29 Comments
 

Moelis is good culture wise but sweatier than probably justified by deal flow (though not sweatier than JPM, GS etc.)

When restructuring season hits the group makes a ton of money, everyone burns out, then half of the bullpen quits. 

Good place if you want to mog your IB friends on bonus day (Moelis never disappoints on comp), have a good finance brand name on the resume, not want to strangle your coworkers and bosses (too often) etc. 

If you want to rack up deals on the resume probably not the place 

 
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Houston has horrific culture across the board. Not sure what it is that attracts some of the sweatiest and most aggressive types to these specific groups, maybe it's a Texas thing or that you don't have other groups/HR around... but if you're headed to Houston IB prepare to get grinded even at the lower MMs that don't do much.

Have seen multiple people go from Houston to "sweatshop" NYC groups and significantly improve their hours

 

Associate 3 in IB-M&A

Houston has horrific culture across the board. Not sure what it is that attracts some of the sweatiest and most aggressive types to these specific groups, maybe it's a Texas thing or that you don't have other groups/HR around... but if you're headed to Houston IB prepare to get grinded even at the lower MMs that don't do much.

Have seen multiple people go from Houston to "sweatshop" NYC groups and significantly improve their hours

Would you say that this is confined to the analyst level and then normalizes at the associate level? I assume that the sweatiness at the junior ranks doesn’t affect the VP+ staff

 

Nah, it's bad at the associate level too. Still not great at the VP level. Basically anyone involved in materials creation from production to direct "management" is impacted. It's about too much analysis demanded on too short of a timeline, regardless of actionability. The upside of it is that you were probably tutored by experienced, quality people, you get more reps yourself, you grow an immunity to the garbage personalities that float around in finance but are more common in Houston IB and so on

If you can push through the bad years you will be better off for it. 

 

No it's without question awful at associate (seen multiple straight-up mental breakdowns) and bad at VP+ too - if anything sometimes worse... no protected weekends or protected vacations, you have ownership over mistakes as opposed to the analyst who has a lot of cover, more deals so there is basically always something blowing up. I think MD is when people start to chill out and not work absolutely unreal hours.

Again from my experience this seems like a Houston thing, NYC it tends to calm down around VP. I can't rationalize why Houston is so bad but it's likely one of the reasons there's always moves to NYC. If your analyst buddy goes to XYZ NYC sweatshop as an associate and his hours are 30% better, makes more (pretax to be fair) and has better exits, why wouldn't you move

 

It’s not just a Houston thing, it’s an oil and gas thing. Banks in London and Calgary are sweaty af as well.

Models are complicated, there’s a lot of data you can source and there are a ton of companies. That means they’re a lot of mid and senior bankers who rely on over complicated analysis to “add value” (usually doesn’t) which means a ton more work.

 

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