Trending Content - Investment Banking Forum
| +197 | Americas M&A League Table Q2 Updated | 79 | 3h |
| +131 | Restructuring: Anti-climactic Experience | 34 | 1d |
| +102 | IB Net Worth / Savings Check | 49 | 25m |
| +91 | Woman who emptied Knicks trashcan on street then stole it was DEI exec, worked at JPMorgan Chase | 24 | 13h |
| +80 | Stop sleeping on UBS - it’s pretty good | 26 | 2h |
| +52 | 2026 VAULT PRESTIGE RANKINGS | 29 | 1d |
| +39 | AI + Financial Modelling | 12 | 1d |
| +30 | Hardest interview experiences? | 16 | 23h |
| +28 | Summer before college | 17 | 13h |
| +26 | Current State of UBS in North America | 8 | 2d |
Career Resources
Lifestyle is def better but the same amount of stress
Stress is a little bit higher when you factor in that you need to start worrying about building your rolodex for your D/MD promotion down the road.
Waaaaay easier for me. Like night and day.
Don't have to grind on models. Spend most my time reviewing and helping the juniors with their questions. Most calls I handle I can almost wing from so many deal reps. Staffers don't control me(only mds I like that I have aligned myself to).
It depends. Some VPs (not me) arrive around 10am, leave around 7pm, and consistently make top bucket. MDs respect them and (as a result) the best juniors readily work extra hard for them. If you game the system this way, the VP years are a vacation.
other VPs are completely miserable while trying to hold up entire processes by themselves. They usually get mid bucket bonuses (or worse) for their trouble.
just proves my point if you treat your juniors with respect and are nice to them they often go above and beyond what you ask and make your life easier because they WANT to work for you. treat them like trash and they will give you a hard time with sloppy work you spend all night fixing/checking.
That is not the point I was making. I framed the loyalty from junior bankers as driven by better deal experience, higher bonuses, and great references. Not really niceness. I’m way too cynical to think otherwise.
It is good and helpful to treat junior bankers well. No one wants to work for an unreasonable VP. But no one wants to work for a super nice guy with no influence or deals either.
.
If you're a good AS3, you're doing the job of a VP1 already so VP1 doesn't feel like much of a change. VP3 is way better than being a junior though. You may not actually sleep earlier but you have a lot more downtime between waiting for work products and a lot more social activity.
From what my vps have told me, it's all about how good your aso / experienced analysts are. At the end of the day, you're still in charge for all deliverables that exit the door, in addition to being a key point of contact for executing the deal (e.g., leading buyer calls, leading client calls, buyer outreach, etc.). If you can trust good asos and typically get good work product back that's (hopefully) error free, you have less time spent reviewing, so the hours get better. Generally, hours should get better as you move up, but yes, as everyone mentioned above, stress levels get much more intense. Worst job in the pyramid is the aso, so at least you made it over the hump
3rd year analyst by far the worst..
I suppose it depends on your group and how much responsibility you're given at the end product, but I'd say that third year analysts still have it fine relative to associates. Don't get me wrong, the job sucks, but associate is when everything falls on you and hold the pen on the deliverables. You're still pulling the same hours but the expectation is much higher
Either your juniors suck or you're still running like an associate. First few months are a bit of a transition but beyond that, its either of those two compounding your hours.
I agree with above comment - all the top VPs at my EB are the ones who got killed during their AN/early ASO years (hence great deal experience and literally know ins and out of everything) so can be hyper efficient and run the process smooth as a butter. In that case, usually one of my VPs comes at 9am, leave at 6/7pm, log in later at night for a quick review and that's all. During weekends yea you might have to check some work but it is definitely not like AN2 who is working on a complex model for 16 hours straight during the weekend.
For middle/low bucket VPs how waste juniors time - they are insecure and do not have confidence, so they become micromanagers and hold up the entire process making it super inefficient. Then MDs gets mad and asks where the deliverable is. Classic.
Edit: Though I agree it is also the function of the juniors - if the junior bankers are shite, then a lot of work gets pushed up as a result.
You lead more processes, go to more meetings, and are more involved in office politics so stress goes up.
On the flip side, you’re not “doing” the work anymore so you won’t be grinding in PPT and XLS for 16 hours straight. I can take a couple of hours off to go to the gym do whatever 90% of the time, while I could never do that as an associate.
Stress goes up and the job becomes more soft-skills based, but your lifestyle and ability to control your time improves.
Non architecto veniam aperiam natus commodi quia. Velit aut nesciunt tenetur et alias rerum.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...