The truth about investment banking hours

[Zamonee]

I see all sorts of different things online.

To those who have directly worked in the industry and in the front office what are the working hours truly like? Are you finishing at 10pm or is it a slog to the early hours of the morning? Do you have to regularly work weekends and on annual leave?

Does your mental health suffer?

Is the truth about constant 100+ weeks true?

Yes. It’s all true. They don’t pay you a shitload for free.

That said, if you aren’t at a decent IB, your life won’t look like that.

I have an economics interested YP who is looking at careers

To clarify are you saying that lower tier investment banks have less strict hours?

It’s an always on kind of job but you are necessarily in the office these days as much is done from your phone. The big money comes with big commitment time wise, most don’t do it for that long consequently

If your young person is interested don't let them be put off by the hours (or overly focussed on the massive comp).

At its best working in an IB can absolutely exhilarating. Team working, under pressure, great cameraderie, massive fun social life fuelled by the highs and lows of winning and losing business.

Yes of course the hours are brutal especially early on (but they are often required at senior level too) but for the right person it can be hugely satisfying.

Even if they don't go on to pursue a full career at an IB the training and experience of what hard work actually looks like is a great basis for other jobs.

One of mine is a quantitative trader - has been for last 7 years. Averages 60 hour working week - Monday to Friday 6am to 6pm. Never works weekends and is never recalled from holidays. Is now at an annual bonus level of £1m plus. The responsibility is immense but so are the rewards. Has a 1st in finance and economics.

It depends on your role. For the big big money jobs, you have to sell your soul. But there are other roles which, whilst still expecting commitment, are more 8am-7pm. They probably pay half or less.

If you get through the door, after your initial few years, you can look around and find what suits. But it’s hugely competitive to get in. Look for internships.

Do these firms care what university you went to?

Not in my experience. If you get through their rigorous recruitment process that’s the start. However they are ruthless in moving people out if their performance is not compatible with the work requirements. A 12 month probation period is not unusual.

yes and no.

good candidates come from all over the place, these days some stay at home and so you get great candidates from less well regarded unis.

however most do go to high ranked unis

What kind of salary are we talking ?
Ive got 2 family members , both in their 40s , one is a qualified accountant , works a lot , not regularly weekends but is deadline based and at certain times can/ will work until the early hours . The other works in banking / finance although not investment banking and has never worked a minute past 5pm in their entire career … and can often be found pottering in their garden for hours whilst WFH , stopping to participate in a few calls , that person earns ( slightly ) more , just in excess of 100k , so go figure .
It’s not always drudgery to get to the big bucks, but depends what you call the big bucks of course lol

My quant trader is on £300,000+
Company pays 15% into pension on top of that, also pays health insurance for them and their partner.

Some recruit 'blind' so they will know you got a first in economics, for example, but won't know whether that's from Oxford or Hull.

Corporate banking is shorter hours than investment banking - like 9am to 6pm or 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday. It pays less than investment banking but still relatively easy to get to six figure salaries but a lot less than investment banking.

Yes, especially if you are working on a deal. It's tough at the analyst and associate levels but once you make it to vp it gets better. The money is good but attrition rate is very high.

I was wondering if the grads are constantly on 4 hours of sleep

Ta

I worked in the back office at Goldman Sachs late 2010s.

You had to be at your desk no later than 08:30 or questions would be asked, regardless of transport disruption. A “normal” departure time was considered 18:30, and leaving before then was often viewed as an early finish. In reality, 19:30 was more typical, 18:30 on Fridays.

Dinner was usually eaten at work. Meals were paid for after 20:00, and taxis home were covered after 21:00, so there was almost an incentive to keep working. During busy periods, particularly the eight business days at the start of each month to close the books, working until 23:00 or midnight was common. Quarter and year end regularly meant weekends in the office from around 08:00 until 23:00. Working from home generally wasn’t an option. My family simply got used to only hearing from me after 22:00.

One Easter sticks in my mind. Quarter end happened to fall at the start of April and, because the US doesn’t observe the same bank holidays as the UK, we worked through Good Friday. I attended a family christening on the Saturday, then drove directly back into central London on Easter Sunday to take advantage of free street parking on the bank holiday before spending another long day in the office. TOIL was rare and most people struggled to take all their annual leave each year anyhow.

I liaised with both Asia Pacific, requiring early starts with occasional 05:00 meetings, and teams in Salt Lake City, which often meant still resolving issues at 02:00. Those competing time zones made for exceptionally long days.

The pay package was phenomenal, but after five years of burning the candle at both ends I realised I couldn’t sustain it and moved to a much less intense role at a UK bank. Looking back, it’s remarkable how quickly those hours became “normal”. In hindsight, I value the work life balance I have now far more than I did then.

I still have plenty of friends in the major investment banks/trading houses and the hours remain long. Even with a specific market focus, they’re following global markets, working across time zones and spending evenings networking or doing business development. The compensation is excellent, but their employers certainly get their pound, or ten, of flesh in return.

Great career booster to have the experience and the name on my CV. No regrets, but not for me long term. My experience - hope it helps!

PS. Recruitment was brutal as an experienced hire - I was lucky with only two rounds of interview, but I was someone’s sixth round once and they didn’t get the offer at the end!

Investment banking is all about chasing and landing the deal. Because hit rates are so low (there's a lot of pitching for each deal you land) they try to keep the number of juniors relatively low, so they all get some deal experience. Which means that the hours are always long, as when you are the junior you are responsible for bringing everything together, which means waiting on more senior people's time. In lower tier banks you may have fewer hours, but you will also get less hands on deal experience, which is where most of the learning happens.

How long this lasts depends directly on how effective you are in front of clients. If you are presentable and you can handle clients without your hand held, and it looks like you could bring in deals, you very very quickly move up the ranks and become more able to dictate your own hours.

But the client/deal always comes first, and you have to have the flexibility to cope with that. And often you end up working across time zones, which doesn't help either.

Like most jobs if you want to get on you do whatever is necessary to keep things afloat. If you just want to do 9 till 5 you won't get far in any high powered career. On the other hand you can earn pretty good money without working all the hours of the day and night somewhere else. And it really depends if you enjoy the work if you do it doesn't feel like huge number of hours working, if you don't like the job it's purgatory.

I would think of it this way - the starting salaries are so high because one person is carrying the workload of two people.

Depends on the role. Junior analyst might well be working long hours, but pay is very good compared with most other industries. Starting salary would probably be about £40k, but bonus could be many multiples of that if the person is good and they/the desk is making a lot money.

I was a desk assistant on a trading desk straight out of uni. My hours were basically the bond market hours. I needed to be in before 8am, but finished around 5.30pm and could always leave by 6pm.

Thank you all for the answer. After bonus what is total pay usually like?

Also to those who worked in the industry, did you all study economics?

The graduates starting in the corporate bank I worked at in early to mid 2010s were on £40k plus 30% in pension. Which is roughly £58,000 plus 30% in pension inflation adjusted. I was only there a few years but headhunting was common and large pay rises like 30% were common certainly early on. I did economics at Cambridge. I had the opportunity to move to investment bank but didn't due to hours and by then I had young children but it was a great opportunity if you can dedicated your life to it even if you just stay a couple of years.

I left 20 years ago (to have kids) knowing that I would not be able to sustain the hours even with a live in nanny. The day started at 7am was non stop. In ‘quiet periods’ you might get a brief lunch break and finish by 6pm, but if you were in the mids of an IPO, bond launch, pitch season it was really normal to be sat on the trading floor at 4am, trying to collate pitch documents and work the binding equipment because, obviously, the print/doc departments and techs DID leave at 6pm unless booked in advance. It was common to be handing boxes of docs to a courier at 5am, jumping in a cab to go home to shower and then get an hour or so sleep before heading back to your desk. If you finished before 1am, you were still expected at your desk by 7am prompt.

The pay and bonuses at the time compensated you to some extent and many colleagues did their time, saved every penny, then left in their early 30’s to buy a home completely mortgage-free in cheaper parts of the country (usually where they had family) and started new careers - teaching was a common one, as was retraining in plumbing.

But it was very clear in my case that, after 3 years of marriage and no pregnancy, that it impacted my health. I was told that it was pointless referring me to a fertility clinic while I worked the hours I did. I left at the end of one April and was pregnant by August, after three months garden leave.

That said, my DH is also in finance but outside banking, and has been for 35years. 7 figure salary in the last few years and mortgage free, still working 14-18 hours days, on call 24/7, works most evenings and weekend, holidays and leisure time is interrupted every time. We will have a great retirement and our kids will be secure with help from us when they graduate. Assuming he lives that long… as many of his peers have died in their fifties or been diagnosed with cancer within months of early retirement.

I am actively discouraging my DS from even thinking about a finance career of any sort. It’s really not worth it unless you absolutely thrive on it. Most of DH’s peers are multiply divorced - we are one of the few couples still hanging in there after all this time.