Hey guys. It's time for me to upgrade my laptop and I will be going to banking next year. Was wondering if to put up the money to get a high quality one that I can use for work, or if the firm will provide one once I start?
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You'll get one from your job and won't be able to use your personal laptop from home anyway. If you are planning on putting your money towards something would recommend a good monitor, keyboard, and mouse for a home setup.
Is this at every bank? Know some require you to log in through a VPN from your personal computer.
I don't know if it's truly every bank, but all of my friends have gotten laptops from work and been prohibited from using personal hardware. This is true from BBs to EBs to MMs. Might not be true for regional boutiques, but definitely true for anything that could be remotely considered "on the street:
Is this also the case for summer interns tho? Should summer interns consider getting a PC?
we got a laptop we docked to a desktop setup (monitor, mouse, keyboard, no desktop computer) at the office and we got a VPN to work from home
Yes, a lot of people at my BB have this as well, some people have VDI's they use at work as well. It varies based on team / location / etc.
We got one at my bank--think its pretty standard practice. I'd take the advice to build out a monitor station and get a docking setup so you can do the dual monitors at home.
Also, I would still recommend getting your own personal laptop.
Question -- is it common practice for firms to have you actually come into the office on the weekend to work? Or is weekend work assumed to be done with the laptop they give you at home?
Short answer: it depends. Might need to be in office if you have to go through things realtime with the deal team
Really depends. DalaiLama was pretty spot on, but it also varies from person to person. Since I have not built out a monitor setup yet, I actually prefer to come in whenever I need to do stuff with excel or powerpoint (so basically whenever I have to do anything lmao). Some people are fine doing that stuff on a laptop, but I really need my whole station to be as efficient as possible.
In terms of the team needing you to come in for stuff, they will let you know if it's a necessity. Otherwise, use your best judgement. Working on weekends sucks regardless, home or office.
We remote log-in to our work computers via our personal laptop. Which means the actual computing is still done on the work computer and the specs of the personal laptop is irrelevant, just serves as a screen and keyboard. You can borrow a laptop from our IT department for a period of time but it’s not issued to anyone.
What from this forum have you read that makes you think that you will have the opportunity to go home?
This aged like milk lol
I know Goldman does not give out laptops and expects analysts to log-in from their personal laptops.
I worked at two BBs, answer is it depends
1st BB: no laptops, all desktops. You could log in from your personal computer via VPN at home. If you travelled frequently to a client site, you could 'loan' a laptop for the duration of your engagement but had to return it to IT afterwards. There was a limited number of laptops available for IB so it was sometimes a pain to get one.
2nd BB: everyone has laptops here (from interns to MDs), when you're at your desk you plug it in and it links up to your 2 monitors and keyboard/mouse. When I travel I still prefer to use my personal tablet to log in via VPN (less bulky to carry). I don't use Excel that much anymore so it works fine for PPT, emails & reading reports/research. My analysts travel with their laptops, given working with heavy models tend to lag when you use a VPN.
lol I can't believe companies even give desktops anymore... not in IB but we have laptops with docking stations.
I think IB hours would be much more bearable if you could leave the office most days by 7-8pm (tops) and just finish from home, assuming that you have a docking station at home as well. Just being able to throw some sweats on and not have anyone standing over your shoulder can make all the difference.
have you worked in banking before?
I have, any other questions?
You'll get one from your firm along with a VPN -> bright side is you can watch Netflix while fixing powerpoints!
^lol very good point; I couldn't split my attention with watching a Netflix series while working over the summer but I imagine full time people have gotten very efficient with this skill working at home.
BB over the summer did not give laptops so we VPN'd into our virtual workstation. Heard from new full timers this is still the case. I actually preferred this since I love my laptop Rona rig; have one monitor for work and the other to listen to music, podcasts, browse news or whatever. Helped a lot in getting through the monotony of updating comps.
every BB i've worked at ( 5 total ) has given me a laptop...i kept them all and i now have a collection
5 BB's?? What are you Zlatan Ibrahimovic?
i'm older than most here...i moved banks every 2-3 years
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