Thomas Weisel Partners: Things to Like, Things to Dislike - Analyst Thomas Weisel Partners Employee Review

I worked at TWP straight out of college. While many banks and consulting firms describe themselves as having a collegiate atmosphere, TWP actually lives up to the promise. I would routinely find myself tossing around the pig skin with my coworkers at 11pm while waiting for the days work to go out. There is very little feelings of competition with your coworkers and aside fromn everyone bitching about how pay isnt that competitive, everyone is pretty happy. For example, even though i am two years out, I I had dinner with two of my coworkers just a few days ago.

This may seem like an obvious observation but trust me, it’ll hit you after your first week of working at home. Consider this: your buddies wake up in the morning, get dressed, take a drive, get to the office, have some lunch, get back on the road, and then return home. Meanwhile, you’ve been there the whole time. This may seem like a sweet deal at first, but you may find yourself growing a bit tired of the environment - you are, after all, there 24/7. No matter how great of a work environment you’ve set up for yourself, a static environment can sometimes suck the life out of you. This pain point hits home the hardest at the end of the day when you’re simply dying to get out. The problem is, your buddies are all relieved to finally be back home and don’t have the energy to head out to the bar with you. Suddenly a drive out to the gas station is a major treat.

There are a lot of young professionals there and overall it's a pretty pleasant place to work. The offices are very nice, and you definitely get the sense that they try to take care of their younger analysts and associates. It's also a pretty well-respected middle-market bank. Overall, there's still some bureaucracy as you might expect at any investment bank, but it definitely has more of a flat corporate structure and overall I found the people there to be very respectful and dedicated to developing young talent. The culture is definitely not uptight and as a young professional, you get out what you put in. Work life balance is also pretty good -- as good as you can expect working in investment banking or equity research I suppose.

Compensation was pretty middle of the road. I also got the sense sometimes that management seemed pretty removed from VP's and below. I understand that management can't be attentive to everybody, but having town halls more frequently and keeping the lines of communication open would help the young professionals feel more included in things. I also feel it would help keep them more motivated; the problem that I often saw was not because of the lack of work ethic or intelligence among people, but what I felt was possibly a lack of team spirit or motivation from management at times.