Can you survive on Wall Street by being mediocre?

I believe it'd be highly dependent on what your sample for determining "average" is. The average American would never even make it into wall street without an incredible amount of luck/connections. The kid considered "average" for their class at a target school is a different story

You’d have to define “wall steeet”. So many of you on WSO forget that banks are much more BO than FO. You know how many people a B.B. employs??? Not everyone is a genius.

actually, Wall Street thrives on mediocrity. they want paper pushes, the "yes sir" bitches to stay up until midnight doing the MD's dirty work.

too ambitious? no one will hire you (for fear you'll take your superior's position).

Tweaking PowerPoint and updating template models isn’t high level stuff. Most of what happens in a bank is very basic and repetitive. Look at the deals that get done (talking about advisory here) and it’s a small group of top bankers that seem to be involved every time (coverage specific). Of the hundreds of thousands of people at any bank, there are a very small number of people actually rainmaking.

To answer your question directly, one can flourish being mediocre as long as they fall into line and make sure the talented are supported in revenue generation.

I will touch on two points that some posters have already alluded to:

1) Mediocre compared to who and what? I would say my background, prestige of my schooling, industry expertise, etc. are all very mediocre compared to the professionals in my current group but I am also the most junior person on my team so that is expected. My stats are very mediocre compared to most people that get a role like mine but luckily, my group took a leap of faith hiring me and believed that my resume did not tell the full story and that there are aspects of my skill set that are not mediocre at all (still have a long way to go to catch anyone in my group though).

2) As I mentioned in pont 1, some aspects of your skill set / background might be mediocre but you can't be mediocre overall. For example, you could possibly be a mediocre modeler compared to other members of your analyst class / group but if you grind, produce error free work, are able to see the big picture and are good at small talk / people like to work with you then you will be more than fine. This is just one example how you can overcome one mediocre skill. Plus, if you work hard enough I believe you can develop any skill to be at least above average... to me mediocre = lazy a lot of the time.

in every situation of life, there is a bell curve. poor, avg, good - everyone has a place.

Bottom bucket analyst here. It's do-able but if you have self-awareness it does wear on you mentally to the point that you might quit before actually being told to leave.

I thought that was the only way to survive

I think the answer is "it depends on the bank"?

Well, in my experience there are brilliant and stupid people in plenty of occupations, including mine. I think an "Average Joe" with mediocre intelligence could survive (e.g. not get fired/demoted) with a good enough work ethic. Thriving is another story.

Having dealt with a bunch of sell side monkeys of different levels (from analysts to MDs), stay assured there are tons of mediocre people on wall street (most of them).

However, a mediocre IB analyst/associate is probably well above a mediocre overall labor force joe.

Finance isn’t dominated by geniuses. Avg people work for other people, risking other people’s money, pretending their job is rocket science when it’s really formatting a pitch book and building out Syndtrak.

You cannot survive this business being below average. But average is all you need.

What is your definition of average? If a firm has nothing but high performers in it's staff, high performers would then be the average! :) Very subjective.