Paternity leave in IB
First year associate (post-stub), wife is due in the fall. Company (BB) offers 20 weeks of paternity leave. I’m thinking of taking 6 then asking for 14 weeks of WFH flexibility.
Thoughts?
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I think that’s reasonable. How old are you out of curiosity?
I am 27. A2A but am about 2 years back due to some lateraling / layoffs.
Fair. I’m 25 in NYC, just made associate. Don’t want to do PE but would like to leave banking
My company offered 8 weeks and I took 5. Ask around to see what others at your firm did. 20 weeks is definitely not industry norm
If you are in IB, you don’t need a paternity leave rather a paternity test.
American Bank? This sounds Canadian.
US BB. 20 weeks is a bit fudged for anonymity but it’s 16-24 weeks of paid non-birthing parent leave.
Is this the same as your A2A bank? If you have no rep here, then I would be cautious to take a lot of time away headed into 2026. Really depends on the year.
No - will be about a year by September. That being said I had a great start and the group paid me more than our pre-negotiated bonus (I joined last fall but they paid out my full bonus).
I’m assuming 6 weeks won’t be an issue.
Take the 24 weeks
Great to see people taking most/all of their leave. I work in sales and while the policy was 8 weeks I was told to take 2 weeks max.. I was still dinged on my bonus the following year
Good call on taking more though. No human being in the right state of mind should be giving up those precious weeks with their newborn to hit the XLS harder.
take it all, time with the kid ain’t coming back
Take 2 weeks off fully and use 18 weeks of WFH flexibility (ideally coming in most days but leaving the office at ~5pm).
Reality is that you will provide very limited support to a newborn that is asleep most of the time, plus this is IB so you'll be expected to work during paternity leave anyway. You'll become increasingly involved in the parenting from ~3 months onwards.
I've navigated this successfully three times with no impact on career or renumeration and still manage to prioritize time with my kids. Believe me that taking more than 2 weeks off consecutively sends the wrong signal in banking, irrespective of what some people think is fair / reasonable / right in this world. This is paternity leave we're talking about - a very different set of expectations for maternity leave.
My firm shuts off access to devices during parental leave fwiw so won’t be able to work at all during leave.
Appreciate the input but 2-5 weeks seems very common here. I plan to be out for 6.
Pretty cool that they're giving you that flexibility. Definitely take as much as you can.
Not in IB but I asked for a week and was called into the office two days into my leave as we were in an important live deal.
My personal view is: be as totally involved as you can be. I took full advantage my company's parental leave and also tacked on most of my vacation time to the end of it. Especially if your wife gets hit with postpartum depression or other complications, or your child has any extra medical needs, you really want to be on deck to handle it without trying to juggle your job. Did my career suffer a setback? IDGAF, I'm going through this life once and money is not my god, the job exists to support my life and not the other way around. Besides, I can always hit the reset button on my reputation and lateral out if someone wants to be cunty about the fact they missed their own child's birth and early months and think I too want to be a stunted fucking cretin. It is absolutely exhausting and sometimes scary to be tasked with keeping a small human being alive, but so is running a marathon or climbing a mountain - it's totally fucking worth it 11/10 would do it again.
Men who take a back seat or minor role in their family life have no idea what they're missing out on: it's not a flex, it's a serious mistake.
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