Just curious if anyone here works weekends regularly beyond the occasional overtime.
I’m looking to switch firms (long story) but one of the major selling points is the infrequency of working on the weekends.
Now, I don’t mind pulling 10-13 hour days on the weekdays if it’ll leave the weekends free but from my experience, my productivity and overall quality of work really suffers the next week if I had to work on the weekends.
The answer is that it depends a lot on the specific job you are in, the firm you work for, and the type of market environment. For investment banking, yes, you would work most weekends at most firms. Private equity could be hit or miss depending on how hot the deal environment is. Sell side research, probably not, but you may during earnings season. Hedge funds depend and are largely market driven. During early 2009 when the market was bottoming, I worked over 4 months straight without a day off, including weekends and holidays. Recently I’ve worked much less than that. It really depends. If you are in non-analyst type jobs, then you would rarely if ever work weekends at most firms.
I used to work for a major consulting firm doing projects related to budgeting, project financial planning and analysis. I used to work 60-70hrs each work week and about 10-16hrs on the weekends. After 1yr and a half, it was getting old but I had no intentions of leaving because of the pay potential. Then my old manager contacted me out of the blue with a job offer where I now work about 50-55hrs a week and rarely work on weekends. So I know how you feel, if the pay is better, I would say go for it. As long as you know exactly what you’re getting into with the new job; go for it.