Always walking on eggshells?

Been in my role for about 4 months and feel like I'm always walking on eggshells with the MD on my team. I'd say I am a pretty damn diligent and hard-working analyst, but when I do inevitably mess up my MD acts like I am a total fucking idiot and speaks to me with disdain that I don't really see him talking to others with. 

When I take initiative, he finds issue with my approach or tells me to "always check with him", and when I am more reactive rather than proactive he critiques me for not being responsive enough. It feels like every decision I make is the wrong one, even though my intentions are in the right place. 

He is generally a nice person but I feel he kind of views me as incompetent and I find it to be exceedingly rare that I propose a method of handling something that he agrees with. Months of feeling this way later I am still working hard to change his view of me but generally I feel frozen and overthink any action I take because I feel like he will inevitably disagree with the approach. 

Anyone else have this experience? Is this normal? I understand I'm a 1st-year analyst and I don't know shit but feels like he's impossible to please. What I wouldn't give for him to just say "I see how hard you're working" or "good job taking initiative"...

 
Most Helpful

Seems like you just got stuck with crappy leadership. Same thing happened to me and it only ended when i rotated out of the desk

Fast forward 5 years and that boss is no longer in the industry and i'm doing just fine

Best you can do is survive your 1st year or 1st rotation on the desk and hope for greener pastures for your next rotation

But use this as a learning experience on how not to treat juniors and then to appreciate those coworkers and bosses in your future career/roles that actually look out for you 

 

This is exactly right. One of the best lessons banking taught me was how much managers can impact your experience. You can have managers that will set you up to succeed and as a result you can be praised across the firm because that person champions you, you also can get stuck with a bad manager who is a negative person who will make your life hell and will actively campaign against you.

Analysts come into the role believing more is in their control than isn’t—in a corporate setting, this just isn’t true. The luck involved in the projects and people you get involved with is substantial and top/ middle bucket from my experience was more a result of preparation meeting luck versus just someone being better than everyone else. I think everyone in my analyst class who was middle bucket and above could have been top of they had gotten the staffings the top bucket guy got.

 

Something tells me this guy is not leaving the industry, he's probably 44 years old and an MD and seems to know his shit. 

But yeah looking likely that I'm kind of shit out of luck. I guess my biggest worry at this point is that his perception of me affects my job prospects in my 2nd rotation, and this snowballs into a general career problem. The weird thing is, like I said I'm not immune to mistakes, but it feels like everyone on my team never makes mistakes (all associate or higher). Just a shitty feeling to work really hard and it not be enough

 

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