Sleep?!?
Real talk, how do you guys function without sleep? I'm an upcoming S&T summer analyst and wanna know how you guys crank through late-night pitch decks till 2 am continuous without sleep. I heard horror stories about getting kept in the office all night. Do you take mini naps throughout the day? Drink 10 cups of coffee? How is the lifestyle maintained? I get how people bear through it for a couple of years and follow through on exit opps, but that's after some time. I want to lateral over to IB for full time and I can handle the hours, but how do yall do it and stay sane without drugs?
No one functions without sleep man (even if many people in these industry LOVEEEE to say that they don’t sleep (note that many people in this industry have a massive ego))
Fair enough, how do you personally cope? I would imagine odee coffee. Some groups are also more intense than others.
"odee"
You only see the worst things on here - people talk about the 110 hour weeks but little about the 60-70 hour weeks where they were home by midnight every night
It's pretty rare to have a week in banking where you're in bed at 2am every single night and ALSO have to be in the office early. Typically when you stay late you can come in late the next day, and while sometimes you are just getting grinded and have 2-5am nights for a few weeks straight, that is not every week of banking
A typical banking week might be:
Monday 9am - 1am
Tuesday 9 am - 1 am
Wednesday 10am - 4am
Thursday 11am - 10pm
Friday 11am - 7pm
Sat/Sun ~15 hours, either split between days or a full day Sun
Total: 80 hours
So you do get decent sleep some nights and the other nights you power through. But most people leave pretty quickly because banking ruins not only your sleep but also relationships, personal life, mental health etc... S&T is a good choice
Thanks for the response, that clears things up. I do want to pursue M&A as well I reside in NYC, and I'm trying to figure out simultaneously how to start networking more efficiently aside from LinkedIn where people aren't quite as responsive. I have heard before that recruiting kicks off during the summer, but why wait? In addition to the sleep thing, how could tired analysts have the energy to hop on a call with me for advice? Knowing the intensity of the work, how did you break through into M&A was it networking, high GPA, top tier school? Just curious!
Emailing is more effective than LinkedIn - most banks are [email protected], but do a google search to verify. Sometimes people will have weird email formats like j.brown, james.f.brown, or james.brown2 so if you can't reach someone after a few tries or it bounces back, just move on
Do a search on here for FT recruiting and get familiar with the timelines - superdays will be at the end or right after your internship. Depending on what bank you're at, you might consider networking/focusing your lateral efforts internally. Citi for example is great with internal mobility, GS I would not recommend. But people will be more responsive to an internal network and more willing to meet you for coffee
Analysts also know the networking game and are usually pretty willing to help. Coffee / in person is better if you can, but phone calls are fine too. Juniors are not that busy during the day either.
Also, not sure if you're just using the M&A term generally as in you want to work on deals, or if you actually want in to the M&A group - but just as a heads up, the M&A group is the most competitive group at any bank and the very few FT spots will go to people with BB IB return offers who want to move to M&A. You'd still work on M&A / deals in an industry group (think healthcare, financials, tech, etc) but S&T to the M&A group is a very big leap
Lol no one is out here working 80 hour weeks every week bro, please stop propagating this lie, we do like 60/65 hours or something like 80% of weeks and 80% of work time is just waiting for comments. IT IS NOT THAT BAD. It's mainly just pampered ass egoistic kids inflating their hardships (as they do with everything).
Agree w this. Once the learning curve gets nailed down, it’s fairly easy to keep your schedule comfortably between 60-80hrs. 80 on the weeks you’re staffed on more stuff and is anticipated, but few and far between if you have a good staffer.
I guess I was a heard wrong about that. Glooks
Can you show a breakdown of how those 60-65 hours are spread through the week?
And what do you think about the GS13 deck from last year that was claiming 100+ hour weeks?
was that deck for GS TMT? Idk if it was truly 100 hours but given it's a very sweaty group + pandemic I wouldn't doubt they'd be putting in crushing hours >80
You’re missing the main point though about the unpredictability of hours which inflates stress/makes it difficult to plan things.
.
The issue is, you may have downtimes when you’re pushing back hardcore because you’re sick of it, but you do have periods where you work 90-110h weeks for 3-5 weeks on end, and this is very detrimental to your health. In those moments, you don’t think about the Christmas break 2 months ago as you’re in survival mode
Wanna clarify here, the big meme is that so much of your office and work time is spent waiting and memeing that those 70/80 hours look more like 40 when you count actual working time. Of course, this intensifies once you realize that the 40 hour office jobs are actually working closer to 10 hours a week then lmfao.
This is bullshit though, literally never happens
please bro, the amount of times a day I see watercooler talk and my buddies tell me they see it is insane, yeah sure maybe sweatshops not, but that's more the exception.
sick thread GS TMT here i come hehe
Like I said, either use copious amounts of adderall/cocaine or accept that you're shaving 10-15 years off your life with heart problems.
I can only speak to my experience in a mid-market shop, but from what I've seen the 100-hour weeks are typically overstated. Analysts and associates are usually working around 60 hours/week, maybe get to 70 if they are slammed, but in that case it's usually live deals and actually important deadlines. As another reply said, this industry is full of big egos, and a lot of these go-hards get off on claiming to work 100+ hour weeks like they'll get a medal for self-flagellation.
Caveat: if you are an analyst at BB where MDs job is literally to throw every possible idea at a potential client, yeah...you're going burn yourself out of pitch decks and work that goes nowhere a lot of the time.
*EDITS: grammar and punctuation
Are you talking about 60-70 hours total, including downtime waiting for work? If so that doesn't sound too bad at all. Are you in NYC?
Yep, 60-70 includes waiting. I'm in Philadelphia at a mid-market shop. From what I hear from b-school friends who are also associates, they are doing about the same as me...maybe touching 80 if super busy. I think a lot of the mythology around hours applies mostly to first year analysts. There is just a lot to figure out how to do efficiently and effectively, so that first year is a combo of doing the work while learning how to do the work.
WHO needs sleep when you have the grind waiting for you
Amen brotha
Removed for anonymity.
Buddy you’re in S/T you’ll be fine it follows market hours decently. Shouldn’t put in more than 60 hours a week at least from my experience doing it.
Also youre pretty much useless bc you haven’t done Series exams so it’s a lot of shadowing and just learning you’ll be okay.
The worst I had it was when we had 3 pitches simultaneously and I was staffed on a deal with 7am calls as an intern.
An example week was like:
Definitely my worst week (so far) and I was basically incapable of thinking during most days. Most days I was on calls from 7am - 4pm and modeling / building decks in the evening through night. My notes were extremely sloppy and almost incoherent. The hardest for me was the 2pm - 6pm time slot where I’d be super tired, but then I was usually fine all night once I got locked into a task.
I think the key to staying awake is based on the type of work you’re doing + the fear put into you by an associate. During that time, my associate would log off around midnight and have an auto email sent to me around 3:30am asking for an update on the deliverable(s). At the time, I didn’t know it was an auto email. Later, he told me he set that up to make me “mentally stronger.”
It’s not hard to stay awake when you’re locked into a deck / model, especially when you get into gear and have specific instructions on what to do.
In terms of staying awake during meetings / menial tasks, the key is to get out of your chair and walk around a bit. I found that walking through the city for 10-15 minutes would wake me up. Try not to overdo the coffee, especially later in the day.
In most cases, your hours won’t be this bad and therefore it’s up to you to prioritize sleep. This means no screens 30 minutes before bed. Take that time to detox from the world and be engaged with yourself or significant other.
This sounds miserable
That's lowkey funny not gonna lie, sorry to laugh at your misery. Anyways, how many deals would you get staffed on at once?
That MD email is hilarious lmao, woulda been sus if it came at 3;30 erryday tbh
I do 50-60 of real work and other time just waiting around. You feel like you're always on the clock because work can come to you anytime.
Gotcha, so in the afternoon I would really be able to hit the gym to rejuvenate myself?
It's always funny to see the former bankers at my fund coming in at like 9:30 AM while the rest of the team is already in the office (as you can prob guess, we are a trader-run shop). I've always been a morning bird myself and I hate sleeping after 11 PM even if I don't have to go to work in the morning at like 7 AM.
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