Intensity of daily work

Post-MBA associate about to start IB.

Can you all share with me what's the day to day life like? I understand hours are long but would I be furiously typing at my keyboard all day? Are there pockets of time where I can step out for a smoke break or to grab lunch? Or will the intensity be intermittent (wait for comments and then rush to amend when comments come in).

Thanks all!

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In my experience as an analyst, it’s a mixture of both. It really depends on what you’re staffed on and where you are in the deal process. When I first started, I was very, very slow for at least a few months. Things gradually picked up and I’ve probably been working at least 60 hours of legitimate work each week since roughly the beginning of the year. Some days it’s intense periods interspersed with downtime. Other days, it’s 16+ hours of non stop work all day. The worst is when you have a string of a few of those days in a row or even a week full of them. I think ultimately you’ll get used to it or you’ll decide IB isn’t for you.

Array
 
Hoomst MD

In my experience as an analyst, it’s a mixture of both. It really depends on what you’re staffed on and where you are in the deal process. When I first started, I was very, very slow for at least a few months. Things gradually picked up and I’ve probably been working at least 60 hours of legitimate work each week since roughly the beginning of the year. Some days it’s intense periods interspersed with downtime. Other days, it’s 16+ hours of non stop work all day. The worst is when you have a string of a few of those days in a row or even a week full of them. I think ultimately you’ll get used to it or you’ll decide IB isn’t for you.

I am a heavy smoker and need to take regular smoke breaks. In my new role, I will have to change lifts just to get to the smoking area (5 - 10 mins) and then have time to smoke. So I would be gone for 20 minutes to 30 minutes every now and then.

Do you think this will be a problem when working 16 hours? How do your colleagues who smoke deal with this? thx

 

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