Analysts - weekend hours?
So I think everyone can agree that analysts at top banks are working 90-100+ hours a week a lot of the time. But how much of that is pushed into the weekend? Analysts, what are your weekends typically like?
Assuming a 9am-2am workday in the week, this amounts to 85 hours Monday through Friday... so that means you would definitely be in the office at least one of the days on the weekend
Expect 7-15 hours over Sat-Sun.
Varies tremendously. If it's summer, half the MDs are in the hamptons, and you do not have any pressing work, you might just show up for a few hours or (amazingly) not at all.
Live deal? You might do 30+. This sort of unpredictability almost has to be expected.
On average ~10-12 hours on both Sat and Sunday. Usually get into the office at 11-12am (get to sleep in a bit)
I work 10h average per day on weekends
I'd expect the worst - and then if you only have to go in for a few hours, or not at all, consider yourself lucky.
That sounds absolutely miserable.
I can't echo this sentiment enough. I don't understand how people have the will power to do it week in and week out.
No other job pays 100k-ish in your early 20's.
Out of these 10-12 hours, how many are spent in doing actual work and how many on youtube/wso/etc?
Depends, worst I've ever had was 9am - 2am both sat and sun, but usually it's more like 12pm - 6pm.
I've heard you have to work at least 25 hours / day saturday & sunday. sucks
its not about the total time. When you can come in at 12 or whatever its fine even if its into the night. Still feels like a weekend.
It is only painfull if you need to be in at 9 or even earlier which basically means you loose every feeling that it is not just another weekday.
I had that now for 4 months without exception - no days off. I cant wait to go to the beach
wow, sounds terrible..
do you guys actually work work on the weekends or is it just mostly facetime? My SA stint last summer i was in on saturdays for a few hours for shits and giggles and sunday night to crank out valuations and shit for pitchbooks for a monday morning management presentation or pitch.
average weekend somewhere between 5-6 hours on each day, infrequently no work, even less frequent crazy days(i.e. 18 hours both days)
I didn't know people work on Sundays. Well that is one of the 500 things that I learned today.
For me it'll be like 5 hrs one weekend followed by a weekend of working 16, followed by a free weekend. Rinse and repeat.
Very similar on my end. Usually the 5 hr weekends I can remote in on. They would probably take 3 hours if I actually went it, but its nice to watch TV and drink a beer or 3 while working
I would agree with this as well.
*double post
It varies from group to group - personally i do about 6 hours every other Saturday and usually 2pm to 1 or 2am every Sunday.
getting free food helps... usually about 7 hours each day average
yikes
I spent basically all last weekend comatose drunk and am planning the same this weekend (sat at least)
boutique banking + dead deals = winning
I rarely work weekends and when I do, its maybe 8 hours on a Saturday.
So it sounds like those people at BB's experience the worst then? (based on common sense this is what it would seem like)
Depends on teams quite a lot. Analysts in my previous group (Sponsors) had it very easy even though it was a top group. Analysts in Sponsors would avoid a lot of the time-consuming stuff i.e. comps, benchmarking, etc. because that was done out of the sector teams.
Some other shitty groups would have their analysts spending every hour of the day and night in the office benchmarking those broadband usage stats and putting shampoo brands logos on a slide.
I heard FIG tends to have reasonably predictable hours - anyone know if that means they're predictably bad for weekends, or the other way round?!
Predictably terrible. The FIG team here works insane hours, they rarely leave before 3am and are in EVERY weekend. This is at a London BB
it means that it's 100% dependent on how many figs you can eat in a day
As a summer analyst, I refused to head in before noon on weekends (not a morning person, can't you tell?).
Typically noon - 6 pm / noon - 8 pm / noon - midnight. I liked the weekends because 1) you get two meals 2) you get cab fare both ways 3) you can blast music 4) casual clothes 5) you don't have to hang around for face-time.
We were actually doing work and had VPs/MDs emailing instructions and comments to us.
Do Associates typically work about the same on the weekends?
As an associates I probably was in the office on 33% of the weekends, mostly when on live deals or because of a Monday pitch. Most often just reviewing stuff from home, sending around comments via Blackberry, taking part in conf. calls, etc.
Out of curiosity, were you at an NYC BB? M&A? Do you think only 33% weekends was the norm for the other associates you knew?
London BB M&A. Most of the associates were around 50%. The analyst would usually come in and do his work, the associate come in later and review (or log in from home), give comments and do a couple of things, leave, and the analyst would process the rest
Yeah as a summer analyst, get in at noon, hope to leave by 6. If you're lucky you always hope it'd only be on one day, but it's usually both
I know that the answer to this question varies GREATLY, but can anyone comment on hours at top boutique firms in NYC and the Southeast?
My understanding is that with BBs you're looking at 80-95+ no matter what; is this any different at MM boutique shops? I guess there isn't as much manpower at a small shop, so one would assume.......
i make the weekends my bitch
I honestly have no idea why the fuck you guys do this brutal work :|
because people believe that money buys happiness because they are insecure about themselves
Money gets you closer to happiness than being poor does.
Usually every weekend for at least 15-16 hours (8 hours both days), can be much worse than that though. will log close to 30 this weekend which will be my 6th week in a row of this shit...
i chose not to work weekends. i also chose to come in after 9am and leave at 6 on the dot on a regular basis. that's why i got shitcanned.
Week-end Hours don't matter at that point. If you want to pursue banking you have to be ready to give up 2/3 years of your life, or more if you want to make it to MD. Is it worth it ? Not for me, but no one can chose for you.
Okay, this weekend working shit is really scaring me. I'm ok with working the whole week all night long, but the weekend isn't there for working. Does this only happen on Wall Street or is it "common use" in London, Continental Europe and Hong Kong too?
\
hhhnnnnggggg
Anyone?
This is industry standard... did you think you got to 100 hours by not working on the weekends?
you should be scared.
2 years of pain -> lifetime of buyside glory
I think that's the reason why the smart ones do the work...
Caaaannnnnnt wait!!
But really, what is with the hate on the banking lifestyle lately?
I don't understand it, and I've noticed that it has really picked up on this forum in recent months. "What ELSE can I do?"
It seems strange to me because my original impression of WSO was that it was a community of workaholics willing to do anything to break in or succeed in banking. Maybe I won't understand it until I'm working like a slave and my job costs me my relationships, health, and happiness.
You don't have any clue what you're in for... you will have some of the lowest lows and highest highs during your banking stint...
No, you probably won't be able to understand it until then (an SA might help prepare you, depending on bank, group, etc). And WSO is a community for people to learn, share info, and take a break from the hell they have to deal with. Some know what's up, others don't have a clue and want to learn what's up. If people around here are complaining about the hours and you're ready to sack up, you should be stoked. One less person you're seriously competing against.
describe the high to me
have you ever done heroin? that kind of high
normally not actually work but in the office 6-8 hours every saturday/sunday
wow a drilling engineer in the states making 120k? something is off......
From what I know yes you can make those numbers working in ultra high risk countries (Iraq, Pakistan) but not in developed countries
Almost any retard can get in the oil patch today and make $80k starting out. Doesn't take long to get to $100k. Oh, this is with NO college education.
With engineering, geology, or any petroleum degree you can easly make $100k 1st year out of U/G.
not sure why people on this forum always discuss starting salaries. oh thats right they are almost all retarded xD
weekends (Originally Posted: 03/16/2007)
It seems that MisInd works in an unusually hardworking group, since she has not had a single day off since December.
But in general (altho I know its hard to generalize) and on average, considering your group is not a total sweatshop, what kinda hours do you work on weekends?
One of my analyst friends said he almost always gets Sat nights free, and comes in quite late on Sunday. So essentially gets almost a day off a week (Sat Night +Sunday morning). Is this a fair estimation of the average time off for an analyst during a work week?
Hey, I'm not saying I don't sometimes leave at 6 PM on Saturday and come in at 2 PM on Sunday. But in my mind that doesn't equal a day off -- chances are that I put in at least eight hours on each day of the weekend, even on a super-light weekend. On hard weekends I've done forty hours over a weekend; on light weekends I do sixteen or so. I did get a whole weekend off last fall... REALLY nice. However, I think that was a perfect-storm event.
Those are good work ethics. You're a trooper.
when I was an analyst back in 2002-2004 (in restructuring in a MM shop) I worked about 85-90hrs a week on avg. some weeks were 70 with no weekend work, most were around 80-85 with some weekend work (10-20hrs) and some were 120+ hours, 7 days a week. Sometimes it is like this for months at a time, but on average I would say an analyst in ibanking works about 6-8 hrs a day on the weekend...or about 12-16hrs for the weekend. granted, sometimes you will work 20hrs a day both on saturday and sunday. some groups, like Mis Inds seem to gravitate more to the 100+ hour weeks...
mis Inds you sure have a lot of time to past on this board for somebody who works so hard
My group has a rep for being the most brutal in the bank, including M&A (which is not what I'm in). I really, really, REALLY wish I'd gotten the memo before I chose this group. Really. I can't say it enough. Also, the analyst staffer likes to terrify us by very seriously insinuating that we are in danger of receiving bottom-bucket bonuses if we don't straighten up and work much harder.
On the upside, we also produce more revenues than any other group in the bank as well. I just wish a little more of that trickled down to us.
If some of us actually do end up in the bottom bucket after working more than five thousand hours in one year, I'll let you guys know which group and bank not to work for. No analyst should be subject to getting screwed that badly.
Mis Ind, i think I might know you (real life)....what group are you in?
Bear, even though I have to be here for a large majority of the hours of the day, I actually haven't been DOING all that much since Tuesday. A little bit of wrestling with the print shop, some directing of the wintern, pulling together some recruitment materials (ironic, huh?). I should be updating my assigned comps for recent earnings announcements, but nobody's going to be checking to make sure they're done and I can always do them when they're requested. So I'm screwing around and praying I don't get staffed today so that I can actually get my hair cut and see a doctor this weekend.
This isn't normal, of course, but it's very welcome. If/when you start working, you'll see just how much downtime there is in a normal 20-hour workday. This whole process could be much more efficient if only the seniors would make it so.
Mis Ind, you mentioned a wintern - how do students find/get those jobs? I may want to take some time off from school and I'm thinking of a winternship. Would you have any advice?
Thanks - feel free to PM if you want.
Kreatif, rather not say. I'm sure you probably don't know me; no need to go digging. The moment I become unanonymous, I can't be as open and truthful, dig me?
my respects for your view Mis Ind, my repects.
for me have been slow since January as well. On average, I try to get out by 9PM on Friday if I can. Weekends depend on what's due for Monday, etc. 10-15 hours sounds reasonable for a given weekend. I usually just work a full day on Sunday (noon-10 or 11 PM) and avoid going in on Saturday if I can. But it just varies. It's hard to come in at all right now during march madness. Who wants to work when they can sit in bar and watch basketball?
I hope you're not sick......go to the damn doc!
Half the people in my group are sick. We analysts who've been stuck here in tight quarters eating cube food all winter and not sleeping are some pale, sickly, pitiful mofos. The crazy kid who works 140's has chronic hypertension and a depressed immune system (wonder why). Me, I'm experiencing uncontrolled blood sugar due to an inability to exercise and a lack of proper nutrition because I can't afford enough vegetables and high-quality lean proteins and sometimes end up eating cheaper starchy food instead, which aggravates my insulin resistance, runs a bunch of undigested glucose through my kidneys causing myriad unpleasant conditions that you don't want me to tell you about, and tips me further towards permanent diabetes.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the kid on the other end of the floor who only eats chicken sandwiches and French fries is feeling the initial effects of scurvy or something similar. When people don't take care of themselves (as many analysts don't or can't), all the kids crammed together on the same floor every day and every night get sick together, particularly after a long winter.
It's not a terribly nice place to work.
So as to end this on a happy note, let me say that beer is one way to avoid scurvy due to the slight amount of Vitamin C it contains. Bottoms up.
...Can't afford vegetables? After 5000 hours/yr?!?
No idea, man. Sorry. Maybe there's a recruitment process at a select number of schools?
I'm at a high-ranked target. Should I call up some alumni MDs or something?
also - does the wintern do the same stuff that a summer analyst does?
A friend at Citi who has a wintern from Dartmouth. They treat him the same as a regular summer.
do you know how that wintern got the position?
Some stories in here are really pitiful, it's really not that hard to take care of yourself.
Yeah, Mis Ind seems to get worked pretty hard, and the culture of her group seems like it sucks hard (no offense Mis Ind, at least you're bringing in the fees, right?).
I try to make it out by 9 on Fridays although lately it's been around 11 or 12 (like tonight). NOBODY in my group is in before 10:30 or 11 on the weekends, and even then it's one or two people. A good time to catch most people in the office is 1-3PM. I'm sort of a health nut, so I sacrifice an hour of sleep every morning to work out 3x during the week and both weekend days, but it takes its toll for sure. A few of our guys are getting killed right now, but one of them is going on vacation next week.
Yes, Mika, Seanc, I can't always afford vegetables on the $25 they give me for dinner. I can get an entree that has a paltry half-cup of green beans with it, but that entree will cost me $22... which means the entire delivery will run well over $25 just on that one item. I could order an entree from a vegetarian restaurant for the same price but then I wouldn't get any meat. If I eat cheaper food -- sandwiches, pasta, Asian entrees with rice or noodles -- I get more starch than anything, which is bad for my blood glucose levels. Cheap food is mostly bread, rice, and pasta. You'll see when you start living on food from Seamless.
Also, remember that you live your first year on only your salary... and that, if you're paying off heavy school debts like I am, it can be hard to live in Manhattan on $60k. I have a hard time making rent every month. I can't afford to take cabs or really eat meals too frequently on my own dime.
GameTheory, the group's culture does suck. Sure, we're bringing in the fees... for our seniors. We get paid no more than any other analysts.
Actually, I've seen this kind of disconnect between analysts before. There's one analyst at my bank (who for her first two years was in the group that I am in now) who once mentioned at an analyst social event that the stress and malnutrition of the work had made a significant portion of her hair fall out. Other analysts were incredulous and made her a laughingstock. Even to this day, I think a lot of people think she's a tad crazy. Of course the other analysts in the bank, the ones that leave by 9 or 11 PM every night, think she's melodramatic or lying. Having now worked for the same people she worked for, I understand why she was under that much stress.
There's really a lot of variance between groups in terms of culture and hours. I would tell you IBO monkeys to avoid my group, but we need you so bad that I really can't.
I now understand why some of the analysts in my group lied during recruitment and told me they frequently left at 8 PM. I don't appreciate it, but I understand it. I'm starting to get to the point where I'll do anything to bring in warm bodies too.
I have a very simple rule for analysts on my teams - Friday and Staruday nights are sacred. The rest of the weekend is fair game, but even then, I would rather have my guys rested and on top of their game on Monday, as opposed to jaded after a 25 hour unecessary weekend.
There are times the rules have been broken because of a weekend fairness opinion fire drill, but that's it.
Anything less is poor management.
Mis Ind -
I've been in banking for some eight years now, and I've worked at a couple places known for their brutality, and known people at pretty much every major firm. And in general, things have gotten better for peeople since I was an analyst.
Either you are seriously exaggerating, or you work on the worst group on Wall Street.
sorry to hear that.. calling up headhunters soon?
Thesquare, can I come work for you? Not because I can't couldn't handle long hours, but because you realise that it's about "management". Manage people correctly, and they'll do more (and better) work in 80 hours than slaves will do in 120.
On a tangent, the Norwegian government (at least factions of it) are seriously discussing a 6-hour work day to be implemented. Some industries in Sweden have already implemented this scheme, and have found HUGE improvements in productivity and profitability of their factories. Just a thought. I'm still looking forward to an 80-hour week, and I'll be fine with 100, but my main goal is to just do good work. Hopefully my team will be a good fit for me.
Anton, post-analyst-stint recruitment begins for me in early summer. I'll be hitting it with a vengeance, believe me.
Thesquare, I'm not sure what the worst group on Wall Street is, but I think the consensus is that I definitely work for the worst group in my bank. Much of that is because we have very little "management", as it were. I can work forty hours in a weekend and then get staffed on Monday morning because my staffer has no idea what hours I'm working or what I'm already staffed on. I have been staffed -- no joke -- on two major weekend-destroying projects on Friday afternoon: one at 3 PM, another at 8 PM. It was as if, by 8 PM, the staffer had forgotten about staffing me on the earlier project. Unfortunately, in my group there is a culture of senior bankers never being at fault on anything, so once I reminded the staffer about the earlier staffing, there was no retraction. The email said, and I quote, "You're just going to have to manage it."
Additionally, there is rampant stupidity in the work process. For instance, I once spent a thirty hour weekend two weeks (!) before a meeting because the (brand new) associate didn't want to ask the MD his opinion on suitable comps and instead wanted to supply a spiffy new comp sheet of his own. Because the associate felt that matching the exact segmentation was more critical for comparables than normal things like firm value and region, I had to supply full financial data including geographic and segment breakdown down through the EBIT line for, no joke, over 200 companies, most of which were in Asia and Eastern Europe and did not report data to anybody outside their own little regions. I told the associate he was full of shit, but he just smirked and said, essentially, "Shut up and get to work." The comp sheet eventually consisted of thirty tiny companies with names like "Chung Lai Kee Corporation" and "Jing Woo Lai Trading Company". This was for a European firm with a billion dollar enterprise value. The MD took one look at the comp sheet, laughed, told us to use the same comps as the last meeting, and a weekend of my frenzied labor went down the drain.
Worst group on Wall Street? Now that I think about it... just maybe.
Heh... I just read that now. I once had a new VP deliver me two full pitchbooks on Monday for two different companies because he was too scared to ask me to clarify which of two similar sounding companies I had told him to get cracking on in my voicemail. An associate and an analyst pulled two all-nighters to deliver me that.
He never made that mistake again.
Do you regret not taking the summer offer?
BTW, did your group let you out for "Analyst Appreciation Day?"
Analyst who? You kidding?
(You should know better than that, GameTheory.)
I regret not doing anything and everything to avoid my current situation, yeah. I literally have at least thirty stories as frustrating or nearly as frustrating as the comp sheet story I just told. Most of them have to do with the stupidity and/or thoughtlessness of those whose job it is to "manage" me as a resource. I'm tempted to start telling them all now due to the attitude of some people on these boards that my life couldn't be as hard as I describe it, but I'm afraid the stories would either become boring or that nobody would believe them.
If folks really want to hear, though, I'd be willing to share. If not, I completely understand.
What are you planning on doing after Ind
Let's hear some more stories. It doesn't sound that bad so far.
Are you kidding me? 200 comps, especially for foreign companies, is murder
I've had my share of late Fri/Sun night comps/profile assignments, but that is brutal; I feel for you Mis Ind.
But it sounds like she only did about 30 comps
I'm playing with the idea of giving tasks such as comp sets, spreading of financials etc. to our team in India to do... anyone out there doing that? If so, how's it working out?
CapitalIq and Factset have led to analysts forgetting how to do comps...
oh, c'mon... are U such a veteran that all U need is the financial statements, the WSJ, a ruler, pencil and eraser and you go to town? Be serious :-)
Maybe CapitalIQ and Factset makes some analysts lazy in that they perhaps don't have a healthy level of skepticism on the numbers, but at the same time the analysts can work more efficiently, using a larger volume of data than was available 8 years ago... and analysts can consider broader companies etc.
Just a thought, but what do I know?
Too much data is a dangerous thing. It leads to unnecessary analysis. Its better to really think about what the right set of comps are for example that to have a broad set, just because a data source lets you.
And there's no substitute for reading 10-ks, 10-qs, etc. in doing comps. People actually learn something about the company they are comping.
In my opinion, doing a comp set by CapIQ or Mumbai is the one of the worst developments I've seen on Wall Street. The devil is in the notes. Mumbai has never come back to tell me about fucked-up related party transactions or assymetrical pension assumptions. Good analysts have.
Listen, I never said that CIQ was a substitute for reading 10Ks or Qs...
Wasn't venting at you in particular, aad.
But to answer your question, the bottom line is that at first, it's a pain since you end up doing the work twice. You send it to Mumbai, they take time to turn it around while you wait, then you have to check everything over again when it comes back.
They get better though with time, and you'll be able to stop checking everything they do. Eventually, you'll trade off the small percentage error for convenience. That's my only issue with data services and outsourcing: we get paid a lot of money to get it right, so I don't like sacrificing accuracy and quality, no matter how small the delta.
There is so much ego in this business...
I'll admit I've been afraid to ask a dumb question - fear of being perceived wrong. Sometimes we learn by brute force... humbling.
That's usually how I discipline my women too, pepsi.
Dont mean to hijack the thread from weekends, but what the heck, I am the OP.
Since we have thesquare (direct promote VP, non MBA) and GK (SVP level I'm guessing), a staunch proponent of the MBA, maybe we can have a 'to be or not to be (an MBA)' showdown with two senior people in the industry? I think it would help a lot of us figure out future plans.
Thanks in advance.
I think graduate school (not just an MBA) is a great idea and helpful on many levels (not just career), but it really all comes down to personal circumstances.
I initially had every intention of going back to business school. However, around the time I was a third year analyst/1st year associate, my firm was working on three or four of the most groundbreaking transactions in the industry I cover, and I was executing them. Each of them was excrutiatingly complicated in terms of transaction structure as well as personalities involved. Not to mention that al around, people across the street were losing their jobs, and I wasn't in the mood to take risks. There was no way I was going to pass up what I was learning about life and the business to go back to b-school at that point. When I came out of it, I was a mid-level associate doing VP work for the best bankers in my firm and had a ton of political capital, so life in banking was pretty good for me. And there's no way you pass that up for the uncertainties of b-school.
So I guess my answer is that there's no right answer. Had I covered another industry and things were going slower, I would have definitely gone to business school. The tradeoff just never made sense in my case, and I'm very happy now with my decisions.
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