Are VP hours in banking really more chill?
I come from MBB, and the higher people climbed, the more they drank the Kool-Aid. With the pyramid structure, it honestly felt like only the completely insane stuck around.
By the time you hit the Principal / AP level, you're basically doing nothing but grinding away for senior partners, hoping to someday get the nod for partnership. These “mid-senior” roles are where the rubber really meets the road. You’re accountable both to senior leadership and to the client. The days of just owning a workstream or cranking out a model are long gone.
Now, I always heard the lore that banking VP hours are way more relaxed, the pay is great, etc. But after seeing a ton of banking VPs in action during sell-side mandates at MBB and later in PE, I just don’t buy it. It doesn’t match my experience of how professional services work.
Banking VPs are still at the mercy of their MDs, juggling multiple live processes while also pitching and managing client relationships. There’s no way that happens on chill hours. No free lunch at that level either.
So how do you see that??
A) Every bank and every team is different (some VP might have a chill workload vs other who are still grinding with the analysts and associates), B) the work might change but so does the responsibilities and in turn the stress increases. You might not be in the weeds of a model but you are still responsible for other stuff which takes up your time (plus you are usually in charge of the younger team members).
I would say the hours are usually the same with some outliers. There is no such things as "Hey I made VP that means my hours are now chill". You just now can start delegating (which doesn't really help the team and more often than not just adds more to the hours/stress).
A lot of people claim that once you're VP the hours decrease significantly (like max 8-9pm) but I never believed that.
The answer is NO.
Depends on firm / team / time of year…
The more reasonable firms / teams would see some seasonality here, while there are certain teams and cultures where the “I grind X hours and produce only shit output” is still the benchmark…
I think VP1 can still be tough while VP3 hours should be better, or the person is doing something wrong — a VP1 can be staffed together with 2-3 MDs and a Direc and will effectively work as Senior Assoc. that doesn’t work for VP3/D1…
Would argue that people should focus on where the -real- value-add is, i.e. building relationships / generating revenues and when executing to focus on the actual value drivers, not things like “making the VDR extra pretty” or crunching the 200th short profile for some rando catch-up… my two cents
VP1 might be the worst job in banking - no job is too big or small. By the time you're a senior VP, if you're tipped for Director, your workload definitely becomes more manageable.
Agreed from ASO POV. VP seems like the worst job in banking by a longshot for a dozen reasons.
Agreed. Not only are you navigating difficult seniors and clients, but you’re also heavily relying on your junior team not being terrible at their jobs (or turning over which most are trying to do). If you have a weak junior deal team (or multiple) then you’re cooked lol
Idk where people are coming from when they say VP is the most difficult role. Maybe I just stopped caring, but VP has been much kinder to me vs associate.
As an associate I averaged around 80-90 hours/week… as a VP I’m closer to 55. Yeah it’s more “stressful” as in you own the work product and are the first stop in the shit rolling downhill… but I was already dealing with that as a senior associate. When I was promoted to VP I basically was given one more person under me to delegate work to and my responsibilities didn’t change much. I need to do more speaking on calls, buyer outreach etc, but again you should already be doing that at least a little bit as a sr associate.
You’re basically still focused on deal execution (what you’ve been doing), with more resources under you. No pressure to put up $$$. And the total pay is great, any reasonable group should be paying you $500k+
But what is the end-goal as VP? Is there no up or out as in consulting? I felt in consulting senior associate is the absolute sweetspot, as you know how to get stuff done, have hopefully good standing within the firm and more confidence than analysts/BAs to push back.
Once you get to project manager it gets more stressfull as all the politics, client managing, internal senior leadership managing etc. kick in and you are one of the main people on the ground to deliver on the project.
Once you get to AP it is pretty clear that you do this to become partner, else you would have exited before and there the real grind starts. Multiple projects at once, pitches, extra work you do for snior partners (e.g., publishing articles) and everyone above you leverages the hell out of you because they know you are desparate to become partner.
What type of bank is this? (BB/EB/MM)
European BB in Ldn my VPs were coming in at 9.30-10 and leaving towards 5.30-6.30. But, was a super slow moment for the sector so no big processes underway, also one was actually quite good so think he felt confident in his reviews, and the other just had a kid I believe so maybe expectations were temporarily lowered for hours, no clue.
Yes and no. Would I go back to doing the associate work? No. Does it definitely have added stress since you actually have to care about if stuff makes sense / come up with ideas? Absolutely. I still get cranked from time to time (like 9:30am - midnight) when there is big pitch or busy time, but overall hours definitely better than associate years. Most of the time I’m done by 8-9pm (more so just bc I choose to be done). In summary, less hours, better pay, and more stress. Better than associate and analyst years. Worth progressing if you want to keep stacking your savings or make a run at MD
A lot depends on how good your associates are. Be good to your rockstars, they'll take a lot of stuff off your plate so you can focus up.
That role is completely dependent on how good your junior team is.
The expectation from seniors is that you have leverage so you can take more on and focus on “higher level” execution. That isn’t necessarily true if your support is shit and you effectively revert to being an associate.
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