I'm a student at a target school and honestly all I care about is the company's culture - I want to work at a chill company with good work-life balance.
I know that IBs are not chill at all, but if you had to choose a few companies that are relatively chill in terms of work life balance, which firm would it be?
I was aiming for RBC because I heard that it's pretty chill.
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Goldman Sachs. More than half of their firm is under 30 years old, they’re focusing on sustainable & inclusive economic growth, and employees love working there.
lmao found Goldman HR
Yo chill with the monkey shits, OP asked our opinion on firm’s culture. Wow lack of acceptance on this forum is worse than Libs v. Repubs
From a cultural point of view, Barclays is supposed to be really good for all their groups except Tech (the NY tech group has great deal-flow but culture isn't as good and people get worked hard).
I have also liked speaking to people from BofA and CS
Can confirm about Barclay’s. Like anywhere you have a few rotten VP’s or crunch time moments but overall chill BB experience
From speaking with a number of people, I've heard work culture is mostly determined by your group.
BofA and CS - obviously differences between offices are sometimes bigger than between firms.
BofA and CS
Barclays > BofA=CS > Citi=DB=MS > GS=UBS > JPM
I thought GS and UBS had good cultures?
Ubs has pretty chill hours
My friends at them say it's by far the most variable — GS TMT & NatRes are allegedly hell, but HC & Consumer are supposed to be chill, similar story to UBS. Not in the typical group by group culture way, but in that there is such a wide gap where the groups are only either okay culture or trash culture
I thought JPM always had lots of staff to go around
JPM has a grindy culture
Would say Barclays is the best overall
As a former GS IB guy I can confirm the culture was amazing. Even as an analyst you were still treated with respect.
It's impossible to generalize culture at banks that have hundreds of employees in IB - even more so when 50-75% of most groups turn over within 5 years.
If it's is your only concern like you say, your options are
1. Recruit with groups that hire directly (niche groups like FIG, RE, satellite offices)
2. Focus on smaller boutiques where you know who'll you're be working with
3. If you're set on BB, focus on the banks that protect weekends in some form for juniors
this is completely group specific at BBs - for example REGL at BAML is crazy
Crazy in what sense?
hours/placement/whatever you want... people cool tho
BAML and CS tend to be ones I hear consistently good things about. Barclays and Goldman have heard mixed things but it tends to be very group dependent. Also, just so you are aware, RBC is not a bulge bracket investment bank and will not yield the same level of exit opportunities as the actual BBs. It is still a great firm but don't let people on this forum convince you that it is equal to these firms--I do not think that the experience is on the same level (not trying to shit on RBC). If all you care about is culture, then I have heard almost exclusively good stuff out of RBC as well.
gotta be Deutsche
Not a BB but Wells has a really good culture across most groups and Evercore is really good w/ amazing deal flow
hmm curious why JP get's such a bad rap. if it's last in most peoples' lists, it must be firm-wide and not group-specific
Culture is mostly determined by group, as others have said. While not a bulge bracket I had a good experience working at a Japanese megabank that had surprisingly great culture-- super friendly and collegiate. This is definitely not what I expected and it was acknowledged within the bank that certain groups including mine had much better culture than others-- so hard to generalize I guess.
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