2025 IB Working Conditions Survey – Your Input Needed!
Are you working in investment banking? We want to hear about your experience! Take a few minutes to fill out our quick survey and help us gather key insights into the working conditions of IB professionals in 2025. Share your experience on work hours, mental health, compensation, and more!
📝 Click here to participate: https://forms.gle/cKcrchhcUVHvG7Je8
Your voice matters – let's make a difference in the IB industry together!
Summary
- The survey was taken by 531 banking professionals during (8 October 2024 – 14 January 2025), 2024 (the professional status of each respondent has not been verified).
- 37% of respondents are first year analysts
- 31% of respondents work at a bulge bracket bank
- 11.5% of respondents have averaged 91 work hours or more during 2024 (4% at 101 hours+)
- 24% of respondents have averaged 5 hours of sleep or less per night in 2024
- 15% of respondents have averaged a 2AM bedtime or later in 2024
- Second year analysts, prefer working at office over WFH
- First year analysts and associates responded to WFH Vs In – Office, it depends on circumstances
- 39% of respondents aren't happy with the meal stipend their bank provides
- 24% of respondents say they feel like they've been a victim of workplace abuse
- 59% of respondents say they frequently experienced unrealistic deadlines
- 62% of respondents say their work hours have negatively affected relationships with family and/or friends
- Respondents report a 22% decline in mental health (comparing health before starting their current job with now)
- Respondents report a 26% decline in physical health (comparing health before starting their current job with now)
- Average hours worked per week by respondents reduced from 82 in 2021 to 72 in 2024
- Average sleep per night by respondents increased from 5.85 in 2021 to 6.2 in 2024
- Average time that respondents went to bed has improved from 1:35 AM in 2021 to 12:29 AM in 2024.
- A downloadable PDF is attached to this post
Message from Patrick Curtis
Wall Street Oasis at its core is a community of students trying to break into careers in finance and young finance professionals trying to thrive and build meaningful careers. For years, we have been frustrated by the lack of change at the investment banks and have tried to bring transparency to the realities of the job.
This includes releasing detailed data on # of average hours worked by bank in the WSO Company Database as well as other lifestyle metrics the candidates have used for years to help them make informed decisions. Unfortunately, this has done little to curb some of the banks with the worst reputation since there are still many more qualified candidates than seats in the industry.
Inspired by the report released by Goldman 13 in 2020 and some of the concessions we saw then, we decided to continue to conduct this wider industry-wide survey and continue to track this data each year.
Our hope is that publishing these numbers continues to get the attention of leadership and make the junior banker role more sustainable. We still strongly believe that investment banking is an incredible career and leads to a very attractive set of options, however, we want to make sure we put the mental health and safety of our community first.
Demographic Breakdown
Hours Worked
WFH, Pay, and Treatment
“Hours could be better, culture outstanding. If hours were closer to 60 a week would have considered A to A” – Second year analyst @ Harris Williams & Co.
“Culture is terrible, management doesn’t listen to inputs from juniors despite those being to their own benefit. Personal experience is great as getting more exposure makes you learn faster.” – Third year analyst @ Boutique
Mental And Physical Health
“Working in a bank may bring certain pressure to employees, and prolonged sitting posture work may also have an impact on physical health. Therefore, banks usually pay attention to the health status of employees and provide some health benefits, such as physical examinations, fitness facilities, etc.” – Third year analyst @ Bulge bracket
Retention And Satisfaction
“Great work experience, but very demanding.” – Associate @ Banco Santander
Bank-Specific Data & Quotes
Banks Included in the Charts Below:
Bank Of America Merill Lynch (50 Responses), Citigroup (20 Responses), Banco Santander (16 Responses), BNP Paribas (14 Responses), Barclays Capital (13 Responses), JPMorgan (13 Responses), Goldman Sachs (12 Responses), HSBC (12 Responses), UBS (12 Responses), Jefferies & Company (11 Responses), Morgan Stanley (11 Responses), Bank of Montreal (9 Responses), Houlihan Lokey (9 Responses), Rothschild (9 Responses), 137 Ventures (8 Responses), Deutsche Bank (8 Responses)
Hours, Sleep & WFH
Health & Retention
Workplace-Culture
Satisfaction & Recommending the Firm
Quotes From Bank Employees
Goldman Sachs
“Group has made an effort in bettering juniors lives. An example includes 7 days fully protected week of Christmas. Firm needs to increase meal stipend. Partners at the firm had the same stipend amount when they were associates.”
J.P. Morgan
“Workload is heavy but manageable. Workplace culture is quite good. Health is affected a bit but still okay.”
Jefferies
"Started taking anti-anxiety medication and going to therapy. The level of sleep deprivation I have seen here is absolutely absurd and disgusting. You are expected to give your entire life to this place.”
Wells Fargo
“These hours and stress led to 0 deals across my 2 years in IB (filling in retroactively). I left IB 4 months ago for a Corp Dev role and my health (physical and mental), WLB and ability to have healthy relationships with family and friends has gone up tremendously. Also to mention, my enjoyment and fulfillment in my role has skyrocketed as well. I have closed 3 transactions since landing in my new role and everything I do is meaningful and for a reason unlike 85% of my work at Wells Fargo. The TMT group is especially sweaty and seniors are from my observations unable to leverage relationships to land deals"
Trends from 2021 to 2024
Hours and WFH
Treatment
Mental Health
Physical Health
Satisfaction and Recommending Your Firm
For more bank-specific data, please check out the PDF report attached to this post.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 2024 Investment Banking Working Conditions Survey 1.02 MB | 1.02 MB |
Some Observations:
Work conditions seem to have improved steadily from 2020
Seems like Goldman having the worst culture among BB is true. However the strong brand names mitigates some of these negative factors and help retain employees despite having the worst working conditions in essentially all categories surveyed.
Banks like UBS, DB despite closing fewer deals are still just as sweaty if not more so than JPM/MS/BAML
What's interesting is that JPM and MS despite having similar level of mental and physical toll (on the higher end on the employee) have drastically different ratings on likelihood of staying at the firm if working conditions remains the same. The difference can be attributed to difference in workplace culture (higher % of negative response points to a potentially more toxic work place environment)
Employees who had lower satisfaction with the firm are more likely to prefer WFH over work in-person
Brand Name does
Australia. Burpengary Qld
What’s happening at Deutsche? 😭
Pitches probably
Can confirm DB juniors are getting worked. Constant 2-3am nights and weekends ruined working on pitches / bake-offs. Some groups are sweatier than others, but across the board junior WLB is terrible
Assuming this is LevFin or what group?
Which group(s)???
I thought they had good WLB
Envistar Marketing
ngl JPM looks like a great firm to work at based on the polls
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