How do you guys work so many hours?
I work from 9-530 and go to school from 630-9 .. at the end of the day I am exhausted. If I did that for 6 days of the week it still isn't even close to 100 hours. How do you guys bump out 100+ hour weeks like it is nothing?
Cocaine and red bull
Most people don't work 100 hours and those that do certainly don't brush it off like it's nothing. Further, there are periods of downtime in between work in IB as opposed to studying where you always have to be mentally on. The exhaustion you feel is mostly due to the mental toll of studying after a day of work. Being mentally and physically drained is more taxing than just physical exhaustion.
10am-11:45am: saunter in, check email, grab coffee, dedicate 12% of energy to pretending to do shit while expending remaining 88% on stealth mode job hunting on your personal phone
11:45-12pm: listen to associate huff and puff over some negligible punctuation blip that your fellow lowly analyst left behind in a first draft
12:01pm: "wow, did you even bother to proofread this"
12:03pm: "GOD, do I have to do everything around here?"
12:03-1pm: sit in on conference call = stare into space, fall asleep for 13 minutes, idly browse espn/ fb/ bi/ dealbreaker/ wso, attempt to do some online shopping for non-work clothing before realizing, 'what's the point' and closing out the window, press on nail beds to check for anemia, mouth "I will destroy you" to your associate as he strolls by, reload LinkedIn to check on recent visitors, sigh heavily
1:02pm: see staffer in the distance; duck into a closet
1:05-1:22pm: escape the hallowed halls of your bb to go and grab a depressing lunch with your equally depressing friend/ fellow analyst/ competitor/ who even knows at this point
1:25pm: fire drill = groan and cuss a lot even though you don't really know what's going on
3:00pm: depressing lunch is now soggy and has somehow become even more depressing. Woe is me
3:15-4pm: update model according to vp's whimsy
4:02pm: accidentally save changes to original file
4:03pm: Ctrl Z
4:04pm: excel crashes
4:05pm: curl hands into fists until you swear you've broken skin on your palms. Check palms. Skin dissatisfyingly still intact. Whimper into hands instead
4:06-5pm: suddenly receive 38 emails detailing the emergency situation at hand: FWD: md wants X by first thing tomorrow morning FWD: RE: of course, anything, do you need it in a certain format? Font, spacing, borders, colors, lions, tigers, or bears? Oh my. -xoxo VP RE: FWD: RE: vp demands to know why X hasn't been done yet CC: RE: associate explains that dipshit analysts should've had X done yesterday; associate is so apologetic—associate hadn't realized how unreliable the analysts were; associate will coordinate, arrange, ensure, manage, arrange, straight away
[Inbox] Associate needs X by 7am for proofing; associate estimates X task will only take 2, 3 hours max; associate does not want you to stay up all night over this
5:01pm: agree with fellow dipshit analyst that task X will take roughly 12 hours to complete
5:02pm: [Inbox] associate would like to know if instructions are clear
5:03pm: sigh heavily
5:04pm: chew up Adderall
5:05-7pm: associate's bidding
7-7:47pm: sushi or burger for dinner
7:48pm: God dammit, should've ordered sushi
7:49-3:58am: actual work
3:59am: sigh heavily
4am: slouch toward freedom
Total hours 'worked': 18 Total hours worked: ~10
Not the most demanding job effort-wise, but soul crushing nonetheless
yet
This is 10/10, thank you for sharing
It's miserable, but you'll get used to it. After my first 100 hour week I felt dead. My body seemed to be moving on autopilot and I felt terrible. After a couple more of these I think my body started adjusting to it. What I felt helped me was drinking green tea and getting 10-20 minutes exercise per day before work. 100 hours per week is certainly not the norm, but I had a long stretch where this was my average and I can confirm that my luck sucked. I think I'm a much stronger person and banker for it though.
How to handle banking hours (Originally Posted: 05/07/2016)
Hello WSO,
I know you all have probably heard a lot of questions about the banking hours, but I couldn't find a post about how to effectively combat lack of sleep. I in no way doubt the 120+ work week occurrences but how do you remain functional? I am under the impression that 5 hour energy and coffee only works short-term. Exercise, eating healthy, etc?
Thanks, and Happy Mothers weekend! (Mom calls it a weekend haha)
You don't combat it; you deal with it. Being in good shape, and having a healthy diet helps you handle it better. Don't under any circumstance think that this is in anyway "healthy" or sustainable; but you'll adjust, and grind through it.
When I did work for big tech, those long hours are close to what we worked on. However, we got to work around 7 AM and stayed until 8-10 PM. Got home around 11PM to support work overseas too. That lasts until 2-3 (rarely) 4 AM, sleep/nap wake up and head back to work after for another full day.
We'd do hour "lunches" with naps in between. Besides that, your body adjusts to it.
Hiten
How does your brain function after working 80+ hours??? (Originally Posted: 01/15/2011)
So we all of course know the ridiculous hours analysts work in investment banking.. i hear all kinds of stories -- working all weekends, passing out for a few hours in the bathroom, working 100+ hours week over week and i just have one question...
in those 100+ hours that the analysts are "working", are you continuously working or does that include down time, like reading stuff online every now and then , taking coffee/lunch breaks etc (or do u not do that at all?) .. i guess a better way to put it is -- are u doing brain-intensive work for all those hours? if not, how much of it involves you actually thinking and putting in intellectual horsepower into whatever you're doing? i understand a lot of the analyst work is grunt work, but all of that for over a hundred hours a week....?. my brain would really really shut off due to lack of sleep. but i guess you get used to it after a few weeks..
Am i thinking about this correctly? would love to hear your thoughts folks.
I think there's a lot of downtime involved when there aren't many big deals going through. I've heard from a couple people that they were able to take 2 hour lunches among other things at a top tier BB. So it's not all work, apparently.
It's a very boom and bust field. You'll be killed at some points and it's not so bad at others.
Your brain functions like crap after a while. You need to take a little break, get some coffee, whatever. It isn't easy, but you kind of adapt.
Also some people get angry after those hours, I mean like batch at everyone. While I've never pushed past 50 hours, some SAs I'm friends with would act like total douches whenever I called them to make plans. It went away after four weeks, or after they left back for school.
There is definitely a lot of down time even if your staffed on 4 deals. A lot of the times you won't get your turns until the vp heads out for the night who will give the work to the associate, who will the hand it to you. Another thing, a lot of work as an analyst takes absolutely zero intellectual horse power and you can just put had phones on, grind away and zone out.
How does my brain function after working 80+ hours?
Sorry don't know. Never have to use my brain at work.
Ever pledge a fraternity? Pull back to back all nighters in college?
Its one of the most competitive industries out of college for a reason. Sure not all the stories are 100% factual but it's extremely demanding. In the end of the year only the best of the best will remain.
What idealistic horsesht. If by "best" you mean only the "best" dcksuckers will remain, because that's all this industry is really about. There's nothing "best" about fixing colors and resizing boxes on a PPT 47 times. The true "best" are out there inventing products and creating businesses making real money after college.
As for brain function after 80+ hours, it depends. There is definitely some cognitive slowdown, but you can combat it with a lot of self discipline, going over your work several times. However, once you get into the 110 hour range, things can really go to hell fast. If you are simply pulling info from the internet and pasting it into a pitchbook you will be fine, but if you're going over, say, a 30 page document (that you created) with lots of numbers and percentages in it, and that document is linked to a database with 100's of different inputs and outputs, you might have a disaster on your hands.
For example, we had one week where we just got killed, typical pitching horror story that you hear about all the time, 110 plus hours...etc. Had a short weekend and recovered a bit, but was still exhausted on Monday. Grinded through it, when at about 10:00 PM word came down that I'd be there again all night, helping on somebody else's project, that "needed to be done by morning" (total BS). Stayed until 3-4 AM, came back again at 8:30 the next morning and I was absolutely shot. It was bad after the short rest, it was like a shock to my system while I was on the path of recovery. That day i couldn't get anything right. Every document I looked at, mistakes got by me. The MD went nuts several times, I tried and tried, but no matter what I did, I simply wasn't seeing anything correctly. My vision was blurred, my brain was not functioning, no amount of caffeine could have saved me. Finally, at about 4PM, the MD looked at the work I did and saw the same stupid spelling mistakes, numbers in the wrong places, etc. and he just laughed (very out of character for me). Finally, he realized I simply wasn't myself and he sent me home early that day, said "you're not allowed here past 5 PM." The next day I was back to normal.
And this is coming from somebody who is very good when it comes to that stuff (one of the reasons I was hired in the first place.)
lol brain intensive? Banking is only physically intensive
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