I am very fresh in my career, but I’m at a decent place and my senior colleagues have really taken me under their wing. I feel really lucky to have this position, and I’m excited to learn more. However, I have a few questions that have been bugging me these days:
Attitude- I’ve been sitting in on calls, and I get that we’re clients, I get that. But these analysts that we’re calling are much older, and have far more experience. My colleagues are older than I am, but don’t have the experience that the ss guys that we were calling have. If you’re in a client-facing position, do you just swallow what abuse you get, and roll with it?
And related:
Brokers- I have a few personal contacts (personal as in I made these connections outside of my role at this job) who’ve told me that now I am a client and I can rely on them for anything. Really? What can a green do for you? It’s my first year at a ‘real’ job.
For personal beliefs, I can’t help but get caught up on age, experience, etc. when talking to anyone. I get all the dirty work of calling up ops folks and external contractors to get x, y, z and get it yesterday, and as these people are all older and more experienced, I can’t exactly put on that attitude… but if my senior colleague is asking me to do it, and get it done yesterday, what choice do I have?
What’s your advice for balancing attitude with respect?
Experience is something to respect, but age? Who cares? Anyway, your the client, their job is to provide a service to you. If its not working for you, they’re failing. So don’t be afraid to let them know. I’m not in asset management per say, but I’m the client of investment bankers and your general bank sales folk, most of which are much older than I. At first I was somewhat deferent to their experience, but now, no way. They are there to make my firm money and I will use them anyway I can to do so. And they’re happy to be used as such because it means they can tell their boss they’re developing relationships and selling me product. The more they help, the more fees they earn. You’ll get used to it. Its way better being the client. Note: this isn’t a ticket to be rude or disrespectful. Those folks generally have a short life in the business. If your an ass, the knives will come out for you the first second you slip up. Treat everyone with respect. From the CEO, to the SS guy helping you, to the janitor. The attitude need not ve disrespectful. Your the client, not a dictator. Some people struggle with finding that balance. Always be forgiving. I’ve had people call in favours and I’ve called in favours myself in a pinch. The respectful folks will always have people willing to help. The assholes will be left for dead.
Define abuse. You have to realize that the industry operates at about an 8 on the 10 scale of abuse, whereas most of the rest of society starts to get really offended at about a 5.
They will do anything for you as long as your firm continues to pay them and you don’t ask too much. So by anything, they really mean something(s). Maybe.
That said, if you pay, they will do just about anything. There is a buyside firm I’ve worked with that used to pay $100,000,000 a year to one of their brokers back in the day for several years in a row. That is not a typo. If you want to see red carpet treatment, that’s what it looks like. Not quite to the level of getting blowies under the table throughout the day, but it’s close.
Age is not relevant in a meritocratic environment.
Give respect, cautiously, until someone indicates they no longer deserve it, and then ruthlessly exercise your rights to self interest, within the scope of the law.
This is also good advice. My point was more that you need to know where the line is. You should always maintain the nuclear strike as a weapon in your arsenal, but you need to use it very sparingly. There are lots of people in this industry who will walk over you in a second if you give them even a millimeter of breathing room. Reputation matters though, and this is a very, very small industry so don’t burn any bridges unless absolutely necessary to avoid being taken advantage of.
Sometimes it is useful to give people small but unimportant opportunities to take advantage of you, and note who takes them. These are the people who you should withhold trust from later on.
It’s not a foolproof strategy, but it can be useful from time to time.
Can you clarify what you mean in the first situation? So you are working in a BS shop talking to SS analysts and your more senior colleagues are treating the SS analysts in a manner you find disrespectful, is that it? Any example you could share of the type of comments they make? I’ve been on both sides of that table and genuinely rude or abusive comments would be very rare in my experiece. People tend to be much more polite talking to people in other firms than when speaking with colleagues.
Second point - I’d assume the broker means that if you have a query about something, to feel comfortable emailing or calling them about it. I don’t think there is anything more to it than that.
On your last point, why would you have a choice to do work assigned to you by a more senior colleague? As a first year hire, your job is to do all the shitty jobs no-one else wants to do. As you get more experienced, you will naturally be given greater responsibilities and hence more interesting work. If you feel like someone is loading you with work unfairly then maybe bring it up with your immediate line manager. If it is interfering with your day job they may step in to help you out.
All firms use SS research in different ways and to different degrees but if you’re an equity investor on the buyside ultimately what you’re trying to do is outsmart SS analysts by figuring out the angle that the SS consensus is not getting. That’s a simplistic take on it but BS and SS analysts are always slightly at odds because their aims are different. And yes, you’re the client in the scenario so the relationship functions on your terms and you’ll get more latitude to be a dick.
Just wait until you’re start getting client exposure on the other side when you’re sitting in meetings with pension funds, consultants, advisors etc and you’ll get used to taking everything on the chin and rolling with it. No matter where you are in the chain the key is to be just enough of a dick that people don’t think you’re a pushover and not enough of a dick for everyone to hate you because as others have said, it catches up on you.
On the point about struggling with calling up ops people and contractors, I really struggled with this kind of shit early in my career as I’m naturally quite laid back and struggled with demanding things when I didn’t understand why it was so urgent or why it hadn’t been requested before now where possible. The best thing to do is just let go of all that kind of reasoning and just take on the responsibility for needing it, if a senior guy in the team wants it, you want it. Resist the tempation to name drop and say that the head of desk or whoever else needs it as this looks bad to everyone and the seniors in the team will think you are unwilling to take on responsibility.
You’ll be surprised by how often just phoning up with a firm and confident tone gets things done. Everyone is different but if you phone up being all reasonable and saying things like ‘i know this is a lot to ask’ or ‘i’m really sorry about the deadline’ then some people will seize on this and exploit it. Don’t present people with the easy way out, make them be the ones to push back and be ready with a response if they do. Some people will kick up a fuss and have a bit of a heated discussion with you but end up doing it anyway. That’s part of their own game to make sure you and the desk don’t always think you can click your fingers and get everything.
The measure of success for an ops manager is if they manage to never ever take on additional duties in the team and stay away from anything ad hoc or manual so everyone in that kind of role is an expert at playing the straight bat. One of the most annoying things about ops people is that they often need to be persuaded into doing something that is clearly their job and they’re so far removed from the firm’s clients or from revenue generating areas that they miss the bigger picture.
Every single front office person since the beginning of mankind has hated dealing with ops teams and that’s why the juniors on the desk get those tasks. The silver lining is that you’ll soon be able to hand over to the next person in the door and skills you learn will stand you in good stead throughout your career.
*I don’t hate all ops people and no ops people were harmed in the making of this post.
I’m not an advocate of going out of your way to be a jerk to people, but sometimes the sell-side really does drag their heels on stuff. As someone that’s been on the buy-side for several years now, I’ll try to offer some perspective.
It’s one thing if the sell-side doesn’t expect anything from me - in that case, I don’t care whether they help me with stuff or not. However, if they’re going to call me up at the end of the quarter and ask for trade commissions, they better be on top of their game and have done something useful for me. I have 20+ sell-side firms trying to get a piece of my attention so if they aren’t on point all the time, either in coming up with useful investment ideas for me or responding to my requests, I just don’t bother with them. They’re basically invisible to me at that point. The sell-side is way too competitive for client-facing individuals to be tardy, especially if they’re looking to get paid by the buy-side.
