What I hate about Banking

Number one thing I hate about investment banking: the congratulations you get after pushing an all-nighter to get a book out.

Spent last night (and most of this morning) pushing out an important book for an IPO. This morning, I got a hearty round of high fives and back slaps for my brave and hard work. Lots of 'Good Jobs' for getting a perfect book out the door. Worst one was from the guy that effectively put us in the position where I had to work all night.

Fuck... We shouldn't be celebrating working all night like that was the good bit, we should be looking at what went wrong and why it turned out like that. Rather than me getting a bunch of congratulations, I'd like to see my MD take the fucker that fucked up behind the wood shed and tear a strip off him (you know the meetings, where they go into the breakout room with the glass walls, and everyone pretends not to look). I'd like to hear my MD ask the other bank about how much of their fee they are going to give up since we had to save the day in front of the client.

I fucking hate that when someone, or someones, fuck up a process or a timeline, the person that saves it gets a hearty pat on the back, and 1) there are no repercussions for the senior bankers that fucked it up in the first place, and 2) nobody thinks 'hey, we can learn something from this, and avoid a similar situation in the future'. But I guarantee that every banker here has at least one story of shit going sideways, and a junior, or a team, getting fucked over trying to keep the pile standing. Some of them will even wear it like a badge of honour.