been thinking about IB as a FT career and know about the long hours. have a few other hobbies in life that i want to continue spending time on and am worried that IB will take over all my time
how do you save time while starting as an analyst or are long hours just part of the gig
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Unfortunately it is just part of the gig. Not sure what your other hobbies are but my suggestion would be to find your favorite and make sure you spend at least 30 mins a day doing it. It's not much but in banking the hours are long and unpredictable, having a little slice of a hobby everyday is like a mental vacation. Hope this helps.
and how about relationships, family/friends/SO?
Similar here, everyone is different, but you will have to make sacrifices in all of those relationships. I don't live near any family so this is kind of a non-issue for me, but I make sure to have a good phone call with at least one family member a week. Dating has been hard to be honest, I never have a solid schedule and constantly have to reschedule / cancel. (Women do not like that in my experience) As far as friends go, most of my friends are in demanding jobs so we get together when we can and have a solid group chat. As poster below said, you need to learn to push back, that is probably the best advice and what I should have started with. You can't always be a slave to work, this balance is something you learn over time and get better at as you gain respect. All of this is not to scare you, but it is reality. I am happy with life, yes it sucks to be sitting in the office when most people are partying, dating, relaxing or sleeping but you just have to know that going into it and it'll be easier to adjust. (Don't worry you'll still have some fun weekends) If you aren't willing to make sacrifices with your hobbies, relationships, or other aspects of your life, there are certainly other career paths that will allow you to do those things and make a decent living. It's just a personal choice at the end of the day. No shame in either.
You need to learn how to push back. When I started as an analyst, I had a very difficult time saying no. People do not give a fuck about you in IB and they will drown you in work if you let them. When you are already on 4 busy projects and your staffer calls you about "a few slides that shouldn't take much time" you need to say no. You also need to learn how to push back against timelines & workload within your projects. Doesn't matter how efficient you are, you won't have good hours as an analyst. However, if you learn how to push back you might be able to leave at 1-2 am on average rather than 3-4 am.
I would also highly recommend to focus on your own workstreams as much as possible. Can't even count the number of times where an Associate has asked me to do some quick fix on a certain slide and I suddenly end up owning that slide forever because I spent 5 mins fixing some formatting on it once.
do other team members look down on this or are they understanding, in your experience?
You need to balance it with your team. If you are pushing back on stuff claiming you are at full capacity and you leave at 1 am while your entire team sits there until 4 am then obviously they will be really pissed. Meanwhile, if you are on 4 projects and stay until 4 am every night while your teams leaves at 1 am then you are not pushing back enough.
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