Death to 'Reply All'

We've all been there before.

An Analyst buddy sends a group-wide email. Something about a relevant deal and he wants to be sure that all the MDs know about it. Not to mention, it's almost bonus time and he wants them to know that he knows about it.

"Is he serious with this shit?" you think to yourself. Why not give him a little grief?

So, you shoot off a quick reply. "Way to make me look bad, d*ckhead. Get back to spreading comps."

You chuckle to yourself. Proud of your pithy, yet topical, comment, when suddenly it hits you...

"Oh my God. What I have I done." You hit 'Reply All'

During my three year stint in banking, there were two things that I feared above everything else.

  1. Getting staffed on a "Strategic Alternatives" pitch on a Friday afternoon
  2. Accidentally hitting 'Reply All' on a snarky email to a fellow Analyst

Unfortunately, I had to face Fear #1 on more than one occasion. There's little worse than knowing that you'll have to cancel plans so you can put together a 120 page pitchbook explaining to Boeing why they need to sell a subsidiary, and hire us of course, knowing that there is no chance in hell that it'll ever happen. Literally nothing in banking worse than spending your weekend turning draft after draft of a useless pitchbook.

Hitting 'Reply All' is a close second, and it's something I managed to avoid throughout my entire three years. Looking back, I'm honestly kind of baffled that I never did it. With the sheer amount of email you get every day (make that every hour), you start to fire them off on auto pilot. I had a couple of close calls, but I always managed to check to make sure I didn't hit the dreaded Reply All button when it would've come back to haunt me.

An article last week in Businessweek addresses the 'Reply All' problem. Apparently, email client makers are starting to offer fixes. Microsoft recently released a plugin for Outlook called NoReplyAll, which allows a sender to prevent recipients from responding via 'Reply All'.

A company was founded on the premise that 'Reply All' is a nuisance. Sperry Software, not to be confused with the boat shoe business, sells a simple program that assaults users with an alert every time they hit Reply All to any email. It acts as a failsafe mechanism to prevent any foolish mistakes. And get this, it sells for $14.95 and has allegedly sold hundreds of thousands of copies, making the anti-'Reply All' business a big business to be in.

As I said earlier, I've never made the mistake of hitting Reply All when I shouldn't have, but I heard a story of a third year Analyst who came before me that did and paid for it, big time. He was working on a typical sell-side deal team with an Associate, a VP, and an MD running the show. Over the course of his Analyst stint, he'd become good friends with the Associate, and both of them absolutely hated the VP on the deal. They thought he was completely incompetent and couldn't stand that he didn't seem to do much other than point out the occasional spelling error in a pitch book.

Anyway. The Associate on the deal sends the team an email update about the process. He had been talking to potential buyers of the firm's client and wanted to give a run-down of who looked promising and who was dropping out of the process. The deal was going pretty well and there were a decent number of serious buyers hanging around the hoop. A standard update email for a process that was progressing nicely...until the Analyst wrote a quick reply email. It was short, but brutal. Something along the lines of "Good stuff, let's hope Jimbo [the VP] doesn't f*ck it up for us." As soon as he hit send he realized what he had done and it was too late.

His 'Reply All' mistake cost him big time. His bonus was trimmed and he lost any shot he had at promotion.

Frankly, I felt bad when I heard about it because the VP in question was completely useless and everyone knew it. But that's the way it works when you're at the bottom of the totem pole. If only he had Sperry's Software, he could've avoided the whole thing and might even be a VP by now.

Let that be a lesson to everyone: live in fear of 'Reply All' or pay the consequences.

 

I am shit scared of Bcc'ing

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
OMS:
i just hit "CTR: + R" so I never have to use my mouse unless I really do need to Reply All but I'm sure there is a keyboard shortcut for that as well.

This is what I do as well (I use "Right click button + R" and the shortcut for Reply All is "Rt. Click + L"). I'm still always paranoid about replying to all with the snarky email. That's why I try not to use it at all. If I am going to write a snarky email I try to compose one from scratch and then add recipients post facto...

 

to be fair, you're rarely gunna reply back a cuntish email to the guy who sent it out to start with, hence, editing of recipients is a prerequisite

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
eleutheros:
Or maybe control your urges to shoot off snarky replies...
you have no idea how necessary emails like these are. honestly, it's great stress relief, you can't just take your mate aside, find a spare meeting room for one dickish comment that you wanted to get off your chest...

chat doesn't work as your wordy referencing of the stupid email loses the punch that an email has

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 

I've seen some ugly stuff with 'Reply All' before. I've seen even worse stuff from e-mails getting forwarded. Never put anything in e-mail you wouldn't want shown on the front page of the WSJ. Paranoid is the preferred MO.

 
BTbanker:
Has anyone "accidentally" hit reply all and commented the MD on his dashing good looks and discussed how excited you were to start working on the pitch book?
I lol'd
Impossible is nothing
 

Eh, I think a snarky email is ok once in a while. Just be reasonable. Even if the intended receiver is the only one to get it, you don't want to say anything too crazy.

With that said, I'd rather hit reply all on every email for the rest of my life than ever do another Strategic Alternatives pitch. That shit is the worst.

 
TheKing:
Eh, I think a snarky email is ok once in a while.

Disagree. I think it's categorically not okay. The problem with email is that it can be forwarded and leaves an easily accesible permanent trace. The deficiency is of the medium, not the possible content. A chat message or face-to-face can't be forwarded, or at least not as easily captured and used maliciously. In the finance playground, you never really know who your friends are, or who will remain as such.

 
Going Concern:
TheKing:
Eh, I think a snarky email is ok once in a while.

Disagree. I think it's categorically not okay. The problem with email is that it can be forwarded and leaves an easily accesible permanent trace. The deficiency is of the medium, not the possible content. A chat message or face-to-face can't be forwarded, or at least not as easily captured and used maliciously. In the finance playground, you never really know who your friends are, or who will remain as such.

I mean, I'm talking about calling your friend a jackass, not encouraging someone to call your MD's wife a whore. Hahaha. Obviously something like that is insane, but a little friendly ribbing between friends is ok.

 
Going Concern:
TheKing:
Eh, I think a snarky email is ok once in a while.

Disagree. I think it's categorically not okay. The problem with email is that it can be forwarded and leaves an easily accesible permanent trace. The deficiency is of the medium, not the possible content. A chat message or face-to-face can't be forwarded, or at least not as easily captured and used maliciously. In the finance playground, you never really know who your friends are, or who will remain as such.

While I also think the email response should be avoided in favor of an IM or face-to-face, if you don't know who your true friends are in the office either: a) you suck at assessing social situations, b) everyone hates you, or c) all of the above.

I would agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.
 
Going Concern:
TheKing:
Eh, I think a snarky email is ok once in a while.

Disagree. I think it's categorically not okay. The problem with email is that it can be forwarded and leaves an easily accesible permanent trace. The deficiency is of the medium, not the possible content. A chat message or face-to-face can't be forwarded, or at least not as easily captured and used maliciously. In the finance playground, you never really know who your friends are, or who will remain as such.

This. All day. This goes for all professional environments, not just banking. Generally speaking, when there is money, potential promotion, or recognition involved, never trust that your peers/colleagues are showing their full hand. On numerous occasions I've been called in to a superior's/supervisor's/manager's office and walked in to the buzz saw commonly known as "some other dickhead's email." Never a good thing. Once you fire off an email you no longer own it. You have no idea (or control over) what the recipient will do with it. Intentions can be innocent or malicious. Side note: this advice does not ever apply to your friends. Your colleagues are not your friends. They are your colleagues. You can be social and genuine amongst colleagues. They are still colleagues. Not friends. It is always acceptable to tell your friends to go fuck themselves with their father's baby dick via email. Never ok to tell your colleagues that you wish the Associate/VP/MD/Jesus would go fuck themselves with their father's baby dick via email. Verbally over drinks on the other hand is ok... as long as you're drinking Uncle Eddie's rum and not something out of a champagne flute...

 

The threat of the reply all being forwarded to even more people is very real. I worked at a F500 for a brief stint and saw it firsthand. A guy in one of our European offices originally sent an email to his group saying he'd be out for 2 weeks vacationing at some exotic European place. One of his coworkers shot an email back about his own (multiple) sexual escapades in the same place, but hit reply all by accident. The entire team got it.

Taking it to the next level, a third member of the team thought it'd be funny to send the reply-all gaffe over to a couple buddies on the US side as a joke. This guy accidentally included a big distribution list in that email and naturally it spread like wildfire from there. Only took a day or two for it to get around the world.

 

wow, someone in this thread really doesn't like others' point of views.....

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
<span class=keyword_link><a href=/resources/skills/finance/going-concern>Going Concern</a></span>:
BTbanker:
We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values, and more importantly, we have to promote general social concern.

To be honest bro, I'm not sure you fully acknowledge that Mr. Bateman is a caricature.

as seen on TV...
 

Not nearly as bad as some of what has been mentioned, but when I was SAing I hit reply all on an email to about 15 MDs and PMs and I didn't even finish typing my reply. I don't know what happened, but my thoughts wandered and I didn't finish whatever "value add" thought I had. Wasn't punished, but got a ton of shit.

Remember, once you're inside you're on your own. Oh, you mean I can't count on you? No. Good!
 

Hmm, I've never had this issue, but I think I do something worse.

Sometimes if I'm writing an email and I'm overworked or just hit a mental road block I'll start inserting obscenities for no reason.

And example would be.. "As the most recent organizational chart indicates, after the reorganization the company will fuck itself with a broom."

And the worst part is that I'm literally an Alt+F+E from sending this to my management team. I don't know why I even do it, it's literally the dumbest thing in the world and could end my fledgling career. Maybe I have a death wish. I don't fuckin know.

Anyone else do that?

Nothing short of everything will really do.
 

2 secretaries from different divisions were fighting over some work stuff through email and one of them decided to cc the WHOLE company in one of her replies. Shit was nasty.

 
Best Response

During my very early days in the city I worked for a large AM business. By coincidence I knew the CEO's PA through a non work acquitance and was good friends with her (she was only 24yrs old as the CEO also had a Senior Executive Assistant).

On a Friday afternoon not long after I started (also about two weeks after Lehman went bye bye) she sent a company wide email with some rubbish message from the CEO to the whole company about what a great position we were in financially, but that due to market conditions there were going to be redundancies across the firm....I'm sure everyone who has been working for a while will have received one of these type emails. Anyway, on that particular friday it was our mutual friend's birthday in a pub not too far from our central london offices, so I shot her a very quick reply saying something along the lines of,

''AHH scary email!! Are you coming for a few drinks at 'The Waterpoet' later? x''

I hit reply and wondered off to a meeting elsewhere in the building. An hour later I return to my desk, sit down at the computer and see around 220 unread 'out of office emails'...I realised what I had done, looked up from my desk and saw the entire floor laughing at me. Even the head of my department (who I had never spoken to) dropped by my desk to ask if he could join me on my 'date' with the CEO's PA.

 

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