Is 80+ hard? 80hrs isn’t

My view here is that it's probably a combination of the following:

1. Yeah still pretty new, the job grinds you down over time even as you get quicker. You're likely not getting the full brunt yet as you're still being trained up.

2. Ending at 12:30am is pretty nice. Some groups are grindier than others, some seniors are grindier than others, and of course certain deals or a combination of deals can crush you. Sounds like you're in a nice spot right now, but know that it's not impossible something changes and you end up in the 3am or later + weekend work crowd for a month or two. I've been in both spots depending on conditions.

3. If your team is great, that's awesome and a big part of making the job better. Treasure it.

The job really starts to wear on you at roughly the 90 hour mark, every incremental hour sucks more. Pulling ~100+ for long stretches is really when people break. At that point you are working pretty much every day, not sleeping enough and staying fit and making good food choices becomes more difficult. To be clear, I don't pull these hours anymore. I am much softer than I used to be lol. 

Don't kid yourself. 80 hours might be easy when you're 1 year into your career as a young analyst working on a good project with decent people.

But it takes a toll on your health regardless of whether it feels 'easy' or not. You'll also miss things outside of work (if you're a relatively normal person).

It's the American 120 that people complain of the most

I’m roughly 1.5 years into the job now, and while 80 hours still doesn’t really take a toll on me physically it’s starting to become very draining to see people live their lives while I can’t do that in the same sense.

One other thing to consider, which has been the worst thing for me is that going down to 80 hours after a +100 stretch doesn’t allow your body and mental to be restored. So the 80 hours becomes so much harder for some time

No weekend work and you rarely if ever work until 2am back to back days? You're at a chill shop. 

Where are you at that you have to be in at 8am after working late daily? I was a BB analyst many years ago. I regularly worked 80 hours, but I was only in at 8 if there were meetings or something necessary (or if I was still there from last night which did happen semi-frequently). I'd bet my average arrival time in IB was 9:45am. I'd crank out everything due before I left and then knew there wouldn't be any early AM work as I was waiting on comments, new work, etc. Working 10am - 1am gets you to 75 hours in 5 days. You pick up 5 on the weekend, and you're at 80. There were obviously plenty of weeks that worked out differently, mostly negative but some positive.

To the original question - outside of extreme times my work hours never bothered me. I worked that hard through my mid-30's while still taking breaks to party, travel and get married. Even getting married didn't affect it much, but once we had kids things changed radically because your top priority just can't be work anymore.

It bothers me now that I’m 3 years in and bored, I just want to do my work and go home.

Didnt bother me as much my first year when I was learning the ropes, but it still sucked.

80 hours per week of pure, nonstop work is very different from 80 hours being “on call” where you have time to go to the gym, eat in the conference room, are waiting for stuff, etc.

You kind of answered your own question - you don't work back to back 2am or all-nighters and no weekend work helps a lot to destress. Good culture helps a lot too.

The issue with IB is that the stress compounds overtime, so the more you pull back to back all-nighters and full weekend work, the tougher it gets to get through (that's why most people do not last long, the fatigue compounds but hard to destress).

At least in my group there were days of pulling an all-nighter and then doing 3 / 4am for few days straight right after that. Sprinkle this schedule few times in a year and you can see why people burn out really quick and want to quit really badly. Also your weekend blowing up last minute really, really, really sucks.

80 hours for a few months is doable. 80 hours for 2 years is miserable. I started noticing many gray hairs on my head and beard and a few months out of banking now and I have significantly less gray hairs.

It’s just the tough grind for so long, extremely difficult to unplug and sustain it. Although you do get used to it somewhat.

In the event this isn't a troll post, good on you for being able to do 80 hours week-after-week. If you're truly showing up at 830 and working until 1230 Monday through Friday (for a total of 80 hours), then you've probably got above average tolerance (even in banking). Most people (myself included) can't work and then fall asleep, so when I would log off at 1230, I'd typically have to get home (call it 30 minutes) and then take a half hour to hour to unwind. Then, even waking up at 730 (so 30 minutes to get in, and 30 minutes to get ready), I'd be looking at 6 hours or less of sleep without working out. That's a tough schedule for a lot of people even if you're getting a lot of your weekend off.

Over the long run I never had an issue with the hours as much as the unpredictability of the hours. Not having much weekend work is huge and culture matters a lot.

If you consistently work 8-2 a.m., you'll work 90 hours a week, which is still a lot because you will sleep less than 5 hours each day, assuming no weekend. Getting ready for work plus the commute will take you only 1 hour, which is not the case for most. Let me shed some light on what a bad group is. I'm at WB, and we work consistently 9:30 AM - 1:00 AM on average, 15-20 hours of work during the weekend, plus people who have abusive personalities.