I don't know what you do. I scanned the posts, but I really never found a description of your job duties. Are you in sales, financial analysis, gopher, what?
My first job out of college was a retail broker, a customer's man for Dean Witter Reynolds back before dinosaurs. I thought it would be all Ivy League, everybody polite, dignified, educated, quietly diplomatic with customers that acted like Father Knows Best.
Actually, the movie Wall Street was pretty accurate at modeling the tone of the industry when I was in it. If you're in sales then you're a hero if you sell and somebody someone has to get rid of someday if you don't. There's no middle ground. They don't keep salesmen with low numbers around because they're nice.
They keep them around because they haven't found someone that can do more sales yet. Salesmen create the revenue that keeps the company solvent, nice guys with manners and ethics bore the snot out of everybody, because most are too stressed over performance to even take a few seconds to make a somebody else feel better.
They might be next if they don't remain ruthless. Ruthlessness is something that a lot of people will never develop; it just isn't in their nature. That's why, despite the fact that everybody thinks they'll be the one to make millions, over 90% eventually fade out of the business. It does indeed take a rare individual to become a lying weasel with no ethics, courtesy, sincerity, or credibility so as to achieve their financial goals. Most people just can't bring themselves to believe the rationalizations you have to make to do the things you have to do to bring in the money that will turn your manager into a rear kisser.
Your biggest mistake is not in what you may or may not be doing wrong at work. Your biggest mistake is over-worrying it and letting it define your value and competence. Don't do that. You'll tear yourself down for no reason at all.
Winning the kudos of a bunch of sleazy millionaire wannabes is not a healthy strategy for maintaining worthwhile self-esteem. I know it's your first job and your pressured to perform so as to get off on the right track, but the fact that your first job is in an INVESTMENT BANK is proof positive that you're not a punk.
You're not asking some fat woman if she wants fries with her burger, though if you're in sales, it might feel that way. So win, lose, or draw, never ever let anybody define your value.
You might have to get up and start over 100 times in your life or you might get lucky and cruise on the first try, but either way, letting some aging has been or never was take his self-loathing out on you is a pity-party you can't afford to attend.
The whole world may be black, but as long as you refuse to see it, you're in the upper 1%. If this crashes, move on. When going through hell, keep going. It's what's so, but it's also SO WHAT!
The ULTIMATE SIN is getting down on yourself because you overly revered the projection of self-hatred aimed in your direction by people who sensed a lack of confidence and decided to use it to pump up their non-existent egos.
Workplace bullies typically are those people who group up on the one who is doing their job well and or with sincere effort and enthusiasm. Factory floor workers are more obvious about it, but all industries experience the phenomena at every level. When everybody in the office hates your guts, it might be because you're making them look bad.
You won't end up on a dead-end path by crashing out of this job, but you will if you let it define your abilities. Investment banking is a fancy name for a financial whore house and the best way to be successful at it is to be the biggest whore in the house. If you can't bring yourself to be that, nobody blames you.
Only a small percentage of people likely are born with the complete lack of good manners, consideration for others, and a general lack of decorum necessary to excel at sales and/or big client rear kissing. Despite their desire for fortune, most just can't figure out how to kill off their personality enough to become successful.
One other thing. Timidity draws attack. If you're apologetic for not living up to your own, possibly unrealistic expectations, you're going to draw heat from losers who never had any expectations for themselves or you're going to draw heat from the bravo class that refuses to give up regardless of the prospects and don't want to be around people they perceive as doing so.
When you're psycho-pumped to jump into the death match with a 95% chance of slaughter, you don't really want to be around people that you perceive as not being into it. It's a motivation thing for the true psychos who refuse to take no for an answer in a sales call or a client interaction. If you feel like a loser when your around the hot shots, either do what it take to be a hot shot, even when you hate it, or decide that you don't want to eat your own soul and go try something else.
Don't dawdle, decide one way or the other and follow through with your decision as though your life depended on it because, given your concern over failure, maybe it does. Failure won't kill you, but failure, perceived in an exaggerated way, might!
Refusing to be a hyena is not failing. Don't confuse the two. You will get more babes being a disgustingly wealthy, gigantic jackass though, in case you're wondering.
As far as bullies and snide innuendo, set a limit and then bite back if they cross your line. Don't slug em', just go outside the boundaries they assumed were fixed because of your polite nature. Bullies will pull back instantly when challenged if they sense a flare, though they may go tell daddy.
Those kind are dangerous, but the alternative is to let them wear you down slowly. They're goobers looking for opportunities to convince themselves otherwise, but the really mean ones can do damage if you strike a nerve so stack some money away if possible to take the stress off the transition if they finally come to believe that you're as bad an employee as they secretly think of themselves as being.
You can help mitigate that ganging-up phenomena by not agreeing with them when they-you criticize you. Remember, being down on yourself is the don't-go-there part of failing your expectations.
While you're castigating yourself and sliding into a crisis-class clinical depression for not getting the A+, D- students with confidence have everybody convinced that they're setting the world on fire. They may be, but it's more likely the catastrophic kind of fire where people will stand around saying things like "I can't believe they actually did that."
Fake it till you make it, kid. Everybody that makes it does exactly that. You may have to sell a little of your soul to get what you want, but you can be successful without pouring gasoline on it and setting it on fire if you find the right career match. Those are rarely found on the first pick, even when composed of a caliber of the kind attracting great expectations. Great men fail greatly, how else could they? Good luck!
