Hours: 80 Hours a week
How are 80 hour work weeks split up? 9am - 12am Monday through Friday and 5 hours on Saturday sounds shitty but manageable - would have no hobbies and a horrible diet but I could get through it. I was wondering if it really does get worse than that?
Probably something like:
Monday: 9am - 10pm (13 hours)
Tuesday: 9am - 12am (15 hours)
Wednesday: 9am - 2am (17 hours)
Thursday: 10am - 3am (17 hours)
Friday: 10am - 6pm (8 hours)
Saturday: 11am - 1pm (2 hours from home)
Sunday: 1pm - 9pm (8 hours in office)
Total: 80 hours
It's a lot lumpier than a straight 9-11 schedule. You may have some 3am nights and some 9pm nights in the same week and you may work a full day sunday and not at all on Saturday. Mornings tend to be pretty flexible - 10am arrivals are fairly common, especially if you've had a late night. People get it.
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.
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).