Is IB the pinnacle of false dedication or is the time necessary?
Is the work one does as an IB employee the pinnacle of dedication, or is the work necessary?
Do you spend most of your day doing filler work or necessary high impact work?
Do you spend 100 hours a week doing 20 hours worth of necessary high value work?
Do you invent things to do in order to put in the face time?
Long ago I read the 4 hour work week. Upon finishing the book, I was slightly skeptical that following the 80/20 and the Parkinson rule would actually force the problems to solve and limit themselves. I have since forced these rules on my various business entities and my private lives. Over the last 2 years I have noticed that my work demand outside of my former job significantly dropped while the efficiency of my various companies has increased in an exponential fashion.
In the past few months while going through a buy out process I have been thinking about my experiences in the financial industry. It seems that the overwhelming majority of the time and work spent in the industry especially in IB seem to be completely pointless and nothing more than a display of machoism.
What do you all think?
Made the move to markets recently, less bs here by far and everyone is incredibly motivated. Of course, environment is more cutthroat and PnL driven and there is still admin crap to do, but loving how I'm busy almost all the time.
I practice the four hour work week, the other 36 hours I browse the internet and eat food. MO all day baby.
Spot on, that's why it's "monkey" business. Bunch of drones all droned out. Can't busta move
I think this is a great topic. Hoping for some bankers to chime in
These types of threads upset me. I totally understand that comp is down at most banks while the hours have gotten marginally better (they're actually better than they were in 2008). But here are my thoughts:
Everything given to you is a learning opportunity: Whether it's a pitch (those suck, sure), or it's a deal, you learn. You learn a ton about the industry, the competitors (and their valuations), and how to value a company, how to run a process, and what buyers look for.
the hours are entirely group dependent. Pick a group where you like the people. Good people are cognizant of your livelihood and won't make unreastlic asks at 8pm on a Friday. So lifestyle can be managed if you do enough due diligence.
you're young, you have energy, so use it. This is your learning opportunity. You can spend it on either going out at 9pm and passing out or learning about an industry and helping execute something kinda cool. Yeah, the hours may suck, but there's a reason. Pitches, which every analyst, associate, and VPs (including me) despise, are pretty much a reason for the MD to listen to the client and figure out what they're ultimate strategy is and help execute (unlike consulting).
I've done both consulting and banking and based on my interests, I chose banking and have never regretted it. I think most of the satisfaction someone has with his/her group is based on the composition/culture of the group. You only work 100 hrs if you either have to (deal that's gone crazy) or if you have a shitty VP.
Hope that helps.
I agree with @bankbanker101 so this is just to add some extra thoughts
While you are inside of the bubble, you can easily start having these negative feelings about what you are doing. However, you fail to realize how interesting your work is - and how lucky you are to be working on that work, rather than working on the stuff that most others in society work on.
Mundane, time consuming work? My girlfriend's a capital markets lawyer and her work, if you look at the individual tasks and how long her hours are, seems so so so much more mundane than putting together a pitch, or a management presentation, etc. However, even what she is doing is actually very interesting when you take a step back and think about why she is doing what she is doing, and the larger picture of her efforts, and where her efforts sit.
Another thing that you don't realize when you are in your bubble is just how competitive this industry is, and how difficult it is to generate new customers and new contracts. Doing pitch books is sometimes gruelling, but their necessity is just a fact of business - it's very difficult to bring in new business, and if you don't spend a lot of effort doing just that, then you will have no business.
I'd replace the assessment of "machoism" with "masochism"
Also lol what odd super Keenos are in this thread.
Nearly all the work you do in banking is zero value add. There's just an overkill of false precision throughout the entire process, you could cut all the formatting bs out and save 80pc of he time, then cut all the false modeling bs (like taking three hours to calculate wacc, which is still a made up number) save another 15pc of the time, then you are at 5pc core value add.
This applies more to work assoc/analyst do, at vp level where you start helping with deal structuring, legal bits, general process hand holding etc.... It becomes a bit more useful.
As for "macho", it's funny you used that word. I just logged on to write a post about this topic. Doing a task that in itself is unfillfilling but serves a larger purpose (getting a deal) can be hard work....even if the 'work' part is sitting through the mind numbing period of time and just getting it done.
As for the level of "false precision", I really don't know, I'm in the shoes of the person deciding to pay money for such a task
@bankbanker101 @Asia_i_Banker I think you both may have slightly misunderstood my point. I am not saying the actual work is unimportant. I am merely questioning the way in which the work in the Banking industry is done. I have worked at a HF and I come from a manufacturing base. I own manufacturing companies. I question the efficiency of the job. From what I gather from WSO and my friends in banking is that 90% of the time is spent running around changing minuscule and pointless details that ultimately change nothing in the big picture because everything that a pitch is based on is complete and utter bullshit to begin with. The industry needs to reformed from a work efficiency stand point or the jobs you all do will be farmed out to India where an entire research ptich project can be done from scratch for $10,000. I think the work environment is nothing more than an "I did this shit when I was your age so you are going to do it to" mentality from the senior bankers. In my world if you do not innovate and find cheaper and faster ways of doing what you do someone else will and they will take your business. I know that investment banks have a shield because the under writing process requires huge cash commitments. But that does not mean that some Tech billionaire can not come in and shake up the industry.
yes, there are many inefficiencies. to be fair, ive only been active for 3.5 months, but the ridiculous iteration is a waste of time, imo. im not sure why the global culture of "what i think right now is best," since that results in the iteration. but yes, i can only hope the buy side is more efficient.
A running joke between myself and a couple interns this past summer when we submitted research and presentations requests was why haven't they replaced IB analysts yet. If you think about it, banks spend so much time and money training new analysts that function essentially as dead weight for the first month or two even after training. These guys in the background doing the tedious research and presentation editing that even analysts don't want to do have been doing their jobs for years and are absolute experts at finding obscure information and cranking in PowerPoint.
No doubt analysts do manage to add value despite this, but from my fresh perspective a more efficient way would be to eliminate the analyst position and have associates take on the responsibility of liaising with the support staff dedicated to his/her group and checking/understanding the work product. Despite all of the effort to retain analysts, how many of them are actually sticking around after two years? Not to mention the lack of clear division between the analyst/associate role.
This also pushes buyside firms to recruit and train out of undergrad and corporate development/strat groups to do the same. IB recruiting would then be done exclusively from MBA programs and/or from industry, which makes sense and eliminates the inefficiency of having an experienced analyst working under a freshly minted MBA junior associate. As a client, I wouldn't mind knowing that the lowly grunt in the weeds actually doing the work has been a professional, maybe even a corporate dev professional, in my industry and has more familiarity with my line of business than skimming over a sellside research report.
Anyway, my $.02. Back to work on my week 4 post.
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