IB Hours on Fridays
Title--how many hours do IB analysts/associates work on a typical Friday? What times?
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Group and project dependent. At my BB it's rare to leave before 7pm but place is a ghost town by 11pm
Things generally wind down around ~5/6 unless very necessary. Friday evening's are realistically the worst time to work only slightly beating out Sunday evenings.
No senior is going to want to send something to a client at 10 PM on a Friday and look like an a$$hole who is grinding there analysts.
BB IB, was typically done by 6. would get really pissed if I was still working beyond 7:30 (rarely happened)
BB IB, was typically out in the 6-7ish window unless there was some live process going on that evening which is pretty irregular but not unheard of for fridays. Currently stuck with writing a weekly report every Friday for the group head so adds 2-3 hrs to every Friday which is super lame.
Used to work at GS and there certainly were Fridays where you could log off early evening (generally Friday will be the most chill of the week though), often being told "you can just get to it Sunday morning, no need to kill your Friday". This is helpful, but I have come to learn that chill Fridays can come at the expense of annoying Sundays. So you might just end up doing some prep work on Friday (working out a shell, thinking about how to fill a profile, sending stuff to the presentation team, data resource group etc.) on Friday night to not have to get up at 9am on Sunday.
This is also very dependent on your senior Associate, VP and MD. Had multiple cases in which Assocs and VPs wanted to impress the MD and allow her/him to review over Saturday so we could get started on comments on Sunday (often happened for client service type projects) so had quite a few past midnight days as well.
On live executions your Fridays still tend to be the best days as in log off at 9pm ("policy" at GS) as your superiors will tell you "just do it on Saturday/Sunday" but was then regularly grinding through the rest of the weekend as work load was more than what seniors thought... If it a super live execution you can also have late nights on Friday of course but you can also spread it out over Saturday in some cases and log off earlier on Friday. Again, this is entirely depending on your team. Had allnighters Fri-Sun for some dumb shit while some teams are much more efficient and look after you (less frequently the case at GS I am afraid).
started during the WFH era
Only once i logged off at 7pm but averaging 11pm
Why? catching up on pitch work that has been neglected due to live stuff
Bump
At a BB - usually finish by 6/7, have had a few late fridays but those are more the exception. If your bank has a Friday night / Saturday free policy then assoc are usually scared to make you work during those hours.
At a top MM. Friday’s I walk away from my computer by 6:30 / 7. If you email me after and not important, then you have to wait till I log on Saturday for a bit in the morning. I’ve even pushed back on my MD once. Have to set the line somewhere. And we have a good relationship since still. (I’m older as I’m not a first year out of college) so I had the balls I guess lol. Other first years I work with slave Friday nights sometimes I’m just like “tell people to F off”
honestly depends. i'm on 5 live deals at a BB - some fridays im working till 4am, some fridays (well one so far) i literally do not have a single thing come in and i'm basically in bed all day aside from sending the comps / trading updates on certain deals.
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