So I work in London at a debt focused boutique, doing mostly debt issuance/advisory for infrastructure and property projects which in my mind is quite "IB-ish" even if it isn't M&A.
What I have been surprised (positively) to find is that those stories of working until 3AM on a Saturday just haven't been true in the slightest. Now don't get me wrong, I do work hard and it is a very intense and competitive environment but even when we're closing deals, I'm rarely in the office past 7.30. Typical week for me is about 55-60h which although a lot more than a "typical" 9-5 job, is nowhere near the 70-100h weeks I keep hearing about. As for weekend work, I've logged in a few times to do some things but generally have not worked on weekends. There is no culture of staying in the office until late at night at our firm.
This makes me wonder where do those stories of crazy hours come from? My thoughts:
- Hours aren't uniform and not everybody actually does those worst hours but the ones that make the press are those of 2AM finishes, not people going home at 7.30.
- It varies by what part of IB you're in and debt isn't as bad as M&A
- It varies by firm, some are better and some are worse
- People are overstating how long they actually work
Any ideas?
The long hours are cultural and m&a transactions have much more nonlinear tasks
DCM / ECM are known to have much better hours, even at BBs. The ECM analysts at my bank were never at the office past 7-8 and very rarely on weekends while pretty much every one else was at the office until at least 11 every day and would put in at least a full weekend day. They did start earlier, but still had a much better lifestyle (but at the cost of much narrower exit ops).
That being said, people in IB tend to inflate their hours a bit and no one is working 100+ hours a week consistently. A good portion of my analyst class (including me) would keep track of their hours in a spreadsheet and we would often compare and over the first 2 years, averagewas about 75 hours a week for people in coverage groups and Lev Fin and about 85 for people in M&A.
Can confirm this comment is true about ECM/DCM at BB.
May I ask what are the typical exits for capital markets? A friend of mine, and it really is not myself since I don't work for a BB, is in a low-tier BB's DCM, for 2 years now. She's not too clear on where she can go and she doesn't have a ton of modeling skills.
I'm currently working at an EB in Europe (not London), M&A. An1 average 100-110 hours, An2 90-100.
edit: lol @monkey shit, the analysts1 I work with never leave before 2 am mon-tue, leave around 11-12 pm on Friday and put in a solid 12 hours sat-sun. 105 hours. On really bad weeks 120 hours are not unheard of, while light weeks usually end up at around 90 hours. Absolutely horrific.
People are throwing monkey shit at you because no one believes you work almost 16 hours a day including weekends. Perhaps you're in the office that long, with procrastinating taking up a major portion of your 'working hours'.
80-100 hours I'd believe. Averaging 100-110? Yeah right.
I know, it sounds hard to believe, but the shop had INSANE deal flow and was severly understaffed. Analysts were on 4-5 deals at the same time, with atleast a couple being huge and live. Turnover is crazy too. And no, procrastinating was basically impossible since you had too much shit to do. I couldn't believe it myself when i got in. Then you get used to it, i guess. AN1 were regularly working more than 16 hours on weekdays and then weekends.
How do you even pull 60 hours if you never stay past 7:30? Do you get into the office at 7?
You work on the weekends...
" I've logged in a few times to do some things but generally have not worked on weekends." ...
"How do you even pull 60 hours if you never stay past 7:30? Do you get into the office at 7?"
or he is closer to 55 hours and gets to the office at 8. try not to strain yourself here
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M&A involves a ridiculous amount of processing work which I've found takes the longest time out of anything. Not the modeling or pitching so much, but things like setting up a VDR, diligence, and most of all (for me) writing the CIM since you need to sift through an incredible amount of company provided material that they usually dump into an internally shared data room, tend to take the longest amount of time
I remember my first working group list...
"It's just the wider deal team, shouldn't be a big deal" - me when I did my first
Working group lists were the bain of my existence
I'm probably biased because I have never put in "too crazy" hours, but I think it's generally inflated. I think most hours come from waiting for your superiors to give you work, and then you do get work at the 11th hour.
A couple of things. 1. EU and Asia typically aren't as brutal as NY 2. No-name boutiques will not have as much dealflow or facetime required to their BB/MM/EB counterparts 3. People here generally associate the longer hours with M&A. Coverage groups usually aren't as bad but culture makes all the difference between leaving at 10:30 and staying there until 2 or 3 because you have an asshole for a VP. 4. IB is one of the most "Big Dick Contests" of any industry. People love to say that they're a top-bucket analyst, top MM when they're at Piper, that they are clocking in 110 hours a week, etc. Who cares if someone is a middle-bucket analyst at UBS? it makes no difference and they can still get a decent PE gig.
Generally speaking it appears that MM Coverage guys tend to have the best hours. Think about how many hours people are ACTUALLY working rather then the time they come in and the time they leave.
Let me tell you what nobody on this forum is brave enough to admit to themselves: it really isn't so bad, and you're not crazy for resisting the cultural programming these early-20's man-children impose on themselves. A 100-hour week is the exception, not the norm, at most places.
100 hours is the rough equivalent of getting to work at 9 AM and leaving a little before midnight for 7 days. You can't function very well doing that very often. I worked in MM IB in NY for 3 years and touched 90 a couple times while I was the only analyst on two M&A deals with lean teams + my MD continued pitching. At a base level, you still need to sleep, commute to/from work, shower, shave, wipe your bum, drop-off/pick-up dry cleaning, maybe even get a haircut.
It just isn't something that happens that frequently.
I used to work in a London BB. Average hours were 80 hours with 90+ on a deal. So no the hours are not exaggerated. Hours do wary but its on the high side. Youre pretty lucky youre avoiding shitty hours.
You work in a debt focused boutique, not a large cap bank. Dealflow and id say inefficiency is defo higher at larger banks. If you truly want a sense of how bad the hours are, look at analyst turnover at any of the larger banks.
That said 100 hours has been a rare exception in my xp.
I would say that the hours are not the worst part, the worst part is that the hours are unpredictable. Also, you are expected to have everything done immediately upon the request coming your way, meaning you have zero control over your schedule.
Hence the importance to pick a group that isn't a piece of shit. My nephew worked at one of the noted sweatshop groups on this forum and had voicemails of his Bipolar MD screaming to get something done.
If you are rarely in the office past 7:30, your group has terrible deal flow or does not pitch, and you are probably getting shit experinece
If you ALWAYS work 90+ hours, you're not really telling the truth. If you NEVER work 90+ hours you're not really in IB
Do people inflate hours...sure...but as a first year analyst in what people here view as IB (i.e. M&A, LevFin and Equity Underwriting) the hours are bad. Our analysts average on the conservative side 10am to midnight and another 6 to 8 hours on the weekend...so that puts you at around 80 hours a week.
I don't mean this as offensive--if you enjoy your work and work less hours more power to you--but a debt focused boutique is not the same job. You're likely not lead left on any of your transactions, which takes infinitely more time since you are putting together marketing materials, running the data room etc...it's a lot different when your focus is just getting through your internal credit committee.
DCM hours at a BB are similar to what you describe....about 60 hours a week with no weekend work....since with investment grade debt you aren't doing long investor road shows, your doing limited or no modeling, and your focus is mainly on what is going on in the market (which is only open to 4pm each day). If you move over to LevFin where you are originating and lead left on deals, the hours start to bump up considerably. Coverage that runs M&A (Goldman, Barclays) and M&A are completely different animals.
Bank of America Corp. intern Moritz Erhardt worked day and night in the weeks before his death, sending e-mails to his parents and colleagues in the early hours of the morning.
The 21-year-old died of an epileptic seizure while taking a shower on Aug. 15, a London coroner said after an inquest yesterday. He never once complained about his workload, Erhardt’s parents and co-workers said, even when staying up until 5 a.m.
“It may be that Moritz had been working so hard that his fatigue was a trigger for the seizure that killed him,” Coroner Mary Hassell said at the inquest. “But that is only a possibility.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-22/bank-of-america-staf…
---------------------------After this Incident---------------------------------------- UBS introduced ‘Take Two’ in June 2016 Credit Suisse introduced a ‘Saturday Rule’, Updated it in June 2016 under an initiative called, ‘Protecting Friday Night’ Goldman Sachs introduced a ‘Saturday Rule’ in November 2013 J.P. Morgan introduced ‘Protected weekends’ in December 2013 Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) introduced four weekend days off per month in January 2014
Morgan Stanley. – No limits in place on working hours
Morgan Stanley being badass af
Perhaps @Frank Quattrone" wants to enlighten us on what the hours are like at his firm.
Protected from non-live work. Funny thing is "live" becomes widely interpreted. Your group head wants a special analysis done, oops gotta cancel the weekend plans... here comes "live" work.
Good question. From my experience, variation in hours is what makes everyone think they're constantly working 100+ hour weeks. In reality, on a monthly basis you're looking at 60-70 hours/week for three weeks with one week being 100+ hours/week. What screws everything up is when you have consecutive 100+ hour/weeks which happens at least once a quarter.
It's simple, really. You're not really in traditional ibanking / m&a so your hours are good. Either that, or your firm sucks and there's no dealflow.
Work smart, not hard.
Seniors drive the culture of facetime / generating unnecessary work in terms of page creates / extra turns etc. Alot of guys I knew would spend at least an hour or two a day talking, taking breaks etc when they had work that could be done during normal hours. They would then be the same people complaining that they were clocking 80-90-100 hour weeks and getting crushed.
Just put your head down and get things done efficiently. Once your in your second year an analyst should know how to manage the senior people they work with to make their life easier.
The past 2-3 years, investment banking at the junior levels have drastically changed traditional culture. Kids were literally dying from the hours (do a search for old threads) at some of the banks and the BB's started to force change among the IBD groups. Caps on weekend work and mandatory time off were two big implementations. Also, one thing that historically kept kids chained to their desks day and night was the fact that there wasn't the tech available to work remotely from laptops at home. So if your MD replies to your last slide deck update at 11:45pm and needed a bunch of changes done "ASAP" you had to physically be at the office to do so. Now, you can be almost anywhere w/ a solid wifi connection.
The 100h work week stories exist because they are true. I spent 2 yrs at BB in London, M&A, and had anywhere from 80-120hr weeks. 120hrs is really brutal. Now I work on the buyside in liquid assets, and I work 60hrs a week. IMO you're lucky to get 60hrs a week at an BB IB type job, but at the same time your comp probably reflects that, too. I guess top An1s in IB can get all in comp of 80-85k GBP unless that's changed massively.
I work at a M&A boutique. Most days I get out between 19:30-20:30, but once or twice every month there is a crazy week where you work until midnight on a sunday, or until 5 a.m.
It is, as it was said before, quite nonlinear. It's common to leave work early on a Monday because there's nothing to do and all of the sudden on Tuesday there is a huge workload coming out of nowhere.
I guess it just depends on the are of IB and the culture of your office.
Teams working on debt financing dont work long hours. M&A and equity advisory work the long hours
Why IB Hours are Looked Upon as so Awful (Originally Posted: 01/25/2014)
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1. Surgeons - go through 80 hour residency and all that BS but have ultimate job security and a lot less hours after that residency is finished, or even better if they start their own practice. Bankers maintain 60 hour weeks even at a very senior level and have relatively little job security.
2. Entrepreneurs - do spend a ton of hours and their life for their business which THEY OWN AND CONTROL. Moreover, if the business somewhat succeeds, you will make way more money than your banking counterpart, with a LOT less hours but MUCH higher risk of failing. Bankers on the other hand, will almost always be working for the person above them in the hierarchy, will make less than an entrepreneur who succeeds but will have relatively better job security. 3. Lawyers ... This is where bankers win it all - higher pay, similar hours, save on schools fees and time (no need for $200k 3-year law school), more chicks get boners hearing "i work in finance" than "I work in law".
4. Buyside - much better than banking in terms of lifestyle, job function, but the reason people may make it seem "not appealing" is because they assume it will be entirely different from banking. It's disheartening to the Ivy league/ 2 year GS TMT/ pre-MBA PE associate when he finds out that he will still be making valuation models/spreading comps/ LBOs as a PE associate even after all the hard work and sacrifice he's gone through, when he expected to be sitting in an Italian leather chair on the 35th floor making the occasional "investment decision" while looking over the skyline and getting paid 7 figures.
If you're chasing chicks who get horny because of your career, you're going to have a miserable life.
Dead. On.
very interesting hmm
Put trading, consulting and engineering (but at place like goog) on the list
surgeon's hours are definitely not less than 80 hours a week after residency is finished. Surgeons typically work 80+ hours a week if they want to make 500K annually.
Not less than 80 hours week? Guess you are including call. I would disagree and say that majority of them are less than 80 a week. Attendings do not have resident hours, that would be horrific. Neuros perhaps are close but many Orthopod friends are doing a 65 hr work week. Granted its not easy. Varies widely depending on practice group or hospital affiliation.
As bad as General Surgery reimbursements have become, maybe some are going all out to rake in extra cash but that is just a choice, otherwise they can pull 280-300k with under 60 hrs.
think about the marketing work a banker is doing. the work is so manually intensive.
"More chicks get boners"
The hours are incredibly unpredictable. Sometimes you have to wait for hours just to correct the mark-ups of your senior. Also, you always have a boss above you. There is almost never any autonomy, you always have to listen to the boss. Also, surgeons may work 80 hours a week, but in IB you often work 90 to 100 hours a week. Thats the difference between 1 day a week off, and none (which is a huge difference). Unfortunately, except for creating a dumb tech start-up (snapchat anyone?), there is no way to get rich easily. You'll have to bust your ass off for many many years. That's one important reason why people should not just care about money, cause accumulating wealth is a path filled with all-nighters, frustration and tiredness and I very much doubt the eventual result of a few millions on your bank account will make you truely happy.
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