How bad is IBD Associate Life at a BB?
Just curious because it seems like you can dump most of the real work to analysts (assuming you have competent analysts). Given the comp (base salary is literally as much or more than analyst all-in) seems like a pretty good gig. Does is vary by A2A vs. post-MBA due to differences in skills / competencies / group respect?
I think this is based on a combination of things such as deal flow/pitches worked on by your group, group culture, how efficient you are at performing tasks.
If you are an A2A pretty good, as you know your shit, you know how to he efficient, and you have a good rep with analysts and thus can really run a deal team effectively with your VP.
If you are an MBA asso it sucks, your analysts know that you are clueless so they don’t want work with you and you’re learning on the job.
This is pretty accurate. In my experience senior members of the team (VP and above) would rather work with a good 2nd year analyst vs. an MBA Associate. The first 1-2 years they are pretty clueless.
In terms of the OP's post, yes you can dump everything onto the analysts and some (bad) associates do that. However you're ultimately responsible for everything and have to take ownership of whatever work is done by the analyst. The good associates I've worked with when I was an analyst worked slightly less hours than the analyst but were more directly accountable for the work product.
i've found that more of the post-MBA associates are duds as compared to the A2A's....
chances are of you're a 28-30 yr old post-mba associate, you're more likely to power trip and not want to work the hours of a 21-22 yr old analyst even though you're still incompetent...
First 6 months after mba sucked. Then it got better. Second year is super chil (my bank has bad deal flow and I love it). Some people take this job way too serious.
Username checks out.
In my experience from a BB, some associates work just as many / more hours than analysts. Sure they spend less time grinding in the model and PPT but they review stuff meticulously and often work on pages that need more “thought”. The best ones spend a lot of time reading research. The best ones also have a ton of active accounts so they are swamped. The bad associates work way less since they don’t get any meaningful work, so that’s probably a decent trade off if you don’t want to stay long term.
Agree that MBA associates generally work more in the first year to prove themselves and get up to speed.
What do you mean that they have a ton of active accounts? Like projects?
Account = client , which yes often leads to projects
I was a former analyst in a group that has a rep on here as being pretty sweaty. I went back to banking post-bschool. Prior to starting, much of my thinking was similar to the comments above. I thought I would breeze through the associate years. But I was really wrong.
I worked just as many hours, if not more, as an associate than I did as an analyst. The reason is that, if you are good, people will know and you will get staffed up to your max bandwidth and then some. The projects that you get will be more complex, more time sensitive, more leanly staffed vs. the training-wheel projects that the "normal" MBA associate sitting next to you will get. In fact, while he is learning the ropes, you are basically working on all of the projects that he should have been staffed on but couldn't get to because he was trying to figure out how accretion dilution works. In the end, the amount of work that needs to get done is fixed. It's a zero sum game. If someone is doing less, you are doing more.
did u enjoy doing more work since youre better than the other dudes or would u hv prefered doing less work?
That is actually a really really hard question to anwer!
Sometimes I've found it's fun to say you're SO BUSY. But in reality, you're just screwin yourself so hard compared to the analyst leaving at 9pm every day and still being a bove aveatge bucket!
How was it getting your MBA and then going back into banking? Is that something you recommend? I am going into banking this summer and would like to get my MBA and go back into banking
My firm continues to maintain that almost no one who did banking pre-MBA goes back into banking. This is true!
If you don’t mind me asking, why did you get an MBA just to go back into banking?
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