I question whether he was doing really bad or if it was propaganda spewed by your RL.  Maybe your friend felt unclean working for Jones and then wammy he gets an opportunity to work at Morgan…he feels more confident and maybe a little cocky.  He feels proud to say he works for Morgan Stanley.  Bottom line the difference would be the target market…wealthy individuals or soon to be wealthy.  Prospecting is prospecting…

One of the advantages to working in a branch office is seeing what is going on around you that works.  I can tell you that my local MS office (small office - 4 advisors) focuses almost exclusively on 401K plans.  They have existing, longterm relationships with Paychex, who feed them leads, and they in turn use their platforms.  You don’t get that when you go to work for Jones.  You are sort of out on an island to figure it out yourself.  For the most part, most wirehouse branch offices have been around a long time, so there is a lot of history and track record at many of them.  That’s something that can’t be bought or learned - experience and history is what it is.  That’s why most of the successful Jones advisors have been in the business well over ten years (and many 15-25 years) - experience and history in their market.