not the hours or the work per se. What’s happening is that I havent had any type of guidance or training, don’t know anybody or how the company works, but my bosses are extremely harsh with me when I mess up or lose focus because I literally am not used to/don’t know the necessary information to perform yet. I am staying late and trying to get as organized as possible but it’s simply a matter of time and I haven’t been here enough to know.
Its an extremely tense situation for me, it’s causing me a lot of anxiety even though I have always thrived in my past jobs and have never been treated this way. I am starting to question myself and feel stressed when any e-mail comes to my inbox. Their reactions do not seem reasonable to me and I don’t know how to handle it.
What should I do?
A lot of jobs are like this, unfortunately. There’s no training manual, and people are too busy to plan someone else’s development. Just realize you are not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you.
Perhaps you could reach out to a couple of more experienced associates and vps? It helps to suffer together at the worst, and you can learn some ways to improve from someone a bit more experienced. One thing I would recommend before anything else is understand how the business model works. And then what you are doing within that business model. That helps you to gain an intuition of what is important to do or not which is useful for environments without a lot of handholding.
Adding to the above comment, two months is way too early to be beating yourself up for not having everything figured out yet.
As someone who lateraled into a similar (but still pretty different) position 7 months ago (and whose first job out of college involved switching teams every 6-9 months), I think it takes *at least* 3 months to start to feel like you kind of know what's going on. And even then, you mostly just have the sense that you finally know enough to know how much you don't know. At 7 months in, I still feel like the village idiot pretty often despite having been told that I'm doing a good job.
It does suck that your bosses are making you feel like you're not doing well, but is it possible that some of that impression might be your own projection? I'm in a similar environment where there's not a lot of guidance/support, which definitely comes off at times like people don't like you or that you're not doing well, but (at least in my experience) it often has nothing to do with you.
In any case, it sounds like you're putting in the time and doing the things that you need to do to get up to speed, and that's at least 90% of the battle. Try not to spiral too hard yet and see how you feel after 4-6 months.
It is actually very common for new grads/joiner that just hitting the desk, only be given minimal guidance, and just being slapped with very harsh judgements on mistakes, and it can last for a year or even longer depending on desk; I wouldn’t take it personally, it’s just what the culture is like on the trading floor.
You haven’t really given too much details on what exactly you are struggling on, but in general, just understand that most traders, especially at banks, are actually not very good at teaching, and a good proportion only have limited knowledge to guide you on, leading to some of them just try to hide it by being rude and harsh to new joiners (they just judge that you are a slow learner or whatever, despite that they done nothing to help you learn). You should try to identify someone that is actually knowledgeable/technical, and try find ways to make his routine easier hopefully that he shows you some ropes. Most importantly, don’t present your self to be too timid, if you have a question, don’t ask quietly (but ask the right person), if people laughs/angry at you, you don’t need to reply with emotions, ignore/apologise and learn to move on.
Don’t expect you will automatically fit into the team culture with someone guiding you into it. A lot of fit ultimately comes down to whether you can identify ways to add value for the team yourself, and people recognising that and starts to vouch for you. For trading, it depends on products you are working on, but your value add can come in forms of trade ideas, market intuition, or tools you build with vba/python etc..
I had a similar spot earlier this year; first month was nothing really going on, mostly me browsing around and trying to get a grip on what's going on (as I have a liberal arts background). Second month things started to go hot and various projects came in, lots of things to organise; meetings, calls, data requests, deadlines etc. during this time I made many errors but was fortunate to have 2 colleagues (one in my department, other one in another one), who gave me weekly feedback and also jumped in on some calls to provide some guidance and fix the errors I made. After the 3rd month the learning curve still goes massively up but the feedback is much more positive as people see you try to your best and are committed to the job. I also have a small notebook I'm making notes whenever I'm on a call, talk to someone or learn something, so I can review it for myself and don't ask questions over and over.Personal 2 cents would be to find 1-2 people, who are willing to take you to the side while grasping the full picture without getting lost into too minor details (not saying you should ignore these). Best of luck and progress for the rest of the year.
Everyone above is spot on. But to make it abundantly clear, you need to reach out to your peers for guidance and the likes with enthusiasm. You can't expect the help to flow to you as it is important to be proactive rather than reactive when you don't know things. Don't stress and take the time to use your desk as a resource rather than being afraid of them.
Hello. Interested on you evolution. Mind sharing how you're faring nowadays? Things improved? I'm in a similar boat. Thank you.
Hey. I’m still working at the same place. Things got slowly better (more so because of my own growth, not because my coworkers aren’t toxic anymore). I managed to “swim” by myself, basically learning stuff on the go and just enduring the anxiety. Now I am at a much better place in terms of what I know and what people think that I know.
Do I think it has been worth it? Yes and no. Yes because I learned so much and now have almost 1.5 years of experience at a top institution. I also made a few good friends.
No because it was a very intense and anxiety inducing experience. I started taking anxiety meds to endure this, and that made me see things differently. However, it still happened and that means this is a terrible environment.
Would I do it again? Nope. What’s done is done and it was worth it for me. But this is the last time I endure something like this.
I also think that I made a mistake at the beginning, and that was not giving myself “my place” earlier. I am an experienced hire, and was treated terribly until I expressed how bad things were.
It’s a long story but it sort of worked out. Now I am a few months away from the 1.5 yr mark, and so I care less about stuff and that makes me happier. If things get bad again, i’ll leave and take “the profit” without much consequence. If things keep improving I might even stay, who knows.
What I do know is that before my next gig, i’ll take a 3-4mo sabbatical.
Thank you very much! Glad to see things improved!
How is it now mate?!
Do many banks hire MBAs for S&T? I didn't realize they still did.
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