41 Comments
 

This is incorrect. Most of my friends and I work on sundays. At shops that do have designated time off, that usually comes on saturdays, not sundays. 

 

People saying you won’t work sundays are at some whacky lax shops. You will almost certainly work sundays.

That said, unlikely there is anything that is URGENT Sunday am because it likely is a deliverable for Monday. Go to church/ mosque/ synagogue/ devil or MD-led-cult worship and tell your deal teams prior you will be OOO during that time due to religious reasons. It’s a pretty legit excuse especially for Sunday am. 

 

Agree with this, almost every VP on up at my shop is expecting deliverables on Sunday. 

Just tell people you'll be at church, 10-12 is kind of a long time so you may be expected to work extra Friday/Saturday to get ahead and not be holding your team up. And at least once every other month you just won't have time because of Monday meetings or immediate deliverables

 

Sounds like blocking off 2 hrs a week for your own personal time, especially on a late Sunday morning, should hopefully be workable for even the sweatiest of teams that I have heard of in ib. As long as you can communicate it up front and not make it a burden for your time, sounds like it may be a welcome break as your team can kinda feel good that they at least are giving you a steady break…. Good luck

 

Don't think it should be much of an issue if you flag it early on but people here saying you wont work Sundays are blowing smoke. Sunday is a workday in banking and you are expected to be responsive. Sunday was pretty often a 10-12 hour day in my group and usually there were deliverables. No way around it for Monday / Tuesday meetings, especially in a busy group where you don't start on the materials until Thursday / Friday.

 

Saturday was usually “off.” So unless told otherwise, you would assume you’re not working on Saturday. However, VPs would pretty often blow you up so it was impossible to ever truly enjoy it off. If you go on a day trip or do brunch, you’re just crossing your fingers you don’t get an email. 
Sunday it was assumed you were working, unless told otherwise. 

 

Just curious based on some of the responses in this thread, how possible is it to travel weekends in IB? I'm in a shitty boring ass midwest city and want to be able to visit friends/family pretty frequently on weekends. Assuming I bring my laptop and get work done, is this usually pretty doable? I'm sure trips will get blown up sometimes, but does anyone have any issues traveling as long as you can bring the laptop and get work done wherever you are? 

 

Prob depends on the team and you to some extent. I’ve heard people being able to travel and others not. Lots of variety around this. Hard to give general statements for the entire industry, though it may be helpful to note that things come up sometimes in a client service, deal-oriented environment

 

Main issue is that laptops are pretty tough to do IB work on, you'll be at 50% at best. You also lose a lot of hours traveling (assuming you're going to the coasts) which is fine once a quarter but not cool every other weekend. IB is also exhausting and weekend is your only time to rest. For these reasons and more, wouldn't plan on traveling more than quarterly unless it's within say 2 hours total travel time

 

Even if it wasn't religion-related (which I think teams would take more seriously), I still believe taking ~2 hours out on a Sunday is completely plausible. I think just make sure to communicate earlier with your team regarding your situation 

 

You certainly can. When I was a first year analyst year ago, one of the first things I did was pull each team member aside and let them know I wouldn't be available in the certain window on Sunday because I had church. They all totally understood and respected it.

That may have meant I did more work Sat night or had to jam after church, but I have never missed church once since then.

Just do good work, be communicative and it should all totally work out.

 

While I worked almost every single Sunday in IB, it was still the slowest day of the week. People would usually crawl in around 10 or 10:30 am to start the day. So, if you have morning church, you could make it without skipping a beat.

Also, I had an understanding VP who knew that I went to church almost every Sunday. Without even asking, he came up to me one day and said, "Hey man, you know if you ever want to go to church on Sunday. Don't worry about it. Just go and show up to work afterward. I totally get it."

+1 SB for making this a priority!

 

in the Kingdom of God

Our Lord and Savior: “Why did you skip mass on every holy day of obligation?”

(Potentially) You: “Because I was too busy rearranging PowerPoint slides for my VP.”

I don’t mean to mock you, but it is important to keep things in perspective. If you are sincere in your religious beliefs, anything that prohibits you from fulfilling even the most basic duty of faith should not be considered.

 

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