Hours: 80 Hours a week

What bank are you at?

Thinking about it again, 80 hours is pretty light. Here's a sample 95 hour week. For context, this assumes you've got a big meeting / pitch / whatever on Wednesday:

Sunday: 12pm - 1am (13 hours)

Monday: 9am - 2am (17 hours; note that most groups have team meetings Monday mornings, so it's the one day you can't roll in late)

Tuesday: 9:30am - 3:30am (18 hours)

Wednesday: 7am - 8pm (13 hours; if it's a morning meeting you often need to be in very early to make any last minute changes, make sure the printers didn't fuck anything up, deliver books to your VP or MD or whoever. If I wasn't going to the meeting--which is usually the case if you're an analyst at a BB--I'd head right to gym once the meeting started. Always kind of risky because there's a chance someone will call you from the meeting with a question on a number or a quick request, but at that point you're kind of useless and not thinking clearly. If you don't have a ton of near term deadlines, it's okay to duck out kind of early that day too if your staffer is halfway competent at managing workflow)

Thursday: 9am - 2am (17 hours; this is the flipside of getting out early the previous day. Tons of work to catch up on that you neglected preparing for your big meeting)

Friday: 9am-8pm (11 hours; more of the same)

Saturday: 11am-5pm (6 hours from home; minor clean-up / catch-up from the previous week)

Total: 95 hours. This is probably a lot closer to the norm my first year while the first post was more representative of my second year when I had a bit more control over my schedule / gave fewer fucks. My worst ever week was in the ~120 hours range and I almost died. Thankfully only got anywhere close to that once.

This is definitely the typical week in banking in my experience so far (hour wise).

My group does not have a strong face time culture (god bless), so a lot of the nights where I know I'll be up late I'll head home around 10:00pm and plug back in at home assuming everyone directly senior to me on my deals have left already. Much easier working until 3am knowing you don't still have a 20-30min commute to your bed.

I tend to also work 8+ hours on Sundays but from home, so even if the week totals up to 80 hours, only around 60 or so are actually in the office, which makes a huge difference.

Another thing to note is you're not always grinding every second of the day. >70% of analysts I know go to the gym for ~1 hour at least 2 times a week (M-F). This generally will push you working later into the night, but necessary to stay sane.

In general the West Coast is not expected to match NY hours but generally we come in significantly earlier (no rolling in at 10 AM, ever...) but also generally leave earlier (when NY analysts leave, so ~2-3 hours earlier on average)

Here are some sample West coast hours in a week assuming a meeting on Friday. I'm in an FSG group so covering you guys Mr. PE-LBOs.

Saturday: 2 hours from home Sunday: 4 hours in office e.g. 1 PM - 5 PM Monday: 8:00 AM - 11 PM Tuesday: 8:00 AM - 11 PM (leaving around same time as East Coasters getting done at 2 AM) Wednesday: 6 AM - Midnight (early morning call, getting draft out to senior team; leaving around the same time as East Coasters) Thursday: 7 AM - 1 AM (turning East Coast MD comments in the morning, turning West Coast MD comments at night) Friday: 6 AM - 3 PM (coming in early before the meeting to handle last minute comments; happy hour / leaving early in afternoon if no post-meeting comments to handle)

I just counted the hours and it's around 83 (77 on weekdays). It can be longer of course (weekend days can each be 12 hours for example and you can definitely crank more at night) but also shorter (if you don't have a deliverable).