What makes the insane hours necessary?

Prospective IB SA with an absolutely rookie question. Why do analysts need to work 90 hrs?
If there are 2 Analysts working 90 hrs, can’t you have 3 doing 60?

In the past few years, we’ve seen the strongest job candidates forego IB in favor of tech and entrepreneurship. Almost entirely bc of work life balance and things that are completely controllable. Think about how much more likely a junior would be to stay if they didn’t feel as miserable. Decrease the salaries by 33% to make it cash flow even. With the recent increase of salaries to increase retention, these firms missed the demands of their juniors re hours.

 
 
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Curious to see the answers to this. I doubt you would need to even increase headcount that much from what I can gather a lot of the hours just seem extra and for some reason many seem against WFH. Tech companies have managed to keep employees happier and have a incredible level of output so I think the same is possible in IB they will just have to stop being boomer and accept change. 

At the company I worked for in the past the head boss seemed incredibly against WFH even though we had been doing it for a year during the worst of COVID, as soon as he could he wanted to drag everyone back in without reason. I tried to tell someone beneath him you guys do not have as much control as you think you do and if you dont embrace change it will force you to. Anyway, his workforce started leaving rapidly and he had to move back towards working from home. Shortly after he got laid off for unknown reasons. 

 

Tight deadlines lead to long hours. Most meeting requests/deliverables come through on short notice which ultimately leads to extra hours to finish in time. Beyond that, you normally have meetings during the day with the client and then wait to receive next steps from senior bankers in the afternoon. It's an endless cycle of fun and joy   

 

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