How much of your time in IB are you on autopilot?

I'm in college and considering IB. After a couple conversations with current analysts, my understanding is that the work itself isn't difficult but rather time-consuming and "sometimes unbelievably mind-numbingly boring" (direct quote). However, how often does an analyst have to sit down and just think about how to work through something? Sometimes I find that tedious tasks are preferable over the more difficult, thought-provoking problems even if the tedious tasks take longer. It's the difference between washing the dishes on autopilot and writing an essay. Writing essays can be more interesting, but I eventually end up mentally fatigued. This is a long-winded way of asking how much of your time in IB is spent on autopilot vs. having to fully process and think through problems.

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Most worskstreams in banking follow an 80/20 rule where 20% of the tasks take 80% of the time. For example, you are scrubbing 10 comps, 8 have standard financial statements and the work is repetitive but 2 don’t clearly disclose the information you need so you end up going through an hours long rabbit hole to figure out the correct EBITDA adjustments. Or you are working on a pitch deck and 80% of pages come from precedents where you only need to do minor updates, but finding the data for the 20% new creates requires much more thought and resourcefulness on your end.

 

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