people have always called Jefferies - Houston a sweatshop, but haven't heard about particular stories. Thus, would be interested in hearing stories about that group.

 

Guy I know used to be an Analyst at CS. On Friday morning he gets an email from his Seniors saying something along the lines of "Hey, the client has asked for certain changes to the model which include X, Y and Z. This is urgent so I need this by Monday morning". Him and an Associate proceed to work throughout the weekend (12 hour days) on the back of a 70-75 hour work week. Model gets updated and sent by Sunday at 9pm. All good. 

The following week (I think it was around Tuesday morning) the model gets sent to the client and the Analyst and Associate get copied in the email chain with the client. The "urgent" edits to the model had been discussed on Tuesday...the week before. They slaved away all weekend unnecessarily. What could have been a heavy, but manageable week turned into an absolute sweatshop week. Great planning.

 
Controversial

Worked 150+ hour week for a bake-off for an amazing sell-side opportunity. Literally didn't get to sleep more than 2-3 hours a night. This was pre-COVID btw. 

And of course, we lost it to a bank like Qatalyst, who we knew would have won anyways. 

Edit: Not sure what all the MS is for. It was for one week only and it was in a sector no one really covered so there weren't a lot of pages to just rip from other decks. Never worked close to these hours ever again, even for a live deal.

 

Damn bro honestly I believe this. I haven't had a week that bad but there were times where I got above 120 and was pulling multiple all-nighters due to multiple pitches and live deals really taking off simultaneously. Depending on your shop and current staffings, this can happen.

Dayman?
 

Roommate used to be an Analyst at BMO metals & mining up in Toronto. They were on some big gold deal and one of the MDs leading the transaction had a reputation for creating 60 page highly detailed decks with multiple types of "analysis" packed in for deals/pitches. He wanted that entire slide deck for management + model + M&A rationale/marketing materials for investors finished over the weekend (it was a Friday) so my roommate left Friday morning and I did not see him come back to our apartment till Monday 7AM as I was about to leave for work. Him and the Associate on the deal slept under their desks for that entire weekend. That group gives $70 dinner budget for weekends though so at least they ate good 

 

Maybe that's the issue...at least in my small boutique it's been an issue on some projects where there's 2 analysts, an associate, a VP, an MD, and the CEO involved. Too many cooks in the kitchen and you end up with conflicting financials from different source files, different comments from different seniors, etc. Then to clean up the shitshow takes even more time than if it was just one analyst slaving away for one day...

 

Heard of a story from a top mm shop where analysts were required to give hourly updates by physically emailing a screenshots of their work. This was to see if they were working “productively” and would call you out depending on what they saw. These same guys were given physical schedules that didn’t let them leave office until 3:00am, not sure how long these schedules lasted.

The boomer md Who headed this tool sharpening initiative has since left and the office saw an improvement in culture, still a sweatshop though.

 

I got staffed on bake-off at 5pm on a Monday and proceeded to sleep a grand total of 8 hours over the course of 4 nights leading up to the Friday meeting. Wrapped up the book in the early hours of Friday and then went home to sleep ~6am-6pm. 
 

We lost the work to the bank (an EB) that the client told us “was likely going to get it” on Monday. I started recruiting for PE soon thereafter. 

 

Bake offs are horrible. I got an email from my MD at 6pm on Friday with “things are going to heat up” and he forwarded the message from the sponsor MD asking for our views ASAP. Proceeded to build the skeleton all night, Saturday morning catch up call with the sponsor, and wanted to speak Monday or Tuesday. Md pushed to Tuesday (sadly) and proceeded to be in fire drill mode from 10am Saturday to 9pm Tuesday.

 

Combination of a stupid first year analyst and sweatshop story. Was doing some supportive work for a 3rd year analyst I was staffed with on a sell-side where we were about to receive final round bids (so felt pretty busy). I was about 3 months in at this point and I got a markup from a VP for a pitch with a client for Thursday morning mentioning the associate he usually worked with for this client was on vacation. It’s Monday at 9am when he sends this and he asks for 2 merger scenarios and an LBO modeled out, saying “yeah should be pretty template driven” and get it to him by Wednesday morning. Pulled back to back all nighters cluelessly trying to figure out the templates I had never seen (literally had never modeled anything before this) and was up till 3am before getting up at 7am to turn final comments before the 9am meeting. Was basically hallucinating at that point and thankfully MD let me sleep a bit during the day after the meeting lol. Have been daydreaming about recruiting picking up ever since. 

 

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