Maybe I am crazy, but I tend to cringe at what a lot of people on this site think of as "good" or "desirable" work/life balance.
To me, good WLB is a normal 9-5 job, but I see people on here who ask questions like "where can I find a lifestyle job (ie 60 hr weeks)?" - when did working 60 hrs become lifestyle? I think of lifestyle as my college days when I would shudder at the thought of finals week, where I'd have to study a whopping 30 hrs instead of my normal 10 hrs
Just for my own amusement I've put together the following WLB classifications - curious if others think I'm way off base here
Less than 35: Great
35-45: Good
45-55: Ok, adequate
55-65: Poor
65-75: Severely inadequate
More than 75: soul-crushing
This would put most PE shops in the "poor" to "severely inadequate" range, which sounds about right to me. Then of course the Apollo's of the world get the "soul-crushing" badge
Sure for the average 'joe' 60 hours is not good WLB but please list me jobs where I can work 9-5 at the age of 24-26 and make $300k+.
No one is forcing you to work at these firms, most people do it for the money and know what they're sacrificing in order to attain it.
I agree with you. I’m not saying the hours are unreasonable relative to comp, just that the wlb in a vacuum is “not good”
Although to be fair, there are roles in SWE or at certain SM’s where you can clear $400k at that age working ~50 hrs
Software engineering.
Lmao they're all getting fired and their vested shares are worthless
Sure, "all" of them are getting fired.
Yeah the notion of WLB is heavily screwed up here (inevitably). Maybe it's a lifestyle thing but personally, I find there's a massive diminishing return on making more $$ after you start IB/PE, like in that $300K+ range. Making that much working 70-80 hrs is totally worth it at age 25, but after that you're supposed to improve either pay or WLB. When you continue down finance, the money scales enormously but your hours get scaled back less (even if not 80 hrs/week, you're expected to be very productive + source). But for me, I'd rather keep the pay relatively constant and just reduce hours as I get older, because I don't even know what I would do with that extra money. but there's a shitton I would do with extra time.
So to your question, yeah I think 40-45 hours is the ideal, and I'm focused on working down to get there.
$250k is a ton of money. Like 5X the median household (and not everyone in a house works 40 hours). What makes you think you deserve it? Honestly If I can find a gig that’s even $100k at max 40 hours a week in a LCOL city I’d be more than happy and I know that it in itself is a stretch. Before people say “corp strat” based on limited networking those guys are still working 50-60 hours or even more a week. It’s not a true 9-5 gig (at least at noteworthy firms) as the director winds up being some ex-IBer who thinks a “lifestyle gig” is making it home before his kids go to bed.
Delete
There's actually a pretty solid IB scene if you're open to boutiques. The big MM firms that have branches in DC are typically limited to GovCon. I'll jot down all of them I can think of at the moment because I'm bored af right now...
MMs:
Stephens - ADG Group
Baird - ADG Group, Real Estate Group
Raymond James - ADG Group
Houlihan Lokey - ADG Group
Stifel - Private Markets Group
DC Advisory (Daiwa Securities) - Generalist M&A
Rothschild - Natural Resources
JPM - Middle-Market banking group
KippsDesanto (Capital One) - ADG Focused; M&A
Boutiques:
District Capital Partners - Buyside M&A focused
McLean Group - Sell-Side M&A focused (Mostly GovCon)
Hovde Group - Financial services focused; Bank M&A and Spec Finance Capital Raising + M&A
Clearsight Partners: Now a subsidiary of Regions; M&A and Capital Raising predominantly for Tech & GovCon
Compass Point - Financial services focused; capital raising
Outcome Capital - Sell-Side M&A focused (Tech & GovCon)
Chertoff Group - Sell-side & buy-side M&A focus with private placement practice; also do PE investments
Height Capital Markets - Diversified industry; M&A and capital raising
Olsen Palmer - Sell-side Bank M&A
FOCUS Investment Banking - Diversified industries; M&A focus
Progress Partners - Tech M&A & Capital raising; also contains a Merchant banking arm
FON Advisors - ADG focused; M&A; also contains consulting/policy advisory practice
Seal & Associates - Industrials focused; M&A
Ziegler - HC focused; M&A and capital raising
I would tend to agree with your assessment that our perspective of WLB is messed up, but there are a few of considerations for PE specifically:
A lot of these are young peoples take on work life balance. Allow me to give an older view:
The bad part about IB or demanding jobs in general isn’t the hours, it’s not controlling your time. People tend to think what makes IB or PE bad is the hours—it actually isn’t the worst part or even on the top 3 for most people when they leave the role. What makes the role bad is feeling that it is impossible to be away from your desk for two hours for your mom’s birthday. Or knowing it isn’t feasible to grab drinks with a friend who surprise visits from out of town.
Imagine you wake up at 9 and work until 5 then workout from 5-7, eat dinner for an hour and work from 8-12 Monday-Thursday. That’s 48 hours and 9 hours of sleep a night. Plus a 9-5 Friday, it’s 56 hours a week. Add in a little Sunday evening or Saturday am work of 4 hours and 60 hours a week can be very comfortable and even desirable if you enjoy the work that you are doing and can manage your own timelines.
Post 60 hours is where you start having significant weekend work, or are unable to do tasks during the week. That said, if a role allows for waves of work and you like what you are doing, even putting in a 75 hour week once in awhile isn’t that bad.
I think work life balance really goes to what you are trying to achieve. From my experience, many of the most miserable people I know/knew were those with not engaging roles that are 20 hour a week jobs. Then your life very quickly becomes lonely as you run out of activities and begin to get anxiety that others around you are building superior skill sets (and likely getting paid more).
Every old person knows Flexibility> hours. Also, while a 9-5 sounds amazing, in practice I find more often than not, those individuals end up consuming significant amounts of social media or TV/ video games, which harms their mental health. It’s unhealthy to drink and go out every single night and even if you join rec leagues or work out you can only really exercise like 2 hours a day. Is watching TV, playing video games, or surfing Tik Tok in the evenings really that much better than listening to music and creating slides as you get paid? I’d say no, but to each their own.
No it is not
Yes, by a mile
I think this response is coming from the exact point of view the original post was calling out
If you really can't conceive of how one could enjoy the extra time in their day other than TV/social media, then yes, 60 hrs/week seems like great WLB because you have no life
But what if you wanted to:
Go skiing
Play some golf
Have sex
Go birdwatching
Or literally anything else you can imagine
Is every option 'constructive' or productive' - not necessarily. But if you are keeping yourself engaged and enjoying yourself, what else matters in life?
If sitting at a desk fulfills every one of your desires, then congratulations. But don't ever use your vacation time to go to Costa Rica and do some shrooms or you'll regret everything
I generally agree with your post, but I do want to make it clear that there is a big world out there for people who aren't truly fulfilled by work
I still think this is disingenuous and drawing a false equivalency. Many of you keep listing hobbies and acting as though 60 hours a week doesn’t allow for hobbies and that’s just not true. If you work more than 60 and don’t have flexibility I would agree with you people are wasting their life and there is more to life than just work, BUT the point I am making is 60 hours isn’t that bad. I think many people on this forum are either undergrads who haven’t worked, or kids in their banking stint who can’t understand the massive difference between 50/60 hours a week and 70/80. There is a big world out there and I highly advise people to not only work otherwise they are wasting their life, but the difference is that I think many of you aren’t understanding that 60 hours a week with flexibility allows for all the things you listed above. Realistically, most people don’t ski alone and people need to take vacation in order to travel to a mountain. As for bird watching, that usually needs to be done during daylight or around sunrise and sunset, so it’s likely a weekend activity or it’s something that you would be able to do working 60 hours a week.
There is a happy middle ground for work life balance that is indeed individual for everyone, from my experience I know almost no one who has financial stability and enjoys their job while working 40 hours a week. I stand by the happiest people I know work closer to 60 than 40 hours and the most miserable are those working north of 75 and less than 30.
As mentioned, it isn’t that I can’t conceive doing anything with my free time it’s that 60 hours a week gives you basically 4 hours a day during the week and a more or less completely free weekend for hobbies and recreational work. That’s a lot of time to fill with activities and most people can’t fill the extra time with anything aside from Netflix, movies, and video games from my experience. I trained for a marathon, lifted weights, joined a band, dated, and drank heavily twice a week while working 60 hours. I eventually learned that 60 hours was the right amount for me even though when I left banking I thought I needed a 30 hour a week job and I was very wrong.
Tbh I think even 40 hours a week is shit WLB. Perfect WLB IMO is doing work whenever I want. If one week I feel like 10, then 10, 20, 50, 100 if I feel like it. The goal is to control when and where I work, and I might have to work some soul-selling hours to get there.
I agree with you OP. I miss the days in HS or before starting internships when I had a ton of free time. I played sports and chased passions that did not have to do with making money. Now I am always thinking about the next steps in my career/business and more money (like many other driven people on wso). I am currently doing around 50ish hours a week and it made me sad to realize how much this sucks. It is almost impossible to fit in any fun activities, or healthy habits (like working out and cooking) on top of the work and commutes every day. What's sad is I want to work and gain experience at firms where I know people consistently put in 70-80 hours, maybe 100. I am applying to these places knowing the WLB is atrocious, but I guess that is the sacrifice you have to make sometimes... I would be lying if I said I never thought about doing the absolute bare minimum like living off my parents for the rest of my life lmao but I feel like I have something to prove/a chip on my shoulder... the majority of people working these gruesome hours do too.