Consulting WLB?
I see a lot of fluff on sites like YouTube, and I want to trust various forums, but also noticed that those who tend to speak negatively are those who had negative experiences, which is in itself somewhat biased and skews the general sentiment. My assumption is there has to be some people who don’t mind the work or who are even interested by what they do.
I’m asking because I’m going to be a first year analyst at ACN. I’m not entering with rose colored glasses on though. My expectation is 80 hours per week (including travel) with a heavily front-loaded week (probably 3 12-16 hour days per week). I’ve also gathered that the first 2 years especially are your “ramp up” time where you’re building internal relationships, exploring varied projects, hardening a couple of recurring skills (e.g, ppt, excel, maybe a viz tool), and receiving a lot of actionable feedback, so those hours don’t include upskilling or after-work activities.
No recruiter would give a straight answer because I think they thought I was fishing for dealbreakers, but it was genuine curiosity to understand where my head needs to be in order to hit the ground running. I’m not at all disillusioned with the job and understand that I’m there to build practical skills while being impactful as possible from project to project. In my eyes, the better I can do, the more I can learn, so the more I can do, so I don’t mind working longer days.
Between FT school and my remote jobs, I already work about 10-14 hours every day anyway, and was once a wildland firefighter, so I'm quite familiar with the way constant travel can be tiresome and how brutal a 2-3 week sprint of 16 hour days with no days off can be. I’ve found that time management and working efficiently over working "hard" means a lot more than the number of hours you spend doing a thing. In my experience, it's only truly exhausting when I don’t allocate my time appropriately, don't take a few (15-30 min) to exercise, and then can’t find a purpose for giving the effort. My hack for the "purpose" thing is just to relegate it to something simple though, which makes arduous, mundane challenges more enjoyable.
All in all, I just want a clearer understanding of what the WLB is like. So, for what I’d call the middle majority (to hopefully get a more accurate answer), what is the true WLB in consulting?
Is it really so terrible, or is it that the terrible projects/managers/scheduling stand out so much that they overshadow your so-so or better weeks? Is it true that your WLB can be largely determined by your project leader or the senior on your project? Is it region-specific (since different regions might prioritize different practice areas with different demands)?
Personally, the WLB does not bother me at all. I work ~55h on average (peak at 62h, and dip at 50h) and I've been staffed most of the time (with some pitch work here and there).
Frankly, 55h is the sweet spot for me, but I don't mind long hours. I'm in the private equity group at my MBB, so we don't travel. Frankly working up to 60h is fine too. The main issue I have is if I feel that the hours are driven by poor prioritisation / planning rather than because we have a lot to get through. From a WLB perspective, the biggest things I enjoy are: virtually no work before 9:30 (handful of exceptions only so far), finish early on Friday (+one early night in the week), and no week-end work. As long as I get these, I'm a happy dude work-wise.
In terms of the enjoyment itself, I really enjoy my work. Fully caters to my short attention span and need to deep dive on stuff I find interesting, for a short period of time. Hell, I forget what firms I diligence 1-2 weeks after a case (I actively take note to remind myself, also from a development standpoint). But yeah man, Im enjoying it, and frankly doing a PhD was worse. While I could control when I would work to some extent, I would end up working weekends, during holidays, and really any available time I had. That wasn't a lot of fun.
Wow, thanks for this! This is much better than I ever would have expected. It is clear that many people online were indeed exaggerating then, haha.
I’m in the same boat as you too when it comes to my revolving interests. I’ve found that my true passion is actually found in the process of learning and discovery, then in execution. The facts matter very little as long as I get to dive into them then move on from them to start learning the next thing eventually. That’s when I feel the most engaged/challenged.
This was refreshing to read because I think I would actually appreciate and enjoy a career in consulting, so thanks a million for sharing. I see so many complaints online that it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between a general work gripe and using humor to mask real disdain for one’s career choices,
lol.
As someone who also works at an MBB, this guys experience is NOT typical at all. Especially working on DDs they can have nightmare hours. It's possible if you're a great performer to be able to have some control over your hours but again, this guys lifestyle is definitely not the norm.
I wouldn't interpret the lack of a straight answer as an attempt to cloak the truth, but rather just that the recruiter genuinely doesn't know. There's a pretty high variance in terms of hours worked. I had friends who worked 30-40 hour weeks (really only possible working remote), and others who worked ~70. Your firm and practice are big drivers of that variability, but on the micro level your manager and specific project will drive it more
According to the r/consulting survey (see page 24), 50-60 hours seems to be the center of gravity on responses which also seems right based on my personal experience. 80 hour weeks are not steady state sustainable, and they certainly aren't worth ACN pay. If you want to work 80 hour weeks do IB where it'll at least be rewarded
If you're on a typical travel engagement, your schedule might look like:
Monday: Wake up before 5am, fly to client site to arrive in late morning or afternoon, wrapup time depends on your team habits (let's say +/- 7-9pm to go back to hotel, maybe some more work to wrap up there)
Tuesday-Wednesday: Arrive at client site sometime 8-9am, leave again maybe +/- 7-9pm. Often you'll have a team dinner one of these nights
Thursday: Arrive at client site sometime 8-9am, leave in the afternoon to fly back home. Maybe some work when you're back home or in transit, but I was able to make my Thursday nights pretty chill. I also never really worked on flights
Friday: Work at home or from your local office, usually with an early ending time (anywhere from 3-5pm is common)
Saturday-Sunday: These should be protected
Really appreciate the hard data here. Great point about the recruiters too. I guess I always assumed that in most of those meetings, we were all applying for the same consulting job, but chances are it is a massive mixed bag.
I most certainly would prefer not to put in the 80 hours unless it were 100% prudent to because you’re totally right on the TC front (although for the first year I’ll make OT in addition to TC in their consulting development program which is kind of nice but will make my second year TC look like a joke).
I just did not also want to be a new analyst that joins with preconceived notions that are skewed in the wrong direction, as I believe that mismanaged expectations can be the real killer of some people’s perception of/attitude toward their work when they’re new to an industry. I’d much rather prepare mentally and physically to work more, only to find out I work less.
With the tidbit you said about remote work, I now get why MBB/Big 4 and some T2 consultants were so pissed that firms wanted folks back in office. Based on those numbers, some people might’ve been saving 80-120 hours a month worth of travel and other time/money spent when remote.
Thanks also for the comprehensive schedule, even if just a rough estimate. It seems the toughest/potentially most annoying day is most likely Sunday evening, lol. But overall appears to be very manageable as long as you’re minding your Ps and Qs and staying on top of ways to put out quality work efficiently. I’m very much excited to get started.
Why are you asking the recruiters about what the job is like instead of asking the actual people in those roles? (ideally outside of a formal interview setting)
Good question! I did that as well, but I still didn't get definitive answers. I got a lot of generalizations because "it depends", which is totally fine as an answer since it is technically true, but I was looking for harder data like the info provided by one of the folks in this thread.
Whoever gave you the impression that management consulting is 80+ hours is just flat wrong - probably trying to flex and impress you since they see it as a badge of honor.
The job is more typically in the 55-60 range, inclusive of everything related to work (including non-project related activities at your firm). ACN should even be less than that. You'll have some projects that spike up and are higher, but those are also balanced out by beach / bench time where you could go 1-2 weeks doing more like 30 hours on internal stuff.
Despite that, it's still bad WLB relative to all jobs, and lots of people leave every year to industry for WLB reasons. It wears on you over time in the way that a 12-hour day at school (where you're probably partially zoned out for half of it) just doesn't it. You won't get it until you actually live it for a year. Nonetheless, it's not unbearable an not as awful as you think.
This is a great insight. I imagined higher turnover was less about the work in itself and more about how consultants have to go about completing the work. I can imagine how old going to bed early on Sundays to wake up at 4:00 am on Monday would be, especially since that type of schedule essentially eliminates being about to do anything too late on Sundays, which I'm sure for many also just kills the weekend. Not to mention the fact that you're often going to locations that are not at all glamorous.
FWIW, I've done a great deal of traveling as a wildland firefighter in the past before starting school. The schedule was very unpredictable and a bit annoying because of the constant "Don't many any plans for X number of days because we need to head to ___". Never will forget a day when I thought we were off for Easter, so I took my crew out for drinks--only to receive a call early the next morning about a prescribed burn that escaped a unit that we had to go suppress. We were all criminally hungover and so burned out because fire seasons tend to be made up of 14-21 12-16 hour days nonstop with only 2 "R&R" days between them.
As for the present day, I have two PT remote jobs and one FT remote job to accompany my schooling (wanted be able to hit the ground running in my first post-grad role), but even that doesn't really compare to consulting because putting in 12-14 hours from home is a lot less exhausting than putting in the hours while on-site.
Sounds like the key to long-term success here will really be to dial heavily into time management and energy management, making sure I'm staying active, eating at the right times, and sleeping well as much as possible.
Whoever is telling you 80 hours/week is either horrible at their job, lying to scare you, or trying to act all “tough guy” by exaggerating how much he works.
You're right, plus it doesn't help that so many people are realizing that talking about how much they hate IB or consulting has become an opportunity to build revenue streams on YT or to sell some BS course on entrepreneurship. When I first started using YT, so many ex-consulting/IB people with maybe 1-2 years of experience would exaggerate to a pretty extreme level about their WLB and how much they had to work. I've learned to listen to information about working for corporations with a filter because it appears that so much of one's experience is contingent primarily on human factors (who you work with regularly, where you get staffed, client personas, etc.).
The true hours in consulting is 55-60 hours per week as a target range, with lows in the 30s and highs in the 80s and weekends almost always protected.
For me, the sheer hours aren't what makes consulting WLB difficult. It's the variability and unpredictability in hours.
I'm curious about what you mean about unpredictability and variability. Are you referring to project-by-project variability/unpredictability since so much of that can depend on the type of project and the people you're working with? Or do you mean literally on a day-to-day basis?
I'm asking because I have some experience (2014 - 2020) with unpredictability on a project-to-project basis. Both as a trail worker and a wildland firefighter (3 seasons), I got pretty comfortable with the ambiguity of our day-to-day and got used to moving every 6-10 weeks for projects, each led by a different sponsor or supervisor with different personalities and expectations. Sort of like consulting though, our turnover was relatively high (started with 12, ended with 6).
Does that sound similar to what you're speaking about in terms of what can burn you out?
As a side note: The more I've learned in this thread, the more I'm seeing that long-term success in consulting appears also to be about personality and lifestyle fit versus needing to be "cut out" for the actual work. Some people prefer constant motion; others prefer to be more stationary when it comes to their work. Others can stomach motion for a while, but eventually, want to settle in. Nothing wrong with any of the choices though as long as you're true to yourself.
Spent 3 years at MBB in a large North American office. Agree with what others have said here - when I've tracked closely, it's generally 50-60h per week and I did a lot of 'strategy' type work. Due diligence were closer to 65h weeks (I did 4 of these, total about 10-12wks). Note a lot of this was remote with COVID which I actually found made the hours *longer*, especially Fridays which pre-Covid were basically schmoozing in the office and doing like 3-4 hours of work. Travel adds to this but certainly does break up the week, so it didn't feel any longer. Notably I found the diligence weeks quite rewarding - even with long hours - it was good, intentional, well-directed work. Like you, I can stomach longer hours much better when the work is clearly moving toward something and not random firefighting or me trying to figure out what to do and stressing.
That said, although the average was 50-60hrs, I'd guess the mode was around 55-8hrs. There's a right tail, as well - almost never worked fewer than 50hrs when I was actually on a project (had some chill weeks where I managed to dodge staffing in between projects, which is a skill you should learn). Outside of that, hit 70hrs probably ~10 weeks total in 3 years and had meaningful weekend work only 4 times (and even then, it was like a half day and 1 or 2 of those times were voluntary to avoid an otherwise brutal Monday-Tuesday). Otherwise weekends were always protected. I found this to be the real key to my WLB happiness - knowing I had a shutoff point at 3 or 4pm Friday, almost never later than 5pm.
I will say the hours themselves can be intense, there's a lot of work and stress packed in, even if the hours themselves are not that terrible.
Anecdotally, only know a few folks who ever approached or exceeded 80hr weeks on rare occasions.
It is entirely project driven, as others have mentioned - if you find a good group to work for, get on their good side and stick with them and you can have a very predictable lifestyle and also be more comfortable asking for concessions on work, which could mean a protected evening here and there, or just more autonomy to set your own work schedule.
End of the day, just get your stuff done and think less about hours.
And one hack - if you finish something early, don't tell anyone and just submit it for review a bit before it's due, you can protect some of your time that way. Really important to figure out how to throttle your work and output to make things more manageable (either by withholding output or sandbagging when setting deadlines with your manager, within reason), otherwise you will just get more and more thrown at you until you drown.
That last bit was especially helpful. Thanks for taking the time to provide those details. Makes sense as well to focus on finishing over how much time it takes to finish, given that the time is more of an unpredictable set of averages than a constant value. I'll definitely be sure to think about how to incorporate the throttling technique too.
The throttling piece is particularly important at night. Most teams will have an evening checkout around 4 or 5pm where you discuss what remains to be done that day. This is where you want to really think carefully and control the narrative around how much you have left to do, when your manager should expect it, and if you have capacity for more work.
If you wanna take 2hrs to hit the gym & have dinner, make sure you can get that. Sometimes, offer to take on more when you really can, it earns brownie points, but don’t do it all the time just to be a kiss up.
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