Possible to have social life in IB? Feeling down

Hi monkeys,

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm fully aware that I'm just an intern and have no grounds to be complaining. I guess I just wanted to sorta rant/hear some encouragement as I'm currently working past midnight on a Friday. I've been pulling about 70 hours a week as an SA, which I understand isn't too bad for this job. However, it's definitely chipping away at my social life and I'm not sure if it's just the people around me or just an unfortunate byproduct of this profession. My friends are always complaining about how I'm never hanging out with them, and when I am, I'm usually working on my laptop, which they also hate. My girlfriend just told me she doesn't like calling me anymore since I just stress her out (pretty much always working when we call).


I know I still want to do this job after I graduate even if I sacrifice friends and having a girlfriend. But I guess I'm just wondering if this is truly the only way to succeed as an analyst. If so, does it get better?


Thanks all.

 

A big part of making the job bearable is who you surround yourself with. If your friends don’t understand the demands of IB and accept it, it can be hard. Hence why most bankers end up choosing to live with other bankers during analyst stints.

With that said you definitely can find a way to have a social life at almost every bank except you may be limited to going once a week or maybe once every two weeks if you want to alternate time with family.

 
Most Helpful

It gets better and worse.

As a first year analyst, it’s really quite bad. For the first 7 months, there is so much to learn and you are establishing your position at the firm, so you can’t really push back at all. It gets a little better once you build confidence/ you learn how to slow play things and have enough people at the bank that like you that you can push back on asshats and know other people at the bank will defend you. Then, 9 months in you get interns, and once you reach a year, you either leave or have 1st years to take most the really brutal work. 


Everyone has their own take, but personally I found the lack of social life of banking to be the worst price. Everyone assumes you just work hard and grind and it will be great, but IB comes with a cost. You make a ton of money and have more responsibility than most people for their first job, but as a result you almost never are able to get a happy hour beer or go on dates during the week. You also consistently flake on plans and are viewed as unreliable. The worst part of banking isn’t the hours, it’s that you can’t control your time. This isn’t a problem for the first few months, but after several the job starts to eat away at relationships and your ability to experience the rest of the world.

That also said, eventually you get pretty numb inside and you just chug along while expecting/ being used to Friday night blowups and other bs.

 

70h weeks is literally 9 -12 Mon-Thur + 9-7 Friday. You basically have Friday night and the whole weekend to hang out with friends. Plus potentially 1h during the week for dinner. You have ample time to socialise. 
 

it’s when you start working 80-100h weeks that it becomes hard (as you also get tired)

But if you expect to go for drinks with your friends every Wed and Thursday night and have dates every Tuesday you shall probably not work in finance. 

 

Agree with above. The extent of exhaustion is non-linear. It's closer to a exponential function with a coefficient that is different for everyone. 

70 hours is not great, and it is not unbearable. I average 60 hours in a coverage group with a very chill, performing MD. Sometimes I do 80 and that's about it. 

You likely have the full weekend. Use your time wisely. If you want to indulge in binge-drinking on a Friday night, go for it since you have 2 days to get sober. Not recommended though. 

 

One aspect of this is that you are suddenly outside of a very flexible, social setting with loads of time - which was college life. Any aging professional in any industry will testify that personal time with friends isn't available all day long. When you add up commute, work, meetings outside of regular hours, phone calls, shopping, cleaning the place, working out at the gym, admin work/bills, and taking care of yourself... there isn't much time left.

It is much harder if you are in banking or jobs with a lot of travel. Imaging you had also a marriage and kids on top of this! I know people who can pull it off, but I don't know how they do it.

 

Once you adjust your mindset and simply do not expect social time with friends other than texting / FaceTiming M onday -> Thursday, you should feel better. Obviously if some days are slow, then try to take advantage of it and see some people.

Fridays usually end earlier and you could at least go out by midnight even if sometimes you may miss the pre-game. On a good day, things are slow, and you could go to happy hour / grab dinner with friends; I usually bring laptop with me so I could reply to emails / do quick edits / send materials (if it’s something that requires more attention, I would say I’m busy in the next hour or so but can get to it after; depends on relationship with person asking, sometimes I just say I’m out at dinner, sometimes I say busy working on something else, although it’s not really common that people ask why I’m tied up).

Saturdays should usually be completely free unless you are on some very live projects, although my perception is that banks are increasingly more aware of saturday policy. In the past six month, I worked zero Saturdays luckily, although definitely some other analysts could get worked pretty hard during very busy times (at top group top BB).

Sundays can be anywhere from a whole day to almost nothing. Unless it’s truly bad, I usually feel comfortable blocking time for either brunch or dinner. Similar to the Friday situation, if I have plans, I usually just tell people that I’ll be unavailable in the next two hours with different excuses, if any, depending on the people.

A strategy I use regularly is to be extra visibly on top of things during the week if I had plans over the weekend to build some goodwill wherever I could.

Ultimately, recognize that banks need you, and you need to speak up for yourself and be very strategic about what you do and how you approach things. You can certainly be in a situation where you lose a ton of friends, but don’t just give up when it gets hard. It gets better.

 

Also an intern doing 70ish hours, but hasn't really been that bad for me. A few things have helped make the hours bearable:

- I don't work weekends (outside a few hrs Sunday), so I make sure that I always have plans to look forward to after working during the week. Goal is to be out of my apartment as much as possible. This is when I hangout with my GF + friends. 

- Friday night, I treat myself to a late dinner with friends/GF or both.

- I hit the gym on Friday/Weekend, so the little free time that I have during the week can be saved for social things or just relaxation 

- I've accepted that Monday through Thursday will be eat sleep and work. The goal here is to just find time to get a quality meal(s) in + breathe some fresh air, while making sure to get enough sleep. I'd rather wake up, work all day, and go right back to sleep on these days rather than trying to do something late at night. Quality sleep helps my energy and happiness levels through the week, although ends up only being like 6-7 hours. I catch up on hours during the weekend.

This is where the benefits of WFH come in, as any free time I get, I'm doing random things like surfing YouTube, doing laundry/dishes, and hanging out with roommates. Working in the office will limit this a bit, but also the added benefit is that when you're not at your desk, people can't really bother you as much, whereas WFH feels like 24/7 around the clock sometimes. 

 

A few things here

- If your internship is virtual, you'll have a much better experience in the office and have friends from your analyst class/group

- It does not get better, 70 hours is a light week as a full time analyst

- Obviously hard in college because IB is so prestigious, but really consider if this is the best path for you. You might be someone who just does better mentally with a social life. I know you'll just say whatever and take the FT offer, but consider that you could be successful in other jobs that don't require these sacrifices to mental health 

 

IB is not prestigious when 99% of your peers make the same base salary and work half the hours LMAO (I'm talking 2-4 years out).

That marketing guy who cleared 50K , got 3 promotes and is now at 100K, and worked 35 hours during those 4 years LMAO.

Same thing with the supply chain analyst who started at 50K, is now running operations at a tech start up clearing 150K

Same thing with Big 4 Audit at 35K, is now VP Finance clearing 180K with stock options 

Meanwhile IB analyst has aged 50 years, spend all his money on cocaine and is wondering why they just didn't do supply chain LMAO

IB -> Corp Dev? That exit opp is available to the same damn guy at F100 internally who did GE FLDP program

IB - > PE (great enjoy.. it doesnt get easier.)

IB -> MBA (great piss off $200K doing a MBA to exit back to associate in IB)

OUCH.

 

Lmao you're greatly exaggerating these numbers.

Big 4 audit analyst is starting at 60-65k, gets a 3k bonus, and is working 70-90 hour weeks (I personally know a few accountants and I ask them why they don't do banking instead). After 4-5 years they won't clear 100k unless they lateral to another company.

The marketing analyst you're talking about will definitely not be clearing 100k. I know many people that work in marketing or firms like NBC who work really long hours and won't make anything close to the base salary of a first year IB analyst after 8-9 years of experience.

 

Big 4 audit 4 years later is going to be like a senior accountant which if at a tech company in SF/SJ/NYC area will be like $120k+10-15% bonus+stocks for like $150-180k total comp depending on appreciation. VP of Finance is like 10 years removed from that unless you go work at a 10 person startup where everyone is VP of something.

4 years out the only professions that hire in large numbers (exclude quant at HF, etc) that pay the same amount at that point are FAANG-tier SWE and sales at a top tech company in the right service (AWS, Azure, etc). Very few if any other jobs will pay the 300-400k total comp that an analyst -> associate in IB or 2+2 IB->PE would earn.

The sacrifice you make working in M&A is that your wlb sucks, your comp isn't that insane until 5+ years in but you have a high ceiling compared to other fields where few make $1m+ a year.

 

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