Lifestyle/Hours at West Coast Groups

I'm currently in doing a summer IB internship right now but was thinking of doing full time recruiting at well regarded west coast groups (some listed below). I was just wondering if anyone had any recent information regarding the culture/lifestyle/hours of these groups. Thanks guys

GS TMT SF
GS LA
MS LA
MS SF
MS Menlo Park
JPM SF
HLHZ RX LA
CS LA

 
Best Response

If your expecting a lighter workload at some of those shops your sadly mistaken. But on the bright side, the culture can be much more relaxed. I didn't wear a suit other than day one in my SA stint.

My knowledge about the groups I have friends working in:

GS TMT: Sweatshop, but not as bad their 200 west counterparts. MS Menlo Park: One of the most brutal offices in banking. Up there with Moelis with its DLJ bank-til-you-die mentality. JPM SF: Pretty good. HC team is laidback, but its still banking hours. HL RX: Awesome group, good atmosphere and places well into distressed debt funds. Rx means more work than the rest of HL (FAS and corp fin) but not horrendous hours. CS LA: Just Don't.

 
westsider:

If your expecting a lighter workload at some of those shops your sadly mistaken. But on the bright side, the culture can be much more relaxed. I didn't wear a suit other than day one in my SA stint.

My knowledge about the groups I have friends working in:

GS TMT: Sweatshop, but not as bad their 200 west counterparts.
MS Menlo Park: One of the most brutal offices in banking. Up there with Moelis with its DLJ bank-til-you-die mentality.
JPM SF: Pretty good. HC team is laidback, but its still banking hours.
HL RX: Awesome group, good atmosphere and places well into distressed debt funds. Rx means more work than the rest of HL (FAS and corp fin) but not horrendous hours.
CS LA: Just Don't.

Hahahahah 'just don't.' I've also heard bad things about cs la. All the other groups are top groups. Didn't have a great impression culturally of gs tmt and ms menlo from my interactions though
 
westsider:

If your expecting a lighter workload at some of those shops your sadly mistaken. But on the bright side, the culture can be much more relaxed. I didn't wear a suit other than day one in my SA stint.

My knowledge about the groups I have friends working in:

GS TMT: Sweatshop, but not as bad their 200 west counterparts.
MS Menlo Park: One of the most brutal offices in banking. Up there with Moelis with its DLJ bank-til-you-die mentality.
JPM SF: Pretty good. HC team is laidback, but its still banking hours.
HL RX: Awesome group, good atmosphere and places well into distressed debt funds. Rx means more work than the rest of HL (FAS and corp fin) but not horrendous hours.
CS LA: Just Don't.

I agree with everything here. HL RX definitely works more than their non-RX counterparts, seems not quite "brutal" but pretty bad in terms of hours.

The ones left out:

GS LA: Seems to definitely be on the lighter side in terms of hours, and they still seem to get great exit opps. Haven't heard whether the analysts are happy or not. MS LA: Pretty bad hours and culture is somewhat stuffy / uptight. Hours pretty bad both on M&A and coverage sides. I heard half the first year analysts quit before a full year. MS SF: Tends to work less than MS LA. I think there are only 3 MD's in this office now (Sponsors and coverage recently combined) which means slightly a lower work load. Analysts seem pretty happy though.

 

GS TMT SF is not bad by any means - extremely relaxed culture, superb exit opps at all levels (group head says he wants the group to be "the best group to join, best group to work in, and best group to leave"), new initiative of blocking off part of the weekend where noone is allowed to be in the office without special approval (also being done in several NY groups)

 

HLHZ RX group is pretty relaxed, culture-wise. I've been told they end up taking a lot of smaller/less interesting deals since they have a 120+ person restructuring team and need to justify that size. Great placement into Oaktree/other distressed funds if that's what you're into.

 
GracefulPiglett:

Yeah, I heard that CS LA and MS Menlo Park work a lot of 100+ hour weeks. Would it be reasonable to expect close to an average of 80 hour weeks for the other groups?

Not to sound condescending or anything (I'm sure it will), but there is really no such thing as an "average" work week on the west coast. Yes, mathematically you can say 80 is average probably, but your weeks will probably be more something along the lines of 65, 105, 70, 70, 100.

When your crushed, your crushed, but the nice three hours time zone buffer from NYC does wonders. Lets say your cross staffed with NY associate or VP, if they're in the office late, its 3am when they cut out in the Big Apple, thats only midnight out here. So then you do a quick turn on their edits, and whammo, you're out the door at 12:30 doing the same workload as the NYC crew.

Pro-tip to minimize your hours: Don't turn edits right away, sit on things overnight unless they are urgent. Some VP's will turn and turn, adding nothing to the product, and would be perfectly happy getting a copy at 9am the next morning. You just gotta figure out who those associates and VP's are, and make a concentrated effort to let them know that you'll "have the book on their desk by morning", thus freeing up your night.

 

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