how impactful is a two year stint in ib on someone’s long term health?
always been curious if the stess from ib would actually take years off someone’s lifespan even if it was two years. how much money is “worth” those years?
how longs a piece of string
i don’t follow
Very negative. A big reason why is because most people going through the IB stint are coming straight out of college, and so this is their only real working experience, meaning they get it engrained in their minds that working 60+ hour work weeks is okay and work must come first. It's a toxic mindset that remains with people for a long time.
Also, of course, the negative affects of lack of sleep, stress, etc. cannot be understated. But those affects can wear off for the most part with very healthy habits over the long term. There are plenty of people who had worse habits in college(sleeping 2 hours, all nighters, drinking a ton) who are perfectly healthy because they turned around their habits long term. The human body is both more and less fragile than we think.
thanks - it’s because on one hand, i don’t mind the “feeling” of grinding through these next few years because i do enjoy finance (more so hf but im not sure i can get there without ib) and find it interesting but im genuinely concerned about long term health.
i often think about the price tag id put on one year of my life and it weighs on me.
but i live pretty healthily for now and i want to enjoy a variety of experiences i didn’t get later on that require me to be well off so ib ultimately makes sense in my head.
Its pretty brutal but the human body is resilient and people have done it for decades (not that I condone these hours and shitty WLB). There are a couple groups that are terrible culture wise (these seem to change every few years so I'm not as well informed now) so I would avoid those like the plague but the average group (even at EB/BB) is manageable.
As others have mentioned, it’s nearly impossible to quantify (or put the price tag) the long-term health impact of two years in IB. If someone lives to 100, would you really say banking shortened their life? But what if, without those two years, they might have lived to 105? Or if someone develops Alzheimer’s at 60, was that because of banking, or was it inevitable regardless of career? It’s hard to draw a straight line between short-term stress and long-term health outcomes.
That said, in some of the more intense groups, people do experience real physical side effects heart palpitations, hair loss, weight fluctuations, etc. If anything more serious cropped up, I’d say it’s not worth it and you should walk away immediately. But for the majority, the impact is more about elevated stress levels than lasting damage, at least I would hope so having done 2 years of IB lol.
The reality of IB (or 'high finance') is that smart (but not exceptional) risk averse folks want to make outsized income. As such, the payoff is the long hours. Unless you're built like a tank and/or super human individual that can function on 5 hours of sleep and have the energy to workout daily for the average analyst they will be in worse physical condition than in college and/or any part of their childhood life.
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