New London IB Analyst - WLB/Comp Questions
I'm starting a new analyst role at an elite boutique coming from a non-IB background, and have a few questions for the forum. Knowing a few people in IB I already have an initial impression but obviously experiences vary and I'd be keen to get your thoughts on any of the following:
Do you bring your laptop with you on holiday, and if so do you check in with your team on a daily basis?
How much work-related travel (i.e. client meetings/conferences etc.) do/did you do at analyst level? Appreciate this is a nuanced question based on sector/geography coverage and the size of the bank you work at. For the purpose of this question assume UK cov at EB/BB.
IB is obviously infamous for very long hours and I think there's a tendency within the industry for analysts to be pretty proud about working 80+ hour weeks. Setting that aside, how many productive hours would you say you tended to work each week (productive meaning at desk working as opposed to travelling/waiting for comments to land etc.) as an analyst, and how much would this vary from week to week? (i.e. some weeks would be 9am-3am every day, in down weeks there may be 1-2 days where you leave by 5pm).
If you are an AN2+ at BB/EB in London, what are your expectations around bonuses this year? Appreciate the difficulty of commenting on full year bonuses when we aren't through H1 yet, but it'd be good to begin picking up on sentiment and set rough expectations come year end.
Bump
1. Yes, always bring on holiday. No need to explicitly check in each day but will be responding to queries and emails ad-hoc almost daily throughout the holiday, I check emails every couple of hours at least.
2. Little work related travel at analyst level
3. "Non-productive hours" are filled with other administrative work, very few / no empty hours with nothing to do
4. Too early say, probably not great if things don't improve dramatically
Nearing the end of my first year as an analyst at GS.
1. You definitely need to bring your laptop when you're on holiday and you do need to check all your emails as some things might be specific to your workstreams. In my group, about 50% of holidays get cancelled a week / a few days in advance. In most cases, you will just have to work 1-2 hours a day during holidays but I've also seen plenty of cases where people go on holiday and they end up having to work 5-10 hours a day. This really sucks but being on 3-5 projects at a time, it is unlikely that you will be able to completely log off all of them for your vacation.
2. I would say that travel is pretty much non-existent until you reach senior VP / MD in IB. For important physical meetings, I would say it's most often MDs, group heads, and product heads attending. I have been present for a couple of in-person meetings when they were held at our office (sharing screen for MPs etc.) but that's it.
3. I don't think there will ever be a day where you can leave at 5 pm in banking. If you are able to leave the office at 5 pm, rest assured you will get a call from your staffer with a new project the next day. In my group and from what I've seen across GS, a 1-year analyst is able to leave at midnight on an extremely good day (I've only had this happen to me a few times during my first year). In general, I would say a good night is before 1.30 am, an average night around 3 am and a bad night 4-6 am. The average in my group is 90-100 hours a week but there are definitely rougher groups out there as well.
How bad are the weekends for you and which groups are typically on the lower and higher end of hours at GS LDN?
They are generally very protective of Saturdays and I have only worked 10-20% of Saturdays. I have worked pretty much every Sunday and I usually come in around 11-12 and leave anywhere between 6pm and 2am. The pace is typically a bit lower on Sundays. Friday is a regular workday but people are fine with you leaving at 8-9pm if your workload is low. Most people in my group are able to leave at 10-11pm on Fridays.
TMT is definitely the worst, with people pushing past 4am pretty much every night. High pace and people are also pretty unhappy with the culture.
Natural resources is horrible if you're working on heavy infra projects, but is amazing within other areas such as chemicals.
Industrials is average, but can be extremely sweaty if you're working with people from the Frankfurt office.
Consumer is pretty nice at the moment, but that is mainly a function of low dealflow due to current environment. Heard from some people that is used to be pretty rough before the shift in environment.
Healthcare is pretty rough at the moment because they recently lost a few analysts.
I think in general that finding a group with low hours at GS is extremely difficult. I would say the really good groups at GS are around 80 hours a week, the average ones around 90-100 and the bad ones are 100-120. You won't find a group at GS where you are working 60-70 hours a week.
You don't work on week-ends ? 5 days of 9-3 is already 90 hours
Agree about the 5pm, even in LMM I don't see anyone leaving before 8pm MINIMUM
I do work the vast majority of Sundays. I don't work until 3 am on Fridays. Usually leave around 10-11 pm on Fridays and then work anywhere from 5 to 15 hours on Sundays. Average for me and my group is 90-100 hours a week.
Currently at HL in London. Aside from restructuring, virtually all teams work around 70 hours per week on average (9-12 Monday-Thurs, Friday 9-6). Have never heard of anyone cancelling a holiday for work (restructuring different matter...) and weekend work is usually fairly minimal (maybe one per month actually working, otherwise 4 hours). PJT is above us and my friends there work a similar amount. There are plenty of horror stories of IB in London, and some are definitely true like at GS, but most of my friends in M&A/Coverage in London work a similar amount to me, i.e. 70 hours average with some lower and some higher, so i'd say take some WLB horror stories with a pinch of salt. At the end of the day, all depends on the team you go to anyway.
Good input and I can only agree. If you stay away from GS, MS and the worst groups, hours do get significantly better. I interned at a smaller boutique before starting FT at GS and I rarely worked past midnight. Were able to leave around 11 pm Monday - Thursday and around 5 pm on Fridays. Only had to work one Sunday during my 3-month internship.
When it comes to other banks in London, I've heard that MS is even worse than GS and on top of the horrible hours, their culture is absolute shit according to the 10+ people I know there. My friends at the European BBs have quite nice hours and it seems that most of them are able to leave around midnight on an average day. When it comes to the EBs, I've heard that Rothschild is pretty rough. No insight into JPM / BoA / Citi or the other EBs except that culture at Citi is supposed to be pretty bad.
XXX
Is there any group that has a good culture at JP/MS? What about MS Natres?
How sweaty is HL RX London compared to other sweaty groups in London such as GS TMT or MS M&C?
Fairly similar - I’d say HL Rx is the sweatiest team in London with some people doing absolutely horrible hours. The difference between HL Rx and GS TMT is going to be pretty minimal though, especially for the people in those teams
Would argue GS above is probably the worst case scenario (maybe MS and JPM groups too..) But looking down the market it would get consistently better. Would question in this current market, what are bankers doing for 90 hours a week though?!
Plenty of people were fired quite recently so workload per headcount increases. Quite a few strategic M&A deals are still being conducted, even if large LBOs is difficult to pull off in current interest rate environment. There is also a huge pressure on MDs (especially junior ones) to pull in new business, so we are pitching a lot. We are also doing quite a lot of client services work for our larger clients. Moreover, MDs aren't really pushing back against "boil the ocean" requests from clients because they know we have the capacity for it and want to maintain good relationships.
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