Over-Hyped

So Im sitting around this evening (Out of the office) and just wanted to share my insights in IB. I work at a top EB and by pretty much all definitions am a gunner. I have taken on an average of 2/3 staffings a week since starting. Ive picked up double weekend staffings and double friday staffings. I have had ~5 total days out of the office in 2015.

Now. many consider that "normal" but I assure you it isnt. WSO is all about over hyping how much people actually work in banking. And those in banking for whatever reason always oversell how busy they are. I can tell you that even the company reviews on here for my firm are inaccurate.

Also inaccurate are these amazing buyside jobs everyone is leaving for paying $250k plus. I can tell you from the 1st and 2nd yrs I know that 200-225 is the range where most kids are at. Now, I know there are a fair number of places paying 250 as Ive gotten emails for them, but these 250-275 ranges everyone thows around are MF ranges that you shouldnt just expect.

One other thing to point out that I get a kick out of is this "top bucket kids never make mistakes" Ive turned through deal models with errors. There are always busts in everything. The goal is minimizing and being able to Spot them. A buddy called me to tell me he had a deck of ours for something they were doing and that the the terminal year wasnt normalized. Like easy stuff slips through the cracks all the time. Hanging footnotes, mislabeled shiz, etc happens to everyone.

 
iggs99988:

Refreshing and original post. Out of curiosity, and the answer is probably pretty obvious, why are gunning beyond your normal responsibilities? Is it for top bonus, faster promotions, both?

To be frank its not hard to. A lot of kids just end up in banking and dont like it. Also, everyone plays the capacity game. The status quo analyst will punt on ALL projects they are not forced to take on, regardless of capacity. It may only be my bank but I have buddies who have told me the same applies for their BBs.

Also, Ive played sports all my live and am super Type A and likely overly competitive.

 
Best Response

So you work harder than everyone, but everyone else overstates how much they work, and nobody really gets the 250k+ buyside offers, but you get emails about them often.. but dont worry guys, even HE makes mistakes.

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ai215:

So you work harder than everyone, but everyone else overstates how much they work, and nobody really gets the 250k+ buyside offers, but you get emails about them often.. but dont worry guys, even HE makes mistakes.

Lol. I didnt say often. To be specific I saw a credit fund offering 240k, corp dev at 300k, and a mid-west $5-$10bn PE fund at 250k. Thats just what has been sent my way that Ive seen. Not saying I get that shit often. All Im saying is that everyone's expectations are way over-hyped.
 
DaBBzMan:
"ai215" wrote:
So you work harder than everyone, but everyone else overstates how much they work, and nobody really gets the 250k+ buyside offers, but you get emails about them often.. but dont worry guys, even HE makes mistakes.


Lol. I didnt say often. To be specific I saw a credit fund offering 240k, corp dev at 300k, and a mid-west $5-$10bn PE fund at 250k. Thats just what has been sent my way that Ive seen. Not saying I get that shit often. All Im saying is that everyone's expectations are way over-hyped.

Bullshit. There is no corp dev job for IB analysts paying 300k. I haven't even seen 150k.
 

Yeah OP is pretty much on point about everything (haven't seen 300k corp dev but w/e). Gunners are hard to come by, but they're great cuz they take up all the work you don't want.

 
Boston:

Yeah OP is pretty much on point about everything (haven't seen 300k corp dev but w/e). Gunners are hard to come by, but they're great cuz they take up all the work you don't want.

Accurate. I take 2-3 burner books every week just cuz I can get them out and the staffer knows I dont mind. I do it on top of my normal work. in general these are things that get sat on till the last minute and turn into short-fused projects that most people wont touch due to a tough team or just in general cuz it "isnt live"
 

This implies you've made it far enough in an interview process to be talking salary with a fund. From the sound of it, you probably haven't seen any numbers personally (unless your headhunters tell you salary numbers in initial interest emails - highly unlikely). You sound like you feel entitled to receiving a 250k+ job, just because you've worked your ass off for two years. It also sounds like, while you've been busy, you may not be gaining the bigger picture knowledge the top tier PE shops / HFs look for in the top tier candidates. Just my two cents, but sounds like you need to be more efficient. Either that, or your EB is not as elite as you claim. A fund doesn't care how many staffings you picked up this week, or when your last day off was. They care about what you've learned (both on the job and on your own time).

 
SomeKindOfAbstraction:

This implies you've made it far enough in an interview process to be talking salary with a fund. From the sound of it, you probably haven't seen any numbers personally (unless your headhunters tell you salary numbers in initial interest emails - highly unlikely). You sound like you feel entitled to receiving a 250k+ job, just because you've worked your ass off for two years. It also sounds like, while you've been busy, you may not be gaining the bigger picture knowledge the top tier PE shops / HFs look for in the top tier candidates. Just my two cents, but sounds like you need to be more efficient.
Either that, or your EB is not as elite as you claim.
A fund doesn't care how many staffings you picked up this week, or when your last day off was. They care about what you've learned (both on the job and on your own time).

This sounds like a undergrad. The fact that I can pretty much turn out books with little oversight and juggle multiple deliverables being due on a weekly, sometimes daily basis means I am pretty efficient with my time.

Also, not sure how you have any way of gathering enough info to determine whether I am "gaining the bigger picture"

My EB is one of EVR/LAZ/GHL/MoCo/CV. So plz feel free to do a ranking thread and tell me how any of the above are "not as elite as I claim"

No where here did I say I am actively recruiting or that I think a fund cares about my day to day life. This is entirely about how over-hyped banking is from the context of hours and recruiting expectations.

 

Everybody exaggerates how much they work, banking or otherwise. The normal equation that people use to describe their hours: Take the most amount of hours you worked that week, multiply it times 5, ignore leaving early on Fridays / random other days, add in weekend work (2x bonus that shit because its the weekend, and make sure to act like it happens EVERY weekend) and you finally arrive at the low end of their estimate (i.e. "Its around 90-110")

Yeah, bankers work a lot. But they also have friends, girlfriends, go to the gym, make it out to the bar occasionally, have a family, even take time off occasionally. They aren't fully-function work robots (yet).

 
jss09:

Everybody exaggerates how much they work, banking or otherwise. The normal equation that people use to describe their hours: Take the most amount of hours you worked that week, multiply it times 5, ignore leaving early on Fridays / random other days, add in weekend work (2x bonus that shit because its the weekend, and make sure to act like it happens EVERY weekend) and you finally arrive at the low end of their estimate (i.e. "Its around 90-110")

Yeah, bankers work a lot. But they also have friends, girlfriends, go to the gym, make it out to the bar occasionally, have a family, even take time off occasionally. They aren't fully-function work robots (yet).

This is definitely accurate hahahaha. +1
 
DaBBzMan:
"SHORTmyCDO" wrote:
what industry was the corp dev gig in? tech? $300k w/ significant equity?


FIG

He sent me the screenshot. Looks legit. It was 300k all-in (150 base plus 100% bonus), but it was for an associate-level banker, not analyst, so pretty big difference. Still surprised any corp dev team is paying 100% bonus. Most seem to pay 10-20%. I've seen director-level guys make similar salaries, so pretty crazy any associate is getting that much.
 

OP, what are your typical hours? In talking with current/recent analysts, they say that they're typically like 70-80 for MM and closer to 85 for BB. I spoke with one person who said that they routinely were pulling 100-110 in a BB HC group. Other than the elite product groups/notorious sweatshops, this leads me to believe that, while never even a 60 hour a week job, the hours are a bit exaggerated. Obviously live deals change that but there's busy seasons in every job.

 
BTOWN:

OP, what are your typical hours? In talking with current/recent analysts, they say that they're typically like 70-80 for MM and closer to 85 for BB. I spoke with one person who said that they routinely were pulling 100-110 in a BB HC group. Other than the elite product groups/notorious sweatshops, this leads me to believe that, while never even a 60 hour a week job, the hours are a bit exaggerated. Obviously live deals change that but there's busy seasons in every job.

I dont know people at every bank across the street and in every group. from the people I know and everything I have seen/heard people are generally around 75-80. Depending on the stage of a live deal you actually work less (for most people). A live deal is a great excuse to turn away work, which most people do. By and large there are less ahort-fused fire drills on live deals as its an ongoing process and deadlines could be as much as a month out. Ill caveat that to say its group/bank dependent as to how hard a team runs, but live processes are more of a marathon than a sprint.
 

Classic WSO... post complaining about that the industry and exit ops are over-hyped is in fact over-hyped itself.

Re. your 3 points:

1) The more prestigious the occupation is, the more exaggerated the hours reportedly worked are. In my experience this holds true for finance, law, medicine, academia, you name it. The one I love the most is when resident doctors complain about how tired they are from working nights and it turns out that they were mostly sleeping on a cot or waiting around for something to happen.

2) It's pretty clear that all people, even elite IB personnel make mistakes. This post is the perfect example of one.

3) I agree 100% that exit op salary numbers vary wildly. Especially if we are talking about the full spectrum of exit "ops" and are including people who burn out and go do something completely different, the numbers are much lower than the "OMG 275-300K BUYSIDE JOB". Those jobs are certainly out there but they aren't the norm.

 
greengohome:

Classic WSO... post complaining about that the industry and exit ops are over-hyped is in fact over-hyped itself.

Re. your 3 points:

1) The more prestigious the occupation is, the more exaggerated the hours reportedly worked are. In my experience this holds true for finance, law, medicine, academia, you name it. The one I love the most is when resident doctors complain about how tired they are from working nights and it turns out that they were mostly sleeping on a cot or waiting around for something to happen.

2) It's pretty clear that all people, even elite IB personnel make mistakes. This post is the perfect example of one.

3) I agree 100% that exit op salary numbers vary wildly. Especially if we are talking about the full spectrum of exit "ops" and are including people who burn out and go do something completely different, the numbers are much lower than the "OMG 275-300K BUYSIDE JOB". Those jobs are certainly out there but they aren't the norm.

Not really complaining dude. Just trying to shed light on the fact that kids consistently inflate their hours to inflate their egos. Completely agree though. I know several lawyers who go on and on about how hard they work yet even when they "are getting crushed" they put in 200 billables a month. Comes out to just under 50 a week, though it isnt a 1 for 1 of hours to billable hours but you get the point.

Not really sure what you are getting at with 2. But I agree with 3.

 

I never doubted the validity of any of the statements nor do I care to. Simply pointing out the douchey tone of the post that seemed more like a reason to talk himself up than share insights on the industry

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ai215:

I never doubted the validity of any of the statements nor do I care to. Simply pointing out the douchey tone of the post that seemed more like a reason to talk himself up than share insights on the industry

Insights. If you punt on projects and game the system you can be out by 9/10 most nights and go out pretty much every friday/saturday. Obviously there is a ton of volatility in this job but it isnt anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be. No one is working 110+ hours consistently. Most kids will consider 100 hours to be "getting crushed".

Edit: Fair on coming off douchey haha. Sry about that. Moreso attempting to validate that I am someone at least reasonably qualified to make claims and am not some undergrad dweeb spreading propaganda

 

All the followups were legitimate insights and led to a more reasonable discussion, just the initial tone that seemed a bit off, which is what sparked my comment. Maybe a bit unnecessary on my part, so my apologies there

Array
 

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