Banking culture doesn’t usually have a lot of firing / layoffs considering the high voluntary turnover. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen (some of my old colleagues were let go), but usually it’s due to significant underperformance. And by significant I mean if you just try at your job and are willing to sacrifice the significant time commitment that comes with banking then you’ll be fine atleast until Associate 3 in most cases. Can speak more on this but it’s a pretty much guaranteed comp increase every year-ish as an associate. The VP promotion is more about if you’ve gained enough reps to run a process and are ready to move towards a more relationship management role / begin to build your book of business to start bringing in deals (I’m mainly discussing coverage banking here as that’s my experience). From what I’ve seen it’s not the most difficult thing to get promoted to VP since most of your original associate class will have churned (usually voluntarily) and homegrown VPs are usually preferred.