I was promoted from analyst to associate last year at a global BB in the US. Manager just informed me that my overal pay will be the same as analyst 3 because the group is ending the year flat to slightly up, so everybody will he paid flat to last year. This means bonus is going to be in the $10k area, and just the base/bonus composition has changed. Effectively it’s a pay cut due to inflation.
It was my understanding that being paid flat only really applies to VP and above, who are already on a higher base. Is this correct? Otherwise I could be paid flat forever and be stuck in the low $100k area for the foreseeable future, regardless of individual performance, because I don’t see my group getting more than 10% growth yoy due to the nature of the business.
Definitely not normal. At a Tier 1 BB S&T typical base comp is 85K, 90K, 95K then 125-140K base with 20K increments for each year as an associate. My group VP comp starts at around 200-225K base. Can discuss more just PM me.
What are typical bonuses in S&T like across those ranges?
Might want to change your username man. Way too easy to find you. Cheers
The golden rule of employer/employee relations is to only pay the employee enough to get him to keep showing up and that an employee is only as good as what someone else will pay him. These are no longer the golden days of S&T where it rains $$ and every seat is a great seat. Comp is going to continue to grind lower and there will be less seats. All that being said my comp and experience over the last 6 years in FICC sales at a US BB has been very similar to what average joe has described. I was an analyst for 3 years and an associate for 3, and will make VP next week. Once I made associate I given my own accounts and was free to work on them as I pleased with minimal supervision from "boss" and had an analyst to pick up the grunt work I was previously doing. I have very rarely worked more than 50 hours a week in the office, there is travel and entertainment which was a different sort of grind but for the most part I enjoy my job and consider my work/life balance to be pretty good. I was lucky in the fact that there was attrition on the team I was on that made my path to moving up pretty linear, but I have seen several other analysts move up in paths that were not as linear as mine provided that they are capable.
Monkeyfaces and Simon Says- You are underpaid, and if you want to stay in S&T you should start networking and talking to headhunters. If you are looking to get out I would recommend looking at sales roles within asset management, cap markets at a fintech company, or sales @ one of the major tech firms. These seem to be the most common exits that I have seen sub 5yr S&T people make.
This is the reality : the easy money is gone. There are still plenty of guys that are paid 400k-1m$ with sub 10y on the job. Most likely you are just not seen as good enough for them to care, you'll get replaced with the next batch of juniors if you make too much fuss. Contrary to banking, in S&T there is not that much link between "hard work" and pay, its pretty darwinian with a thick layer of politics on top. In any case, the pay can jump so much once you get to VP+ that i wouldnt make a career decision based on 1 bad year.
In bad years(but not bad enough to trigger mass layoffs) the top performers (VP/ED+, noone cares about top bucket analysts) are going to make sure they make a lot of noise to get their share "ringfenced". Then when the ivory tower guy slams the floor with a 20% cut to the bonus pool. The MDs are going to pay the top performers slightly up, knowing they are still going to get upset as they were expecting 30-40% raise, but won't leave. Then they are going to pay the odd dude that got an offer from elsewhere that they want to keep "he must be worth something if GS tried to poach him". Then they are going to pay slightly down the seniors that didnt have a good year (so should be down 30%) but are too annoying to replace. Then they are going to pay the new hires from JPGoldmanStanley that promised them 40m$ of extra revenue. Then after all the guys with "ringfenced" allocation have been paid, they will divide the scraps among the dudes with no leverage, you are one of them.