How many hours a week do you work in investment banking?
How Many Hours do Investment Bankers Work? Investment bankers work notoriously long hours, with the typical work week filling in 60-80 hours per week, and the occasional high-intensity work week that can push a banker to 100+ hours.
How Many Hours Do Investment Bankers Actually Work? Investment banking is not a normal 9-to-5 job — investment bankers can work anywhere from 60 to over 100 hours per week, depending on the company and the deals at hand.
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.”
Typically, entry-level investment bankers, for instance, can expect to receive around 10-15 days of vacation per year. This can increase to 20 or more days as they gain seniority and move up the ranks.
On paper, Managing Directors have the best hours of any banker, with a likely range of 50-60 hours per week.
I happen to know some 28+ year old investment bankers that would be very happy making $500k/year. Technical quibble aside: There are many who have set such high expectations for themselves that they are dissatisfied with their pay packages despite being in top 1% income bracket.
On average, a first-year investment banker makes a 5-digit salary, in the range of $70,000 – $90,000, while a 7-digit salary is considered above average and is difficult to achieve for most people in their careers.
Many Analysts might be working more like 80-90 hours per week rather than 70-80. That may not sound significant, but it's the difference between 12.5 hours per day for 6 days with one day off and 12.1 hours per day with no days off.
Most former bankers have reported that it is quite uncommon for an analyst to hit the 100-hour mark. Apparently, this only happens occasionally (once a month) when an analyst is working on multiple live deals or poorly aligned international projects.
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%.
What Bank gives the most PTO?
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
At JPMorgan Chase & Co, employees say the company provides "very good vacation benefits." Employees report they can get four weeks vacation, three personal days and six sick days, and can also get nine holidays bank-wide.
The average working hours of an investment banker is reported to be around 60 to 80 hours a week. Getting any deals done in the investment banking world requires a lot of manpower since there are actually a lot of moving pieces in mere simple financial transactions.
Bankers get paid huge fees for a short, intense project -- a merger, an acquisition, a financing, an IPO. Why do bankers get paid tens of millions of dollars for a few months work? Because the stakes are massive and good banking work can generate a ton of value.
Investment bankers are notorious for working long and demanding hours, with work weeks well exceeding 40 hours being the norm for entry-level investment banking analysts. In a competitive culture where putting in extra-long hours is regarded as a badge of honor, a 9-to-5 routine is pretty much unheard of.
Can you become a millionaire as an investment banker? 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.
Key Takeaways
Investment bankers meet with clients, prepare offers, run financial projections, and work on pitchbooks, that help generate new clients. The work is lucrative but the days are long and stressful.
Based on that figure, an annual income of $500,000 or more would make you rich. The Economic Policy Institute uses a different baseline to determine who constitutes the top 1% and the top 5%. For 2021, you're in the top 1% if you earn $819,324 or more each year. The top 5% of income earners make $335,891 per year.
Hedge Fund Manager
Typically, you'd have earned a university degree, a CFA certification (Chartered Financial Analyst), and a decade of outstanding investment experience. To make this one of the jobs that pay $1 million dollars a month, you'll need to be one of the absolute best in the world at it.
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Age plays a huge factor in the decision-making process. Wall Street is an up-and-out industry. Unless the goal is senior management, most people in finance are out of there by age 50. That's not at just the biggest investment banks, either.
Is 7 figures considered rich?
A seven-figure job refers to the number of digits listed in your salary. This includes people who earn anywhere from $1 million to just under $10 million per year. Many people may consider this salary range to be well above average.
"Six figures"
This typically refers to an amount of money that is in the range of $100,000 to $999,999. It is used to describe a level of income or a financial transaction that is above the range of five figures (between $10,000 and $99,999) but below the range of seven figures (over $1 million).
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.
Yes, it has been part of the culture for many years. Only recently have big firms begin suggesting associates take the occasional weekend off. While investment banking is extreme, for most ambitious careers you will likely have to spend at least a few years devoted almost exclusively to work.
This is not a Monday to Friday, 9-to-5 gig. Employees who are not comfortable working 80-hour weeks rarely last long in the industry. Almost every Saturday is spent partly at work. Even Sundays are not guaranteed off days for an investment banker.
