SA? More like BB (Banker Bitch) - Help

Welcome to intern life, dude. Did you think they were going to have you do an LBO right when you walked in the door?

Is this considered acceptable intern experience? Doing something like this wouldn't be considered a ding in an interview, right?

Absolutely not. In fact I didn't even think I would be doing much modeling at all anyways, considering I am very young and the firm is fairly small. But I did however believe that the Analyst, as well as the MD, would be willing to teach me and show me this amazing field of business. They are not. As ridiculous as this sounds, I am absolutely neglected by my colleagues. It is not a true "internship" if you know what I mean. My desk is outside of the room where all the analysts, and the MD sit. They come and go without telling me. They don't say much to me at all. Its crazy, but real.

How about you try building 3-statements out and then showing the others and/or working on models in your spare time? If you don't take the initiative as an intern you're not going to learn much, especially at a boutique.

You people need to calm down. My last internship was in marketing and I was making powerpoints "look pretty." It's all about how you spin that shit in your interview. The fact that it's an IB internship alone puts you in a solid spot.

You will be doing bitch work for much longer than I think you realize, this includes your first fulltime position. Get used to it.

Also, you spin it the way you want so you have talking points in interviews. It doesn't matter what you did on the job, as long as you can talk about it and if tested on it, pass that test; it doesn't matter if you did shit at the internship or not.

Last, go ask for more related tasks. Tell them you want to be able to talk about this and this when going into interviews for IB analyst positions. If they hired you in the first place I'm sure they shouldn't have a problem with it.

They do not know your capabilities so they aren't going to waste their time delegating you something that you cannot handle. Go tell them you want to do this and that and go ask the analysts for work, I'm sure they would love the easier load.

Right, good points DaisukiDaYo. I may have to try that out

thankyoucomeagain - Also good points. I understand "spinning" things in interviews is a key skill. In fact, that is essentially how I got this position anyways. I come from a non-target school and was competing against all the local top tier kids and somehow got the position over them. 100% because of my ability to "reasonably bullshit" previous experience. Having said that, when it comes to an SA position on a resume, I feel that BB analysts during an interview will grill me on what exactly I did and such. If I tell them exactly what I do, what is listed above, they will not take me seriously at all. That is just my perception of course, and I imagine the work will change as time goes on. We'll see, but thanks for the input.

I was about to type out an acidic response...but does anyone else think this kid's sense of entitlement is out of this world?

Congrats! This is what most entry level jobs look like! This is what work, in general looks like. If it were fun, they wouldn't have to pay you to do it.

I would not expect much more. At least they are paying you to do this. You can always be open to your MD about it and ask for more meaningful work. But they might have hired you just to do this kind of work.

I remember my first internship on Wall Street was in ER at a small boutique in midtown. My MD told me the most important thing was to make sure that I got everyone's Starbucks order correct.

End.Of.Story.

^^^ You must have missed the memo. Wall Street was relocated to Midtown after September 11th. No street names were changed, officially, but Wall Street now snakes up Ave of the Americas to hit BAC in BryantPark, then Broadway to hit MS and Barclays, then over to Park Ave. for JPM, and then over to Lexington/59th to hit Citi.

Aside from GS and Deutsche, none of the major players are still in Lower Manhattan.

Hmm.. Good to know

I think the question "Is there a second Wall Street in Midtown that I am unaware of?" reads with a different tone than was probably intended.

Guys, we're dealing with a 20 year old intern, not an associate used to sending business emails on a regular basis. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt.

He does sound like a whiner. Then again, there are a lot of whiners on WSO, including me.

Just FYI, I have been working very hard at this job. I complain about it online, to get feedback. That is it. You are being a little banker-esq yourself and making assumptions based on this minuscule amount of information I have provided you with. Just because I banter my own internship does not mean I am willing to work hard (otherwise I would not be here) or that I have not been working diligently thus far. You are the epitome of WSO, how you have to make such a naïve comment when all I am looking for is feedback. By the way, your the one being unproductive, taking time out of your day to summarize my ego on an online forum. At least I posted for a specific reason, Dick.

Ok, I'm now with Duff on this one.

OP seems to be online to vent. He is obviously discovering that IBD, at least, isn't for him.

There's nothing wrong with that fact. I could never survive in IBD. Now that OP has his information, he can act on it and try to get a job in research or trading where the work is a little more interesting the hours are a little better, and the pay isn't quite as good but at least on the same order.

lol good luck with that attitude making it through your internship let alone an analyst gig

I have an attitude when I need to have one. Welcome to New York guys, come on, if any of you are a true local like me you know exactly what I am talking about.

I'm sorry. I'm 20 years old and I'm confused. I'm going to stop posting in this thread for a while

I try to be the good guy and be helpful to the n00bs when I can. I like to put forward a general positive vibe at the office. But if your a n00b with an attitude I will go out of my way to make your life much more unpleasant.

Next time read the job description

DBCooper now you're the one being a douche. The kid was adult enough to say he was sorry and left the thread. Don't tempt a 20 year old to come back and start arguing- unless he's supposed to be the adult here and you, the associate, are supposed to be the kid.

Idea for mods: lock this thread

I call troll post

I can relate to you. Nothing more people can say but just to keep chugging obviously and spin it differently in the interview. People can say this nicely to you or in other tones, its a forum. Its nice to vent though, better here than doing this to your boss.

I like how Illini at least explained stuff out, really appreciate people who go the extra step to explain and not expect the other person to understand everything automatically.

I was in this position before - i had a desk right outside the MD' and VP's offices where they would come out and check if I was doing bitch work. You obviously don't impress them much and probably don't seem very capable. You're 20 years old and an idiot in their minds by default

I started using my head to improve the bitch work process by automating tasks, designing analytic tools, producing valuable commentary and observations, and that got me modeling pretty quick. You need to add value and dig deep into the BS work so you actually learn something. In my case, the gave me a leadership role and I started managing some of the other interns.

This happens at every bank, but you can try to control your own destiny. Keep doing the bitch work, but do it well (accuracy and timeliness). As you continue to do well in this area, people will take notice. Also, make sure you build strong rapport with your peers over drinks, lunch, coffee, around the office, whatever.

When the time comes, speak with your supervisors and kindly ask if you could do some more interesting work. It's not always that the employees want to take advantage of the intern; you sometimes need to just ask for what you want and be vocal about it. But I repeat again - do well with with the bitch work first, otherwise you will never be given the chance to do work that's considered more interesting and complex.

Hey OP, I am in the same position as you. The type of work I am doing and the firm I am at are both pretty similar to yours. Heck, my past internship in boutique PWM was a joke too. Two in a row. Anyway, my plan for this summer is to supplement this "work" with self-learning financial accounting and financial analysis/modeling. Once you know some of the more technical stuff, the analysts might be more willing to let you do some other stuff. I have some materials that can help you out, so feel free to PM me. As a sophomore this is a great internship to spin for a junior SA position. The work sucks but it will get better as you move into the larger firms, so this is just something you have to endure.

Yeah OP, sorry you kinda tripped yourself into a wolves den here ;)

Some sincere advice, I'd just keep in mind that even the grunt work counts in investment banking. Covering names and doing research on potential clients/targets and their buyers is a critical part of client prospecting, and therefore making fees. I don't know if this is the exact context of your work, I don't know if that's been shared yet, but a lot of the important work in banking is the grunt work.

Learning about banking will come w time - just keep listening to the analysts and bosses, something bigger will come up that they'll be able to use your help on. Bankers (all bankers) climb step by step. You'll learn a ton by osmosis. Maybe in a few weeks, if things haven't gotten better, ask the analysts if they can teach you some of the basics of DCF, writing pitches, etc. - you could even suggest a potential company that you want to try modeling out and running the comps, transactions, etc for.

For now you have to keep making sure your work - even on the grunt work - is perfect, otherwise, they won't ever trust you on the more advanced work.

Every M&A deal has heavy lifting to do. The details, the research, ticking diligence boxes, managing data rooms, writing pitches, updating random shit, making buyers lists. It all has to get done, or the deal doesn't get done - MDs might be the car/engine, but analysts are the petro that keeps that engine running. This also means juniors get burnt up pretty quick.

PM me if you want to chat on skype or something, happy to fill you in on pros and cons of being an investment banking analyst (I did it for 3 yrs). I've got roughly a decade on you so I'm a bit crotchety by this point but maybe I can offer a word or two of decent advice :)

OP brought some of this on himself, although asking for advice on WSO is like playing that bowling ball roll game at the amusement park- somehow you have to listen to all of the advice without losing it to benefit from it- which can be a very tricky game.

I think one helpful thing for accepting help/advice on this forum is not to misread users like MarineDrill-Instructor and BuckUpStopWhining when they make their posts. It doesn't read like it, but they really believe they're helping you, because they believe that yelling would have helped them when they were getting started. Just realize that they were trying to help, then put them on ignore, at least for this thread.

So you have to quietly grit your teeth and accept their advice to get help from others with helpful advice without starting a troll snowball, which is what basically happened here. (This one was pretty mild.)

Deal with it. We have all gone through our fair share of menial and BS work in the past. I would believe that all of the menial work has turned us into better analysts.

That's the reality my friend. Look around, is there anyone lower ranking than you on the team? At the end of the day, someone is gonna have to do it. They are not purposely bossing you around to do bitch work. It needs to be done and naturally it falls to the lowest ranking person. Even if you are just buying coffee and picking up dry cleaning, prove you are a reliable person who they can count on. If the firm has a good culture of utlilizing people's potential and your direct supervisor isn't a complete asshole, slowly they will give you more meaningful work. Just rmb, you are an intern, not a VP, not an MD. Even FA and Associates still have to do bitch work when it needs to be done.

also, i find it's always a good idea to sit down with your manager after a week or two of work to clarify your duties, set some goals, and let them know what you want to get out of the internship. Show them you want to learn smth there and are genuinely interested, not just there to add a title on your resume.

*deleted

I did really mundane "bitch work" like that for almost two years. Inputting data, organizing database lists, etc. It was something that was really boring, frustrating, and every source was different so it wasn't possible to just write some code and automate it. I did learn a lot though, and left with very good impressions. It's not mindless - now I'm an encyclopedia when it comes to the industries/markets I covered. I know the major players, their scope, size, etc. off the top of my head, and if I don't I know exactly where to look.

Years later, I'm glad I went through that. No job is too low, and you'd be surprised at how much you can learn out of the low jobs one day.

Be prepared to do Infopacks, downloading company information, updating databases, printing and binding and if you dont screw up you-ll get real work. Even as a FT you still do the work or do you think the printing is there at 5 am?

OP you're a damn intern? You know what i did in my first internship? Sat and watched screens and made phone calls

deal with it..people have to do data entry somehow. They're not going to pay someone money to do stuff when they can get a 19-20 year old kid to do it for them.

stop whining and get experience so you can be the one telling someone to input data in a few years

My first day at my first internship I had to lick envelopes and make sure the letters to clients were addressed properly. I was so stoked because I got put in an 'office' to do it. After a few good lickings I picked up some more useful 'skills'.

Everything is an opportunity, even if it doesn't look like it up front.

*Can you create a macro or program to input company information? If so, do it. If not, learn and then do it. *People are not going to reach out to you - you need to reach out to them, and show initiative, as others have mentioned. Can you do lunch with some of these people? Lunch can turn into mentorship if you play it right. *Keep your ears perked up. Is anyone overloaded with a project? Don't wait for the assignment to come to you. Find them and volunteer to help out with whatever they need. Make yourself known as a team player. *Is there an industry certification you could work on over the summer? (I'm in an actuarial field, so always recommend interns work on exams) *Read the news every. single. day. Know the information and understand how it relates to your job. Context is key. *Keep a running, written log of your accomplishments for future reference, however small they be. As you gain more experience, you can put your small accomplishments into bigger context. *Most importantly, keep your attitude positive. You're going places, and people are giving you opportunities. Don't forget to show them you appreciate it.

Believe me when I say I sympathize, because I used to be you. I spent five years doing grunt work, and actually just joined WSO after lurking for years to get this message out there, because it's important, and I've seen these kinds of posts before. If you want to succeed, you will. But no matter how smart you think you are (and I'm sure you are), you won't succeed unless you pay your dues, and there is no way around that.

So, remember this summer: streamline processes, reach out, use your eyes and ears to find opportunities, get certified, keep up on news, write it down, and be gracious. If you do it right, you'll be busy and engaged.

Good luck!

My first week on the job I had to go through about 200+ audits and pull two line items out of each one and write a brief description of another section of the appendix and put this all into a spreadsheet. This is full time, mind you. I've been here 10 months and that spreadsheet gets used at every weekly meeting and is an important piece of prospecting material for my boss. On the other hand, I have done just as menial of tasks that an "8 year old" could do and they never get seen again, filed away in some folder on the drive which I probably couldn't find if someone asked for them. That's kind of what you signed up for. Anyways, fast forward a few months of doing similar tasks that could easily be (and were later, by me) automated I was asked to model a fairly complex book for a client. It does and will get better but no one is going to trust you to do anything more than bitch work if you show them that even that is too much for you to handle. You are not too good to do anything that adds value to the company.

This is one of the reasons I think there's value in having kids work shit jobs when younger (even if your family has means). I worked some really fucking crappy jobs in high school for very little $/hr. It provided a perspective that still serves me today. Thanks mom and dad.

Sorry about the bitch work, OP. You'll get through it. Just have a good attitude about it. Good luck.

I'll give you a baseball analogy I got from my first internship. You're role as an intern isn't to hit a home run, it's just to get on base. If you have to lean over the plate and get hit by a pitch so that a pinch runner can take your place on first, you did a great job.

OP, I was in your shoes two summers ago and am now in a BB. You should try to do two things at this point: 1) Live up to your name and add value where you can. Have a menial task that takes hours? See if you can learn VBA and do it in a fraction of a time -- things of that nature that you can talk about in an interview next fall and show rather than tell. 2) Learn things that you don't already know. Personally, I studied for the GMAT. You could learn 3-statement modeling, script out your interview questions for next fall, learn about a specific industry by reading research your firm has access to.

Bottom line -- your experience is what you make of it.

Haha

Do the bitch work perfectly every time and once they see you are capable, more meaningful work will come. I'm not about to trust a college sophomore with project work if i'm going to have to rework the whole thing again and potentially get ass welded upstream. Bid your time, do your work, be available, and get into the mind set that no job is too small or too irrelevant. You are still helping them out. At the end of the day, they don't really owe you anything.

You know what kind of work really sucks? Manual labor. You are at least in an air conditioned building.

You really come across as an entitled little dude. You're going to put up with shit work for a long time, no matter what you end up doing. What exactly were you expecting?

Welcome to the real world.