Why do people say IB isn’t an intellectual field?

I think it heavily depends on your experience and I feel EBs/smaller boutiques allow AN/ASO to get better experience to see overall transaction.

Like above commentor said drafting slides mindlessly while cleaning VDR and WGL is never fun, but when you are participating in a Board room meeting where all parties have different motivations and goals in their mind during a merger and your Team has to defend your client is something out of a chess match. Client/counter party ego management probably is the hardest thing to do as you are dealing with people, not numbers (surprise, there is no right or wrong answer)

Plus complex modelling also can be very intellectually stimulating. Sure it might not be triple integration or linear algebra but still requires substantial logic to create a clean, cohesive model where a company might have multiple different assets and geographical locations.

Meanwhile I’ve seen so so many average or below average intelligent people simply not able to do the job in a satisfaction manner despite being able to put in the hours.

Bcos they think it makes them sound "cool" and "different".

"I'm not like other girls" type of shit 

It's not that people are "dumb" - it's that it doesn't take a 160+ (4 SD above the mean) IQ to rearrange powerpoint slides. 

Because Analysts & junior Associates think they're "Investment Bankers" but most exit or burn out from the industry far before they ever get experienced enough to be valued for their experience and wisdom instead of their ability to work long hours. 

We're grunt workers for an IB team right now. I can only speak for my own experience but from my time in Restructuring and then Structured Credit, the guys who do actually move up and become a valuable part of the team (VP+) are VERY sharp. Those who get from there to the next level, having actual clients who trust and appreciate their advice, are even sharper. 

Aint no way the CEO & Board of a failing company is going to call up some dude with a lukewarm IQ when their nuts are on the line and they need a solution pronto.  

I've seen more smart people be bad at IB than dumb people be good at IB.

I realize that sounds confusing, so let me contextualize. A lot of bankers who get promoted, because they were great juniors become less and less effective as they get more senior, because their intelligence is largely academic or quantitative and not social.  However, if you're an idiot, you won't make it post even the junior levels and won't be long for the career.  so banking may not have a one to one correlation with IQ points, but you certainly are better equipped to do a good job if you are above average and then the difference between good and great is EQ

A lot of points, but simply:

• ”Smart” jobs in people’s mind generally involves complex math and calculus or science. Programming has blurred this, but many people consider programming mathematical enough.
• IB is ultimately a sales job. Much in the same way being a good salesman can take decades to master, IB takes decades of experience, but there isnt a huge correlation between perfect math SAT scores and good bankers. As someone above said, there are more perfect SAT score kids who suck at banking than middling intelligence people who can do really well in the role.

My take is “smart” is overrated. Physics phd’s probably have some of the highest concentration of “smart” individuals, but their common sense might not be great and the field pays less. All that said, if you work at a hedge fund, it’s very obvious the intelligence and academic nature of conversations is just on another league relative to IB and PE. IB and PE people are more EQ intelligent, but the roles are very soft skill based. 
 

Now the above said, hedge fund individuals love to get on their high horse and think they are on another level when that’s not exactly true. A good banker is like a good salesmen—ultimately it is a specialized skill that can be supremely valuable and even more valuable than someone doing math problems everyday.

Banking is not intellectually stimulating, especially for analysts whose background in finance is public markets/VC. Your opinions as a junior are frankly not valued, unless it's about some small modelling detail or formatting choice.

The truth is that bankers don't do any real analytical work for most deals because their clients won't outsource the core due diligence part of the deal process. Diving into a business and critically thinking through the investment thesis is not the job of the banker. Even the models that bankers produce, although helpful for clients, are often used as templates for the client to input their own assumptions and/or for fairness opinions to protect against legal liability.

In my intern class at a top BB, the interns that enjoyed the experience the most were the ivy league kids without any finance background. They were drinking from a firehose and their learning/work ratio was fantastic. But once you plateau, the job becomes exceptionally boring.

Because my mommy told me I was real smart when I got an A on my math quiz and now I think I’m better than you

No one said it, ever. This holds since the 2000s. It was even then laughed at about banks recruiting the "brightest" students to become Analysts (then Associates) if the work is by no means hard nor intellectual. Also, it is quite well-known, since then, that sometimes the pitchbooks they do aren't even opened in client meetings (and those meetings tend to be the most fruitful). So it continues to amaze me to see people who don't do their homework and get surprised by the reality of IB or take some bullshit as truth (like tje preise of this question).

As a junior in banking, especially as an analyst, it is NOT intellectual whatsoever. I would say that this is the case for a few reasons.

First of all, the majority of tasks you are doing are extremely simple (admin stuff like scheduling meetings, tracking processes in Excel, formatting stuff in PPT, pulling comps etc.). Sure, your average guy on the street couldn't do it but that is not because it is intellectual in any way. It's just because they don't know finance terms or have experience working in PPT / FactSet / Excel. In the same sense, I would have no idea how to fix an issue on a car. That doesn't mean you need to be a genius to be a car mechanic. 

Secondly, your level of responsibility is very low and your projects are extremely process-driven. You don't need to re-invent the wheel or come up with very creative solutions. You know exactly when you need to deliver what, you know exactly what information you need to create those materials, and you know exactly who will give you that information. Moreover, you have seniors that tell you exactly what you need to do down to a very detailed level and you have multiple layers double-checking everything you do. 

Compare this to other industries where you have more responsibility and less support. Industries where you need to come up with a solution yourself rather than following a pre-determined process that has been done plenty of times before. Industries where you have a big responsibility without people giving you detailed instructions and you don't have a safety net for everything you do. 

A lot of people seem to think that you need to be extremely smart to be in banking because they see these huge deals and finance terms they don't understand. In reality, anyone who is even remotely familiar with banking knows that it is a pretty braindead and extremely boring job that mainly requires you to have the stamina to pull rough hours and some level of attention to detail. When you become senior in banking, it's a different question. I think most people would agree that the job of an MD is quite intellectual. 

I'm currently an analyst at a US BB and honestly, my part-time job in customer service that I had during uni to fund my studies was more intellectual than this. 

Wouldn't say it isn't intellectual. Would say it lacks creative minds. In my MBA class, I do have a few classmates who are going banking FT that tend to be more flexible with how they view businesses but some people are more matter-of-fact / go off financials / historic trends. The IB guys also tend to follow the market more often than most of our classmates and they tend to have reasonable evidence to back up their thoughts. A lot of them come from pre-MBA finance backgrounds and are used to thinking that way.

Anyone else think being “intellectual” is overrated and quite frankly exhausting sometimes? Don’t get me wrong, it would blow if the job was literally just admin work but in my experience that’s not the case.

Sometimes it’s kinda nice to turn the brain off, throw in some headphones and bump music or listen to a podcast and crank some mindless work and get paid $$$ to do what anyone with half a brain could do.

IB is a glorified salesman job. There's very little room for critical and independent thinking, and that's just the fact.

I feel dumber every day I spend on the bull pen.

Good