Saw the post on liquidity. 10% of the bank with a focus on juniors? Anyone have any insight into other banks? I know they all will follow suit/make changes throughout the year.
Hypothetical: Say you could guarantee upper-middle bucket every time you got reviewed/compd. No way you would be on chopping block, no? Assuming all else is kosher.
| +273 | Intern has 2+ hours of coffee chats daily - WTF? | 46 | 38m | |
| +260 | What happened to west coast talent? | 103 | 14m | |
| +169 | NYU Stern Clubs 101 | 37 | 47m | |
| +56 | Seeking Advice for Incoming Freshman | 21 | 2d | |
| +54 | CVP partners making 8 figures??? | 37 | 15h | |
| +45 | IB compensation Pulse check | 19 | 1d | |
| +34 | Healthcare to Healthcare Investment Banking | 27 | 2d | |
| +31 | How is working 50/60 hours a week considered relaxed? | 6 | 12h | |
| +28 | May 2025 Grads Full-Time Recruiting | 45 | 14h | |
| +23 | Leaving early as an intern | 12 | 3d |
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.
More curious about the “random” factor. We all know DSol is not the most competent at his job, but it would be one of the stupidest moves ever by a CEO to allow for random layoffs.
Performance at the junior level can be subjective. Juniors don’t bring in revenue. It’s difficult to rank who has the best financial analysis or ppt skills out of hundreds of analysts or rank modeling and management skills out of hundreds of associates and vps
I don't agree with this. I can tell you from first-hand experience that there is a significant quality/performance difference in juniors and if I was told to reduce headcount it would not be difficult at all to pick the dead weight to trim.
What I am unsure of is how they make decisions between the levels. Like do we get rid of the 2 lateral VPs that everybody on the floor hates to work with? Or the recently promoted MD that's struggling to get clients to even take meetings? Or do we get rid of like 10 analysts and associates that we know are leaving to the buy side in 6 months anyway? Or all of the above?
Guess we'll find out next week.
I think it's easy to rank the extremes. Some junior analysts are clearly shit, and some are clearly rockstars. The middle 80% are much, much harder to sort out.
Shouldn't be that difficult to cut the bottom 5-10% or so of performers. Might be a lot harder to identify the bottom 20%.
From friends who have been analysts at GS, most groups tended to be 50% really good analysts and 50% that were largely nepotism hires and were average at best yet often ended up getting better bonuses than the good ones actually doing the work. I'm sure it varies some by group and class.
Why bother? He said the good ones aren’t getting high bonuses.
Not close. 2008 was a total meltdown of the financial sector, where banks quite literally weren’t sure if they were going to go under (GS included)
This is more of a roster adjustment after massively overhiring for a deal boom that is long gone.
Like not remotely close. I understand it's hard for younger people to contextualize what a downturn looks like because we've frankly been in a 15 year bull market (with a few speedbumps), but 2008 was like EXISTENTIAL bad. By that I mean people weren't sure whether we'd have a functioning financial system / economy the week leading up to TARP being pushed through. Without question, we were looking at a great depression type scenario if the central bank / government didn't act so decisively.
Cuts typically start with under performing back-office and support staff who aren't under the main segments of the bank. It is typically easier to see who is struggling in those departments.
Del
What tangible skills do you offer as a prospect? I find it hilarious how junior bankers (or in your case, wannabe bankers) have a holier-than-thou attitude when most of your working hours are spent doing grade 9 math, mucking around in excel and aligning logos. Don't let the money get to your head - a high school student with a few months training can do your job and you're as replaceable as anyone.
It's unusual to see layoffs focused on juniors. But I'm not that surprised either, because I've heard a lot of anecdotes over the last year or so to the following effect: "I've never seen analysts this bad, we had to hire anyone with a pulse and some of these kids aren't up to par."
I don't like to talk about people that way, but I've been hearing it a lot and it's also exactly what one would expect after 1-2 years of over-hiring. I'm sure there's been some over-hiring at the mid-levels too, but it's harder to fake a VP interview. At the analyst hiring level, the only currency is good grades from a good school, so banks can step up their analyst hiring very easily. And it appears they did. No surprise then, that they now have some people that perform below their usual standard.
I don't like characterizing generations of people as one way or the other, but yes, the hiring bar was significantly lower during the free for all of 2021 in IB. I've never seen so much pushback about returning to the office or even dressing appropriately for work - understandable because analysts could've just left whenever they wanted to other banks or even other industries. It's also interesting that people are outraged / surprised by GS; putting aside the brand power and credentials in the space (both of which are very up there), GS has NEVER cared about loyalty and always puts itself first before clients and definitely before employees. If you're going to work with GS, you have to go in eyes wide open; they typically pay under street, they work you very hard, and they're the first to make deep cuts on a whim. You will work with a lot of talented people, get great exit opps, and work on top deals. If you're going to dance with the devil, don't be surprised when you get burned.
Completely agree. Not surprising coming from a place where 1MDB, Libya Investment Authority derivatives trade, various HR cover ups of employee mistreatment, and many other things happened.
It's almost funny because it seems to be universal, across all firms and countries. It's like a global gen-z analyst union.
Unfortunately you can't really do much about it if they all have the same attitude. It's worth considering that banking and PE is just not what it used to be, not attracting the same talent.
I'm not Gen-Z and not an analyst but am about done with MDs screaming about "back in the days, I -" yeah salaries barely moved from 2008 until last year, wanna do some math? Or have you forgotten about the time value of money?
Or MDs running sweatshops and not promoting until they're about to lose someone (resigning somehow makes you worthy for promotion).
Or allowing toxic middle guys (VPs / SVPs / EDs) to hang around. Here's a clue... if someone has to keep blaming at least half the teams / juniors that he's working with... it ain't them, it's him. But he's not getting fired, so anyone with a brain but no sponsor in IB / PE is going to leave the industry.
I'm not paid enough per hour to take shit from the senior level and also deal with juniors like that.
Knew people in firmwide strategy / IR and in addition to IBD/GM, Consumers will layoff a lot in Utah/Texas for the ops. Controllers will be hit hard as well. The safest one at least as of last week is PWM (FO, not the BO in SLC) which is largely intact.Within IBD, looks like FIG/TMT will be impacted heavily since they brought in a lot of new ppl in late '21. ANL2 and ASO1 (people joined in '21) will be on chopping board the most since they just did a full year cycle 360 performance review to evaluate.
Any ceo discussing layoffs in a year end voicemail should be removed. Period.
Seems like they definitely overhired during covid compared to other BBs, I would recommend any analysts working at GS to start printing out things your worked on today / tomorrow in case you get let go
IBD M&A London started 9am. Everyone from assistants, AN2 to MD have been cut. Much larger cuts than expected. Financing cuts started recently.
Any chance we can get some rough figures? I.e 3 of 10 an2, etc?
Half of TMT and industrial was axed more incoming
My roommate in ECM got fired, heard 4-7 juniors at ECM got fired at random
Know that this offers little consolation to those getting let go and for those of us still waiting but 1) you’ve already gone through some of the most rigorous recruiting there is - you’ll fare well next time around as well and 2) people that are most concerned are not particularly competent nor driven folks that lucked into their cushy tech spots; you have a real skill set of getting stuff done and work ethic that will allow you to pick up whatever industry you’ll be after.
Growth equity got hit - NY.
also wtf can’t we directly go to the latest message vs. scrolling down manually. This feature was there before. Patrick pls fix