Do you hold off on sending weekend and night-time emails?

Not sure about the answer to your question in terms of the field you work in.

But I would suggest getting Boomerang, it allows you to type up emails and set a specific time for them to send. So you can respond whenever you feel like, but set it to send Monday at 8:00A or whatever you want.

I think it depends on the culture of your team.

Personally i think its fine because it shows you’re prioritizing the work being assigned. If the reader does not want to interrupt family time, he/she can review the email later

Good question. If your firm/team prefers quick response time, emailing during night or weekend is a plus. As @SFbanker commented, it does show your priority and others can always choose when to read work emails if they want to set boundaries. However if you want to draft a message and target a certain arrival time, do you use Outlook? The “delay” function works if Outlook is running at the time of the target "Sent" time.

I used to be careful when I was more junior because people assumed you were very inefficient if you're working too late or weekends. We had a guy in the team that was sending emails at 2am and 4am. Initially we though he was really busy, but then realized the emails were always exactly at 2am and 4am, so clearly he was using some script to time them.

Now I don't care anymore and prefer to send it out and move on to the next thing rather than put it on my to do list for the next day. I deal with people globally, so it's always going to be outside working hours for some. I expect people to manage their own time outside work. If there's any deliverable I'm asking for, I might mention in the email that it can wait until tomorrow.

up to vp level when the work is done I send it, no matter what time it is. I think that’s very acceptable in our firm. even if they don’t respond, I get this off my chest and enjoy my weekend.

And sometimes they’re like send me this when you’re done, I’ll take a look over the weekend (which never happens but they want you to send the work before today ends).

as for MDs, all of them except one, that I avoid emailing starting Friday afternoon, are fine with it, especially if it is work for them. I go to the office on Sunday and sometimes find the head of our group there, so I think it is totally fine if the work is for them. BUT if it is just a random question or follow up then just wait till Monday or a decent hour.

one of the MDs once told me: I was once the associate staying in the office till midnight waiting for feedback so I try to be responsive. I don’t have to be in the office to give comments and ask for stuff.

I assume you mean initiating an email. It depends on the relationship I have with the other person and the time sensitivity of the issue. I do not initiate/send emails on religious holidays and try not to send emails on weekends and nights if time is not a factor. If someone reaches out to me, I will respond at night and on weekends but I probably will not reply on a religious holiday. For example, I will not reach out to anyone today because it is Easter.

I don't hold-off and I don't agree that it is intruding on someone else' time. No one is obligated to the read the email immediately. My bosses also typically send me emails very late, sometimes from 3 to 5 hours after I left the office. And now that we are working from home it is very common for me to check my emails in the morning to see like 10 emails from way after I logged off yesterday. When they send me night time emails it is probably about just letting me know their needs/ideas the moment they have them instead of risking forgetting them, which I accept. And when I send them night time emails it is to let them know "hey today I stayed up late to work on what you needed. You can count on me and tomorrow morning instead of finishing this I'll be working on new stuff".

Sometimes a cigar... is just a cigar...

If you're worried about the timing of an email or response, this is not the industry for you.

I personally do not with certain clients since they do not.

I have been known to deliberately send a 1-3am email/report to send a message. Someone called out my team as sandbagging (I was training someone fresh out of college and the Senior Manager left the firm 2 weeks ago abruptly, I was drowning) and I Cc'd their team when sending on one such instance.

I always coach our teams that there needs to be boundaries. If you are going to be bothering one of my analysts at Friday at 9pm during COVID 19 I'm going to call it out - clearly someone's time isn't allocated efficiently.

For anything deal-related and time-sensitive, I’ll send whenever it’s finished.

However, this is an important subject for me as I’ve climbed the ranks because I’ve been under highly inefficient associates / VPs that just ‘don’t get it’.

Anyone who has someone junior to them needs to be mindful of weekend emails. I get very annoyed when a VP sends out a staffing email in between 5pm Friday and Monday morning for something that does not have any immediate need. There’s no reason this could not have waited until Monday morning.

It just adds to the bad culture associated with IB and prevents junior employees from plugging off for 24-48 hours on the weekend

100% depends on office culture. If it’s work/project related I send it regardless of what time it is, irrespective of how senior the person is. If it’s to the client, I only send out emails between 8AM - 9PM. If it’s a non-project specific initiating email, say asking for a coffee chat with someone senior, then I send those in the morning.

I personally get annoyed when I see a nighttime or weekend email from anyone on my team if it's not critical. I generally don't respond until the next day/Monday unless it's very important.

I send emails on weekends, nights, etc... all the time. If they're marked as urgent I expect a response quickly...but if something is urgent I'll usually just text or call someone.

I used to think the same way you do, but I learned over time that nobody cares about it. If they want to not answer emails til later, they'll do that. You're not bothering anyone.

This thread has been pretty interesting to read. I personally didn't really think about how much people think about this. I used to not care but after reflecting, it is a little annoying and stressful to see an email received notification pop up on a protected Saturday. Usually, I just have to reply "Will do" but these emails also help if I realize the work is going to take me a while and I want to get a head start on Saturday rather than getting jammed up on Sunday.

In my group, I learned pretty quickly that seniors will shut off and be unresponsive to emails for a certain period of time at night (depends on the senior). This is of course not true if there is a fire drill. I've learned to just send the email whenever I am done at night so they have time to review in the morning, which they have usually done by the time I get into the office.

Honestly, some MDs in the more sweatshop/ toxic groups love seeing that kind of shit. Reminds them of the good old days and that not every person on their team isn’t a useless millennial. Like I said, toxic, but there are some kids who use delay delivery for validation

I'm more likely to get a prompt, thoughtful, response from my PM with a 2am email than a 2pm email.