Hot take: IB hours aren't THAT bad (or at least, not much worse than consulting)

Bruh this is a low deal flow environment. Check again when things are hot.

Also, not many respectable teams expect you to come in before 10am if you were grinding until 3 am the night before. This is assuming you don’t have a deliverable to address early in the morning or any calls

I did an IB internship at a top BB so not full time (which I heard is lot worse than the internship) but it was 8:30am-2am regular for us interns, with many nights of 4ams. Weekends had 10+ hours too. Was in a sweaty group. I would never go back. I recently talked to a full time analyst who I interned with who hates it so much, he’s about ready to quit with no backup and it’s only been 9 months. It was a lot worse than consulting (currently at MBB) where Im almost always done by 10pm and have zero weekend work. Also have lots of time off between projects where you’re on the bench for days to weeks (you basically “work” 20 hours a week or less when you’re on the bench so you get time to recharge in between projects which bankers will never get. The effect of this cannot be understated - a couple weeks to recharge is gold).

Consultants also away from home a hell of a lot, idk about anyone else but I don't count being able to go 'home' to a hotel in Wichita earlier than bankers going back to their actual homes at night really counts as a better WLB.

Eh I know a ton of consultants that literally chill on the “bench” for weeks at a time.

Another key distinction is consultants are hired with project scopes and defined deliverables, and an upfront agreement on cost. There is more reticence to do ad hoc requests out of scope that would add hours to your day. 
 

Junior bankers on the other hand have no scope of work, no ability to reject certain client requests and are constantly pounded with ad hoc request due ASAP. That alone is what adds 10-20% more hours to banking job.

IB hours get way overhyped. Yes the late nights and weekends suck, but the daytime is far more chill than it is at an MBB or in PE. The work is just far more mindless in my view. Cranking out turns of a deck etc is just so much less taxing than most of the daily work once you switch to a buyside firm. Haven't worked in MBB, but have enough close friends at them that I would say the per hour fatigue (not necessarily stress, just actually using your brain) seems much higher.

But this is WSO so everyone will overhype the hours at their bank per usual, and include time spend browsing WSJ or Bloomberg every morning as "work". My "hours" when I was at a BB were technically longer, but they were so much easier to just turn your brain off and not wear out concentrating intensely for hours on end. There is also associates and VPs to check your work closely before the MD sees it. Much more stressful when you have to go directly up to the top and check your own figures.

Lol. Lmao, even.

Interesting discussion so far - as someone with 10yrs experience now in IB and then PE, I think posters on both sides have good points here. To sum up my thoughts:

- Yes it's true that IB does come with a lot of downtime. I.e. especially during the summer/quiet deal periods you can spend seemingly hours just reading WSJ/FT, doing random personal admin, or even popping out for a quick gym session. And on wfh days, analysts now have the option of watching Netflix etc at home during downtime periods. However - this isn't really "time off" by any means, as realistically you know any second a VP/MD can come over/ping you on Teams about some urgent fire drill. So you can never really relax during this time.

- Furthermore, the downtime is deal-dependent and nothing to do with your personal needs - meaning that you can (and likely will) have a Wednesday - Friday where you're virtually doing nothing all day (because MD is travelling etc) then 5pm Friday your entire weekend gets blown up. So it's a double hit - you have "time off" during the week however you still have to come into the office (assuming it's not a wfh day) and sit around, so whilst you're not busy you also can't enjoy yourself. And then your weekend gets ruined, which would have been a time when you could actually have relaxed! Bearing the above points in mind, I don't think it's necessarily unfair for analysts to include downtime periods in their 60-80hr work week tally.

- Worth noting that there are weeks when you actually are working 70-80hrs or even 90-100hr weeks (multiple live deals simultaneously for instance), however in my experience these aren't the norm for long periods (unless you happen to be working at a particularly sweaty shop). As some posters have said I wouldn't be surprised if there are posters on WSO here who inflate their hours (or are just really unlucky). Also bear in mind that AN1 will always take 2-3x as long as say an associate to do tasks (just because they're not experienced enough yet) so they could be working insane hours just because they're still relatively slow at things (nothing wrong with that as it's how you learn). But in reality if you're working 90-100hrs for 6 months, you'd be pretty useless as an analyst after a while - not saying it doesn't happen but I don't think it's that common.

So in summary, IB hours aren't 90-100hr weeks constantly. But it still does suck - expect a lot of late nights and blown up weekends, cancelled hot dates and meet-ups with friends etc. Whilst this might not sound like the end of the world given you're very well paid for someone in their early 20s, the unpredictability and feeling of being "on edge" really does start to grate after a while. And despite what some "hardos" on here might say, 60hrs is still quite a lot for being a minimum for IB/quiet period of no work - that's still  an average of 12hrs in the office Monday - Friday even when the market is pretty dead.i