Bare Minimum Analyst Work
What’s the bare minimum work a first year (and going into second year) analyst can do knowing that he doesnt want to stay in banking past the 2 years while still remaining average/middle bucket/not getting fired or anything?
I feel like this isn't normally the answer, but given the labor market right now... the analyst can do as little as he or she wants...
Middle and bottom bucket aren't too far apart. Your average analysts work pretty long and hard, but maybe never fully got the harder models down, or tend to miss comments. To stay average you have to work harder than the bottom ~30% - unless your group has some real scrubs, that is likely still 70-80 hours. Hard to do the complete bare minimum and maintain much bonus.
If you are leaving and happy being totally bottom bucket, it's almost impossible to get fired even if you completely phone it in. Log off at 8-9pm, don't respond on weekends, and you won't get fired. But you will get a very low or no bonus.
That is totally wrong. Have seen an analyst get fired for not answering emails on weekends, leaving (pre-COVID) before 8pm everyday, pushing all work down to 1st years, and having terrible work product / attitude in general.
Idk, knew a guy who refused to work past 6pm about 6 months into his first year and he was never fired, just got $0 bonus. Bad attitude will get you, but in many years of banking I've only heard of analysts being let go for egregious things (insider trading or harassment). Not worth the paper trail of PIPs to fire a second year leaving in 12 months
So much of this is just managing others perception of you. If you are very responsive and enthusiastic / show a good attitude, this will go a long way and is completely independent of your work product. Probably the lowest effort input for highest return is this.
On top of that if you can avoid the same mistakes twice and don’t do anything majorly dumb, you are probably just fine.
if you don’t want to work hard, be cognizant of the deal teams and deal types you get involved with. Don’t do hairy M&A or work with hardos if you want to just skate by
OP, this is the answer.
The last point is big brain shit. Scheming just to scheme
holy fuck this dude has literally mastered the art of bullshitting, Jesus Christ
Lol funny how I've had this conversation quite a bit with my peers hahah
do you miss out on the skills by not being a hardo / working with hardos / taking the hairy m&a tasks if you eventually want to exit to buy side? in other words how much can I cruise in my analyst years but still get recruited and perform at PE?
Minimal tbh - while modeling is a required skill and reps are good, you will come out of 2 years of banking with plenty of reps regardless. PE models are different, every company is different, and you'll still be ramping up at your buyside job. I'd work hard the first year, especially until your buyside offer, and then you can start to turn down the jets after the holidays in your second year
Do you think you can be Middle bucket can get to Associate?
I feel like this is also just quite hard to answer considering that everyone operates at fundamentally different intensities and limitations so you really have to see where you push the gas till to play at that “top bucket” quota and then use that to determine the minimum. That might involve you getting staffed on a deal and experiencing that then understanding how you will play moving forward. Sucks that this is the realist answer but hope that helps !
It depends on your bank and your group. Also, office politics plays such a big role. Have a few people in your corner and you could be golden with an easy ride to Associate.
Love this question.
Depending on how large your group is and how transparent staffing is, you always gotta make sure everyone knows how "busy you are" when requested for a deliverable without outright rejecting work. For instance, if it's 7-8pm and you're wrapping up your current work but have something else to do, "overcommunicate" and say you're super slammed at the moment, and ask if the next day morning is OK.
The key is to demonstrate that you're committed and aren't hoping to pawn it off, but just that there aren't enough hours in the day to handle it. Ideally you would have built up some kind of rep as a "hard worker" so that you can slack off later on. You learn very quickly exactly what is complete nonsense versus what is actually time sensitive.
bump
I scraped by with 25 hours of true work this week, at most. That's more the luck of the draw though, since all my deals are slow-moving and I'm not staffed until anything else for fear that everything picks up again at the same time.
Are you in the office? How do you make the time go by in such a situation?
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