The hours are tough, most don't recognize how much it really is until they are there. Here's 70 hours for you:
9am to 11pm every weekday. Doesn't sound like much, but think about it realistically. You're up by 8am, you get home by 11:30pm.. Sleep, rinse repeat.
Increase that to 80 hours, 10 hours on Sunday added.
Increase that to 90 hours, you're pulling an added 2 hours on weekdays, so you get home at 1:30am
Increase that to 100 hours, you're in the office at 7am for a deal going live, getting home at 1:30am, including 10 hours on Sunday.
110, add 10 hours to Saturday and mind you, you're getting off at 1:30am on a Friday night.
Sure there might be different combinations, but this is just an example. Now think imagine yourself, coming home at that time in NYC or SF.. exciting places, where all the girls are going out and the backoffice guys are having a great time.
I don't understand the point of this thread. Are you trying to warn people?
It's a legit post. I think a lot of people in college or who are just not in a job where you actually work that amount truly understand what those hours are like on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Not just occasionally, but always.
I think they're fully aware of what the hours are but in the youthful enthusiasm of their mind's eye they glamorize and romanticize the idea of working 110 hours... taking a black car home at 3am, waking up 4 hours later to a bunch of stressful emails, rushing back into the office, cranking through the fire drill.
It all sounds so terribly romantic and important. I think people's expectations wouldn't be as disappointed if all the people they worked with were brilliant banking wizards rather than survivalist ass kissers grabbing at straws to stay alive in a ruthless industry. The work you do is mindless, yes, but that's not the bad part. The bad part is that the reason you're doing the work is also mindless.
I'd say the first time the sheen is smudged is when you first start you and see this bright shiny penny of an MD that you're lucky enough to call your boss's boss who is so self-important (and justifiably, right?), swinging his big dick around the office, toppling people over with it, stomping lesser beings out like a singed newspaper ember, and then you walk into a client meeting with him and he's a neutered pup groveling for a belly rub. After that the work you do starts to seem much less glamorous and important.
Also, OP is skewing the entry/exit hours. You typically get in between 930-1030. And get home around 1-3. So sleep wise it's not terribly bad; life-wise however it's horrendous.
You're correct. I think undergrads intellectually realize what the hours are but don't realize the grind that it actually is when you're living it and how the work itself isn't terribly challenging or important. And it's not ending soon or like cramming for finals for a week. I haven't been down in the trenches for a while but I remember getting shit thrown at me at 6 pm on Friday and someone saying it needed to be done the next morning and it just didn't need to be done, except a senior guy would want such minor changes done over the weekend that I'd then be in over the weekend to do it, and that happens all the time. I was thinking about it a few weekends ago when we were at a friends BBQ and another guy there was a pediatric surgeon. He had to take calls, not drink because he was on call and ended up having to leave but it was literally life or death. Not tweaking a model but actually going in to perform emergency surgery on a kid.
One thing I just cannot understand is why bankers feel the need to throw work at someone over the weekend when it is not that important.
In my analyst days I downed a corona or two and would come right back upstairs and crank on a model for a $4 billion LBO. How many billion dollars was that kid worth? My deal would have made my bank like $20 million... that surgery probably cost like $50-100k. He has NO prestige. What a tool, operating on kids.
He could have loosened the elastic waistband on his Docker's chinos and thrown back a few Michelob Ultra's if he wasn't such a tightwad.
First of all, I'm only about to graduate soon.
I realized about the hours (and kind of actually want a piece of it during my youth), but this struck me hard: "And it's not ending soon or like cramming for finals for a week."
Now we're talking. I almost forgot about it and I got reminded by your sentence that it probably won't get easier as we climb up the ladder.
Phew. Godspeed.
Best WSO comments of the month. Seriously, I haven't laughed this hard in a long time, thank you Marcus
LOL, don't forget a few gentle knife stabs in people's back regions.
I skewed the hours on purpose. Yea just not used to it. I'm not getting killed but the no free time in a NYC summer eats at me. Plus you have maybe half an hour till you sleep. really wish this job would be capped at 70 hours.. oh well, I know thatll never happen, unless someone else dies (which i'd prefer not)
This.
My first client meeting also was the point when I realised how unnecessary and redudant most of the work you do as an analyst really is. I walked into my first meeting full of enthusiasm and with the expectation to see my BSD MD and the VP going through my kick ass analyses and blow away that client. I slaved away a few nights before to create that 70 slide deck with surgical accuracy and then the MD starts with "see page 33", "Moreover, page 42..", "on the following page..", "page 48 shows", "see the appendix for reference".. Bam, at best one-sixth of the deck was discussed. Fuck that.
But but but... I've pulled a few all night-ers in college so I'm ready for 80 hour weeks!
I pulled a few as an analyst not fun! You start being jumpy and erratic
Hard to believe people don't realize before starting....but you're right, awareness and doing are different.
Highly underrated post. People will say all the time "oh yeah, I pulled x amount of hours this week," and most of the time it's not even close. Wish I would have read this going into SA stint.
Another way to think of it is that the average person works 40 hours a week: 9-5 for 5 days. Now, somehow in the extra weekday hours and 2 weekend days, find a way to come up with 40-60 more hours.
Long hours are by no means a badge of honor - people just can't wait to spend a minute telling a friend that they work 100 hours, then go back to work the next day hating themselves for the next 99 hours and 59 minutes
The worst part about the hours is the it is never ending... day after day, week after week. While you watch all your 40-50 hour week friends going out and actually enjoying life while you just get older.
A banking internship is simultaneously an excellent and horrible representation of the job. Excellent, in the regard that you would theoretically work hard hours and be exposed to different projects/pitches/deals and horrible in that it's only for nine weeks and you go back to school at the end of it. Indescribable difference between that and waking up after a year of working full time and realizing that this is your life, not some little internship.
crazy, thanks for posting. at what point does sleep deprivation begin to affect your work?
would also like to know this
Not to derail this thread with semantics, but wouldn't working 7 AM to 9 PM technically be 65 hours a week assuming you stop to eat lunch at some point each day?
At the companies I've worked at, 8-5 is the standard business hours and that equates to a 40 hour week even though you're technically at the office 45 hours because of the hour for lunch. Not very relevant to the overall point of this thread, but just curious how you look at it.
More typical schedule:
Monday - Thursday: 9am - 12 Midnight (15 hours a day x 4 = 60 hours) Friday: 9am - 7pm (10 hours - total of 70 hours) Weekend: Fit in ~10 hours how you will.
Standard 80 hour week in a non-deal type of environment. You're not going to be overwhelmed, but you're not going to have a lot of free time either.
I remember working in internships where coworkers complained about staying an hour or two late one day a week. Puts things into perspective.
And somehow people still aren't quitting. There are 1000's of people who would kill for an IBD job even if it meant never leaving work.
"I can't remember the last time I played a full 18 without my blackberry buzzing like a possessed vibrator."
Within the past few months there have been several articles on hours getting better. Is this reality, or just the banks getting good press? I know for instance that JPM reportedly introduced a color-coded spreadsheet to track hours worked. Has anyone from JPM or another BB experienced a noticeable decrease in hours worked?
Yes, this is reality, at least within my limited scope of view.
@"HedgeKing" To what extent? Less 10hrs/week?
It's about right on average for junior bankers. Much less weekend works. These of course are based on my limited scope of view.
Goldman IBD doesn't let analysts work Saturdays anymore, unless it's authorized (ie live deal with a deadline the following week).
I think it's worth noting that a lot of the "life degradation," so to say, comes from the fact that you have to actually take care of yourself while working all those hours. I'm on the west coast and have to be at work before the NY market open so, for me, because I like working out in the morning, hitting the gym needs to happen at the ungodly hour of 4:30am. When you get home, you add cooking a healthy meal to the mix of hanging out with friends/roommates/whoever and trying to maintain some semblance of control and things begin to escalate quickly. In college, a lot of the time you'd study hard, have food prepared for you by dining halls (at least in my case), and have all the necessary stores in very close proximity. In real life, that isn't the case. There's a lot more time wasted going places you need to go to pick up the things you need for everyday life. Amazon is a godsend here.
Pro tip: get a housecleaner. Best money I've spent to save a few hours every month. Besides, no one wants to deal with dirty toilets.
this is why I am in crude trading. Yes you do have to get up pretty early in the morning but nothing is better than leaving the office from 3-5 PM everyday and hitting up a patio for a couple of beers and NO weekends : )
Nice, that sounds pretty great, is that because of time zones or just the way the crude market works?
ssing
Actually for my situation I would say a bit of both. I live in Calgary (Canadian Oil Hub). so we are 2 hours behind NYC, so we do have to start earlier to be there for the opening of the market but in general once a traders PnL is on the books for the days (usually around 2:45) they get out of the office ASAP, followed by analysts and then risk
I always wanted to know what proportion of 1st years lose their shit and publicly. Does every analyst class at least have a story of the kid who stood up on the desk and pissed onto a deck or pull a Rob Ford? Maybe that's just my fantasy, but i want to believe.
I've both heard of and seen some batshit crazy shit, but I don't think anyone will be posting stories cause of anonymity. Maybe once they've moved onto different things.
I've worked worse hours at our family business since I was 7...
My mother purchases wholesale clothing from LA and resells them at an outdoor flea market in Arizona. When most people picture flea markets, they probably get the image of people selling garbage from the back of their trucks. We take it to a whole other level.
My hours:
8am to 5pm: The setup. Our "store" (basically just pieces of metal to box-in 7 parking spaces) is filled with racks and hooks to hang clothing from. The challenge isn't trying to pitch the stubborn Mexican customers into buying some no-name brand jeans--it's running 30+ pound piles of pants, cargos, etc. from a container onto the racks. This process becomes the definition of hell when you add in 110+ degree heat. Trying to put together a presentable store from scratch takes a very, very long time.
6pm to 10pm The sales. If you've ever been to a flea market, you'll understand that bargaining is the name of the game. These people are so stubborn. If a shirt is $15 but a customer INSISTS that he wants to pay $14 and you refuse, you just lost a sale. Remember the penny stock scene in Wolf of Wall Street when Belfort POKES and POKES the client until he finally gives in to the $4k deal? That's my life.
10pm to 12am Cleanup. As you can probably predict, stuffing the clothing back into the messy container is much easier than pulling everything out and trying to make things look presentable to the clientele. At this point, your skin is sticky from the buckets of sweat you've produced and your feet hurt like hell from standing all day. Not to mention that I get a nasty jock itch at around 7pm that I somehow manage to iron-man through.
Tl;dr - IB is Club Med. I salivate at the thought of getting paid that high of a salary to sit behind a computer all day in a nice room set at 76° F. Hell, you can even go ahead and keep the models and bottles.
Take your sob story elsewhere, no one cares. Also, 76 degrees is a fucking sauna. My bank pumps in cold crisp casino air.
This is all true. But you get used to being left out.
Great post by the OP (some other good posts in here as well). Kudos.
Full confession, I've never worked in IBD or those hours, but certainly have friends who have as well as colleagues/associates in their earlier days. Some of my friends in fund of funds sometimes work those hours (some don't shrugs).
I think the point is, I cannot imagine what it would be like to work those hours. Week after week. And I think that it is difficult to do so unless one actually does it and has to deal with it. I never ever want to, and I think people really underestimate the hours and how tough it can be and the original post really lays that out.
The worst thing is, I can imagine some of the dumb things people must do. Why? As a consultant to LPs who throw down serious money to funds, I have been taken through so many pitches its incredible (it's my job to hear of all the funds and meet with them before making investment recommendations/providing ideas). The number of times I have been given a 90 page deck at the beginning of a meeting and to have the MD/Partner just flip through like 65 of them and say "let's go to page 66" and just talk around like 5 slides is incredible.
The first 50 pages are pretty worthless data that no one cares about or can pull on their own, but someone in the chain has decided it's needed and probably made some bright kid slave over some weekend or weekends for it. In the end, most pitches are thrown away since the data is so often cut in a useless way, but man some of those things are formatted nicely. What a waste. I feel kind of bad about that. The MDs know a lot of it won't be used but want the content there "Just in case" someone asks, essentially (very few do - most people know that China is a high growth economy, rising disposable income blah blah blah etc.).
Don't even get me started on how some senior types talk about their analysts/associates (if they do at all...)
Just to give another data point:
I'm in at about 9 to 9.30am and leave somewhere b/w 10pm and 1am on M-TH; 9.30am to 8 / 9pm on FR. Depending on work load, I put in 0 - 12h on the weekend. However, hours have definitely improved a bit with all the programs that banks have introduced for their junior employees.
Furthermore, after your first six months on the job you either 1) burn out, become fat, look tired all the time, and are in work/sleep/work/sleep/repeat-mode or 2) learn to "live around your work schedule" and find time to hit the gym, go out, meet friends etc. In major cities such as London (and presumably NYC) it's actually possible to live a half-way decent life while working these ridiculous hours. Plenty of gyms, supermarkets, pubs, and food places are still open when you leave work so can have some kind of social life besides work. It's not much, but it keeps you sane.
but don't you have fellow comrades making the job less monotonous and draining?
...That post wasn't for the purpose of sharing a sob story.
My point was that there are people who are killing themselves to earn minimum wage over some of the worst jobs known to man. Yet, people still talk about IB hours as if nobody has it worse than an analyst.
As mentioned before, there are people who would kill to get the opportunity to work in this environment. At 22-25 you should be perfectly capable of putting out these types of hours. Tough it out and be of grateful of how lucky you are to enter the industry in the first place.
Wow, another beyond clownish post. These people working tons of hours in minimum wage jobs are there because they have no hard skills whereas a student graduating from a top university with good grades has very wide options as it pertains to what they'd like to do for work. This is why given that large option spectrum it is seen as the tough route to choose (and be chosen) to do IB. Also, not too many people in the US are working nearly banker hours, I don't care what your anecdotal story portrays. Check the data on US worker weekly hours.
Additionally, for most people, getting into IB has very little to do with luck. I guess that is your way of trying to marginalize an impressive accomplishment.
I don't think a single person made the claim that no one in the world has it worse than an analyst.
Its very easy to have that perspective when you're a pimply faced 17 year old jerking off every night to the idea of working on Wall Street and pulling nighters.
Why don't you come back here after 6 years and tell us about how lucky you are to not be making minimum wage. In the mean time, keep your uninformed judgments and holier than thou bullshit to yourself, given that they are based on zero percent practical experience.
I know of no 25 year olds that work +80/hr weeks outside of an oil field and investment banking (maybe a rock quarry). We are talking about people that are highly intelligent and motivated that got into great schools, took a huge bet/investment on themselves paying for that school, continued to perform and landed a highly sought after position... just to get a job cranking massive hours.
So how hard is it to apply online at 'old navy' and fold shirts for 40/hr weeks?
you have to be decent looking for one, so that rules you out
@Teller
fck that become a pokemon trainer and go on a slay quest for all the nurse joys/ officer jennys
Love the hostility. Who knew that being content with your job would be such a challenge.
I think the entire world knows its a challenge, people who haven't yet begun their careers notwithstanding.
You better get back to work dude. That pair of used old navy cargo pants isn't going to try itself on your Mexican customer.
I will never understand how people can't understand that everyone has issues and complaints. I suppose homeless people shouldn't be allowed to bitch because they are at least homeless in American vs. Somalia. It is basically a race to be the most fucked over person so just you have a right to complain.
Bankers can bitch about their hours while still realizing they have it better than other people. I fucking hate when someone chimes in with their bullshit "at least you aren't working at McDonald's" as if everything in life is random and no hard work was involved making sure you don't work in McDonalds.
My point wasn't that this is a bad post--I just think that people who think they want to do banking will rationalize it away anyways. It's important for people to realize what they're getting themselves into. I just don't know how people will, ever, without doing it.
LOL. This shit has got to be a troll post. Pure WSO gold.
The hours are tough, and there's no doubting that. The only real way to get through the analyst stint, from my ongoing experience, is to maintain a positive attitude above all else. You're there anyway, you might as well make the most of it. There's a ton to learn, you're building up your resume, making more money than you would have imagined your self making in freshman year, and you're creating options for your self. Moreover, if you're as interested in finance and M&A as you claimed in interviews, then you should choose to engage with the work and look beyond the grunt tasks. Personally, I find the time to review my decks, business models of target companies, and the communications/strategy the seniors have going with the clients. My motto is that there's always an upside to every downside, and that focusing on that upside goes a long way in helping me maintain a healthy attitude. Further to that, don't let any negative emotions or thoughts into your head, and control your state of mind to the best extent possible. Hard to remain positives at times, but definitely worth a try. Plus, from what I've seen, things get better after year 1, and even better after year 2, for a variety of reasons discussed in other similar threads. This is my 2 cents.
The worst part isn't even the number of hours, it is the unpredictability. If 80 hours a week on average meant that every week, you worked 9am-midnight M-TH, 9am-7pm Friday, and 10 hours at your leisure over the weekend, it would be WAY more manageable. The issue is you often don't know when you show up in the morning whether you're leaving at 7pm or 4am. You don't know until Friday at 6pm whether you're partying all weekend or stuck in your cube. That moves social life from difficult to damn near impossible because friends outside banking often don't understand or appreciate having to cancel plans last minute all the time. It makes life as a normal human almost impossible because you don't know when you'll have time to go to the store, dry cleaners, tidy up your apartment, etc (I imagine this is a bit better in NYC where stuff is open all the time, but still). It makes weekend trips, etc very very difficult as you don't want to pour money into plans you'll ultimately have to break.
80 hours a week is tough, but 80 hours with banking's unpredictability is much more of a grind than just working 80 hours with a set schedule
Great post. Good for college students to read.
You IB folks really have my respect. I don't know if I could do those hours. IB is one of the most respectable professions out there IMHO.
Reminds me of a time I heard Reid Hoffman speak at a conference and someone asked (it was in context at the time), "How many hours of sleep do you need?" And he responded "Zero. Thanks to my time at Goldman Sachs"
Thought I'd add in my data point too. I just started my analyst stint (a little earlier to get my feet wet) and since I'm going in with no training and no SA experience, it's been a rough start. I haven't worked outlandish hours yet as some of you have but I've worked enough to realize that there's no way you can ever replicate the environment. At the same time, it's ridiculous to note how quickly you adjust to it. I've already begun to make changes to work around the schedule and I'm getting better about managing my time since I have so little of it left compared to college.
I will add though that the culture in my group is great and everyone has been open to answering all my questions and while I feel like a moron from time to time, I'm starting to pick stuff up. Hopefully after training and a few more months on the job, I'll be more efficient.
For those of you looking to break in, I'd also add that in your initial few weeks and months, don't get lost in the weeds. If you put some thought into your work, you'll find more value in it. There's a ton to learn if you do it right and maintain a good attitude.
No position to comment, but sleeping at 2 am is considered early at my competitive high school. I've been doing this for 3 years, and I am perfectly fine. But I do get weekends off...
@Bobster: you do work in high school til 2 am? Are you in a high school leadership training program in North Korea?
I went to a competitive prep school... you either are trolling like a champ here or you have a severe learning disability.
You are correct. You are in no position to comment. HS is a joke.
I'm not in the building till 2, but we get homework and staying up till 3-4am is normal and not something to complain about. Again, not sure how comparable that is to doing IB hours, but everyone here deals with it and jokes about it and honestly it's not that bad lol, it's bearable...but we do get to recover on weekends.
TIL there are sweatshop highschools.
They are talking about actual work all day long, like head down with a packet of gushers and lunch at your desk. Not, FB open, using skype while copying information down from sparknotes and trying to find a source from a wikipedia article.
i cant believe a high schooler is trying to make the comparison. Please let me go back to high school - those were the easiest days of my life. I too stayed up until 3 am every night playing video games and hanging out with friends.
Not every high school experience is the same.
I've heard of extremely competitive high schools, and I can tell you (based on personal experience and what I've heard) that HS (even if "hours" are similar) is not the same as IB.
High school and IB don't compare at all. There's always more pressure when money's involved.
okay, fair enough.
If you stay up until 3-4 am doing high school work you are damn inefficient. You get out of school at 3, so you're telling me you work for the next 12 hours? And maybe you have sports or clubs so you get out at 5-6. And then you get 4 hours of sleep? This is total BS. I'm currently in high school and i am not at a super prestigious school, but I am at a private school and I never have more than 2 hours of homework. If you have even 5 hours, you're probably a jackoff. Go search for some fucking teachers manuals and develop a system to get work done with your friends.
lol 2 hours of homework.
Are you going to high school in the US?
2 hours is what happens when you have every teachers manual
Yeah, in the US. Chances are, if you live in the east coast, you will have heard of my school. It's notorious for being a pressure cooker, and many parents choose not to send kids our way b/c it's too demanding and they think kids commit suicide, which by the way, is not true.
Get real dude. If you were in South Korea I might sympathize, but even a random high school in France/Italy/Switzerland is likely far harder than whatever "pressure cooker" you are at.
You need to figure out how to be more efficient if you want to have any hope of doing investment banking.
Don't you go dying on me!
If high school is a pressure cooker for you... You really shouldn't go to a target school or aim for high finance.
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