Thanks to COVID, we understood that it is possible to work several months from home. In my opinion, it is much more comfortable:
1) you do not see your seniors = there are much fewer minor ASAP tasks
2) you do not waste time on the road to the office and you spend less time dressing working in a T-Shirt when there are no Zoom meetings
3) you spend more time in the zone of comfort = it is much better for mental health
More than that, you understand, that you need to finish all the tasks and you will have free time during a workday- there are no people who see you doing nothing. It makes you much more efficient.
The question is if it could last forever and change the industry's paradigm. I have searched if any bank started work fully remotely and found nothing. there are no banks / boutiques that decided to work remotely forever. Of course, some banks give you to work a couple of days per week from home, however as for me, it is not a significant shift from 2019.
I have found only an article on Grit Daily about ArieGuard that provides full flexibility regarding working hours and office attendance. In particular, it states that "it does not matter whether you work from office or from home – you just have to do your job perfectly". I absolutely agree with this approach.
What do you think? Is it possible to break the system and always work in IB remotely, but efficiently? Do you know any other successful examples?
Yes, it’s 100% possible and should be the norm. You should still be located in the same city for meetings and such but no reason for us to live like this. Life is short, let’s try to salvage what we can of having a happy life in this industry. My quality of life improved dramatically since being work from home. Sure, workload went up, but I also didn’t CONSTANTLY feel “on the clock” or needing to dress and be a certain way.
There’s also a lot of luxuries that you have at home that you likely take for granted and won’t realize until being in an office.
Might hurt effectiveness though…procrastination is a bitch
Actually when WFH started many people thought this too be the case, but it was actually widely proven wrong. If I can find the article I will post it, but when going to the office, people spent wasted hours dressing up and commuting. There was also wasted time when chatting with employees, going out for lunch, etc. In comparison, yes there may be some level of procrastination, but the majority are actually working more productively because if there is a task at hand, they will try and finish it right away instead of sitting on it in the office and pretending to be busy. For me, I immediately move quickly to finish tasks because then it gives me flexibility later in the day where I can do personal errands. Whereas in the office, I am there for 8-10 hours no matter what so I dont have flexibility to run personal errands. I also save hours in commute and lunch as I often eat while working.
I left banking in 2017 but I would think there would be pros and cons.
Biggest benefit: I remember some days just jerking around during the day waiting for comments and feedback to come back. I felt like I could go hit the gym or do something more productive but felt like that wasn't possible given my need to show face. I believe working from home now allows you to take advantage of that time to help find some balance between your personal and professional life.
Biggest Disadvantage: I feel like most people in banking are high performers and will get their shit done regardless. I always found the social aspect of banking to be critical for sanity... eating lunch with your coworkers or just shooting the shit when everyone is waiting for comments. I would imagine that you definitely lose that working from home.
I agree with one of the posts here where being in the same city as office would be great. I currently work in a hybrid model where I come in 2 or so times a week for a strategy role and I love it!
I think you are right from a efficiency / less nonsense standpoint, but I do think facetime is being underrated as people increasingly embrace remote work - and the younger you are, the more important it is. Helps you truly understand and improve at your job + network and build relationships w people that'll go to bat for you in the future. If you value culture (the longer I've worked, the more I do) some face time is important. There's +/- to both sides, and like many, I think a hybrid approach is the ideal
FYI I have not worked in IB but think what I'm saying applies to most all finance jobs