Are the hours really that bad?
I’ve been working at a micro market sell side for about 12 months and my hours are a solid 70-75 per week. Yes, every once in a while I need to stay until 1-2 in the morning but that has only happened maybe 10 times since I’ve been here, besides that I’m done pretty much by 10 every night and rarely have to do any significant amount of work over the weekend.
I think I’d like to stay in IB but go up-market, ideally BB but can’t imagine consistently working until 4am plus weekends like this forum claims is the norm.
Yes
Yes
This week: 2am 2am 6am 1am… Friday til 11:30pm. 9-9 Saturday and Sunday tbd. Not every week is this bad but yes, prepare for it to happen.
That’s doable. I would be willing to do that level of hours for the right price, like yeah it would suck but the posts on here make it seem like 4-6am is the norm every single night, 7 days a week.
wtf are you talking about? Read it again. That's completely awful.
Do you wake up at the same time every day and when?
You need to stay right where you are. You want to go up market? Don’t fucking come back and complain afterwards. I’m telling you man you are more than fine where you are if you truly feel this way about your current hours.
I did consistent 3am nights at ubs this past year during covid.
Doesn’t UBS do protected weekends and most of the office clears out by midnight
Not during covid. Look up the rage thread 6 months ago that had hundreds of comments. People were getting grinded last year.
Damn should I be worried as an incoming SA at UBS?
Only having 10 1-2am nights in an entire year and no weekends is WILDLY good hours. If you were leaving at 10pm at a BB you'd be sneaking out.
I think you're underestimating the difference between working until 10pm most nights versus working until 1-2am almost every night and 4-6am at least once or twice a week. Plus having a weekend to recover, socialize, travel if you want, is a completely different ballgame. You will work 95% of weekends at your average BB. I don't know what you're making now but your $/hour will tank even if you're way underpaid atm.
If you like banking, stay where you are until VP
For context I make 115k with a shitty bonus of 15k. Hence why I’d like to move upmarket but really need to decide if the hours would be worth it. The other caveat is that currently I am able to wake up at 5am and get in a 2 solid hours of studying for the CFA L2. Once I get my charter I won’t need to do that and it’ll be a smooth transition because at least somewhat accustomed to not having much free time anyway.
What title/year are you?
I'd also consider the more legit regional boutiques in your area, you take a small haircut on comp but the hours aren't anywhere near BB. Everyone I know at BB IB who has stayed is legitimately mentally ill in some way, and are fine having no family/relationships. Sounds dark but at the moment it's just not a sustainable career long term. If you said "I'm dying to do UMM PE and willing to spend 1 year in hell" that'd be a different story
Lmao my hours are worse than i ever could have imagined
If you’re happy, stay
In a west coast tech group. 7 to 2 almost every day which is the equivalent of 9-4 on the east coast. Yes it’s bad right now
FTP?
WF TMT?
It could be in shops that are very active.
Yes
Yes the hours are bad. Not at a BB or EB and consider my hours good in general. I have not had a sinlge weekend where I do not have almost a full day of work to do. Other than that my group's MD is pretty chill and doesn't ask us to sit in the office until midnight. We do get staffed on shit sometimes in 10pm or 11pm, and I work until 2am.
Also, your salary is higher than mine. Stay here you are.
Yes
No it’s your average 9 to 5
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Not OP, but 9am-11pm Mon-Fri is 70 hours. Whether you add an hour on the front or backend each day would push you to 75.
Yes this is correct, usually start my day at 8 instead of 9 also.
Yes, 9-2am everyday with the 4/5am maybe 4 times bi weekly. Leave office around 10pm Friday. Have gotten 5 Saturday exceptions since I started and work from 9-12am on Sundays… it’s been brutal
Which bank are you at? Want to make sure I don’t lateral there.
Sounds like Citi from the terminology and times
Wtf is this real?
Sounds like Baird
As someone who's joining a similar group and who will be in the same boat. How do you handle it not getting any / a lot of sleep?
I know that's just what your first years look like but do you just get used to it?
I work 70+ hours a week on average as a VP. So I'm guessing you can add 15 hours to that for an analyst on average. keep in mind threads like this will suffer from adverse selection, ie a lot of people getting smoked (and they certainly exist) will reply.
Do you enjoy the work more than you did at the analyst/associate levels?
Just curious to see what size bank you are at (BB, MM, etc)? Were your hours like this pre-covid?
RBC/WF/DB...feels like everyone works 10% more hours post-COVID. 10% more for analysts is harder because a. the number is higher to begin with and b. every incremental hour after 80 hours is worse than the last.
I understand late hours with IB, but I don’t understand how or why people are working from like 9am-4am on the regular or until 11 pm on Fridays, work full days on Saturday, etc. Just log off for the night and say you’ll finish it in the morning? Say you are busy and can get to it Sunday morning? There’s no excuse for that - hours will always be tough in IB, but there’s no reason you should be getting taken advantage of to that extent, or that you should just let it happen. You should get your work done, but it can be helpful to push back a little sometimes - will earn you more respect if so too. Especially with the shortage of junior bankers now
Making sure the OP gets a realistic picture - often the folks replying to these threads are the ones who are having it the worst.
I work 9am-midnight during the week on average, with a couple of >2am nights biweekly, on average. This isn’t that bad, especially considering I often have periodic downtime throughout the day.
WFH makes it even easier. I get up at 8:30 most days, occasionally 7:30 when I’m on an account where the MDs are cranking in the morning. During downtime I can watch an episode of TV, go to the gym, etc. I work in my sweatpants and sometimes have the TV going in the background.
Weekends - very rarely do I work Saturday, and Sundays are on and off. Usually need to be near my computer but have a decent chunk of down time between tasks on Sundays.
Overall, the thing that sucks most about banking is that you need to always be “on call” and you can’t really make plans, excluding most Saturdays and Friday nights. However, that doesn’t mean that every day is a constant 9am-2am sweaty grind.
I’m aware that rationalizing isn’t always the best coping mechanism, but there are countless numbers of folks who need to be on call for much lower pay and in much worse conditions - think firemen, urgent responders, military, etc. I’ll gladly sit at a computer for a few years if it means I can make 300k+
This is much more accurate of an experience in my opinion. Just for context if you work 9am-midnight with one 2am, get off work at 6pm on Friday, and work 5 hours spread out on the weekend (likely Sunday from 7pm-12am) that’s 76 hours. I think every banker likely has a horror story of numerous 3ams in a row and I’ve even had months like that, but that’s not what happens every month/ the entire time you are an analyst. If it is, you likely aren’t communicating internally well in some capacity whether it’s to your staffer, your direct manager, or yourself in terms of how you complete deliverables and manage distractions.
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