Bankers: WTF are you doing from 8pm to 2am?

From a guy who's never been in banking, but knows enough people that were and they STILL can't answer this question with anything that makes sense.

Okay, I don't know about you guys but I typically work from like 8 or 9am until like 6pm most days - no weekends usually other than maybe fielding phone calls and emails from home. Obviously I travel more than bankers but I rarely consider that work, it's more like vacation to be honest since I like to travel.

But when I hear about people coming in at 8am and not leaving until 2am every day, I'm wondering to myself - what the fck takes so much time that you have to be there that long? Are you just really slow as sht at stuff? I've never left work with something I didn't finish in a reasonable workday. It doesn't take that long to do anything unless you have epic ADD, no?

Now I understand the general arguments... you have to wait for your MD to get back to you on something, your VP was being an asshole and told you he needed you there at 9pm to revise something after a dinner. But all of this boils down to the same category: just waiting around. Is that why you're there so long? Modeling a company start to finish, including all of the research necessary, probably takes me two weeks. The research is the part that takes me 13 days though... building a model from scratch and finishing it takes me like a morning to get done, maybe 4 hours. I don't walk around, go bullshit with other analysts, go get coffee, eat, take a dump, stare at my screen, etc. so maybe that's why? Or is there something I'm missing here, because I'm not trying to sound ignorant I literally don't get it...

Monkeys I need your help! What exactly are you doing so late at the office from like 8pm into the wee hours of the night?!

 
Best Response

A pretty common thing is you get a draft pitchbook full of comments faxed from your MD (yes, faxed so you can barely fucking read it), and you just re-do the whole thing. They want to change something in the model, reformat some pages, add some bullets, whatever. You do it while your associate sits there and surfs the web. Then your associate goes through it while you sit there and surf the web. Lots of wasted time. Repeat 2 or 3 times until it's ok, then both go through and tick and tie every god damn number in the 60 page book, make sure the colors are consistent, make sure there are no periods at the end of your bullet points, etc and send it back, then sit there and wait for another round of comments. I'm sorry you didn't get to experience the excitement of doing a pitch book.

Occasionally, your MD is leaving for a meeting in the monring and gives you final comments at midnight that you have to furiously turn, check, and print (and then check to make sure the printers didn't fuck up, which they do sometimes) and have on their chair at 8 am before you go home, take a shower and come back. Or better yet, he's got a red eye and decides around 11pm that he wants to read about company x in the morning, so you have to sit there for a few hours pulling together all their filings, research, comps, anything else of interest and sending it all to the printer to be bound and then personally delivering it to his doorstep.

If you're lucky enough to be working on an actual deal, maybe the client called you and asked you to dig through the data room and put together a historical breakdown of revenue by customer or something and for some reason your MD wants this to be sent at 3am rather than just waiting and sending it at lunch time tomorrow. That is some straight up Stanford Prison Experiment shit.

I was seated right behind our staffer, who was a real dick, and if I flipped to ESPN.com for more than 5 minutes he would have some dumb shit project for me to do, like scrub 5 year old transaction comps, even if it was 9pm. I wish I was making this up.

Needless to say I did not enjoy the whole banking thing.

I am wise because I know that I know nothing -Socrates
 

MM Summer Associate here.

Generally speaking, management are in meetings for the early parts of the day into the afternoons. Once they return from meetings they will either drop shit on your desk at 5PM "to be done tomorrow," or they will mark up 100 revisions to work you've already completed. Much of the work is menial bullshit. About 80% (or more) of analyst/associate level work could be taught to anyone reading this in less than a days worth of time. So, to answer your question: You work late because management drops work on your desk at 5PM and wants 4-8 hours of work done by the time they get in in the mornings.

 
Cane0180:
MM Summer Associate here.

Generally speaking, management are in meetings for the early parts of the day into the afternoons. Once they return from meetings they will either drop shit on your desk at 5PM "to be done tomorrow," or they will mark up 100 revisions to work you've already completed. Much of the work is menial bullshit. About 80% (or more) of analyst/associate level work could be taught to anyone reading this in less than a days worth of time. So, to answer your question: You work late because management drops work on your desk at 5PM and wants 4-8 hours of work done by the time they get in in the mornings.

I always wondered, can't you just drop that shit onto an analyst's desk instead? If not, how do the associate and analyst roles actually differ?

 
Boreed:
Cane0180:
MM Summer Associate here.

Generally speaking, management are in meetings for the early parts of the day into the afternoons. Once they return from meetings they will either drop shit on your desk at 5PM "to be done tomorrow," or they will mark up 100 revisions to work you've already completed. Much of the work is menial bullshit. About 80% (or more) of analyst/associate level work could be taught to anyone reading this in less than a days worth of time. So, to answer your question: You work late because management drops work on your desk at 5PM and wants 4-8 hours of work done by the time they get in in the mornings.

I always wondered, can't you just drop that shit onto an analyst's desk instead? If not, how do the associate and analyst roles actually differ?

The smaller the bank, the more the line is blurred between associate and analyst. To put another way, you have more defined roles at the BBs than boutiques. You don't drop shit onto an analyst's desks for a few reasons.

-The analyst could be working at capacity on a different deal that an MD assigned, and if you assign something to an analyst without asking an MD first then you take the heat.

-The analyst could be working with you on the same deal.

-The MD could get pissed that you just passed it off to someone else when he asked you to do it.

-It's a dick thing to do. Etc...

An associate is a glorified analyst, but with slightly more clout and responsibility. At my bank if you're a senior associate they generally trust you to run deals with someone overseeing you. Associates will be called on to check analysts work before it is presented to someone above them.

 
Boreed:
I always wondered, can't you just drop that shit onto an analyst's desk instead? If not, how do the associate and analyst roles actually differ?

The key difference is the associate is actually responsible for the work product. I worked on some projects directly with an MD after I had established myself as an analyst who knew his shit, but only for a couple very low-profile clients. Normally there is going to be an associate involved in the process because they are expected to understand the project better, make some judgment calls and proof the final product. The analyst is just the bitch who works in excel and powerpoint.

I am wise because I know that I know nothing -Socrates
 

ThunderRoad gets the SB for making me laugh and cry at the same time, but not the cry til you laugh kind of cry, the cry because you feel terrible that something terrible happened to someone cry. Already read Monkey Business like 11 times but it never stuck, except the part about pissing in the beer bottle. Plus I didn't believe it. Is it really that mundane? Anyone wanna hug it out?

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
Is it really that mundane?

It really is. Especially for analysts. You are not being paid to think as an analyst. In fact they don't like it when you think. I read in a company's 10-k that they were really concerned about local economic stats, so pulled together some of our bank's relevant econ research, checked it with compliance, and put together a nice page for our appendix. The VP threw it out without even showing it to the MD and said "you won't be adding any pages just yet". Never mind whether it will add value for the client, or give us a reason to come back again next quarter, I was an analyst, and I didn't get to think thoughts. Yeah come to think of it a hug might be nice. This is bringing back some memories I had buried pretty deep.

I am wise because I know that I know nothing -Socrates
 
ThunderRoad:
The VP threw it out without even showing it to the MD and said "you won't be adding any pages just yet". Never mind whether it will add value for the client, or give us a reason to come back again next quarter, I was an analyst, and I didn't get to think thoughts. Yeah come to think of it a hug might be nice. This is bringing back some memories I had buried pretty deep.

This made me lol...which makes me wonder, do you feel you learned anything worthwile from this type of abuse?

 

Here's a fairly regular occurence and something that made me hate banking: It's a random Tuesday night at about 9pm. There's a pitch in the morning across the country. The MD gives you his "final" comments before he goes to sleep. You make the changes and then the associate checks it over. Regardless of whether you did everything 100% correctly or not, the associate will have comments of their own. You then make their changes. You give the book back to the associate, who prints the book and ticks and ties every number (and you do the same). It's now 11-11:30pm and you finally get the book ready to print. You send the book to "production" to print and bind the books for you. You give them a call and say, "how long til you think these can be done?" and they respond with, "3 hours, it's very backed up down here" and you say, "Damn, ok." And you sit at your desk from 11:30pm to 2:30am waiting for the damn books to print that you would gladly do yourself but you have to send it to production. Finally, 2:30-3:00am rolls around and you get a call or email saying your books are done. You go, pick the books up, flip through every page to make sure they didn't screw anything up (and your night just gets longer if they are missing a page or the binding is messed up, etc.). Once the books are flipped and checked, you call up a black car (or take a taxi yourself if the MD lives near you) and have them (or you) hand deliver the books to your MD's doorman or front step. Once you put the books into the car, you flag a taxi and head home. You can't go to bed yet because you have to wait for a confirmation phone call from the driver that the books were delivered. You're in bed by 4am and then get to wake up and start it all over again. How much of that time was actual work? Maybe 2-2.5 hours, but you went to bed at 4am. And the real fun occurs when each part of the process I mentioned takes a little longer than described and the MD is leaving for a flight at 6am.

 
nyc123:
Here's a fairly regular occurence and something that made me hate banking: It's a random Tuesday night at about 9pm. There's a pitch in the morning across the country. The MD gives you his "final" comments before he goes to sleep. You make the changes and then the associate checks it over. Regardless of whether you did everything 100% correctly or not, the associate will have comments of their own. You then make their changes. You give the book back to the associate, who prints the book and ticks and ties every number (and you do the same). It's now 11-11:30pm and you finally get the book ready to print. You send the book to "production" to print and bind the books for you. You give them a call and say, "how long til you think these can be done?" and they respond with, "3 hours, it's very backed up down here" and you say, "Damn, ok." And you sit at your desk from 11:30pm to 2:30am waiting for the damn books to print that you would gladly do yourself but you have to send it to production. Finally, 2:30-3:00am rolls around and you get a call or email saying your books are done. You go, pick the books up, flip through every page to make sure they didn't screw anything up (and your night just gets longer if they are missing a page or the binding is messed up, etc.). Once the books are flipped and checked, you call up a black car (or take a taxi yourself if the MD lives near you) and have them (or you) hand deliver the books to your MD's doorman or front step. Once you put the books into the car, you flag a taxi and head home. You can't go to bed yet because you have to wait for a confirmation phone call from the driver that the books were delivered. You're in bed by 4am and then get to wake up and start it all over again. How much of that time was actual work? Maybe 2-2.5 hours, but you went to bed at 4am. And the real fun occurs when each part of the process I mentioned takes a little longer than described and the MD is leaving for a flight at 6am.

Forgive my ignorance, but is that not the most horribly inefficient thing in the world? How easy would it be to outsource half that shit? And if banks are hurting so hard for money shouldn't they kind of fix their horrible structure first before concluding the only way to cut costs is to lay off completely capable junior talent?

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
Forgive my ignorance, but is that not the most horribly inefficient thing in the world? How easy would it be to outsource half that shit? And if banks are hurting so hard for money shouldn't they kind of fix their horrible structure first before concluding the only way to cut costs is to lay off completely capable junior talent?

I don't think efficiency is even in the vocabulary of investment bankers. I once saw an analyst fly across the country to personally bring pitchbooks to a meeting because the MD wanted one more round of pointless comments turned after his flight left and he wasn't about to pick up books from a kinko's (they wouldn't have our marketing department approved logo engraved binding anyway).

I am wise because I know that I know nothing -Socrates
 
BlackHat:
nyc123:
Here's a fairly regular occurence and something that made me hate banking: It's a random Tuesday night at about 9pm. There's a pitch in the morning across the country. The MD gives you his "final" comments before he goes to sleep. You make the changes and then the associate checks it over. Regardless of whether you did everything 100% correctly or not, the associate will have comments of their own. You then make their changes. You give the book back to the associate, who prints the book and ticks and ties every number (and you do the same). It's now 11-11:30pm and you finally get the book ready to print. You send the book to "production" to print and bind the books for you. You give them a call and say, "how long til you think these can be done?" and they respond with, "3 hours, it's very backed up down here" and you say, "Damn, ok." And you sit at your desk from 11:30pm to 2:30am waiting for the damn books to print that you would gladly do yourself but you have to send it to production. Finally, 2:30-3:00am rolls around and you get a call or email saying your books are done. You go, pick the books up, flip through every page to make sure they didn't screw anything up (and your night just gets longer if they are missing a page or the binding is messed up, etc.). Once the books are flipped and checked, you call up a black car (or take a taxi yourself if the MD lives near you) and have them (or you) hand deliver the books to your MD's doorman or front step. Once you put the books into the car, you flag a taxi and head home. You can't go to bed yet because you have to wait for a confirmation phone call from the driver that the books were delivered. You're in bed by 4am and then get to wake up and start it all over again. How much of that time was actual work? Maybe 2-2.5 hours, but you went to bed at 4am. And the real fun occurs when each part of the process I mentioned takes a little longer than described and the MD is leaving for a flight at 6am.

Forgive my ignorance, but is that not the most horribly inefficient thing in the world? How easy would it be to outsource half that shit? And if banks are hurting so hard for money shouldn't they kind of fix their horrible structure first before concluding the only way to cut costs is to lay off completely capable junior talent?

The important thing isn't for analysts time to be used efficiently. Analysts are only paid like $70k a year plus bonus - they're time is cheap to waste.

What's really important is keeping MDs happy. They bring in ALL the IB division revenue. If you lose an MD to a different bank, now that's costly

 
BlackHat:
How easy would it be to outsource half that shit? And if banks are hurting so hard for money shouldn't they kind of fix their horrible structure first before concluding the only way to cut costs is to lay off completely capable junior talent?
  1. Several of the BBs tried to outsource the more mundane aspects of the analysts' work to "India Analysts" in the mid-2000's. Do these programs still exist? I'm guessing not because the work product was generally useless.

  2. There are a couple of aspects to this...first, analysts are there to churn and burn. You are a short term resource due to the defined time frame of the analyst program and the BBs don't have a long-term view on your career. Generally, analysts don't get hit that hard in layoffs; 2008/2009 was bad, 2001/2002 was worse. Most of the people cut in layoffs outside of catastrophic circumstances are Directors and VPs...they cost a lot and don't generate revenue.

 
nyc123:
Here's a fairly regular occurence and something that made me hate banking: It's a random Tuesday night at about 9pm. There's a pitch in the morning across the country. The MD gives you his "final" comments before he goes to sleep. You make the changes and then the associate checks it over. Regardless of whether you did everything 100% correctly or not, the associate will have comments of their own. You then make their changes. You give the book back to the associate, who prints the book and ticks and ties every number (and you do the same). It's now 11-11:30pm and you finally get the book ready to print. You send the book to "production" to print and bind the books for you. You give them a call and say, "how long til you think these can be done?" and they respond with, "3 hours, it's very backed up down here" and you say, "Damn, ok." And you sit at your desk from 11:30pm to 2:30am waiting for the damn books to print that you would gladly do yourself but you have to send it to production. Finally, 2:30-3:00am rolls around and you get a call or email saying your books are done. You go, pick the books up, flip through every page to make sure they didn't screw anything up (and your night just gets longer if they are missing a page or the binding is messed up, etc.). Once the books are flipped and checked, you call up a black car (or take a taxi yourself if the MD lives near you) and have them (or you) hand deliver the books to your MD's doorman or front step. Once you put the books into the car, you flag a taxi and head home. You can't go to bed yet because you have to wait for a confirmation phone call from the driver that the books were delivered. You're in bed by 4am and then get to wake up and start it all over again. How much of that time was actual work? Maybe 2-2.5 hours, but you went to bed at 4am. And the real fun occurs when each part of the process I mentioned takes a little longer than described and the MD is leaving for a flight at 6am.

Hilarious man. This is perfect. Once I made the mistake of falling asleep after dropping off some books, and I woke up to about 16 emails of "WHERE ARE THE FUCKING PITCHBOOKS?!?!?". The dude's wife had just put them on the kitchen counter. My heart was pounding out of my chest for a minute though.

I am wise because I know that I know nothing -Socrates
 

Reading about I-banking makes me think that people in my country that were taken by force to work in labour camps in Syberia by Stalin had a better time than an average analyst.

 

People go into banking for the exit opportunities, money, experience, whatever. Rarely, and I do mean rarely, do people go into banking because that is a long term career goal. It is a continuous cycle of frivolous bullshit. The analyst experience is not fun. I'm not complaining, it is what it is.

On the other hand, if you do make it to a management-level position then it's probably not bad at all. Running deals and not doing any of the leg work is probably really engaging.

 
Cane0180:
People go into banking for the exit opportunities, money, experience, whatever. Rarely, and I do mean rarely, do people go into banking because that is a long term career goal. It is a continuous cycle of frivolous bullshit. The analyst experience is not fun. I'm not complaining, it is what it is.

On the other hand, if you do make it to a management-level position then it's probably not bad at all. Running deals and not doing any of the leg work is probably really engaging.

I'm not so sure about that. You're on the road like a door to door salesman 80% of the time. Maybe if you are known as the top banker in your industry and blue chip clients are beating down your door for counsel while you rake in $20MM per year it could be fun, but there are probably just a handful of guys like that in the world.

I am wise because I know that I know nothing -Socrates
 

I have ragged on banking a lot here so I will leave one positive- late night conference room dinners where the analysts pool their dinner allowances and get like 400 chicken nuggets or something equally awesome. The relationship you build with the other analysts on your is by far the highlight of the banking experience.

I am wise because I know that I know nothing -Socrates
 
ThunderRoad:
I have ragged on banking a lot here so I will leave one positive- late night conference room dinners where the analysts pool their dinner allowances and get like 400 chicken nuggets or something equally awesome. The relationship you build with the other analysts on your is by far the highlight of the banking experience.

Couldn't agree more. I've seen some of the absolute funniest / best times in my life during this ride and have also had some of my most frustrating / worst as well. One thing is for sure, you definitely get a lot of the weakness beaten out of you and you accumulate a ton of hilarious stories.

 

Interesting comments. It seems like you have to have some modeling knowledge to enter the door, but once you start working the majority of your time you're doing mindless work that doesn't require any thought (e.g. proofreading for commas). Does that sound about right?

 
Beretta:
Interesting comments. It seems like you have to have some modeling knowledge to enter the door, but once you start working the majority of your time you're doing mindless work that doesn't require any thought (e.g. proofreading for commas). Does that sound about right?

Modeling is an extremely small portion of the job. I'm talking less than 10% for me, and I'm in M&A. It depends on how you classify "modeling" though. Sometimes the most simple shit is referred to as "modeling," for example, compiling and formatting financials.

 
Cane0180:
Modeling is an extremely small portion of the job. I'm talking less than 10% for me, and I'm in M&A. It depends on how you classify "modeling" though. Sometimes the most simple shit is referred to as "modeling," for example, compiling and formatting financials.

What's the other 90% Cane?

I am going to call my kids Ctrl, Alt and Delete. That way if something is going wrong I can beat them all at once.
 

You are operating under the assumption that each analyst works on one pitch or model at a time. Last week, my time was split between drafting a CIM, a management presentation, uploading a dataroom, negotiating ~120 NDAs for a broad process sell-side, and a full pitch with positioning and valuation. With NDAs/contact log/drafts of documents, my 9-6 was spent essentially trying to stay above water and I could start to actually get work done once people left for the evening. I'd say that tends to be the case most weeks. If your group is any good, you'll simultaneously be on at least two deals at any given time and should be pitching on top of that.

 
dogboo:
if banking is really mostly completing these menial tasks why do people talk about how steep the learning curve is in IB? And why are IB analyst so sought after for Buy-Side Jobs?

Because one of the best ways to learn is through repetition. You build up a lot of experience really fast through working 2.5x full time jobs. You are also (ideally) exposed to either a bunch of transaction types (industry group) or industries (product group).

Coming out of college, even the best Wharton grad, who imo are the best prepared of any college grads, can barely build a model, let alone one that is client ready. Beyond that, even top college grads' writing and presentation skills aren't up to par. These skills all need to be refined, and the best way is through repetition and replication of existing decent work. It is mind-numbing, but you actually do learn a lot.

I would hire a former banking analyst over almost any other mid-20's candidate where polish and well-rounded skills are needed.

 
TechBanking:
dogboo:
if banking is really mostly completing these menial tasks why do people talk about how steep the learning curve is in IB? And why are IB analyst so sought after for Buy-Side Jobs?

Because one of the best ways to learn is through repetition. You build up a lot of experience really fast through working 2.5x full time jobs. You are also (ideally) exposed to either a bunch of transaction types (industry group) or industries (product group).

Coming out of college, even the best Wharton grad, who imo are the best prepared of any college grads, can barely build a model, let alone one that is client ready. Beyond that, even top college grads' writing and presentation skills aren't up to par. These skills all need to be refined, and the best way is through repetition and replication of existing decent work. It is mind-numbing, but you actually do learn a lot.

I would hire a former banking analyst over almost any other mid-20's candidate where polish and well-rounded skills are needed.

Good post, SB. This really breaks it down for outsiders on why IB is worth the trouble.
 

NDAs, the bane of my existence, why isn't there a true market standard already!!

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
Oreos:
NDAs, the bane of my existence, why isn't there a true market standard already!!
Also the bane of my existence. Can't stand it when bankers only send a PDF of the NDA/CA. You know I'm going to mark it up! Much easier for everyone if I can do it in Word with Track Changes turned on than busting out my red pen, neatly cramming my edits into the margins of every page.
 
ThaVanBurenBoyz:
Oreos:
NDAs, the bane of my existence, why isn't there a true market standard already!!
Also the bane of my existence. Can't stand it when bankers only send a PDF of the NDA/CA. You know I'm going to mark it up! Much easier for everyone if I can do it in Word with Track Changes turned on than busting out my red pen, neatly cramming my edits into the margins of every page.

Just go back and ask them for Word version and for them to stop being so asinine. My play now is just get the lawyers on the phone to each other as quickly as possible. We've also started signing blanket NDAs to cover us against all info from banks so we don't have to go back and forth....until someone tries to get us to sign something under different underlying docs such as in the form of ISDA rather than credit docs (e.g. an SFA) for a total return swap or CDS and we have to start all over again. Yawwwn.

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
ThaVanBurenBoyz:
Oreos:
NDAs, the bane of my existence, why isn't there a true market standard already!!
Also the bane of my existence. Can't stand it when bankers only send a PDF of the NDA/CA. You know I'm going to mark it up! Much easier for everyone if I can do it in Word with Track Changes turned on than busting out my red pen, neatly cramming my edits into the margins of every page.

Do you actually mark up the NDAs as an analyst? At firms I worked with it is usually the legal counsels that write the comments.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 

A humble contribution to your question.

My worst nights while doing M&A (as Associate/VP based in europe) where when we had cross-border transactions with US colleagues involved. So our team worked through the morning, started reviewing and sending stuff (analyses, mark-ups, presentations, whatever) on the afternoon, exchanging comments on those, then discussing on eeeteeeernal conference calls in the evening (say at 11pm or 1am) with decision makers or MDs, just to start working on the next steps right after the call. Finalise and send to the US colleagues for them to continue spinning the wheel... just to find your inbox exploiting when you return at 8am.

I was lucky though not to have face-time and substatial number of real transactions, which made it more bearable (particularly when you see your team is not the only one toiling -eg. lawyers, accountants etc). However it is a empty and many times pointless a proposition and tasks.

You are right, there is room for improvement, it needs though to be ingrained from above. Problem, as mentioned, for most companies analysts/associates are just a cheap resource that costs only money

There are exceptions though, teams/MDs that care about the team, their morale and try to keep the team to the limit or even remain around to give their feedback timely. We all understand the business we are in and should be willing to take the hit if you want to achieve, but it is nice to receive encouragement and that people value your work and time.

The MD work is oftentimes not better, just different. Either you are a positioned M&A strategist (seasoned very experienced MD), and you get to actually provide strategic counsel to clients; or you are just a common MD, ptiching, selling, networking, selling, pitching, travelling and believeing you are a big guy and that you actually made it. We are all just a small wheels in the machine, no doubt. This can also be a demoralising and empty road. Many also miss the thrill from involvement in the real deal, as they need to spend time in originating and can only catch up with deliverables/calls/presentations.

Make sure you find a purpose to what you are doing, no matter if analyst or MD/Partner.

 

It's sad that this is the "work" that our nation's brightest minds and Ivy League grads end up doing. Talk about brain drain. Also I have yet to read a compelling argument as to how the whole system can't be made more efficient.

 

well...the reason why they hire top grads is because of their higher attention to detail aka their ability to spell and write well....even engineers, bio majors, etc. at top schools cant even spell and write and tell the difference between words such as they're, their, and there.

from what it seems you draft a lot of legal documents in word and powerpoint decks so obviously attention to detail like this is important.

 
highhater:
well...the reason why they hire top grads is because of their higher attention to detail aka their ability to spell and write well....even engineers, bio majors, etc. at top schools cant even spell and write and tell the difference between words such as they're, their, and there.

from what it seems you draft a lot of legal documents in word and powerpoint decks so obviously attention to detail like this is important.

They hire top grads because top grads apply for the position.

"One should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it, indeed, especially when one doesn't like it." - Charlie Munger
 

The reason why there aren't 10x more investment bankers is accountability. Each deal is worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more, and the number of people involved needs to be as small as possible to ensure confidentiality. Also, these deals are huge, complicated matters, and its not like anyone can replace someone else during a "night shift" if they haven't been around for every meeting and document write-up throughout the process. Finally, it just makes taking responsibility a lot easier as the structure of who is working on what is very clear when there are only a few guys working on a project. If every bank just outsourced to a faceless mob of Indians, the data would never be right and there will be no one to point the finger at.

 
accountspayable:
The reason why there aren't 10x more investment bankers is accountability. Each deal is worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more, and the number of people involved needs to be as small as possible to ensure confidentiality. Also, these deals are huge, complicated matters, and its not like anyone can replace someone else during a "night shift" if they haven't been around for every meeting and document write-up throughout the process. Finally, it just makes taking responsibility a lot easier as the structure of who is working on what is very clear when there are only a few guys working on a project. If every bank just outsourced to a faceless mob of Indians, the data would never be right and there will be no one to point the finger at.

I'm suggesting more senior bankers working on the same deal. Perhaps same amount of investment bankers, but more of a focus on promoting your most qualified investment bankers to create more senior bankers. This way, a small team of senior people can be more accesible for the people working on the modeling and pitches. It seems everyone says the problem is senior bankers not having enough to time to go back and forth with the ibs... Extra sets of eyes at the senior level seems logical

 
Mel Clark:
accountspayable:
The reason why there aren't 10x more investment bankers is accountability. Each deal is worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more, and the number of people involved needs to be as small as possible to ensure confidentiality. Also, these deals are huge, complicated matters, and its not like anyone can replace someone else during a "night shift" if they haven't been around for every meeting and document write-up throughout the process. Finally, it just makes taking responsibility a lot easier as the structure of who is working on what is very clear when there are only a few guys working on a project. If every bank just outsourced to a faceless mob of Indians, the data would never be right and there will be no one to point the finger at.

I'm suggesting more senior bankers working on the same deal. Perhaps same amount of investment bankers, but more of a focus on promoting your most qualified investment bankers to create more senior bankers. This way, a small team of senior people can be more accesible for the people working on the modeling and pitches. It seems everyone says the problem is senior bankers not having enough to time to go back and forth with the ibs... Extra sets of eyes at the senior level seems logical

Then there would be even more iterations of the same product causing even worse hours. Whenever there are too many cooks in the kitchen i.e. multiple MDs on a deal, materials always take forever to finalize because everyne wants their input and will amke changes to the materials once they get a chance to review.

 
Mel Clark:
accountspayable:
The reason why there aren't 10x more investment bankers is accountability. Each deal is worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more, and the number of people involved needs to be as small as possible to ensure confidentiality. Also, these deals are huge, complicated matters, and its not like anyone can replace someone else during a "night shift" if they haven't been around for every meeting and document write-up throughout the process. Finally, it just makes taking responsibility a lot easier as the structure of who is working on what is very clear when there are only a few guys working on a project. If every bank just outsourced to a faceless mob of Indians, the data would never be right and there will be no one to point the finger at.

I'm suggesting more senior bankers working on the same deal. Perhaps same amount of investment bankers, but more of a focus on promoting your most qualified investment bankers to create more senior bankers. This way, a small team of senior people can be more accesible for the people working on the modeling and pitches. It seems everyone says the problem is senior bankers not having enough to time to go back and forth with the ibs... Extra sets of eyes at the senior level seems logical

You obviously have no idea how professional services firms work. There is nothing worse than the clusterfuck that is too much senior overhead on project...

 

Couple things:

  1. Issue with banking is kind of a macro thing. Bankers are commodities as are the services they provide. No one can honestly tell me that the exeution provided on a deal is TRULY different whether it's done by Goldman, JPM, MS, DB, Citi etc. I'm sure people will point out exceptions blah blah blah but to be honest, it's all the same everywhere. What that means for a junior banker is that seniors are always atempting to figure out ways to differentiate themselves....which yields worse hours for us cranking out mundane work. Also clients know this and know they can request literally any analysis they want and our MDs will promise to get it done AND more in the hopes of drumming up some business.

  2. Bigger issue with banking is mid-level bankers. Let's be honest here - Managing Directors and SVPs / Directors / Executive Directors (w/e) you want to call them) bring in deals and analysts / associates crank out the work. A lot of VPs have no direct value add so they feel they need to drum up work to "add value" and put their stamp on work product. Can't tell you the amount of time i've spent cranking out turns / edits from a VP only for the MD to just cut the pages etc. In my view, these are the guys that end up crushing the lives of analysts as well as what I mentioned before.

 
Bernanke23:
2. Bigger issue with banking is mid-level bankers. Let's be honest here - Managing Directors and SVPs / Directors / Executive Directors (w/e) you want to call them) bring in deals and analysts / associates crank out the work. A lot of VPs have no direct value add so they feel they need to drum up work to "add value" and put their stamp on work product. Can't tell you the amount of time i've spent cranking out turns / edits from a VP only for the MD to just cut the pages etc. In my view, these are the guys that end up crushing the lives of analysts as well as what I mentioned before.
this is a good point but it's not just mid-level bankers. the fundamental driver of this culture of inconsideration at banks is that at all levels, a banker is constantly trying to avoid getting fucked by his boss (or by the client in the case of the MD). he is conditioned to constantly feel the need protect himself against every possible negative outcome in any situation. possible negative outcomes can include: being seen as not having been involved/added any value (your example), having made an error or not having spotted a subordinate's error, being unimpressive, being unable to answer a question or justify an assumption, etc.

to avoid these outcomes (however unlikely), a banker will assign endless minor revisions, useless analyses, data pulls, etc. to his subordinate "just in case" ....just in case the MD gets mad about ____. just in case the client questions us on ____.

even if such an edit/assignment has a very low chance of being useful and will cost the analyst an hour of sleep or a weekend with his family...it still costs our banker exactly nothing and is therefore a good tradeoff in his estimation. he gets a decrease (no matter how miniscule) in the probability of getting fucked for the price of zero. to him it's a no-brainer.

 

It could be done efficiently.

I think its tough breaking up tradition as well, moving up the ladder who would want to be the MD who ended the hazing of new hires aspect

 
Mel Clark:
It could be done efficiently.

I think its tough breaking up tradition as well, moving up the ladder who would want to be the MD who ended the hazing of new hires aspect

It could not be done more efficiently because of the reasons described. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the hierarchy and overall industry work, as evidenced by your repeated comments that it could be done better. You clearly don't work in banking, so you don't know.

 

2 general reasons why you work all night:

1) You are in meetings and on calls/dealing with bs all day and each meeting leads to an assignment that your boss wants in his hands the next morning. You often don't get the chance to begin real work until 5 or 6pm, or later. And you often go through revisions 20 or 30 times because someone above you can't make up their mind. I would put internal processes in investment banking up against any profession in terms of inefficiency.

2) You are staffed on multiple deals with multiple bosses/teams, and your boss (associate/VP/whoever) does not care how much other work the other guy wants you to do.

And yes it would make sense to hire more people, but it is easier to manage less people and have them work a ton of hours than manage more people working less hours. It's also the culture of the industry ("I did it so now you can too") and there are plenty of times as an analyst you are sitting around not doing a whole lot of work.

 
JohnG:
2 general reasons why you work all night:

1) You are in meetings and on calls/dealing with bs all day and each meeting leads to an assignment that your boss wants in his hands the next morning. You often don't get the chance to begin real work until 5 or 6pm, or later. And you often go through revisions 20 or 30 times because someone above you can't make up their mind. I would put internal processes in investment banking up against any profession in terms of inefficiency.

2) You are staffed on multiple deals with multiple bosses/teams, and your boss (associate/VP/whoever) does not care how much other work the other guy wants you to do.

And yes it would make sense to hire more people, but it is easier to manage less people and have them work a ton of hours than manage more people working less hours. It's also the culture of the industry ("I did it so now you can too") and there are plenty of times as an analyst you are sitting around not doing a whole lot of work.

I feel that's how a lot of individuals in upper management are whenever work is being reported to them.

 

A few things:

1) You can't swap in an analyst at night to "takeover" the work of an analyst who has worked during the day. Deals require precedent knowledge. If you haven't been involved in every step from the beginning, you will struggle to complete even basic tasks. This includes everything from understanding the company, the industry, what information is available (and where it is saved on the drive), who the key players are, what it is your Associate/VP/D/MD is looking for, etc. And the answer isn't to simply hire more analysts and staff fewer analysts per deal - it's inefficient. If you have 50 analysts, that's 50 people who need their hand held through the entire deal process (the first time around). Double that to 100 and all of a sudden you've doubled the amount of people you need to teach and your "deals per analyst" count just got cut in half. Sadly, analysts' time isn't respected, so the senior folks are going to run as lean as they can.

2) I don't buy the argument that "the senior folks had to deal with it, so analysts should too." Rewind 20 years to when your MDs were analysts and the "deal environment" was totally different. Back then, there weren't fancy excel models that could run 500 different scenarios at a flick of a switch. You couldn't go online and simply download an industry report or a company's financials. CapIQ wasn't invented until 1998, and I guarantee it lacked today's database and capabilities. I've talked to MD's about what life was like when they were analysts. Back then, CIM drafts were exchanged via hardcopy in the mail and you had to wait a couple of days for the client to receive it. Fax sped things up a bit until email proliferated. People didn't have email on their blackberries so when they went home at night (or on vacation) the work stopped. The whole concept that the senior folks had to deal with the same hours or struggles is ridiculous.

Conversely, I think this explains why senior folks make some of the requests that they do. Ever have a senior guy say "oh, let's just run the model out six years instead of five." They think this is a quick toggle because they don't know any better. Or my favorite: "Please find and add-in the purchase multiple for this private transaction." Makes you want to grab a baseball bat and say: "I can't get the multiple, the transaction was private, dumbass." Obviously not every senior guy is like this, but they exist. That's why analysts love working with associates who were analysts at one point --- they understand the capabilities and limitations of the system.

These days, data is so widely available and communication is instantaneous. Client and therefore internal expectations have grown with it. This doesn't just apply to the investment banking industry, but all client services industries in general. A lot of corporate america seems to have "accepted it" as the cost of doing business.

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 
CompBanker:
A few things:

1) You can't swap in an analyst at night to "takeover" the work of an analyst who has worked during the day. Deals require precedent knowledge. If you haven't been involved in every step from the beginning, you will struggle to complete even basic tasks. This includes everything from understanding the company, the industry, what information is available (and where it is saved on the drive), who the key players are, what it is your Associate/VP/D/MD is looking for, etc. And the answer isn't to simply hire more analysts and staff fewer analysts per deal - it's inefficient. If you have 50 analysts, that's 50 people who need their hand held through the entire deal process (the first time around). Double that to 100 and all of a sudden you've doubled the amount of people you need to teach and your "deals per analyst" count just got cut in half. Sadly, analysts' time isn't respected, so the senior folks are going to run as lean as they can.

2) I don't buy the argument that "the senior folks had to deal with it, so analysts should too." Rewind 20 years to when your MDs were analysts and the "deal environment" was totally different. Back then, there weren't fancy excel models that could run 500 different scenarios at a flick of a switch. You couldn't go online and simply download an industry report or a company's financials. CapIQ wasn't invented until 1998, and I guarantee it lacked today's database and capabilities. I've talked to MD's about what life was like when they were analysts. Back then, CIM drafts were exchanged via hardcopy in the mail and you had to wait a couple of days for the client to receive it. Fax sped things up a bit until email proliferated. People didn't have email on their blackberries so when they went home at night (or on vacation) the work stopped. The whole concept that the senior folks had to deal with the same hours or struggles is ridiculous.

Conversely, I think this explains why senior folks make some of the requests that they do. Ever have a senior guy say "oh, let's just run the model out six years instead of five." They think this is a quick toggle because they don't know any better. Or my favorite: "Please find and add-in the purchase multiple for this private transaction." Makes you want to grab a baseball bat and say: "I can't get the multiple, the transaction was private, dumbass." Obviously not every senior guy is like this, but they exist. That's why analysts love working with associates who were analysts at one point --- they understand the capabilities and limitations of the system.

These days, data is so widely available and communication is instantaneous. Client and therefore internal expectations have grown with it. This doesn't just apply to the investment banking industry, but all client services industries in general. A lot of corporate america seems to have "accepted it" as the cost of doing business.

Totally agree. I am always frustrated by MDs that try to talk about how "In my day we didn't complain about things and we worked just as hard." If they had any idea of the complexity of the analysis they request or the time it takes to run all the sensitivities / scenarios that they request, they wouldn't try and compare their experience to ours because they would look incredibly stupid. In their mind, excel is this black box where analysts just snap their fingers and additional price scenarios that were never previously considered automatically update themselves seamlessly into the model. Adding assumptions at the 11th hour is inherently simple because excel can do anything and obviously it should be intuitive and simple.

Trying to explain these types of issues to kids who are incredulous about the hours is largely useless (though I think your explanation sums it up perfectly) until they actually see it. The problem is that while the work done in banking is incredibly boring and fairly straightforward, a lot of effort and tediousness goes into making relatively simple changes proposed by senior bankers work with existing models / analyses.

To the kids out there constantly questioning the inefficiency and thinking it could be done more effectively please just accept that many people have asked that question before you with the same misunderstood perspective on banking that you have. It isn't some sort of profound epiphany that you have just now discovered.

Ultimately, everyone knows that the process is inefficient, but because of the constraints of the job (i.e. client requests and unreasonable deadlines) there isn't a way to make the job much more efficient besides offshoring menial tasks such as data mining for company profiles or very basic comp spreading (tasks which many teams are still uncomfortable offshoring). You just need to accept that you don't know everything and that if it was as easy of a "fix" as you think it is, that it would probably have been done before.

It isn't going to change because you can't just throw extra bodies at a process and make it more efficient. You can't make MDs push back on client requests, and you cannot control the "cover your ass" internal culture of the banking hierarchy. Accept it for what it is and try not to hate it too much for what it is not.

 

I worked in restructuring so my hours weren't as bad, but my colleagues in M&A got regularly slammed really badly, to the extent where I'd help them out when my workload permitted. Not totally selfless as that looks really good for the 'team play' part of your review.

The worst times were when they had 3-4 pitches coming up in a short timeframe. Much of it is 'hurry up and wait,' as I think has been said in the post already. M&A was much more militaristic than RX, the book had to go from analyst to associate, back to analyst for edits, back to associate, then up to VP, then back to associate for more markups, then back to the analyst to crank the changes - they were all necessary changes but done in an extremely inefficient process cuz everyone wants to add a little value here and there, and basically the analyst ends up working super hard and then having to wait and wait and wait until the next reaming.

If you have a Wednesday pitch, you can expect the 'almost final' book to go to the MD about 9-10 pm Tuesday, changes from him come in at 11-12 pm, and you have 8 hours of work to complete, and THEN you have to print and flip the damn things too - no sleep at all - and imagine having to do that for 4 deals in a week. Brutal.

The M&A analyst would also have to spend alot of time doing stupid shit - pulling every equity analyst report on a company (and all of its comps) and printing them and binding them and sending a courier so the Associate/VP could flip through them at home in front of the fireplace while he's at the office, scrubbing transaction comps, etc. Also the memoranda and such are done in Word and not PPT, and Word as you know can be so much more finicky than PPT.

CapIQ is a double edged sword - it's made everyone know everything, so to really stand out in a pitch you have to do even more now than you did before CapIQ. Things like spreading comps have been outsourced - we used a company in India who were awesome, basically the guys do all your data entry and flag every single cell and cite where they got the number, they do addbacks (sometimes you have to check them but 95% of the time they are right) and all that good stuff.

But all said it's a really awful life being an M&A analyst - and since M&A is now so commoditized, they might do all that work and pitch 4 sell-side deals in a week and have none of them hit - but you ALWAYS have to put your best foot forward. Industry guys are also always updating their comp sets every quarter. I was so blessed and lucky to be in restructuring, it's maybe the single best choice I've ever made.

if you like it then you shoulda put a banana on it
 
frgna:
... since M&A is now so commoditized, they might do all that work and pitch 4 sell-side deals in a week and have none of them hit...

Many thanks for your insightful comments. As someone who worked in sell side restructuring/recap advisory roles, I couldnt have said it better myself.

Regarding M&A being commoditized, do you think restructuring is heading in the same direction? Why do you think the restructuring/recapitalization space is less commoditized than M&A? Perhaps because relationships are more established and entrenched here which make for higher barrier of entry while with M&A anybody can just set up a shop and start selling companies (just like realtors). And also clients are reluctant to give out retainers to new restructuring shops, although sometimes the retainer is waived for new clients that can potentially bring in lucrative pipeline of deals down the road.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 
brandon st randy:
frgna:
... since M&A is now so commoditized, they might do all that work and pitch 4 sell-side deals in a week and have none of them hit...

Many thanks for your insightful comments. As someone who worked in sell side restructuring/recap advisory roles, I couldnt have said it better myself.

Regarding M&A being commoditized, do you think restructuring is heading to the same direction? Why do you think the restructuring/recapitalization space is less commoditized than M&A? Perhaps because relationships are more established and entrenched here which make more higher barrier of entry while with M&A anybody can just set up a shop and start selling companies (just like realtors).

Precisely. The space is certainly a little more crowded now, but really, Lazard, BX, Houlihan, Moelis, Rothschild and a few others dominate the space because they invented the practice more or less. The relationships are really deep - bankers and lawyers are so tight together and go back decades so that when something breaks, they know the first person to call. In the big deals, there are usually enough advisory roles available to get at least a few of each of these bigger guys in, and the rest are left out - but there are roles for advising debtor, unsecureds, equity, 1st lien, etc. So it's hard for the newer players to catch up in that field by breaking into the big deals.

Also where M&A clients are more price sensitive, RX clients want the best. RX also requires so much legal expertise, and deal experience is really relevant - if you have a failing energy company, you want the guys who did the Enron bankruptcy.

if you like it then you shoulda put a banana on it
 

I forgot maybe the worst one - buyer diligence requests. Analysts and associates are constantly getting emails and calls from potential buyers for the most ridiculous crap - P&L's by SKU, legal documents/titles, incorporation docs, scanned copies of every piece of land the company owns, on and on and on...

This means managing the data room for an active deal is another super huge pain in the ass, especially if you are on multiple deals with different dataroom interfaces (Bowne, Merrill, Intralinks, etc). You're constantly adding/changing/organizing/shifting documents and permissioning new buyers to look at certain things. It's tedious enough to drive you crazy.

if you like it then you shoulda put a banana on it
 
frgna:
I forgot maybe the worst one - buyer diligence requests. Analysts and associates are constantly getting emails and calls from potential buyers for the most ridiculous crap - P&L's by SKU, legal documents/titles, incorporation docs, scanned copies of every piece of land the company owns, on and on and on...

This means managing the data room for an active deal is another super huge pain in the ass, especially if you are on multiple deals with different dataroom interfaces (Bowne, Merrill, Intralinks, etc). You're constantly adding/changing/organizing/shifting documents and permissioning new buyers to look at certain things. It's tedious enough to drive you crazy.

ugh...DD was probably my darkest days as well. i was fine with flipping something at 4am, but DD work for some reason just felt like a quicksand of productivity. that shit killed my motivation to do work so fast

 

what would you say is the equivalent in RX to these M&A inefficiencies? or is there just not one?

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
Oreos:
what would you say is the equivalent in RX to these M&A inefficiencies? or is there just not one?

RX is a much more efficient revenue model - fixed monthly advisory fees and success fee based on successful recap instead of a sale which can be botched at any point by buyer, seller, or other factors. One deal I did was something like $200,000 monthly fee for up to 12 months (thereafter credited against success fee) and success fee was $3-4 million. Some deals get a percent of recovery as well, so the more the bonds trade up the higher the fee, and these can get ridiculous (if they get too high, there's usually some agreement). I think we had about 15-20 professionals, and at one point in 2009-10 we had 4-5 deals running like that, which is manageable - RX has slowed down a lot since then but those were really good times.

The only painful thing in RX advisory are the walking dead - the companies that you know are gonna restructure, but keep getting lifelines/refis/covenant resets that only delay the inevitable. That means you could have a pitchbook that you have to keep updated for literally years before it gets used, updating for new financials and sit overview every time - though it's usually not too bad if the book has been done right. Overall though the RX world and lifestyle is so much better than M&A - a distressed company wants to restructure, and needs to restructure, whereas a healthy company doesn't NEED to sell, and can always just say no.

No offense to any M&A bankers here but I've always kind of viewed M&A as glorified real estate agents, they just sell companies instead of houses.

if you like it then you shoulda put a banana on it
 

Alright my ignorant friend. It's fairly easy, you (in your 5-figure total comp corporate job) usually work on a couple of projects at a time, maybe 3 or 4 including projects with long-term time horizons. Your weekly deadlines are countable on your left hand. Also, you work with fairly average people that only care, like you, about getting out of the office as soon as 6pm shows on the bottom right of your 7-year old Compaq running Windows 2000, so a model built in 4 hours is accepted and rarely challenged, and probably never revised.

Now imagine that you had not one week, but 36 hours to do everything you planned this week. Imagine a to do list of 3 live deals deliverables (with billions of dollars in consideration), 3 pitch books, and 2 model revisions that are all due in the next hours or the next day. That's how banking is. Deadlines are never given more than a couple of days in advance. It's always "ASAP'. And even if you know that a meeting is coming up in 2 weeks with a massive amount of work, you have so much to do already in the meantime that you cannot possibly start until a few days prior.

Makes more sense? Why do you think we make so much more money than you do?

Work travel feels like vacation? Where the hell do you work? I remember very well landing at 11pm near the client's office, getting all my stuff ready between 1am and 4am (since I had to revise a model for another deal on the plane ride there), sleep 2h, wake up, shower, shave, iron my shirt and get going for the day, then fly back in the afternoon and be back at the office that evening for a third deal I was on.

Your banker friends who dick around will very likely get fired in the next round of layoffs if your description is accurate. Or worse, they'll finish their 2-year analyst program and will come work for your lethargic firm after months of unemployment.

 
Dumbeldore3000:
Alright my ignorant friend. It's fairly easy, you (in your 5-figure total comp corporate job) usually work on a couple of projects at a time, maybe 3 or 4 including projects with long-term time horizons. Your weekly deadlines are countable on your left hand. Also, you work with fairly average people that only care, like you, about getting out of the office as soon as 6pm shows on the bottom right of your 7-year old Compaq running Windows 2000, so a model built in 4 hours is accepted and rarely challenged, and probably never revised.

Now imagine that you had not one week, but 36 hours to do everything you planned this week. Imagine a to do list of 3 live deals deliverables (with billions of dollars in consideration), 3 pitch books, and 2 model revisions that are all due in the next hours or the next day. That's how banking is. Deadlines are never given more than a couple of days in advance. It's always "ASAP'. And even if you know that a meeting is coming up in 2 weeks with a massive amount of work, you have so much to do already in the meantime that you cannot possibly start until a few days prior.

Makes more sense? Why do you think we make so much more money than you do?

Work travel feels like vacation? Where the hell do you work? I remember very well landing at 11pm near the client's office, getting all my stuff ready between 1am and 4am (since I had to revise a model for another deal on the plane ride there), sleep 2h, wake up, shower, shave, iron my shirt and get going for the day, then fly back in the afternoon and be back at the office that evening for a third deal I was on.

Your banker friends who dick around will very likely get fired in the next round of layoffs if your description is accurate. Or worse, they'll finish their 2-year analyst program and will come work for your lethargic firm after months of unemployment.

Um.... you know BH is balling out at a top hedge fund, right?
 
Dumbeldore3000:
Alright my ignorant friend. It's fairly easy, you (in your 5-figure total comp corporate job) usually work on a couple of projects at a time, maybe 3 or 4 including projects with long-term time horizons. Your weekly deadlines are countable on your left hand. Also, you work with fairly average people that only care, like you, about getting out of the office as soon as 6pm shows on the bottom right of your 7-year old Compaq running Windows 2000, so a model built in 4 hours is accepted and rarely challenged, and probably never revised.

Now imagine that you had not one week, but 36 hours to do everything you planned this week. Imagine a to do list of 3 live deals deliverables (with billions of dollars in consideration), 3 pitch books, and 2 model revisions that are all due in the next hours or the next day. That's how banking is. Deadlines are never given more than a couple of days in advance. It's always "ASAP'. And even if you know that a meeting is coming up in 2 weeks with a massive amount of work, you have so much to do already in the meantime that you cannot possibly start until a few days prior.

Makes more sense? Why do you think we make so much more money than you do?

Work travel feels like vacation? Where the hell do you work? I remember very well landing at 11pm near the client's office, getting all my stuff ready between 1am and 4am (since I had to revise a model for another deal on the plane ride there), sleep 2h, wake up, shower, shave, iron my shirt and get going for the day, then fly back in the afternoon and be back at the office that evening for a third deal I was on.

Your banker friends who dick around will very likely get fired in the next round of layoffs if your description is accurate. Or worse, they'll finish their 2-year analyst program and will come work for your lethargic firm after months of unemployment.

I work in banking so I understand some of what you are saying, except that I completely disagree with the prickish and condescending way you went about it. BlackHat showed a ton of class by not bitch slapping the shit out of you for being an idiot and making outlandish assumptions.

He makes a hell of a lot more than both of us and probably has a more stressful job.

 
rufiolove:
Dumbeldore3000:
Alright my ignorant friend. It's fairly easy, you (in your 5-figure total comp corporate job) usually work on a couple of projects at a time, maybe 3 or 4 including projects with long-term time horizons. Your weekly deadlines are countable on your left hand. Also, you work with fairly average people that only care, like you, about getting out of the office as soon as 6pm shows on the bottom right of your 7-year old Compaq running Windows 2000, so a model built in 4 hours is accepted and rarely challenged, and probably never revised.

Now imagine that you had not one week, but 36 hours to do everything you planned this week. Imagine a to do list of 3 live deals deliverables (with billions of dollars in consideration), 3 pitch books, and 2 model revisions that are all due in the next hours or the next day. That's how banking is. Deadlines are never given more than a couple of days in advance. It's always "ASAP'. And even if you know that a meeting is coming up in 2 weeks with a massive amount of work, you have so much to do already in the meantime that you cannot possibly start until a few days prior.

Makes more sense? Why do you think we make so much more money than you do?

Work travel feels like vacation? Where the hell do you work? I remember very well landing at 11pm near the client's office, getting all my stuff ready between 1am and 4am (since I had to revise a model for another deal on the plane ride there), sleep 2h, wake up, shower, shave, iron my shirt and get going for the day, then fly back in the afternoon and be back at the office that evening for a third deal I was on.

Your banker friends who dick around will very likely get fired in the next round of layoffs if your description is accurate. Or worse, they'll finish their 2-year analyst program and will come work for your lethargic firm after months of unemployment.

I work in banking so I understand some of what you are saying, except that I completely disagree with the prickish and condescending way you went about it. BlackHat showed a ton of class by not bitch slapping the shit out of you for being an idiot and making outlandish assumptions.

He makes a hell of a lot more than both of us and probably has a more stressful job.

A ton of class? Quoting BH: "Are you just really slow as sh*t at stuff?" -- I decided to adjust my tone and assumptions to HIS condescending tone AND assumptions. He is ignorant as he never worked in banking, probably never got the offer out of college, is bitter about it, got the HF job through daddy, and now comes back in everybody's face to show how cool he is (THAT is an unfounded assumption). I don't tolerate that. Especially from little HF leeches that make money from sucking out inefficiencies out of capital markets, without adding any value to the greater economic system whatsoever.

Also, I no longer work in banking and work at a large PE/VC fund, but I'll still stand up for those who work in banking.

Btw, BH, please make your reply public. Instead of cowardly sending it in PM.

 
ThaVanBurenBoyz:
Might as well just post it.

No..its bad.

The answer to your question is 1) network 2) get involved 3) beef up your resume 4) repeat -happypantsmcgee WSO is not your personal search function.
 

I think one small but extremely important point has been missed, and although it's not a complete picture of the inefficiency in investment banking, it plays a big role: The success fee

On the client side, if you have committed to doing a deal using an advisor, you know you are going to end up paying a very significant figure to your banker, and it gives you the power to work them as hard as you want.

Take a typical sell-side process staffed with an M&A analyst, M&A associate, M&A VP and M&A MD (not always the structure, but I have seen deals run that lean). Industry teams may or may not have a role on the actual execution, but for this purpose they don't so the hours they put in pitching really don't matter. If the deal is $500 million, your fee is hopefully going to be somewhere around $5 million. If you assume that the analysts and associates are spending 40-60 hours per week on your deal for the first 8 or so weeks, and 20-40 after that, VPs half of the analyst and associate, and MD say 10 hours a week up until the end of the deal when they pick up a little bit with negotiations, you are looking at somewhere around 1,500 hours over the span of 3 months. That's $3,333 an hour you are paying to your banker (sure that's a lean structure/deals drag on, etc, etc but even if you doubled the hours, it's still $1,667 an hour). That leads to the expectation that a) they better be producing top-notch, and only top-notch work and b) they will produce that work whenever you want, 24/7. In the broader context of an M&A deal, that $5 million may produce way more value to the client than doing it in-house (broader access to buyers, less drain on your resources etc etc). However, it's still a lot on an absolute basis and even more on an hourly basis. I'm not denying the value that bankers can add, but when you look at it in the reverse, it's pretty eye-opening

MDs are conciously or subconciously aware of this, and the a) and b) above drives their expectations of everyone below them. When on a deal, everything you are doing is extremely important and needs to be done yesterday. You don't want the client thinking you can't do top-notch work (hence the endless comments from all involved) and you don't want them thinking you aren't working as hard/fast as you can (hence the extremely short, asap deadlines).

The whole culture of banking is driven by the desire of seniors to justify their exorbitant fees to clients. If you backed into it, and assumed that analysts bill out at $100/hour, associates, $250, VPs, $500 and MDs, $1000, your total fee for that deal is around $400k. Pretty stark difference between that, and the $5 mil fee the firm is getting.

Edit: I didn't comment on work fees, but a) if you only got paid on work fees, no one would in IB would be paid particularly well, and b) you don't always even get them / are undercut by firms who don't need them

 
rufiolove:
Omg... BH that was beautiful... it reminded me of the post I wrote on that "girl problem" thread.

That kid should really thank you that you didn't post this on the thread... true class.

Another +1, even though a lot of that hit fairly close to home, it was amusing as shit

Please link to girl problem post

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
rufiolove:
Omg... BH that was beautiful... it reminded me of the post I wrote on that "girl problem" thread.

That kid should really thank you that you didn't post this on the thread... true class.

Another +1, even though a lot of that hit fairly close to home, it was amusing as shit

Please link to girl problem post

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/girl-trouble-am-i-being-petty
The answer to your question is 1) network 2) get involved 3) beef up your resume 4) repeat -happypantsmcgee WSO is not your personal search function.
 

All I'll say in response to that is this: If you were ever a banker, which I'm doubting more and more, you would have had the "attention to detail" to know that I wrote that yesterday, not today, so your little argument about my free time is just stupid. You seem to jump to conclusions pretty quickly too, with those immediate assumptions about a handful of things that no reasonable person would assume based on what I've said in this thread so far. You'd also know that "f-bombs" (we called them those in middle school) are fairly common in my vocabulary, so no indication there of having "struck a sensitive chord."

By the way you can't quote things people haven't said. I'd never call my job stressful in a million years, nor did I do so on this thread or at any point in any of my posts. You're grasping at straws and it only makes me feel bad for you. I also feel bad that you had to construct an excuse for why you'll never use that username again because I embarassed you too much. For a guy who only comes on here once in a blue moon, you sure do seem to care an awful lot about me and my opinion.

Oh, and if you think my grammar is bad (who would care anyway?) then you must have been quite a shitty banker. If anything, I'm assuming you're the "fraud" since that's the first conclusion you decided to jump to.

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
All I'll say in response to that is this: If you were ever a banker, which I'm doubting more and more, you would have had the "attention to detail" to know that I wrote that yesterday, not today, so your little argument about my free time is just stupid. You seem to jump to conclusions pretty quickly too, with those immediate assumptions about a handful of things that no reasonable person would assume based on what I've said in this thread so far. You'd also know that "f-bombs" (we called them those in middle school) are fairly common in my vocabulary, so no indication there of having "struck a sensitive chord."

By the way you can't quote things people haven't said. I'd never call my job stressful in a million years, nor did I do so on this thread or at any point in any of my posts. You're grasping at straws and it only makes me feel bad for you. I also feel bad that you had to construct an excuse for why you'll never use that username again because I embarassed you too much. For a guy who only comes on here once in a blue moon, you sure do seem to care an awful lot about me and my opinion.

Oh, and if you think my grammar is bad (who would care anyway?) then you must have been quite a shitty banker. If anything, I'm assuming you're the "fraud" since that's the first conclusion you decided to jump to.

Haha. Weak answer. Thanks for confirming all my above-mentioned points. And please, keep answering, each of your words entertain me more and more.

Funny, I've just noticed that you are quite the talk of the town on this website (couldn't resist logging back in to see your instantaneous answer, as expected, since you're so busy) and get a lot of support from a bunch of little c"cksucking-fans on your posts. Is that where you... exist? Where you're cool and popular? I'd love to see how you guys all look like in real life. You make me think of these nerdy kids with awesome nicknames that would play CounterStrike and World of Warcraft for hours everyday. You guys are pathetic. Now, you and your little followers, please unleash the insults below. Tell me how much of an $#@% I am for not respecting your little community of d-bags:

 
Dumbeldore3000:
BlackHat:
All I'll say in response to that is this: If you were ever a banker, which I'm doubting more and more, you would have had the "attention to detail" to know that I wrote that yesterday, not today, so your little argument about my free time is just stupid. You seem to jump to conclusions pretty quickly too, with those immediate assumptions about a handful of things that no reasonable person would assume based on what I've said in this thread so far. You'd also know that "f-bombs" (we called them those in middle school) are fairly common in my vocabulary, so no indication there of having "struck a sensitive chord."

By the way you can't quote things people haven't said. I'd never call my job stressful in a million years, nor did I do so on this thread or at any point in any of my posts. You're grasping at straws and it only makes me feel bad for you. I also feel bad that you had to construct an excuse for why you'll never use that username again because I embarassed you too much. For a guy who only comes on here once in a blue moon, you sure do seem to care an awful lot about me and my opinion.

Oh, and if you think my grammar is bad (who would care anyway?) then you must have been quite a shitty banker. If anything, I'm assuming you're the "fraud" since that's the first conclusion you decided to jump to.

Haha. Weak answer. Thanks for confirming all my above-mentioned points. And please, keep answering, each of your words entertain me more and more.

Funny, I've just noticed that you are quite the talk of the town on this website (couldn't resist logging back in to see your instantaneous answer, as expected, since you're so busy) and get a lot of support from a bunch of little c"cksucking-fans on your posts. Is that where you... exist? Where you're cool and popular? I'd love to see how you guys all look like in real life. You make me think of these nerdy kids with awesome nicknames that would play CounterStrike and World of Warcraft for hours everyday. You guys are pathetic. Now, you and your little followers, please unleash the insults below. Tell me how much of an $#@% I am for not respecting your little community of d-bags:

I don't understand your logic/reasoning. Finance is a small world, and this site is pretty popular among the community. In fact, I don't think I know anyone in banking who has never heard of WSO. It seems like you're on the outside looking in. That being said, I don't see where your argument is coming from. Comparing people who work in finance to CounterStrike kids...coming from the guy bitching about grammar - with the Harry Potter username...that you spelled wrong

BH, or any of the Certified Users on the site aren't trying to whip their dicks out to have a measuring contest. But from the way you attacked BH in your original post, it is more than apparent that you are trying to compensate for some kind of shortcoming in your own life. BH has such a strong following on the site because he has proven time after time that he "adds value" to the community. Probably more so than you do at your roach fund hotel

 

Yikes, this thing really blew up. All I'll add is that it is never cool, impressive, or awesome to work a job that requires long hours or is very stressful. If you find yourself bragging to your friends about how much you work or how tough the culture is, stop yourself. No one is jealous of the kid working til 2am every night.

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 
CompBanker:
Yikes, this thing really blew up. All I'll add is that it is never cool, impressive, or awesome to work a job that requires long hours or is very stressful. If you find yourself bragging to your friends about how much you work or how tough the culture is, stop yourself. No one is jealous of the kid working til 2am every night.
This. No one is impressed with your ability to copy and paste logos into a powerpoint at 1am because your MD thought it was necessary to show a buyers list.
 

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Quia modi aliquam ipsam voluptatem impedit expedita. Non laborum omnis sed exercitationem.

"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 

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The answer to your question is 1) network 2) get involved 3) beef up your resume 4) repeat -happypantsmcgee WSO is not your personal search function.
 

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Aut aliquam sint officia iure laudantium sed quis. Quia inventore laborum explicabo quo. Molestiae doloremque aliquam ut quod tenetur aspernatur eos fugit. Laudantium est consequatur asperiores rerum porro nulla rerum. Velit hic voluptatibus perspiciatis quae et quod. Ratione consequatur tempora sequi magni voluptatem delectus aspernatur.

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