Consulting, Considering Switching But How is the Travel
See header, that is all I'm looking to find out. Will be a entry level consultant, advancing to sr consultant in 2.5 years if I decide to make the jump from banking.
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Monday leave on a 7AM flight, come back home Thursday around 10PM. Hours might vary by one or two hours depending on location, client, etc. Flights are generally 1 - 2 hours time on the air, longer if you are going across the continent. Also include the time to get to airport, TSA, etc.
Work from 8AM - 7PM, eat, go back to hotel, work more if needed. Hours can be longer depending on firm and type of project.
Repeat this 45-48 weeks a year.
This is a general average, maybe better or worse depending on firm, project, client, etc.
Sounds awesome. I really want to work for MBB.
So you have weekends off to be with family/friends?
To add to abacab's post, the "go back to hotel, work more if needed" is a pretty consistent thing. You can generally expect 60-80 hour weeks in consulting. If you're staffed but lucky enough to work out of your office instead of going to the client site, this usually means:
Monday - Thursday: Coming in between 8-9am and leaving between 10pm-midnight, with the occassional 2-3am nights and occassional 7-9pm nights Friday: Leave between 5-7pm
If you're travelling that means:
a) Working 3-5 hours a night in your hotel room after dinner because you get kicked off the client site at a certain point or b) Staying at the client site, having food delivered, and work with the entire team in a conference room while the rest of the office is empty
There are also wildcard options such as working at a Kinkos until 2am because you can't be on site at that time but your team still needs to be together.
Travel is very firm and office dependent. 80 hour weeks seem pretty high to me, unless you're baking in some travel...I would say 55-70 actually working...8Am -7Pm Mon-Thurs + ~2 hours/night hotel, 9Am-6 PmFriday, ~5 hours on weekend.
i only want to work 50 hours per week, including hotel time and travel, how do i do that and not get demoted?
i only want to work 50 hours per week, including hotel time and travel, how do i do that and not get demoted?
Sounds like you'd want to either join a consulting firm that doesn't have a travel model or hop into industry.
That just isn't realistic for most consulting firms. You are part of a team and expected to pull your weight or you will be replaced. Do you really think it would go over well when you head back to the hotel every day around six while everyone else on the team stays on site and keeps working? I wouldn't be worried about being demoted I would be worried about being politely asked to seek employment elsewhere. This might be possible at some smaller firms but I highly doubt any of the big players would allow this.
One solid thing about consulting if you are a true ironman - which I know isn't easy - is that you can do SERIOUS work on a ton of ladies in cities around the country (wear a condom). The hours are clearly not short, but they're way, way, way, way less than banking. So if you can survive as a banker you can probably survive working until 9:30 or 10 every night in a small city in the U.S. and then going out to bars in your hotel, etc, explaining to random hoes that you "went to HBS, work at MBB and live in NYC". Trying NOT getting laid in that position, from what I've heard, it's difficult. I personally am in finance and wouldn't want to switch because I find things that are not quantitative somewhat sickening to my stomach, but two of my best friends from college work at Bain and they both say the lifestyle is totally legit. Super-platinum hotel/airline miles... lots of puntang. Weekends SOMEWHAT free-ish (compared to banking) to see your family and friends.
wow makes sense
It's always firm/project/client dependent. If you are doing some government IT implementation with BAH or ACN in DC (where you'll also be local), you can easily keep it under 50 in many cases. If you are doing some 6 week strategy work for McKinsey, it'll obviously be closer to the 80 mark.
In my case weekends are not that bad. Friday work from home, trying to keep it 9 - 4. Will need to spend 5 - 10 hours this weekend, but nothing that will stop be from catching a few games or spending time with friends.
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