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Notes -
Investment banking isn’t really an 80/100 hour a week job. No job is, there is research about productivity dropping off a cliff after 50/55 hours anyway. Investment banking is more like one of those jobs where the gap between personal time and work time is dictated by the role (like the army, or working on a ship) rather than a regular 40 or 50 hour a week professional office job.
For example, your investment banker friend says he works 9am to 1am every day. OK. Firstly, he’s not in at 9. You could walk through any bulge bracket investment banking floor at 9.05am and not even 20% of juniors would be in. The usual start time is maybe 9.45am, often 10 if it’s been a late night in the office. So your friend comes in at 10am. He drops his stuff off, then makes a coffee, checks his emails, all the rest of it. There’s usually no last minute work to do unless it’s the literal day of a pitch because the MD (who works from home 2 days a week, sees clients 2 days a week, and comes in from 8-4pm the other day) started reviewing changes to the deck at 8am over his breakfast in Surrey anyway. The junior reads the news, halfheartedly sends a few emails to the lawyers / client / whatever, attends an internal meeting and does some ‘research’ (a YouTube video and ChatGPT) for a couple of long shot rfps that the global vertical head wants to say the bank pitched for.
Then it’s lunch, quick trip to Farmer J, then a coffee, then a walk around outside, then he picks up some dry cleaning. Catches up with a colleague from another team over another long coffee. Then comes back to the office and sends a few more emails, MD comes back with a few small adjustments, maybe some light modelling, pull a few news articles to lazily include in a daily sector market recap summary he will send to some clients that they never read alongside the similar email from every bank and brokerage and research provider and newspaper. Then it’s 4pm. Your friend goes to the gym for a relaxed 90 minutes. Comes back at 6pm after a shower. The day really begins as the MD / director comes back with comments. VPs start getting more demanding. He orders dinner at 7 for 8. He eats, has another coffee, then gets down to real work while “chill beats to work/study to” plays in the background. He works through to 1am then goes home.
If you compare it your archetypal hardworking 45 hour a week PMC, the banker still has time to get his dry cleaning, have a long lunch if he wants to, go to the gym for a long time every day (there are others who sit in the lobby or a cafe and read, take a nap, go for a swim, go shopping, etc), do any “life admin” he needs to (he can go home briefly at 2pm to let in the plumber if he wants, as long as he’s back later), he doesn’t need to make dinner or clean up because it’s paid for every day etc. He actually has a lot of leisure time, my first staffer would play video games for like three hours a day in the afternoon and nobody cared. He doesn’t even necessarily have less sleep than the average worker (company car has him home on empty night roads by 1.30, he showers and sleeps, wakes up at 9, he can easily get 7 hours of sleep). He just needs to technically show his face in the office by 10 and then do his actual work between 7pm and 1am, so the MD can review it over breakfast.
Or, during periods where "in at 9" is being enforced, turns up, has a quick chat with the VP checking up on juniors being in at 9, and then goes to the onsite gym until there is likely to be work to do.
Note that this is for IBD. The average front office junior in trading is working something more like 7-5 with little or no downtime.
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