Should I choose the sweatiest team?

Hi all, I'll be starting at a Tier 2 BB (Barclays/DB/UBS) soon and thinking about team selection. There is one sector team that is considered to be by far the best in the bank, and the bank is competitive with GS/MS/JP for that sector. It has really strong deal flow and supportive seniors, but they work really long hours (3-4 am pretty regularly I hear) and there is facetime culture. On the other hand, the bank also has other teams that are good but definitely have less deal flow, though their hours are better (around 1 am) and also do lots of WfH (apparently helpful for PE recruiting). The teams I'm considering are all sectors that I'm genuinely interested in. 

My goal is to exit into MM/UMM PE once I've done my analyst stint and I would love to get amazing deal exposure, but at the same time I don't know how sustainable doing ~90 hour work weeks are, both for my health and for PE recruiting. 

Of course, the final outcome will also largely depend on which teams choose me, but I want to make sure that I do the best I can to optimise my chances for myself. 

9 Comments
 

If your main goal is to get the best exit ops, then I would compare the exit ops from previous analysts in the various teams you are interested in. If the exits are vastly different, then it may be worth to pursue the sweatier team. Additionally, if all teams are consistently going past midnight, then your WLB is going to suck either way, but being at home working on a deck at 1 in the morning vs in the office at 3 in the morning is a substantial difference in my opinion. Overall if you feel like you can get a good exit out of a more chill team and you aren't in love with the sector the sweatier team covers, then I would probably go with the chiller group.  

 

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