Is it really so demanding to work in IB?
Coming from 5+ years of strategy consulting experience, I am now finishing an MBA and I accepted a FT offer in a BB in London after a summer associate internship. As FOMO intensifies I am trying to understand whether it is worth it or if I should explore other opportunities... (for example I could go back to consulting in a senior role at 260K+ net).
I am coming from a demanding and competitive type of job already but reading the posts in this forum the job seems kind of a nightmare in terms of anxiety and long hours involved... as such, here's my question:
Is it really so terrible and demanding to work in IB as a fresh Associate in London (wanted to specify this as I know that in US is way worse)?
What are the average working hours during the week and weekends?
Thanks in advance for your insights!
yes
He doesn’t have the time, he’s in IB
If you are a fully ramped-up A2A promote, then the answer could be yes-ish to maybe even "no". You would be a hyper-efficient processor, savvy delegator, and know how to politic/whos ass to kiss.
If you are a post-MBA associate new to banking, then the answer will be a definitive "yes". Regardless of your title, you will be a bitch for the first 2 or 3 years. And expect your quality of life to be very poor during this initial period, and be entirely consumed by your job.
Not sure what more there is to say. I hope this is not news to you.
"hyper-efficient processor, savvy delegator, and know how to politic/whos ass to kiss"
I personally think this is one of the most accurate summaries of an investment banker's core skill set.
Depends on how you define demanding. The work itself is not at all demanding. However, the personal sacrifice is very demanding. I didn’t find banking to be at all stressful. Most the deadlines are manufactured and I don’t think the work is very value add. It’s very transactional and no multi billion dollar deal is happening because of some numbers a banker puts on a page. However, never being able to commit to plans and knowing any e-mail could wreck my life was very demanding.
I’ve since moved to the public markets buyside. My hours are significantly better and consistently ~50hrs/wk. However, I would say the job is significantly more demanding and stressful. On the flip side, I find it more rewarding and stimulating, so it’s worth it.
Second this. The job itself is not intellectually difficult. You are not building rockets, complex computer programs, probabilistic models, etc.
What's demanding is the unpredictability and quite sometimes, manufactured/fake deadlines.
It's really group dependent and if you get an asshole/unnecessarily intense MD or VP, that's unfortunate and I suggest to move around.
Sacrificing person plans for those kind of stuff is demanding. It sure is.
IB is essentially process management/project management. The bad thing here is it's a never-ending process. There will always be a "next deal".
An associate in London works pussy hours, probably even under 80. Come to NYC at a sweatshop and you'll know how hard real IBD is.
Hey, come to China where you work 80 hours average and make 35%-40% of BB's global base pay (talking about a fairly big bank here). That is a sweatshop.
Source: I'm Chinese and no when I say that it's not offensive.
Made the same jump through MBA, but to NYC BB. Banking is brutal and it feels so stupid all the time. We accomplished as much, if not more in consulting day to day with 70% of the time spent. Banking is full of entitled dummies who create artificial problems and deadlines so they can wear hard work as a badge of honor. I can't tell you how many emails I get from a VP at 1230am "we need to turn these footnote edits tonight because the MD is expecting it" (hint, they're not, its just because the VP wants to show off that they're a hard worker to their manager). And when you're running on 4 hours of sleep all the sudden everything takes twice as long to do and is 5x more painful the next day. I've never worked in an environment where everyone is so god awful at actually accomplishing work it borders on bizarre. Also im pretty sure the banks literally slow down IT and create wasted time just to make it worse.. ive consulted at middle market shitcos where their excel and PowerPoint actually function... a top BB should be able to make it so you don't spend 3 hours a day on the phone with a help desk trying to figure out why your files crash every time you ctrl+s.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how senseless it all is and how this feels like the last dying gasp of an industry which has become a parody of itself. Full on meme IRL territory. Any banker who thinks sitting on a draft pitch deck for two weeks until 2 days before the meeting and the handing you hand written makeups like its 1995 so that you can work 24/7 for no reason is, in my humble opinion, a clown.
I have done both IB and strategy consulting. Simply put, there is no comparison. IB is twice as brutal as strategy consulting.
If your internship did not reflect that, then you were given an easy 10 week internship or you were at a bad bank. With how busy the M&A space is right now, I am astonished you were not grinded to a pulp. I am in M&A strategy consulting and have been getting horrendous hours for the past year.
Based on my personal experience, even being an intern at a decent bank was harder than grinding out a sweaty strategy project as a FT consultant. I constantly felt as though there weren't enough hours in the day, even when I got the hang of it, and started becoming proficient. Strategy consulting is bad, but still gives you at least 30 minutes each day to take a shower, sit down and actually eat a meal, etc.
I always see these naive (not you at all, as you have undergone an IB internship and have a good grasp of what the position entails) posts from consultants saying "I work 60-70 hours a week doing CDD / strat consulting, should I switch to IB? It cant be much worse, right?" They drive me insane, and I have stopped responding to them for the most part. No one knows IB until they have been doing the job regularly.
Everyone's experience is different, but IB scarred me. It beat me up. This site is so bizarre, you have all these UG interns saying "IB is easy" or "anyone can do IB". Yeah, no, absolutely not true. I was an underperformer in IB, but a top bucket performer in consulting. I worked at more prestigious consulting firms than I did in banking. The guys in banking worked harder than me, longer hours, and were still more mentally with it than I was. The ones that excelled were brilliant. Very average consultants can make it to manager at solid firms if they just stick it out. Rarely is that the case at solid banks.
Edit: I would assume your internship hours weren't bad because they are trying to attract talent. My guess is you were at a good bank and your team was specifically told to give you a manageable amount of work. Deal flow is reaching unparalleled heights, to the point where Qs 1-3 of this year matched all deal activity for last year. There is certainly no shortage of work available. I have 6-7 recruiters reaching out to me every week trying to get me to join strong banks, better than any of the ones I worked at.
Thanks for your insights mate.
Just for clarity I interned in (I would say) a decent BB, ranked #2 or #3 in most league tables. I still believe there is a geographical factor here - I assume your experience is from US? I had the impression that in London things are "softer" and they do care somehow about not killing employees.
As I said in my previous comments, I do know that the internship is not really a good proxy of the real work even tho I tried to step up as much as possible to see whether I liked the job (consider that I worked on 2 live deals and owned end-to-end 3 pitchbooks), but my feeling is that overall it wasn't such a nightmare for associates and above.
The only part of your comment that I would argue is this one: "Very average consultants can make it to manager at solid firms if they just stick it out. Rarely is that the case at solid banks." After the summer internship I thought exactly the opposite - I was in loops of 20 emails of seniors (not associates...) discussing technicalities which clearly had zero impact on the deal. Honestly this kind of depressed me... I was coming from an EM position in top tier strategy consulting (think McK / BCG / Bain) and the work was 10x more intellectually challenging than what I have seen. I also felt that most of the ppl during a deal don't really know what they are doing...
Hi, Consulting Engagement Manager -> MBA -> BB IB Associate (now a VP) here.
The reason is very simple: consultants charge per hour, bankers don't. Banker workloads are pure operating leverage: you pay the salary, and someone works all the way up until the deadline. The VP/D/MD doesn't get judged based on how efficient the process is and the closest thing you get to charging a client for hours is the late night meals.
In consulting, every hour is tracked and accounted for. Utilization is one of the primary factors determining your rating and promotions. Utilization also matters a great deal to the Managers/Senior Managers/Partners. Therefore, things are planned out more carefully, executed more carefully, and stopped if things are getting out of control.
I easily have worked far more hours than I did in strategy consulting. Notably, the marginal hours are brutal --> ever considered the difference between going to sleep at 12 vs. 3? How about that schedule 30 days in a row including weekends? "Only" 20 hours more for 50% more pay seems like a great deal until you consider *which* hours you're giving up, and that extra pay is near the top of the marginal tax bracket so you are netting very little of it.
Yes, it's absolutely brutal. It's a never-ending grind. Do you know the feeling of liberation in school that you have after you sit your finals? Well here you have finals every other day, but you can't really catch a break as more shit pops up all the time that needs to be handled (of course ASAP). So you have a lot of stress and no sense of liberation at the end. It's just constant work.
Add in lots of toxic people and incredibly mundane work (do you like reformatting the same page 10 times because, for example, people change their minds on what comps set to use instead of thinking long and hard about a good set before wasting everyone's time, or how about changing buyers logos a million times because everyone has a different opinion?) and ofc attrition is that high. I love finance but there's very little of what I do in IB that is actually stimulating (probably reading reports is the most stimulating part), it's all administrative and formatting BS with some financial backing to make us feel good about ourselves.
I'm waiting for my aso 1 bonus in 2023 and then GTFO. Really losing respect of the people that decide to do this long - term. You probably like pain, being rushed and stressed all the time, and you don't enjoy spending time with family or cultivating an interesting life