Classics of Boomer Behavior

Habitually being the only one on a Zoom call who can't figure out how to get their audio or video working and assuming it's either because your computer is broken or because your punk ass millennial analyst must have screwed up the meeting settings.

Bonus points for showing up on video disheveled, unshaven and in casual clothes once the video does start working then proceeding to pause every 10 seconds to make sure "you guys can still here me, right???? okay, okay great."

References to films, athletes, life events, artists, and other particulars from eons ago. Nothing wrong with that. Just different.

Deep and specific cut, but not grasping that CapIQ doesn't spit out complete and accurate fee runs with a click of a button. 

"Sorry MD, I know you texted me that you need this information for the call that you are already 20 minutes late for, but there is no public fee detail for sell-side M&A advisors in the [insert niche sub-industry that our group doesn't cover] with enterprise value between $643M and $661M that closed between 8/12/13 - 2/19/15"

• Taking an OCD level of interest in shades of colors, fonts and bullet point types for work you're reviewing from an Analyst/Associate that is only for personal/internal digestion...then proceeding the misspell basic words and omit punctuation on emails directly to clients

This one drives me nuts. Spending hours mulling over wording and verbiage in a document, but then has errors in their email signature or the email itself. 

- Thinking turns/model overhauls will take ~15 minutes - I seriously think MDs believe updating models is just like an on/off switch

- on the same note, adding in 20 extra "support" pages that the client won't even see as a security blanket - that took the team a week to create

not knowing how to open a pdf or print/scan documents

1. Refusing to just retire the f*ck off at 75 years old

2. Name dropping important people they worked with 50 years ago i.e. “I know xyz personally”

3. Will not shut up until…wait, how did we get him to shut up? I can’t even remember.

4. Forget how to unmute or change some setting on zoom and literally brain-freeze for 3 seconds. Then proceed to be super annoyed and claim “I’ve been doing this for 30 years” after someone tells him he could just click that button.

5. Requesting everyone to use the front door because he wants to see who’s coming in and out of the office.

6. Blasting the team with nonsensical and irrelevant emails of his interpretation of investing/the market/some random shit that I don’t even comprehend why he’s sending, no grammar no punctuation no spacing or breaks between paragraphs seriously it was just James Joyce style stream of consciousness I’m not kidding you just like this it just goes on and on I think you get my point now

7. Bothering the analyst several times a day to pull data points or analyst reports from financial databases like Bloomberg, even though he knows how to use Bloomberg since obviously this database’s user interface was designed in the 1800s just like he was. Btw the data points/analyst reports are for his own research that informs the insights that he send to the entire team (as described in the bullet point above). None of this actually pertains to any client work. But he just has to keep enlightening the team because that’s obviously what Warren Buffet also does despite being 80 years old.

Wouldn't be surprised if the millennials that make it into MD have some of these characteristics as they grow older.  We'll probably be saying how our music was good back in 90's and also being OCD cuz our bosses were.  

great thread

Being ridiculously stingy on the small stuff.

I just imagine all the dudes you guys are mentioning having giant font on their phones

-Walking around the office in a heavy shoulder pad dark suit jacket with a billowy white shirt with your initials embroided on the cuffs in the year of our lord 2022 despite the rest of the office (including most the other MDs) having somewhat toned down the formality or at the very minimum, are wearing suits tailored after the reagan administration

-Despite being in the office and sitting in front a computer, still sending emails to the deal team on a blackberry

-Getting oddly excited/worked up about closing dinners and gag gifts

-Join an internal conference call late and interrupt by announcing your presence.  Then make everyone else do a mini roll call and slow things down by saying "Sorry, who is Adam?"  "Hi, I'm the analyst on the M&A team"  "Sorry, who?"

-  Holding up investment/valuation committee meetings with tons of boomerisms about being "late in the cycle"  "you haven't seen a real recession" and overly pessimistic about anything tech related, no matter how revolutionary the idea ("These financials are just not mature enough, sorry")

- Pulling out that ancient looking calculator in the black sleeve to check pointless cagr calcuations(I have no idea what type of calculator it is, it looks like its pulled from the apollo spacecraft )

-Doing napkin accretion dilution math and getting concerned the answer is different (which is due to rounding of the numbers presented in the deck).

How long do these boomer MDs stay in their role for? Does someone only become an MD when a spot opens up? 

A preoccupation with getting things “back to the way they were before.” We ain’t never goin back chief.

1. Getting upset at prospective hires for not knowing the menial details of their personal bio (i.e. that he played lacrosse at an Ivy league, worked on some obscure shitty LMM deal, joined xyz firm in ___ year, etc.)
2. Getting upset at analysts for asking for pay bumps when the rest of the street is raising bases - "You should be GRATEFUL for the OPPORTUNITY to WORK here!!!"
3. Asking you to edit .pdfs and not having the .ppt version when you ask
4. Writing half an email in the subject line and then the rest in the body - bonus points if nothing in the body 
5. Is overly political
6. Enters Zoom calls late, announces themselves to disrupt flow of the whole meeting
7. Doesn't mute on Zoom calls and proceeds to inundate the call audio with various scuffling and scratching noises from their phone moving around. When someone else makes so much as a sound, they say "____, can you plz mute??"
8. "Pls send calendar invite for xyz time" *30 min later* berates admin for double booking him for xyz time 
9.  Is technologically inept
10. Is incredibly anal about formatting details, so you spend 5 hours turning his comments for him just to say "you know what, lets just change it back"

C-suite exec at my company telling us not to complain about our pay and how she doesn't think she's fairly paid too (execs at our company are rumored to clear 1M+ with comp/equity...). Complete boomer mentality, won't go into more details as this specific experience is pretty out of the ordinary and can probably trace back to which company I'm at but it was super awkward. Funny thing is, they claim we all got merit-based "raises" but it was below the inflated value of the dollar as of late in comparison to our previous salaries. The person who initially complained was making <100K and quit within a month of that meeting lol. C-suite exec told she'll have HR review her situation and she didn't get a raise while many others did. HR gave her some canned answer and I have a feeling the C-suite exec had a role in that. Especially since she was a good performer and worse performers got raises.

• Saying ridiculously uncouth, sexist shit around clients or female coworkers that would get anybody else referred to HR.
• Being offline to go do a prostate exam
• Being from a non-target city school and accidentally ending up in IB

You've forgotten stupidly short internal emails that don't give you enough information... yet demand a response

I'm bookmarking this and hopefully will remember to read it every 5-10 years as a reminder of what NOT to do

great thread boys and girls

Emailing a huge list of comments on a deck that aren't actually a set of instructions.

For example.

p.4: not sure this is the right way to show the multiples

p.6: Is that accretion number really that low?

p.7: can someone explain to me what this page is saying?  I am not following

p.11: I think it might look better to show the graphs on the right hand side and cut the lbo math, or maybe we just simply table this page and/or add to the appendix? 

p.14: thinking about it now, it may be beneficial to repeat this analysis for the comp set as well - perhaps we have off the shelf?

- Repeated incompetence when using basic technology (ie the mute button) that disrupts the flow of a call

- Setting up calls that could've easily been emails

- Hounding people that we need to RTO on most days despite overwhelming evidence that WFH is more efficient

Handwriting comments in an ancient form of cursive that hasn't been taught in schools since the 70s

Saying some shit “back when I was an analyst we slept on the floor and worked 7 days week”. Like ok Steve, the calculator was barely invented when you were an analyst 

Dang. Boomer MD I know is super chill not like this. Though he's the only boomer MD I know so I guess my sample is small. 

1) "Oh no, those case numbers are really going up"

2) Demands to have something done for the next morning"Remind me to look at this in the morning"

3) Asks to catch up"Put a meeting invite in my outlook"

flakes

My favorite right now is saying something that is clearly racist, sexist, etc. with the white washing of "now you know I'm not a racist but…."Also refusing to keep up with the flow of information coming in from texts, slack, and emails and responding to an email from an hour ago that had a problem solved 15min ago with an obviously outdated solution. However, you can’t forget the best yet…refusing to leverage technology to automate a task because “then what will we do?”

I’m a boomer and don’t exhibit any of these behaviors. I noticed you used the male pronoun. Maybe it’s just men in general. I’ve dealt with male MDs that clearly exhibit all of these issues and they drive me crazy. Especially the failure to leverage technology. As a female advising the C-suite on strategy, I sometimes feel like I’d rather just bang my head against a wall.

I like the imaginary shelf they think has every analysis ready to go.  'This accr/dil of all the comps we selected for this company across multiple industries should be off the shelf'