What makes a firm a sweatshop?

Thing that scared me though is that he made the 100 hour week sound like it was a solid improvement after the bank started initiatives to improve analysts' lives - I always thought that 100 would be a shitty week.

When people sit around waiting for comments or whatever, can they leave the office and come back when they get emailed? Or do they usually wait at their desk?

Sil:

You need to understand that everyone overstates the hours that they work. There are many analysts who will claim they're working 100-hour work weeks when they're only working 80-hour ones. Many other analysts will sit in the office for no other reason than to rack up the hours. IB attracts a lot of narcissists.

It's all relative, though. Everyone deals with the hours differently. I think once you cross 80, though, it really starts taking a toll on you.

I have never done IB but I agree that 80 hours/week is the line, for any job really. Assuming no work on weekends.

modestlocke9:

Alternatively my place is a sweatshops simply because its so damn hot.

As the percentage of women in an office rises, so does the average temperature. "It's too damn hot" is the #1 argument in support of professional gender discrimination.

You realize that you're commenting to a banking thread right? not a recruiting thread. Your definition of a sweatshop isn't helpful to OP, and your critique of a long work week also carries no weight.

You're missing the point.

1). Analysts make more than $100k

2). No analyst works 100 hours week in and week out. Most analysts only rarely work 100-hour work weeks.

3). Calculating your salary on a per-hour basis is meaningless. Even if we made $19,23 per hour, find me a job that pays $100k per year, requires no advanced degree, and offers all the exit opps that IB does.

K3:

I think this is a good time for me to finally chime in about how IB hours work. I want to start by saying that I do not work in M&A or IBD, but I do work in a group that is equally as intensive, arguably more intensive than most teams in the bank given where we are in the bank's strategy and how client facing we are (by this I mean both physically and through the phone... I talk to at least five clients per day which are all generally the top 20 global HFs or Top 10 global asset managers). Also, I do not work in sales or trading, but this role can be awfully similar to that type of work.

Now, for M&A/IBD analyst hours. Here is why I did not join IBD: 1) I hate the concept of "face-time"... It really does not make sense to me at all and I am not one of those people that likes to pretend like I am working versus actually getting things done; 2) I like to be connected to the financial markets versus being someone in the background putting together deals or mega-deals. From what I know about my friends who work in M&A/IBD, the type of work and the analyst's caliber highly varies from analyst to analyst. Let me elaborate on this... I know that IBD analysts hit 100 or 120 hour weeks. However, these hours are not solely an analyst in a financial model, pitch book, or memorandum for 100% of the time... Generally, 20 hours of this week are random meetings, 20 hours are conference calls with work in the pipeline, another 20 may be some other type of allocation that varies from bank to bank including waiting for your boss to reply to you with the next list of comments or tasks, then you are left with 60 of ACTUAL hours of output, meaning you are in a model, building a pitch book, researching an industry for a model, preparing meeting materials for a deal call or an actual deal if you are lucky. So when my IBD colleagues at the BB I am at say they work "120 hours" I know exactly what they mean and I can see these hours/time-tolls really weigh in on their lives. So, obviously this varies from bank to bank, but from what I know (now 4 years at a top 6 BB), this is how it goes. Now for some Analysts I know, they are truly productive and proactive people... So they spend much more than 60 hours a week engaged and in the trenches; building out complex models, figuring out unique modeling cases, and researching the industry for more insight (for instance, how do you forecast deferred revenue for a services business in the technology sector...). However, I can confidently say that everyone in IBD thinks they are like this, but I assure you this is highly not the case since some analysts reach a point of exhaustion or fatigue than others. Also, not everyone in IBD is that thrilled to be there, which means they aren't that passionate about the sell side deal flow versus going into private equity to start their "real" work.

Now let me contrast the other roles in the bank. Traders/Sales/ER Analysts/Fixed Income underwriting divisions. On average, all the other front office roles involve at least 50 hours a week to be a superstar and you are required to be extremely responsive to your clients. If you are not responsive (meaning you don't check your phone when you aren't "working") your clients will probably get annoyed at you just because of the nature of this business. So what ends up happening is your 50 hour work week turns into a 70 hour work week because you are replying on your phone or looking up certain things outside of the 50 hour work week that you think you work... granted, these roles may be a bit less hands on than IBD functions, but let me say that the 50 hours here are pretty intensive, especially for sales and trading.

Equity Research Analysts. Now I know for a fact that certain ER analysts that have a substantially higher productivity rates than IBD analysts largely because of the function of the job (in at 7am out by 7pm, with many cases working later than 10pm because of earnings seasons or big market takeovers). An ER analyst or associate is essentially wired into the function and moving in tandem with the market, with some element of reaction to large market news, requiring a high rate of productivity and computing power for reactions to news wires. For instance, I know some ER associates that can build a basic LBO in 25min, or an M&A model with all three financial statements forecasted in some way (using FCF conversion, key balance sheet figures, etc.) in under 30min. An ER analyst works about 50 to 80 hours a week with an "output" focus depending on the type of team/sector/work you are doing. With the BBs more intensive than others.

So hopefully in this email (I know there are variations and outliers for the IBD and ER sections) but this has generally been my take being in the bank and working alongside these teams (IBD, ER, S&T, Fixed Income Underwriting). Not saying one is better than the other, but this debate of "long hours" is an expression that requires more color.

Sounds to me like you couldn't break in, so you took your second, albeit a distant second, choice and are now trying to justify it.

Chill

Lmao

SanityCheck:

K3 should win this year's "most insecure and incoherent" post of the year. What the fuck was that.

LOL. K3 bro at least throw me some fuggin paragraphs... Jesus Christ.

.

Nuclear-Penguin:

Got a friend who worked like hell for 4 years IB in nyc. He ended up with a stomach ulcer. Poor guy.

He managed to save $70k and the dummy blew that money on an MBA in entrepreneurship at Stern. lol

How did he only save $70K in 4 years?

Consistent 100+ hours an the occasional 120

I have never heard of ANYONE ever working 140 hours in a week.

Yea there are only 168 hours in a week. Working 140? Have fun.

machinegunfunk:

I hear people throw the term sweatshop around here a lot to refer to tough groups like Moelis, GS TMT, MS M&A etc., but what do they mean by that? Considering that an average IBD group works 80 to 100 hours per week, do sweatshop hours imply 100 to 120 hours (or more), give or take? Or does it just mean consistent 100+ hours, or more like frequent 120-140+ hour work weeks?

Just wanted to get a frame of reference - thanks

this is a funny question. it just means your life as an analyst there is going to be mizzzzzz.

Chuck norris works 198 hours per week.

A person a grade ahead of me had one 134 hour week during his internship.

Wow, you know the hours are bad when you can divide the # of hours by THREE and it would still be worse than the workweek for an average job

I knew a dude at Moelis who said he had a week where he logged 140...

Sweatshop doesn't mean necessarily you will work a few crazy weeks here and there - just means overall average higher (let's say 100+), which will eventually drain you (even without crazy 120+ weeks)

what would you say is tougher, consistent 100+ hours or 80+ hours with 120+ hours every other week or so?

I never get bored of laughing at investment bankers!!!

Long live the buy-side!!!!

lol moelis, they overhired u probably wont work that long except on pitches.

you should check out india factories. thats a real sweatshop.

At my first job, my hire class worked for about six months in a small room next to the backup heating for the whole building. We had no windows, a hot room, and worked >12hrs a day. If we'd been making sneakers instead of financial models, it'd have been a sweatshop.

chuck norris comment FTW

This idea of a "sweatshop" is not as much the hours as it is a mix of a cultural element and hours. Some groups are very human, and while you might work very hard, once in a while a higher up might throw you a bone or you might get out early on a Friday...you won't often work weekends if there isn't any real work to do.

Then there are the sweatshops, churn and burn. Burn every last ounce of work out of the analyst. It matters not when, where or how. It matters not how irrelevant the work is, for the higher ups, the more they can get out of an analyst the better, who knows what could lead to a deal. A vicious culture of use and abuse and abuse...and then abuse some more. Grind the analyst to dust and snort him like cocaine - that's a sweatshop.

Jesus rebel that sounds absolutely awful...how was your analyst experience?

I will say it again, S&T all the way people.

I know somebody who got out of the military and went to columbia full-time while working as a bartender 6 nights a week until about 2-3am just to get right back up and go back to school then start all over again. He said he was relieved when he started working 80-100hrs a week in IBD. Sure I guess IBD hours suck to people who have been pampered their entire lives.

There a lot of former military guys on here and there are also a lot of pampered kids......obviously my comment wasn't directed at you personally then so do not take it personally.

rebelcross what firm did you work for? If you don't want to disclose it'll be great to know if it was BB, MM, or boutique?

I agree with rebelcross that a sweatshop is a cultural thing and not a reflection of the hours. I have friends who came up through sweatshops. There are stories of severe face time. MDs in the office at midnight, staffers staying to 2-3 in the morning and then overloading those that "leave early". Results in people taking too long to do stuff to put in the time, having low productivity due to being tired and the whole system perpetuates itself. It burns through junior and mid-level folks extremely fast.

And it has nothing to do with working long hours when needed. My personal record when I was an analyst was 138 hours in a seven day week. We had to log in and out of the client's office where we were given a remote workstation. I estimated the travel time to and from the office/hotel but the rest was well documented. At the end, my hands were shaking so hard I could barely type. We submitted the bid and my boss told me to take three days to recover. It literally took that long to recover.

Sweatshop pretty much means you're working more than usual for Wall Street (add 10+ hours to averages). My friend's group at UBS lost half of their analyst class before the first year was through, by the time he left there was only 2 of the original analysts left. Part of what contributes to this "sweatshop" term is the bosses, too.

Hear what you're saying - but I gotta ask, Is that your MySpace picture?