What's the closest you have come to reaching your breaking point, where you considered changing jobs/careers? Was it the result of a particular moment or built-up exhaustion/frustration?
In other words, what's the worst experience you've ever had on the job?
How did you move through/rebound from this experience? Did you change jobs, or just bite the bullet?
| +162 | The "Not So Obvious" things that get you a return offer? | 19 | 34m | |
| +90 | Is my life over after not getting GS? | 20 | 1h | |
| +61 | Best IB group on the Street | 26 | 5m | |
| +52 | BIG FOUR ARE PARADISE | 13 | 13h | |
| +46 | Thoughts and tips on how to speak like an investment banker. | 24 | 1h | |
| +41 | Tell me one good reason why Jefferies isn’t going to be a top bank in the next 5 years | 22 | 1h | |
| +36 | UBS Outlook | 28 | 22h | |
| +35 | Georgetown Placement for 2024 and 2025 | 21 | 6d | |
| +31 | Highest Paid Bankers in Toronto? | 50 | 1d | |
| +30 | How to deal with egotistical team? | 6 | 2d |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
I considered leaving this site when they banned my first 3 accounts lmao
A rare gem from you. +1
Why’s your name and picture Ray Dalio but you work in RE?
Ray Dalio works in hf but ROY Dalio works in RE
+1 banana
Joe Montannnyaaa was a quarterback, idiot
I said Joe Mantegna.
What almost made me quit? Pulled 100+ hour weeks for 5 months straight on a deal - those hours were real working hours, I.e. no waiting around etc. mainly due to poor internal management, MD being clueless and causing a lot of redundant work (was insistent on various things and even after client set him straight on multiple occasions he blamed his subordinates). Deal gets put in cold storage in the end.
Waitta minute, come to think of it, I Actually did quit...
Which bank was this?
When I was a summer intern at a NYC boutique and the analyst decided to pull a prank on me and made me stay past 3 am for work that he was "just kidding about".
I would've strangled him right then and there.
Would you punch him in the face while he’s on the treadmill? Asking for a friend.
Jokes on him-
He could have asked you to do actual work that he needed done, and then just lied to you that it was fake work so you’d be pissed.
3 months into my analyst sting - pulling consistent 40 hour weekends.
**note: there's 48 hours in a weekend.
echo the above - unnecessary work and calls.
![https://66.media.tumblr.com/f4bbf334202d8c504d5a3fbf187b221c/tumblr_pds…]
[https://66.media.tumblr.com/f4bbf334202d8c504d5a3fbf187b221c/tumblr_pds… https://66.media.tumblr.com/f4bbf334202d8c504d5a3fbf187b221c/tumblr_pds…
Initially read this as 40 hour weeks ..
Had a brutal Director that would pull me into his office 3-4 times a week for ~30 min to yell at me and tell me how terrible my work was (intern could do better job, threaten to bring up in review and influence bonus). Didn't matter if I tucked my tail, pushed back, created great or terrible work - his response was always the same. I just bit my tongue and waited out the horrible storm until bonus season - ended up transferring to much better team internally, and that a**hole Director got let go. Learned from him how to NOT treat subordinates.
i agree that's horrible... but that shouldn't be a lesson he taught you
by that i mean it should be common fucking sense not to treat subordinates that way
Regional LevFin at a BB, quit after 18 months of not getting in front of a client. Dealt mostly with smaller MM companies, where the commercial banking team always insisted on having an army of bankers at every meeting.
We had a hot girl in my analyst class and the MDs always took her to meetings, even when she wasn’t staffed on that particular deal - she was the selling point/eye candy for these guys. I get it, I just wasn’t happy about it. I got top bucket my first year and made it very clear to my staffer and resource manager I wanted to go to a client meeting. 18 months rolled around, I put in my two weeks’ notice and left
That's absolute ass. Sorry to hear that dude.
Damn 18 months without client exposure would drive anyone mad. Hopefully you leveraged the brand / role well though - where did you end up mate?
Deleted.
Why is it a bad thing?
Worked through a period of several years where my scope of activities was far outside the norm for the role on a lean platform (e.g. doing the job of 3 different groups at a larger shop) without recognition in title / compensation in spite of advocating for myself with the appropriate decision makers (their hands were tied). Was ready to move on when the platform came through unexpectedly.
Was offered a 3% raise. I threatened to leave and got a 23% raise and promotion instead. Sometimes you have to speak up. Then again, I am not in IB anymore so I wasn't just seen as totally expendable.
Promoted to senior Analyst? I find it hard to believe they found 20% out of nowhere
I came from banking with 3 years of experience. I was told at the start I would be promoted to Associate in a year. My boss seemed to forget about that and wanted to make it two years, so I had a conversation with him to remind him of that discussion. In a sense I was just getting what was originally promised. I also pointed out that I turned down an unsolicited Associate offer to return to IB for significantly more money. I am still making slightly less all-in than I did as a 3rd year IB analyst.
The fact that my title was "analyst" to begin with kind of irked me, but the job is the same before and after, reporting to our regional CIO.
Had a boss say ”I know 50% of the first-year analysts will quit within their first year, so I'm preparing for that”.
Just tired of being tired
two of my co workers were fired for spending $800 each at a strip club. I knew right then - i didn't want to work at a firm that called into question a $800 tab. I left months later
lol
2 days in a row round-trip 7am to 11pm flights while driving around in a car each day looking at properties while being forced to go to shitty restaurants for meals. My boss is a strange individual who refuses to stay in hotels while flying round trip across the country in a single day and only wants to eat awful food like Arby's.
Similar to other stories here, had a terrible MD that would criticize everything that I did and made pitch preparation meetings / CIM review / ANY work review brutal. He would say things like "Show me what you have and you'll either live or die based on your analysi (um wut)", then proceed to shit on my work. Almost never received any positive feedback and he generally was unfriendly to junior staff. Personally, from working in banking for a close to a decade and at different firms, in hindsight I noticed that he was a very hands-off MD that would bring in a deal and expect the junior staff to just run with it. The thing about his practice too was that he had a knack for pitching for ANY company (i.e. large, small, consumer, healthcare, golden goose, straight up dogshit, which most of the time ended up being dogshit), so as an analyst you really felt that you weren't gaining any expertise and most processes felt very dysfunctional. I'd say almost a majority of the deals didn't make it to close, which just made the whole experience of working there terrible.
Ended up leaving after just a few months and lateraling to a much better bank. My takeaway from the experience is that if things feel dysfunctional and the people around you seem almost terrified of their superiors, leave ASAP.
Was stuck doing due diligence on a fertilizer company in Phoenix during the summer. At that point I was seriously rethinking what awful sequence of events led to be being in that particular situation.
Sounds like you were some pretty hot shit....
Worked at a fund where the CEO believed, as a trader, he could best "prepare" you by putting you under as much stress and pressure as possible, whether or not it was strictly necessary: his rationale was that if you could survive him, you could survive the market.
Anyway, I'm on desk one day and we're into the post-lunch lull. I'm tidying the book's risk - the guy hated if you weren't always doing something to allegedly improve or learn - when all of a sudden he turns and screams at me: "WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW!? ARE YOU SURE? GO ON, THEN - F*CKING DO IT! DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW, DO IT NOWWW!"
He'd pulled this kind of trick before, so it was nothing new, however by this point my patience with him and how he ran his company was paper thin. I more or less ignored him, finished the task at hand, and then sat there stewing for the rest of the day, an absolutely apoplectic rage building in my gut. I generally like to think of myself as a pretty measured guy, however this was by far and away the angriest I've ever been in my entire life - it was raw and potent, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I was so immediately pssed off as soon as he started trying this sht that day that something flipped in me - I came dangerously close to standing up, stomping over to him, and lamping him as hard as I fcking could right across his dumb fcking face. In fact, I told him as much after work that day: once we'd finished on desk, I asked for quiet word and we went into a meeting room. I told him that while I understood what he was trying to do, I vehemently disagreed with his rationale - what's more, if he ever spoke to me like that again, I would indeed straight-up punch the c*nt.
He kind of laughed it off, however realised he'd pushed me too close to the edge - he never tried that sh*t again with me. That said, by this point I'd lost any semblance of respect I had for the guy and knew I wanted to go elsewhere. I quit a few months later.
back stabbing bullpen of cut throat analysts and supervisors that couldn't delegate nor manage their workforce.
Analysts back stabbing other analysts sounds like one of the most miserable parts of IB culture. Very grateful I didn't experience that.
Enim omnis non pariatur ut distinctio consequuntur. Deserunt illo blanditiis corporis excepturi nulla provident. Iusto ut consequatur accusantium labore dolor id nisi. Quos nulla tenetur laborum quam et hic voluptas.
Quaerat eum vel amet. Qui alias et libero aut sed. Eum aut ducimus qui. Vero voluptatem ratione maiores laboriosam quaerat enim. Officia voluptatum non animi aliquam omnis aut. Quia consequatur et odio nisi. Et aut expedita dolor. Aut sunt soluta sit nisi reprehenderit amet.
Repellendus ut debitis tempore tempore qui. Et nobis debitis ipsa recusandae. Velit sint laboriosam ut voluptatem. Voluptatem quia velit quia et reprehenderit dolorem cum. Sed accusantium mollitia et magni accusantium officiis soluta. Quam unde iusto sunt occaecati temporibus ipsa dolorem. Vel alias qui qui expedita sunt doloremque.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Provident aut non non quia voluptas perferendis. Eveniet est quo exercitationem velit. Vel aperiam inventore qui consequuntur aut perspiciatis eum. Est laborum excepturi ut delectus minima. Explicabo et facilis quasi excepturi.
Error magni sit sint vel. Delectus est dolorem labore sed laborum occaecati. Delectus omnis voluptatem odio at. Itaque deserunt facere quo rerum officia sed.
Nisi recusandae ratione occaecati doloremque quaerat iste impedit. Excepturi sunt in molestiae deleniti voluptatibus provident. Sed molestiae in dolorum omnis sit. Error animi quo corrupti quod voluptas.