Is the work-life balance in IB actually that bad or does it just get a bad rep? For example, as an analyst/associate do you at least still have some time to date/hang out with friends/see family?
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Depends entirely on the bank / group and generalizing IB is impossible. If you work in GS TMT you will probably never see a week below 100 hours while if you work at a regional boutique in a tier-2 city you could easily be working 50-hour weeks. In general, if you are at a US BB / EB then it is exactly as bad as people say it is. I would argue it is even worse because when you're not in the industry you will do the math and be like "Oh, if I work 18 hours a day Monday-Thursday, leave at 9 pm on Friday and work for 8 hours on Sunday then I can go clubbing on Friday night, have the entire Saturday free and be free on Sunday afternoon".
The problem is that in reality, it doesn't work out as well. On Friday night you will probably be so fucking tired that you barely make it home without falling asleep. Saturday is off but again, you will be pretty beat up from the week and not be super energetic to pack the day with activities. You will also have to catch up on all your chores that you couldn't do during the week such as cleaning, washing, shopping, picking up packages, admin stuff etc. Sunday is often less work but you still need to be available the entire day. 8 hours of real work on a Sunday most often means 12-15 hours of being available where you have 1-2 hour periods of waiting here and there.
Dating is very difficult because as stated above, you are really only available on Saturdays. You can't really be spending hours on tinder each day to find and chat with women. I think it's very difficult to get into a relationship when you are only available once a week. The people at my bank who are in relationships were in relationships prior to starting in IB. I actually don't know anyone who has managed to find a serious relationship while in IB. Most people in my group just go for one-night stands when they're out clubbing.
This is just based on my experience from my bank and group (moderately sweaty group at GS). The situation will obviously be completely different if you're at a 50h/week regional boutique or similar.
Much appreciated
Work at GS TMT and it’s not even that bad. Average would be around 80. Yes there are stretches of longer weeks but there also stretches of slower weeks. Don’t believe everything you read on the forums. You also have a lot of downtime during the day so it’s easy to sneak in a workout.
I'm situated in Europe and did a rotation with TMT before starting FT in another group. Know a lot of people in the group. I haven't seen a week below 90 hours in my group a year in and the TMT guys very rarely leave before I do. Might be very different in the US but I would have expected it to be the other way around.
Oh understood. You might be accurate regarding TMT in London. I have heard that culture and wlb is pretty bad for the London office.
Yeah I mean there are bad weeks and good weeks but everyone always like to highlight the hours worked on bad weeks. I do know some people that are very busy always but that's mostly caused by them raising their hand for extra work all the time.
Think Europe might be worse because it's more telecom-heavy. There is a huge recurring client within telecom that always has a bunch of projects running simultaneously and that client is extremely demanding. That definitely doesn't make life better. There are also quite bad MDs within TMT in London. They don't know what they want and are pretty bad at communication, resulting in endless turns of exactly everything and extremely unnecessary fire drills because they can't communicate well.
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