Ok I work in IT and on the desk generating reports and sucking and processing data - I ve done this at a number of banks and without fail (even at GS) the people on the desk are on average and to a large extent total jerks!! They will claim stuff is crucial when its not - Send emails asking for explanations of why reports are not on time and not bother reading responses and generally not answer any questions you might have instead expecting you find out for yourself Is this normal in all IB’s??
I’ve also been in IT. I guess these guys see it as crucial even if you don’t, it might be differences in priority or that one of you (or both) don’t have the full picture. Some of these people might get, I don’t know, 300 e-mails a day… so that’s probably the simple explanation to why they might fail to read your response. You might want to check out http://www.cnvc.org/ - the techniques you learn there will help (read on on that site and you’ll see why this is so).
Jerks like money and they don’t care who they have to crawl over and stab to get to it. So, given that the field pays well, it attracts jerks. Those of us who aren’t jerks have to decide whether to deal with them or leave for quieter stuff. They’re really too many jerks to manage in any other way than to grow a thick skin and develop the “jerk radar” so that you can sniff them out and avoid them from afar as much as possible. The silver lining is that not all of us are jerks; just many.
One of the best way to deal with jerks is to become one…thus, increasing number of jerks.
Are you a good/average/bad IT person?
I feel like there are many jerks in finance simply because there’s a false sense of entitlement that front office people often hold against middle and back office folks. It’s unfair and really quite self-serving, but I’m not surprised because I’ve seen enough people out there acting like big swinging d!cks even if they’re not. Another possible reason for people seeming impatient or having a ridiculous sense of urgency is because their boss has gotten on their tails about something. Normally, if people aren’t that stressed out or they’re just chilling, they don’t go out of their way to be jerks to people. On the other hand, if they come across as jerks, chances are it’s because they’re feeling pressure from someone above them. With that said, the other side of the coin is that in my experience, especially at larger firms, I find that IT is often too slow and not very responsive. Not sure how quickly you work, in my experience, but I’ve been pretty disappointed with just how slow things get done sometimes.
In my world IT has always done a pretty good job. But the time perspective is different. If you are to reinstall some technical equipment or some new software it will simply take some time, more time than is generally available as seen from the front office side.
Agreed w/numi about the sense of entitlement. But from the people I meet on the buyside they’re all pretty hardworking and nerdy who generally enough learning and talking about the market. I can imagine a lot of aholes on the sellside thou.
It’s the IT guys that are the jerks where I work. Listen, I know I probably screwed something up and I’m sure it’s an easy fix but I don’t freaking care to hear what I did and how big of an idiot I must be and how it’s going to be fixed.
BiPolarBoyBoston Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Agreed w/numi about the sense of entitlement. But > from the people I meet on the buyside they’re all > pretty hardworking and nerdy who generally enough > learning and talking about the market. I can > imagine a lot of aholes on the sellside thou. This is my experience as well. SS tends to attract the salesman type personality. Very loud, brash and often arrogant/cocky. BS in my experience is more academic/nerdy and you are less likely to find aholes mouthing off to IT. That’s a very large generalisation of course and based on personal experience.
“Send emails asking for explanations of why reports are not on time” That’s reasonable. Deadlines are set for a reason. Most finance jobs are high-stress environments. “They will claim stuff is crucial when its not” I think that’s a matter of opinion. It might be extremely important to them. Also, the order of work tends to get done based on what is deemed most important (which is logical). It is likely that they just don’t want their stuff to get lost at the bottom of a large pile. “not bother reading responses and generally not answer any questions you might have instead expecting you find out for yourself” I’m sure this can be frustrating. However, it’s equally frustrating to get a large list of questions when you feel like most of it should be self-explanatory. At the end of the day, you either need to learn how to deal with it or change careers. As you are here, I’m assuming you chose the latter. In the meantime, I guess you’ll just have to learn how to deal with it. I’m not in IB, but if I were, I’d probably be a bigger D!ck than I am now.
Hmm… lots of the stuff that people have said about a sense of entitlement or high stress in IB environments is true. However, for the most part, bankers are normal people without severe personality flaws. It’s normal to deal with some @ssholes in finance, but if *everyone* you deal with treats you poorly, you have to think that maybe the problem might be internal.
I suspect keyloggers being installed here (‘target IB’), but I do promise to contribute to this thread in my capacity later-on, giving some perspective from the IT side of things.
There are plenty of jerks in every profession. I did 18 years in public accounting and worked with every type of profession. Other CPAs - gobs of jerks. Attorneys - mostly jack o’s. And the worst were doctors. Yeah yeah doc, if you want to be called “Dr” then lets stick with the formality and you can call me “Mr.” Most people want to think they are smarter than you and that their time is more valuable. Those are two main ingredients for being a major jerk.
Because many of them got beat up in high school and now they are taking out on you.
Most of the jerks I encounter are Jamaican.
Costanza: “Well the jerk store called…”
Personally, if you’re not a profit center, then do your f’ing job and provide the profit center the work they need, regardless of whether *you* think it is important or not.
^^^That’s what I keep telling my CFO. I mean, he’s just overhead eating up my group’s fees.
spierce Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Personally, if you’re not a profit center, then do > your f’ing job and provide the profit center the > work they need, regardless of whether *you* think > it is important or not. Most interesting post in a while. Wow. My condolences to the poster’s colleagues. Although I am sure he wouldn’t consider them as such.