Life as an IB

For someone who’s looking to join IB, can we get an insight of how your typical weekly schedule looks like? How much sleep you’d get, how many day you work, hours in a week you work, the type of work you generally have to do? And what is the pay like? Just so those us who have not experienced the lifestyle yet can het a sense on what to expect. Thanks in advance.

 
 
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Why are you bumping this? You’re an analyst, you can literally answer the question lol.

 
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First year analyst here.

Hours: ~9:00am to 12:30am on average, M-F. Probably working 75-80% of those hours on average. On weekends, protected Saturday and probably 10am to 6pm on Sunday or some iteration of those hours. 

Type of work: taking notes on calls, creating/updating slides for decks, running models in Excel, working with product partners, summarizing financials and research

Pay: Standard "street" pay is $85K base, with a variable bonus equating to an all in range of $130K to $150K. 

 

Worked like a dog as a first year analyst in RX, hours ranged from 80 hour weeks to 120 hour weeks. "Normal" weeks meant getting in 8-10am, depending how late I had worked the night before, then grinding until anywhere from 10pm to 5am. Work drastically varied depending on how live certain deals were, whether the bankruptcy / out of court restructurings were progressing as anticipated. No such thing as protected weekends at EBs so there was a month where I literally just powered through with an associate on a deal through the weekends too. All in was pretty high at the end of the first year (incl. signing), anywhere from $170-$200+ across the group. Note this was definitely not typical of a first year experience. There were other groups that had much more "regular" hours

 

Do you think it was worth it working that hard? Have you left since to a position with less hours?

 

Not in IB (for perspective of my comment); How the hell is that job attractive to anyone? Even at what is being considered high comp of 200K all in, how is this a sought after job? In a normal first and second year do you get vacation? Time off? Ever see your family on holidays etc? Help me understand what is the real payoff for doing this? What is the end game in terms of ultimate income at year 3-7? If you love it then sure I get it but if its money why not tech or medicine. People in this industry are obvioulsy smartthey could likely pick any path they choose? 

 

Money and the ability to exit into private equity. I grew up poor as shit so I don't have a choice and would rather not see my mom and dad living in the same house I grew up in as a grown adult. 

 

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