I often see references to 80+ hours/week jobs being done by guys on this forum. What are these jobs? Like someone (maybe Frank) said, it is unsustainable. It puts the Anal in the Analyst.
I consider myself having a high-stress high-visibility job as a software manager. Apart from the “release crunch” that all software guys know about, I have never worked 80+ hours/week. I would estimate the max to be 60 hours for maybe one week, even when the pressure was enormous. My normal work week is 45-50 hours. And I get a hell of a lot done, spinning 15-20 different disks at the same time (no exaggeration there.)
Hah, I must be one of them “work smarter, not harder” types. Feels good to be so smart. Except I don’t think I am, and people talking about 80+ hours/week are purely bragging or insecure.
I know a couple of people in a variety of industries with those hours.
From IB analysts, oil platform workers, to some military jobs. None of them brag about it, they complain about it. There’s no work/life balance. Nobody wants to work that many hours in a work week. I agree with you about the work smarter, not harder philosophy but sometimes the job just requires you to put in long hours, no other way around it besides quitting.
Weeks like that definitely exist in finance, but there’s also a fair amount of non-efficiently used time in there too. For equity researchers, earnings season can be pretty intense because there is a lot of model updating going on simultaneously, and new stuff that needs to be written. But a lot of Jr hours are spent in hurry-up-and-wait mode, when senior managers tell junior analysts to rewrite a whole bunch of stuff by morning as they leave the office.
You want a quote? Haven’t I written enough already???
There’s no way someone is a regular on this board that consistently works 80+ hours/weeks. Those that I know who do work those hours hardly have time to shave and shower, let alone post on a message board.
Any time you need to publish some printed work to clients or to the public will eat up a lot of time. Just imagine finishing up a client presentation on a Friday evening, showing your boss the “final” version, and having him say “just rerun a few of these numbers and it’ll be good”. As he steps out, you realize that rerunning those numbers shakes the very foundation of the entire presentation including all those pretty graphs you made. Add 16 hours to your work week and say goodbye to your weekend!
M&A peeps get hit with 80-100 hour work weeks
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I think they do. It’s just they use some of that non-effecient time to post here at work lol
I quite often work longer hours so I can overlap with offices in the US and get things done. I hate coming in early in the morning only to find i have to wait on certain things from my US counterparts. That quite often results on getting started on urgent work at 2/3pm and staying on well into the evening.
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Not that I know from personal experience, but from having worked with a number of consultants in my current position it seems like they could easily have 80+ hour weeks.
Then again, those jobs with the “non-efficient” time probably value face time and the appearance of doing work. If you had one of these jobs, you might get in trouble if you appeared to be playing on the internet a lot.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
Most analyst positions that require 80+ hour weeks have about 30 hours of Starbucks/gym/solitaire included while they wait for updates, instructions, etc.
This. A solid 60 hour a week finace job that requires deep thinking is much more tiring than 80 hours of banking, 40 of which is probably spent sitting around. The numbers are debatable depending on the specific jobs in questions, but the concept stands.
“I lost my wife to a margin call. Wives get mad when you come home and say, ‘Sweetheart, I lost the house today.’” - Dennis Gartman on trading mistakes
Sorry, my grammar ran away from me.
I meant “references from guys on this board to other people working 80+ hour weeks”. Someone mentioned his cousin, a mechanical engineer; and another mentioned an Apple employee.
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One Rec Ho
If I had a job where I was required to be in the office for 80 hours a week even if there wasn’t much to do, I’d definitely spend most of my free time studying for the CFA instead of playing on the internet.. at least I have the “excuse”/reason of furthering my career.
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I have one of these jobs. Though, really, smart folks like me only work 50 hours tops. The rest of the time is facetime. Bunch of fuggin corp red tape exists that frowns on those leaving early, even if they are more efficient and have nothing to do. Idocracy at it’s finest.
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Yea, that is true. I had a friend who did IBanking for JPMorgan in Dallas one summer. They had a “sleeping room” where people would go and sleep under the desk ha ha
My brother works for Apple. It’s not so much they’re working 80 hours a week. He keeps pretty normal hours since he’s in editorial. But, the engineers keep whacky hours. Lots of those nerds like to work during the night and when they need something everyone else is expected to jump. Jobs was big on everyone being able to return an email in 30 minutes no matter what.
In finance, it’s mostly IB but that’s when they’re working a deal. It’s not consistently 80+ hours, and after you’ve put in a few years it gets better.
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I work in private banking in Switzerland and even though I would not admit this so readily outside the internet, I can honestly say the hours here are very very relaxed.
I know some colleagues who complain about the “stress” but then I see them taking a long swim in the lake during lunchtime and leaving at 6. Maybe it is different in IB but as far as I know, there is definitely an element of exaggeration.
ps: anybody else worried that IT will some day figure out just how many hours we spend on AF or Q-Bank or whatever?
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80+ is totally crank… I work as a Portfolio Manger within alternative investments at a small private bank in Zurich. Even we’re having some stressful times especially during reportings, none of us works more than max. 60 hours (average is 45-50 hours). IMHO people who work 80+ will do that for no longer than 3-5 years - burnout guaranteed. What are you going to do with your cash when you do not have the time to spend it? Work-Life-Balance (yay, everybody heard about it) is and will always be important.
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80+ is totally crank… I work as a Portfolio Manger within alternative investments at a small private bank in Zurich. Even we’re having some stressful times especially during reportings, none of us works more than max. 60 hours (average is 45-50 hours). IMHO people who work 80+ will do that for no longer than 3-5 years - burnout guaranteed. What are you going to do with your cash when you do not have the time to spend it? Work-Life-Balance (yay, everybody heard about it) is and will always be important.
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I worked as an M&A analyst in NYC in 2006/2007. 80 hours a week was standard, 100+ hours happened about once a month or so. I don’t think I ever worked a week less than 60 hours. And I can honestly say very little of this time was spent “sitting around”, though hours upon hours of mindless (once you get the hang of them) comps or pre-paids were not uncommon. Although I learned a lot on the job and made good $, overall, it was a miserable experience. The complete lack of work-life balance is unsustainable in the long term.
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I’ve had a few crazy engagements that required burning the midnight oil. A lot of that time was spent putting out fires and on dumb shit like formatting/re-formatting or my favorite, “wordsmithing.” If there was a sense of value (e.g,. going over our model after a press release hit the wires), I could understand, but deciding whether to use blue font or red font seems so trivial.
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Ay, I was working 80 hr weeks pretty regularly when I started working at Lehman after college in M&A/IB. After a year, I was burned out. Weekends were shot, tired of going to sleep at 1-2 am abd being at the office by 630-7 and moved to investment management. Four years later I went to PwC and started my MBA. Went to Corporate after that at PEP so my life changed, as did the work hours. I’m no stranger to 50-60 now at AIG
M&A Analysts regularly work 80+ hours/week. They come in at 9-930 and stay till 11-12 most days. They go early (at 7) on fridays to enjoy. come back on saturday and work another 10-12 hours. sunday’s usually can be half days (if work load is normal)…
I say from experience of 2 years on wall street M&A banking…
There was a week that I logged ~105 hours…(three overnights, countless coffee and early morning muffins and a pleased vice president)… remember a week only has 168 hours, and you have to take a dump, brush, commute 4-5 times, maybe get some sleep in there…
obviously 100/week is not sustainable… but 70-80 is and is being done by M&A analysts…
Try working for a valuation firm during busy season. 7 days a week, hours from 8am-12am. Summers are nice though. Off Fridays.
I hope you made more than minimum wage.
I know plenty of co-workers that push 80+ hours a week. If you can’t, then you won’t get those jobs. Simple as that.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
What jobs are those? Titles, fields, job descriptions?
Do they do it 365 days a year or seasonally (like tax season for tax pros)?
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One Rec Ho
Equity Research at my last job, associates
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
Of course, there’s only 8760 hours in a year.
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I have met a 26 year old Merryl Lynch inverstement banker working in Hong Kong (he was Indian) who said he worked 100 hours a week without taking annual leave for 3 years. And he went to night clubs after work and partied hard.
In the laid-back down under I have seen junior graduates at the Big 4 accounting firms working 65 hours a week, and graduate lawyers working until 10pm every day.
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