The hours are tough, most don't recognize how much it really is until they are there. Here's 70 hours for you:
9am to 11pm every weekday. Doesn't sound like much, but think about it realistically. You're up by 8am, you get home by 11:30pm.. Sleep, rinse repeat.
Increase that to 80 hours, 10 hours on Sunday added.
Increase that to 90 hours, you're pulling an added 2 hours on weekdays, so you get home at 1:30am
Increase that to 100 hours, you're in the office at 7am for a deal going live, getting home at 1:30am, including 10 hours on Sunday.
110, add 10 hours to Saturday and mind you, you're getting off at 1:30am on a Friday night.
Sure there might be different combinations, but this is just an example. Now think imagine yourself, coming home at that time in NYC or SF.. exciting places, where all the girls are going out and the backoffice guys are having a great time.
It's a legit post. I think a lot of people in college or who are just not in a job where you actually work that amount truly understand what those hours are like on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Not just occasionally, but always.
I think they're fully aware of what the hours are but in the youthful enthusiasm of their mind's eye they glamorize and romanticize the idea of working 110 hours... taking a black car home at 3am, waking up 4 hours later to a bunch of stressful emails, rushing back into the office, cranking through the fire drill.
It all sounds so terribly romantic and important. I think people's expectations wouldn't be as disappointed if all the people they worked with were brilliant banking wizards rather than survivalist ass kissers grabbing at straws to stay alive in a ruthless industry. The work you do is mindless, yes, but that's not the bad part. The bad part is that the reason you're doing the work is also mindless.
I'd say the first time the sheen is smudged is when you first start you and see this bright shiny penny of an MD that you're lucky enough to call your boss's boss who is so self-important (and justifiably, right?), swinging his big dick around the office, toppling people over with it, stomping lesser beings out like a singed newspaper ember, and then you walk into a client meeting with him and he's a neutered pup groveling for a belly rub. After that the work you do starts to seem much less glamorous and important.
Also, OP is skewing the entry/exit hours. You typically get in between 930-1030. And get home around 1-3. So sleep wise it's not terribly bad; life-wise however it's horrendous.
In my analyst days I downed a corona or two and would come right back upstairs and crank on a model for a $4 billion LBO. How many billion dollars was that kid worth? My deal would have made my bank like $20 million... that surgery probably cost like $50-100k. He has NO prestige. What a tool, operating on kids.
He could have loosened the elastic waistband on his Docker's chinos and thrown back a few Michelob Ultra's if he wasn't such a tightwad.
But but but... I've pulled a few all night-ers in college so I'm ready for 80 hour weeks!
Highly underrated post. People will say all the time "oh yeah, I pulled x amount of hours this week," and most of the time it's not even close. Wish I would have read this going into SA stint.
Another way to think of it is that the average person works 40 hours a week: 9-5 for 5 days. Now, somehow in the extra weekday hours and 2 weekend days, find a way to come up with 40-60 more hours.
More typical schedule:
Monday - Thursday: 9am - 12 Midnight (15 hours a day x 4 = 60 hours) Friday: 9am - 7pm (10 hours - total of 70 hours) Weekend: Fit in ~10 hours how you will.
Standard 80 hour week in a non-deal type of environment. You're not going to be overwhelmed, but you're not going to have a lot of free time either.
I've worked worse hours at our family business since I was 7...
My mother purchases wholesale clothing from LA and resells them at an outdoor flea market in Arizona. When most people picture flea markets, they probably get the image of people selling garbage from the back of their trucks. We take it to a whole other level.
My hours:
8am to 5pm: The setup. Our "store" (basically just pieces of metal to box-in 7 parking spaces) is filled with racks and hooks to hang clothing from. The challenge isn't trying to pitch the stubborn Mexican customers into buying some no-name brand jeans--it's running 30+ pound piles of pants, cargos, etc. from a container onto the racks. This process becomes the definition of hell when you add in 110+ degree heat. Trying to put together a presentable store from scratch takes a very, very long time.
6pm to 10pm The sales. If you've ever been to a flea market, you'll understand that bargaining is the name of the game. These people are so stubborn. If a shirt is $15 but a customer INSISTS that he wants to pay $14 and you refuse, you just lost a sale. Remember the penny stock scene in Wolf of Wall Street when Belfort POKES and POKES the client until he finally gives in to the $4k deal? That's my life.
10pm to 12am Cleanup. As you can probably predict, stuffing the clothing back into the messy container is much easier than pulling everything out and trying to make things look presentable to the clientele. At this point, your skin is sticky from the buckets of sweat you've produced and your feet hurt like hell from standing all day. Not to mention that I get a nasty jock itch at around 7pm that I somehow manage to iron-man through.
Tl;dr - IB is Club Med. I salivate at the thought of getting paid that high of a salary to sit behind a computer all day in a nice room set at 76° F. Hell, you can even go ahead and keep the models and bottles.
I will never understand how people can't understand that everyone has issues and complaints. I suppose homeless people shouldn't be allowed to bitch because they are at least homeless in American vs. Somalia. It is basically a race to be the most fucked over person so just you have a right to complain.
Bankers can bitch about their hours while still realizing they have it better than other people. I fucking hate when someone chimes in with their bullshit "at least you aren't working at McDonald's" as if everything in life is random and no hard work was involved making sure you don't work in McDonalds.
The hours are tough, and there's no doubting that. The only real way to get through the analyst stint, from my ongoing experience, is to maintain a positive attitude above all else. You're there anyway, you might as well make the most of it. There's a ton to learn, you're building up your resume, making more money than you would have imagined your self making in freshman year, and you're creating options for your self. Moreover, if you're as interested in finance and M&A as you claimed in interviews, then you should choose to engage with the work and look beyond the grunt tasks. Personally, I find the time to review my decks, business models of target companies, and the communications/strategy the seniors have going with the clients. My motto is that there's always an upside to every downside, and that focusing on that upside goes a long way in helping me maintain a healthy attitude. Further to that, don't let any negative emotions or thoughts into your head, and control your state of mind to the best extent possible. Hard to remain positives at times, but definitely worth a try. Plus, from what I've seen, things get better after year 1, and even better after year 2, for a variety of reasons discussed in other similar threads. This is my 2 cents.