Former NYC ibanker told me she got 4 days off total during 1st year

i had like 6 days off my first year, excluding training. 4 of which were a scheduled 7-day vacation that got cut short into a long weekend.

similar stories for first years in my group.. there are people who haven't had a day off in 3 months.

first year is tough. things do get better your second year.

thats life dude

Fucking sucks. Someone should create an IBD where you might work 100 hour weeks for a few weeks, then take a week off or something. It would take some creative timing to make it so every 4-6 weeks one could take a week off, but that would make ibanking so much nicer. Id take a lot less if that was the case.

So I guess I shouldn't be planning a trip to Australia for Dec-Jan huh ?

By aday off, did you mean that she worked every single weekend and holiday, or that she only took 4 week days off?

sleepyguy - my group probably has the most tough culture in my bank and one of the tougher schedules on the street. there are a lot of different groups where people have slightly better lifestyles. for example, one group in my bank guarantees 1 weekend off per month... (although it took lifestyle and attrition getting pretty bad before this was implemented).

you should just talk to the fulltimes (hopefully an alum or some kind of full-time who will give you a balanced opinion) before you do group selection.

having said that, the groups that are more busy often put out analysts who know more stuff. purely a function of the amount of hours worked. as a full-time once said to me when i was interning, at the end of our 2 years of banking we'll really have the equivalent of 5 years of experience at a normal job. everything is a trade-off.

first year sucks.

it's especially hard on the people who think they can work ibanking hours and still party like its college. i remember i tried to go out on monday nights early on..that shit stopped real fast.

I think the 4 days off for the entire year is the absolute extreme but you should be ready to dedicate your life to work for the first year, regardless of whether you go into IBD or consulting. You need to establish your reputation as a go-to resource and the only way you can do that is by being available.

first year sucks. second year gets a lot easier once you get a decent corporate / PE / HF / 3rd year promote.

go to the markets side - I get 26 days off this year.

No, no... I'm not talking about how much I "get". I "get" insane amounts of vacation time according to HR. The question is how many days I'm out of the office -- which has little if anything to do with the handfuls of vacation days HR keeps throwing at us. Those exist primarily to be paid out to us in the form of a bonus, since we certainly can't take them all.

As a soon to be MBA student this fall, should I expect the same as an associate? I know most of you guys are analysts...

So you basically get Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and another holiday off?

I'm somewhat lucky. Not only did I get Thanksgiving and Christmas off, I didn't have to come in on the day before or after Christmas either. I also got to go out on New Year's Eve after working only a few hours that day, and I didn't have to go in on New Year's Day until noonish, so I felt comfortable staying out until 2 AM. I actually wouldn't have stayed out any later anyway, because at that point in the year I'd learned to prefer getting enough sleep to partying.

First-year analysts learn to be grateful for what they get.

My bank implemented a mandatory two week consecutive holiday. London, city of dreams.