How many hours of sleep do investment bankers get?
While working in Investment Banking, the average bedtime on weekdays for me was 1:29 AM, with an average sleep duration of 5 hours and 56 minutes. On weekends, the average bedtime was 12:02 AM, with an average sleep duration of 8 hours and 29 minutes. However, behind these figures are large fluctuations day by day.
Investment Bankers who average 80-hour work days will likely get around 7 hours of sleep per night assuming that they go to bed at around 2 AM and wake up around 9 AM.
Seniority plays a big role in vacation time as more experienced bankers are typically given more time off to recharge and take a break from the grueling demands of the job. Typically, entry-level investment bankers, for instance, can expect to receive around 10-15 days of vacation per year.
A Week in the Life of an Investment Banker
In an average week, you will not have much free time on weekdays. Many Analysts are in the office from 9 AM to 1 AM each day, and sometimes a bit less than that on Friday or other “slow days.”
The short version here is: Yes, investment banking hours, especially in your first year or two, are always bad (think: 70-80 hours in the office per week). But junior bankers also tend to exaggerate their hours, often by not subtracting downtime or breaks during the day.
- Chief financial officer. ...
- Private equity associate. ...
- Hedge fund manager. ...
- Insurance advisor. ...
- Financial advisor. ...
- Compliance analyst. ...
- Information technology auditor. ...
- Investment banker. Investment bankers help businesses and government groups invest their money.
It is possible to become a millionaire as an investment banker, but it is not easy. Investment bankers typically earn salaries in the $200,000 to $700,000 range, with bonuses that can bring their total income up to several million dollars per year.
Have you ever heard of Goldman Sachs' 15-minute rule at Goldman Sachs? It means you have to respond to an email in 15 minutes or less no matter what. It doesn't matter if you: - showering - hiking in the mountains - attending your son's wedding - saving someone from a drowning vehicle Unreasonable?
The lucrative and fast-paced career of an investment banker is a highly competitive one. For instance, in a recent year, 236,000 applicants competed for roughly 3,500 internships at Goldman Sachs. This is common across the industry where acceptance rates for programs are typically less than 2%.
Investment bankers are typically the highest-paid workers in the finance industry—high salaries are most prevalent even among younger employees. The starting salary for the typical investment banker exceeds that of most other finance positions, but working in this field has its challenges.
Do investment bankers really work 100 hours?
In summary, I think you can generally expect most of your weeks in investment banking to be between 60 and 80 hours. I'd say 60 hours is doable, while 80 hours will really start to push you. I think anyone who says that they work 100 hours on average is probably lying.
Investment bankers meet with clients, send emails, prepare offers, conduct financial projections, work on signing new clients to the company, providing initial public offerings (IPOs), and mergers and acquisitions. These are some of the tasks an investment banker must do on a daily or weekly basis.
But people in IB (at least people I kind of know) work until about 2am every day and come into office between 9/9:30. So realistically they get about 5-6 hours of sleep (or even less in busier periods) and are expected to be functioning 100% every day.
Banks don't break out investment banker headcount specifically, but data released last week by research firm Coalition, suggests investment banker headcount across the industry fell only 4% year-on-year in the first half, which is when many of the cuts at Goldman and Morgan Stanley took place.
Investment bankers make money through the fees charged to their clients. As discussed above, this includes underwriting fees for arranging the sale of securities and advisory fees for providing strategic guidance.
“In investment banking, that's what you do. Working on Saturdays is a no-brainer,” says the sleep-deprived banker, who asked for his last name to be withheld for professional reasons. Sure, he earns six figures, but he also averages just five hours of shut-eye a night after his typical 16-hour workdays.
1. Investment Banker. Roles in investing banking are highly sought after. For investment bankers, it's often a higher competition to land a role in one of the largest firms.
Finance roles that typically pay the most include positions such as investment banking managing directors, hedge fund managers, or private equity partners. Chief financial officers (CFOs) of large corporations are also highly paid positions.
On an hourly basis, most sales & trading professionals earned a lot more than bankers in 2023. Credit sales & trading professionals earned $147 per hour on average, for instance.
Sure, anybody can make a good living being a doctor or a lawyer or an investment banker where you can make ~$200-500K per year a few years after you finish with your studies, but you hit a ceiling very quickly unless you start your own practice (aka start your own business).
Do investment bankers have a good life?
An investment banker's life is considered to have long working hours, working on weekends, a lot of hard work, and little sleep.
While bankers used to make multiples of what lawyers did, the lawyers have been zooming ahead, thanks to stagnant banker pay for all but the very top performers and changing dynamics at law firms. The trend took hold well before the recent slowdown in deal making dented banker pay.
Under the new policy, more than 1,400 senior bankers will no longer have a cap on their time off, while Junior employees will get two extra days off. However, according to the Bank, all employees will be expected to take a minimum of 15 days a year beginning in 2023.
Alfred Feld, Goldman's Longest-Serving Employee, Dies at 98.
Working at Goldman Sachs can be difficult and stressful, especially in roles that require long hours and intense workloads.
