Protected Friday Nights in IBD?

Yet another interesting piece of news regarding Credit Suisse and its revised firm rules. According to Reuters, CS has informed its bankers to leave work at 7 p.m on Friday evenings and not return to the office until at least Saturday lunchtime. This email was sent out around 23rd May to EMEA IBCM teams who do not have an imminent major deal launching.

"We have given a great deal of thought into how we can provide some time off for our bankers," said Marisa Drew, co-head of EMEA Investment Banking and Capital Markets Division said, adding that Credit Suisse had sought feedback, in particular from junior staff, on weekends and work-life balance. (This allows)...employees to make firm plans with family and friends and ensures that this time will be respected. "

What does everyone think of this new 'improvements in lifestyle' trend across the investment banking industry? UBS now promotes two hours of free time a week, and JPMorgan encourages employees to keep their weekends.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-credit-suisse-workers-idUSKCN0YO0Y5

 

lol this is a joke right. Friday evening until Saturday morning off? It's certainly incremental but I don't see how 16 hours off is going to change anyone's life. this isn't even a full day.

This is however, less of a joke than the UBS policy. Two personal hours a month if someone can fill in for you? So what, they'll allow you to go to the doctors now? Are things so oppressive at UBS that you don't have two hours in a month to do the things you have to do?

 
juniormistmaker:

lol this is a joke right. Friday evening until Saturday morning off? It's certainly incremental but I don't see how 16 hours off is going to change anyone's life. this isn't even a full day.

This is however, less of a joke than the UBS policy. Two personal hours a month if someone can fill in for you? So what, they'll allow you to go to the doctors now? Are things so oppressive at UBS that you don't have two hours in a month to do the things you have to do?

I'm assuming the policy is to allow people to go out to dinner with friends/girlfriend on Friday night and not have to cancel more often than not. Still not much but allowing some predictability could go a long way...

MM IB -> Corporate Development -> Strategic Finance
 
juniormistmaker:

This is however, less of a joke than the UBS policy. Two personal hours a month if someone can fill in for you? So what, they'll allow you to go to the doctors now? Are things so oppressive at UBS that you don't have two hours in a month to do the things you have to do?

I had to close my browser when I read that

 

Is banking really that bad? Some of these new programs sound like parody. The FT had an article on its front page yesterday about a "sabbatical" for newly promoted VPs at Morgan Stanley... The "sabbatical" was four weeks long. I don't think that qualifies as a sabbatical.

Two hours for personal time a week at UBS... I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. Take two hours off when? Between 9am and 7pm on a day M-F or take two hours off at any time during the week, even if it's from 12am to 2am?

I know banking is different, but most companies call four weeks off "vacation" and call two hours of personal time per week "lunch".

 

if i was interning or working as an analyst now I would tell my boss to not worry about sending me home and even if I had to leave the office i would still work at home on my laptop. many generations before you have paid their dues in this way and they have enjoyed great success. the whole point of that rigorous program is to take you floppy dicks and mold you into powerful strap-on's. sort of like the marines do. when you leave college all you care about is pussy and alcohol so that means you have to be re-programmed to also have strong work ethic.

even if you have to leave keep working and be a star and they will love you and pay you and promote you. do what you will with that advice .

"I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. " -GG
 

Thanks Gekko. You make a fair point. By discounting time in the office required of bankers, these firms are cheapening the perceived value of their divisions, because there is enough slack in the system that their staff no longer have to stay up all hours to work, which implies that their work is somehow not as important as it used to be, when they were required and expected to do what needed to be done.

 

As someone who's "paid their dues" as an analyst in a much earlier vintage class, I can attest that spinning your wheels late on a Friday is for the fucking birds in most situations and I'm glad the CS analysts / associates / VP's don't have to put up with this time honored bullshit. I found the work weeks that I had to crank all weekend demoralizing and, sans working on a live deal launching, nonconstructive.

Ace all your PE interview questions with the WSO Private Equity Prep Pack: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/guide/private-equity-interview-prep-questions
 

Why on earth would you want to rise up the ranks in banking other than for the money?

You know you've been working too hard when you stop dreaming about bottles of champagne and hordes of naked women, and start dreaming about conditional formatting and circular references.
 

you just answered your own question...

"I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. " -GG
 

You made a really good case until you mentioned "many generations before you have paid their dues in this way and they have enjoyed great success." This is inherently flawed logic, as "this is the way we've always done things" only convinces troglodytes to abide by any such statement. Are you saying if they had 16 hours free per week they wouldn't have developed the ability to be a workhorse and excel in life?

Developing a strong work ethic is fair, but at the same time you have to remember that IB isn't what it once was. Nowadays, top MBA grads (and even the best undergraduates - absolutely not myself) have buy-side options available that bring with them lower hours upon graduation. Banks are probably trying to show some leniency with respect to hours. I have a handful of friends that went straight into PE because: 1. They could, and 2. They weren't willing to work the hours associated with IB

 

with "many generations before you have paid their dues in this way and they have enjoyed great success." I was simply illustrating that this method has yielded many successful bankers and quite a few legends in the past so clearly that formula works. Of course you don't need to kill them by working 24/7 but you can't expect to work from 9-5 on a job where your career trajectory is very likely to send you to the top 1% in the not too distant future. There is a lot of competition so there is natural selection that occurs if 1) your body isn't capable of withstanding the environment and 2) if your work ethic isn't strong enough to either measure up to the bar or raise it.

"I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. " -GG
Asatar:

It's been said before but all these"protected weekend" programmes do is shift the same amount of work into a smaller time frame. Nice to have some predictability around planning social stuff though.

Not true at all, at least in my American top tier bank. I was multiple times on calls where pages or analyses have been killed becuase they would have impacted over the weekend or where people discussed about postponing meetings because the weekend was close. My life improved a lot and I am definitively in favour of these measures.

I'm grateful that I have two middle fingers, I only wish I had more.
 
Asatar:

It's been said before but all these"protected weekend" programmes do is shift the same amount of work into a smaller time frame. Nice to have some predictability around planning social stuff though.

I think these rules are to prevent the nonsense last minute "make me a BS model or pitch before 9am on Saturday" that has regularly occurred in banking. The predictability aspect of this actually matters, and it prevents senseless MDs from creating work for the sake of creating work on an unnecessary/false deadline. When I left a BB to move to a boutique, I made sure to always set a reasonable deadline on deliverables. That alone can make life much more manageable for analysts. Too much time of an analyst's life is dedicated to creating product that was asked for by someone more senior on their way out the door.

 
Best Response

I think IBD set up its own failure in this case and will suffer if it doesn't address the issues.

Banks hire some of the world's brightest minds then put them to work on menial projects that anyone hard working with some semblance of intellect could do well. I'm not trying to put down the work of an analyst or anyone, but how hard is it in intellectual terms to put together a pitchbook? It might be hard work but it doesn't require the mind of an engineer or physicist. On top of this they then subject these young men and women to relentless hours under pressure, demand their full attention and servitude and think that throwing some money at them will keep them satisfied and fulfilled.

Perhaps if they looked back at what made great banking candidates in the past, for example those with a passion for finance and banking itself, and perhaps reigned back on the hours but adjusted the comp downward to compensate, they may find it a little easier to retain their young talent in the future.

 

1) Work volume is akin to a balloon...you can squeeze it anyway you want, but there is still the same amount air in it. There is work to be done. It isn't any skin off of the seniors' back if you do it at lunch on a Saturday morning or at 2 am on Sunday. 80-100 hrs. a week is 80-100 hrs. a week. Protected weekends, two hours or whatever - who cares. 2) Define "imminent deal launching". What about pitches? One off random analyses trying to correlate your shoe size with the square root of the distance to the moon? Calling BS on this one immediately. 3) Take your two UBS hours, as long as they are between 11pm and 6am on a Thursday night and don't inconvenience anyone else at the bank. 4) Time off? You still better have your laptop with you so that I can email you at 3 am expecting an immediate response to a stupid question...simply because I can't sleep and/or am bored with my family.

 

Way back in the day, Lehman would offer a 6 month unpaid sabbatical for any employee who hit the 5 year mark (or 10, 15, 20, etc). I honestly think that's a great policy for every firm to offer, provided that it's done at the convenience of your manager over a ~12 month window.

Also, in case you've forgotten, there is a direct link between this whole talk about being able to leave on a Friday evening and saving money. The goal is to save up enough money so that in the worst case, if you hate that sort of stuff with not being able to leave on a friday, you can LEAVE.

 

This is the usual CS bull. The fresh analysts are just asked to work from home and that is before they get rubbed raw due to the "protected weekend" deadline. Go out on Friday evening, sure, but please pull an all-nighter the night before. UBS is a joke, people in sweatshops work less.

This part of my life. . .is called "Running"
 

At my bank protected weekends are guarded religiously by everyone in the group, all the way up to sr management. When Friday at 6pm comes you're practically kicked out the door. A deal has to be fully mandated/engaged with a hard, near term deadline (i.e. Monday or Tuesday of the next week) in order for a protected weekend to get blown up. I don't know that it's quite this good in all the other groups. So it's bank and group dependent.

"I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
 

While it sounds like the idea of protected weekends or similar lifestyle initiatives aren't perfectly implemented equally across different banks, it's still a pretty fundamental shift in thinking. No where in hell were any of these institutional policies even talked about few years ago. Maybe if you were fortunate and had a nice head MD that made a point about it for his/her group but certainly not for the entire firm. Take solace in that at least things are changing (even if slowly) and compensation has increased (maybe not in total but I'd take an increase in base salary and less variable comp any day). Plus depending on which PE firm you go to (and we're not just talking MFs here), your lifestyle isn't much better if at all. There are certainly no "protected weekends" on the buyside...

 

Anyone that says a protected Friday or Saturday doesn't matter simply has never worked as a junior banker. First of of all, 9 out of 10 (at least) people don't terribly mind working an extra hour or two later during the week if it means they can have a date, drink with friends, etc...without fear of cancelling on the weekend...after all, if you're leaving at 11pm or 1am on Tuesday who cares....you aren't likely going out that night anyway. You can also enjoy Saturday without checking your phone every 15 minutes because you know people aren't expecting you to be plugged in.

While some work shifts to other parts of the week (yes Sunday becomes a fuller day), protected Saturdays also force senor bankers to be more efficient. For a Monday pitch, books need to be pretty much done by Friday since there won't be a ton of time to rework on Sunday. In the old days, an MD may see a nearly finished book on Friday and say, hey, we still have 48 hours til we need to print...I'll add in a double reverse RMT just to see what the returns look like....why not...we have time. Saturday off eliminates a turn in these cases which is huge.

 

Speaking from experience, my bank does / did this kind of initiative to make work / life balance better.

It seems to vary by team how effective it is. If you wander to the floors on a Friday night, it's pretty clear which teams are and are not sticking to it.

Then you could always end up with a hellish Associate / AD on your deal and you're screwed anyway.

Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel
 
student22:
If you ask this question, IB is not the job for you. We need people with total dedication, willing to work 24/7 a week...

You're gay dude. You don't even work yet. You need dedication but you don't need 'tool' dedication how you have framed it.

 
netking007:
I am new to I-Banking and looking to apply this year for the analyst position. I was hoping to get some input from current analyst on the number of weekends per month they have to spend in the office ? Does this change as you move from a first year to second year analyst ?

Also...I can understand that Monday - Thursday would be long hours, but is it easier to get out of work earlier on Friday nights...assuming you are going to be coming to work on the weekends!

Or are people at work till 4:00 AM even on a Friday ?

Any thoughts on the above...would be helpful.

Its more the matter of amount of work you are assigned. Don't expect any free time....Weekdays or weekends. As an Analyst and an associate, your work will be your life pretty much.....However, if there are days when you don't have any work (which I highly doubt cuz its rare), you might be able to leave as early as 6:00 PM.

 

i go out a lot (most) of friday and saturday nights (even if it is at 1am when i head out). every once in awhile, i'll get fucked till 4am like you say, but thats the exception more than the rule.

 

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