What Working in Investment Banking Actually Feels Like

The Job Is Not What You Think It Is

Every aspiring banker has a mental image of the role: you are in a boardroom, advising a CEO on a multi-billion pound acquisition. The reality is that for the first 18-24 months, your job is primarily production work — building models, formatting pitch books, turning comments, and managing data rooms. The strategic thinking happens above you. Your job is to make sure the numbers are right and the documents are perfect.

This is not a criticism. It is the truth of how apprenticeships work in high-stakes environments. The sooner you accept this, the faster you will learn and the sooner you will be trusted with real responsibility.

The Hierarchy Is Not What You Think Either

Most aspiring bankers assume MDs sit at the top of the food chain. They do not. A BB M&A sector head with 14+ years of experience put it bluntly: "You are your deal experience." Your ability to be an effective senior banker is almost entirely the accumulated sum of wisdom and experience from doing deals — every transaction is unique, and providing high-stakes advice on tactics, pricing, counterparties, and structure is a function of having been there enough times to react instinctively.

But even MDs answer to someone. At one bulge bracket, a PE sponsor's Principal called the bank's MD on a Thursday afternoon demanding $800M of committed financing by the following week. When the MD pushed back on timing, the Principal went on a five-minute tirade telling him to shut up and get it done. The MD — a Managing Director at a bulge bracket bank — sat staring at his screen afterwards. He had to escalate the situation to the Global Head of LevFin and Global Head of Capital Markets to figure out how to balance internal optics against not damaging the bank's relationship with the sponsor. The "big swinging dick on top of the food chain" image is a myth.

The competitiveness never stops either. That same MD reflected that out of his analyst class, less than 15% are at MD or partner level today. When he was an analyst, he thought making associate was everything. The day he became associate, he was gunning for VP. Now as a team head, he wants to run the investment bank — and about 20 equally qualified people feel the same way.

What Actually Matters (It's Not Your Technical Skills)

By the time you start, every analyst in your class can build a DCF. Technical ability is table stakes — it gets you hired but it does not differentiate you once you are in.

What separates the analysts who get top-bucket bonuses and strong exit opportunities:

Reliability: When a VP sends you a task at 10pm, do they have to check on you at midnight, or do they know it will be done correctly by morning? The single most valued trait in a junior banker is predictability of output quality.
Attention to detail: A misplaced decimal in a client presentation destroys trust. An inconsistent font in a pitch book signals carelessness. Before presenting important work, always print it — errors stick out on paper far more than on screen. Set the tone early that you are not a person who makes formatting or spelling errors.
Communication: Can you flag a problem before it becomes a crisis? Can you summarise a 200-page data room into three bullet points? Can you push back on unreasonable timelines without being difficult? These soft skills determine your trajectory more than any model you will ever build.
Stamina management: The hours are real. But the analysts who burn out are not the ones who work the most — they are the ones who cannot switch off when they have downtime. Learn to rest aggressively when the deal flow allows it. One BB MD said he has never pulled an all-nighter in his life and hates when his people do. A great chunk of the battle is simply showing up consistently — you cannot burn yourself out.

The Hours — Real Numbers From Real Bankers

Everyone asks about the hours. Here are actual numbers from practitioners, not recruiting brochures:

A typical week at a prestigious NYC shop: 9:30am to midnight with a standard deviation of plus or minus two hours. Good days you leave at 10pm, bad days you stay until 2am. Saturdays and Sundays are 4-8 hours spread throughout the day.

A VP confirmed the broader pattern: 60% of weeks are "normal" (~75 hours on call), 30% are busier (85-100 hours), and 10% are slow. Genuinely working 100 hours in a week is very hard — most people who claim it are counting idle time.

Many analysts report 40-50 hours of actual productive work per week, with the rest being wait time, downtime, and face time. The brutal part is not the work itself — it is being on call 15+ hours a day. One analyst reported a 130-hour week where even the MD was doing 120 alongside him — the fact that the MD was in the trenches was the only reason he kept going.

The practical reality: banking is a "pick two" system. You can handle banking and one other thing — a relationship, working out, a hobby, a side project — with decent consistency. Not two other things. Plan your life accordingly.

The Things That Surprise New Analysts

You will spend more time on PowerPoint than Excel

The popular image is that IB analysts live in Excel. The reality: pitch books, management presentations, and process documents are all PowerPoint. You will spend significant time on formatting, aligning boxes, and making sure every slide tells a clear story. This is not busy work — clear communication is how deals get done.

The relationship with your staffer matters enormously

The staffer (the person who assigns you to deals) controls your life for two years. A good relationship means you get staffed on interesting deals with good teams. A bad one means you get the leftover work nobody wants. Be reliable, be communicative, and never complain about a staffing decision to anyone other than the staffer directly.

Most of your learning happens on live deals, not in training

The two-week training programme teaches you the basics. The real education happens when you are on a live deal with a tight deadline and a VP who expects you to figure things out. The best analysts seek out these high-pressure moments because that is where the learning curve is steepest.

Your peer group becomes your support system

The other analysts in your class will understand your experience in a way that nobody outside banking can. Invest in those relationships early — they will be your network for the next 20 years, and some of them will become your closest professional allies.

Politics matters more than you want to believe

Politics determines roughly half your ranking. Annual reviews are set by 5-8 people who spend less than five minutes writing about your performance. If they like you, you are set — and this does not always correlate with actual output. Your first midyear review will likely be pointless unless you have done something really bad. People's memories are shorter than you think — a strong three months going into the year-end review can make up for earlier mediocre performance. Bankers love to see someone who has "stepped it up."

Surviving the Grind — Tactics From Practitioners

These are not theoretical tips — they come from bankers who lived through analyst years and came out the other side:

Manage expectations on timing: If a task takes 45 minutes, say it will take 1.5 hours. Deliver after 1 hour 15 minutes. You under-promised and over-delivered while buying yourself a 30-minute break.
Use strategic timing: Send deliverables around 1am knowing your associate will not review that night. You can get 7-8 hours of sleep without worrying about comments coming back. Strategic timing of emails is an underrated survival tool.
Frame sleep as quality control: If you have had five hours of sleep for five nights straight, tell your team your work product is suffering and you need two extra hours of sleep. Frame it as quality control, not weakness. Nobody benefits from a sleep-deprived analyst making errors in a model.
Know the deal cold: Memorise key deal details: coupon dates, maturities of debt tranches, capital structure, historical revenue, EBITDA, and capex. When a senior banker asks you a number and you know it off the top of your head, that is how trust is built.
Have a reason for being there: If you do not have an end goal — a dollar amount, a date, a milestone — set one immediately. If you do not have a reason you are doing this job, quit. It is not worth it without a purpose. Banking is like having braces — you are excited to get them, then you hate them, and only after they are off do you appreciate what they did for you.

One reassuring data point: outside of COVID layoffs, virtually zero analysts get fired purely for performance. The ones who lose jobs are careless repeatedly, are not culture fits, AND it coincides with an economic event that gives the firm cover. Do good work, be likeable, and you will be fine.

Live on your base salary, bank your bonus for the first 3-5 years. Money equals freedom in finance — do not build a lifestyle that locks you into a job you do not love.

The Exit Opportunities Are Real — But Not Guaranteed

Private equity, hedge funds, corporate development, venture capital — the exits are real and they are the primary reason most people do banking. But they are not automatic. You need to perform well, build a track record of deal experience, and actively network during your analyst years. The analysts who coast get mediocre exits. The ones who are deliberate about their experience and relationships get the top PE offers.

Take Your Preparation Further

Prepare for what the job actually requires with our free Interview Day Checklist. For comprehensive technical and behavioural interview prep, see the IB Interview Bible.

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