Can’t wait to start my IB role and not do anything at all

always look at the glass half full, i agree

When the market started cooling, I had this same mindset. Especially with the base increases, getting a smaller bonus but presumably avoiding being crushed sounds great in theory. In practicality, it takes one only one deal to crush you to extremely late nights and weekends. If there's truly such little deal flow, then you'll just work on a ton of pitches with seniors and mid-level people that are stressed about their lack of business and it'll come through in how they try to nitpick every detail for a sense of control. 

Dog I hate to ruin your mindset but man that’s what I thought too and I just been getting cranked with so many pointless things. IB analyst really just a corporate factory. Hope your experience is different

No you will work on a lot of shit pitches as MDs making long shot attempts to generate revenue. 

You might work more if anything because of meaningless pitches that have no clear end in sight

Completely agree with all of the above - OP, respectfully you are very much wrong here. I've only been in finance for a decade so was still in college during 2008, but even in the softer periods during my IB days (e.g. 2016 when you had the China selloff followed by Brexit, or the 2018 taper tantrum) - things get worse not better. 

As others have said - you're still doing a ton of work, but it's on absolutely pointless stuff that has precisely 0% chance of happening. But MDs/Directors can't just be sitting around doing nothing - so even if there's an infinitesimal chance of your bank somehow getting on the one trade that is happening right now, trust me you'll be churning out a 100 page pitch book. You know the target client won't care as they don't even have a real relationship with your bank - but your MD is shooting desperately in the dark hoping something hits (and he doesn't have to work multiple all-nighters doing it after all), so away you go on the deck.

I guess you could say "well who cares what work I'm doing, as an analyst I'm still getting paid right?" Well yes that is true to an extent - but trust me it gets soul-destroying after a while when you have to cancel dinner/date plans to work on a presentation you 100% know is going absolutely nowhere. Plus as others mentioned, everyone from MDs down to VPs (the highly paid guys with a lot to lose) will likely be extremely on edge most of the time, so you get much less latitude/cover for going to the gym, meeting a friend for a coffee/drink etc. Whereas during a live deal you're working flat-out sure, but as long as you're getting everything done a good MD won't give a sh*t about you going to the gym for an hour.

And finally - not working on live deals means you're not learning key skills like modelling, managing a transaction, working with counterparties etc. Hell even managing/running a data room is a good "skill" to have, which you probably won't get if the market is absolutely dead and you never get to work on a live deal.

I'm now on the PE side so the last year hasn't been quite as grim as the above, but it has still been a hard slog - with a lot of "busy" work with very little realistic value-add (creating decks on how we can "optimize/streamline" our port companies, doing excessive analysis/over-engineering on our quarterly marks etc). And what differs 2022 to the turbulence in 2015/2018 is how long it has been - honestly the 2018 taper tantrum was a nano-second in length compared to this current environment. So yeah not exactly fun times...

Agree with everyone above. I'm in this exact position right now. Closed nothing all year except a few ATMs and been told to not expect "the biggest bonus ever". Regardless, because deal flow has been so weak, we're actively engaged on two rather far fetched deals. In my estimation it is a 50/50 shot that we'll close at least one. Then there are a few other equally far fetched deals we're working through with potential clients & deciding if we want to engage on it. So we're still doing a ton of work, it's just on crappier opportunities with lower likelihood of engagement and/or execution. 

TL;DR: When the market is down you don't work less; you shift down market and close less

Yeah hate to say it but everyone here is right. If the market continues you will work just as many hours but just pitching ridiculous ideas that will never happen - at least if you're grinding on a live deal you know it's going somewhere, the experience is valuable/something different, and you'll have either a closed or substantively progressed deal on your resume. Kinda sucks to miss your girlfriend's birthday to work until 5am on a pie in the sky pitch telling Apple to buy Tesla or something equally ridiculous.

Seniors are also so much harder to deal with when they're pitching as they aren't getting paid at all. On a live deal you might be getting murdered on hours but seniors make usually some effort to protect juniors they're working with on an intense deal. The work environment is literally awful in a downturn... chill is the absolute opposite

If you think you are regularly shutting it down before 10pm or not working weekends I have some bad news for you

You will work fewer hours all in, the increase in moonshot pitches won't make up for lost live deal time or pitches with actual merit, at least in my experience. But it might feel like more given the nature of the work and ppl being on edge as mentioned above. I'd take the extra hours doing meaningful work and gaining valuable experience any day. Can't win in banking huh. 

It sounds fun working in this slower environment but I was getting cranked this fall on multiple deals going nowhere. Worked until the early morning on the night before my whole team ended up getting cut. Market is pretty shit right now so be careful

Unless you’re working in a recession proof subvertical like me and get your asshole gaped on Christmas.

Too little deal flow means your job is more vulnerable.

WE NEED MORE PEOPLE LIKE YOU

why would anyone want to be an investment banker. when there is less deal flow going on, you work worse hours, on shitter deals, and get paid less. what a joke

During downturns, go all-out to do as little as possible. 99% of the work is meaningless busy work and will do nothing for your career, and everyone’s bonus will be shit so there’s less of a gap between performance levels.

Working on live deals allows for actual learning and valuable experience, plus there are a lot of diligence calls where you can zone out/take a mental break once in a while. Would 100% rather be on a few live deals at once rather than a bunch of BS pitches.

I agree with the OP’s sentiment, but it’s much easier said than done to achieve this.

Maybe I just got lucky, but my hours improved massively during late 2008 / 2009. I went from literally one all-nighter per week, full weekends, and 2am weeknights to going home every day at 6:00pm and no weekend work. There was one real exception where I basically worked through Christmas 2008 to write a CIM that we knew was for a deal going ‘on-hold,’ but that was a one off. I cannot speak to the other banks, but HW&Co. didn’t punish its analysts with mind-numbing pitch work when deal activity ground to a halt in late 2008. Buyers were literally doing no diligence, financing for deals was completely unavailable, and sale processes were getting pulled left and right. It was a struggle to find work to do even with the increase in exploratory work. It was obviously scary on the basis that layoffs were happening across the entire industry (including analysts) and PE offers were getting rescinded, but the reprieve from the brutal hours for a few months was fantastic. On top of this, my bonus in 2009 was only down about 10-15% from my bonus in 2008… HW&Co. really stepped up on the basis that the seniors had all the upside so they absorbed most of the downside as well.

I’d encourage people not to extrapolate their own experiences (or worse yet, other people’s experiences) across the entire industry. This isn’t meant to be an advertisement for HW&Co., I’m pretty confident there were other banks that treated their analysts well.