You did good work, and you know it was good. Your manager barely reacted, then asked for something that felt beside the point. Are they even looking at the right things?
That reaction is fair. But your manager is accountable for something you have never asked about.
In investing, you cannot pitch a position to a fund without knowing its mandate. A deep-value idea dies in a momentum shop. The pitch can be right and still fail, because it was aimed at a mandate it was never going to fit.
I once asked a junior analyst to send a short update whenever one of his companies reported. He pushed back. Most of the print was noise, he said, and the job was to stay on the signal. On the investing, he was not wrong.
But I was not measured on whether that earnings report mattered. I was measured on developing analysts the PMs could rely on, and reliability comes from knowing what someone is thinking while it matters. One line saying “this is noise, I am not changing anything” would have done it. His silence told me nothing, and it capped what I was willing to hand him next.
I could have told him what I was measured on. I didn’t, and most managers don’t.
You cannot pitch to a mandate you don’t know.
This week’s ROE Letter is about reading what your manager answers for.
https://substack.com/@charmianlong
Do you know what your manager is measured on this cycle?
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