It seems to me that banking WLB has gotten significantly better in recent years. 50 hours per week now feels fairly normal, aside from a deal sprint every few months.
What's your WLB like in PE? What sort of hours are you working on average? Please mention the type of fund you're at, your years of experience and location.
All I ask for is 1) time to enjoy hobbies and interests outside of work and 2) enough sleep.
Is this achievable in PE?
50 hours a week in IB? Can’t be a BB or EB
PSA - any stats that you're going to get right now aren't really indicative of the job. We've been in a quiet market for the last 12-18+ months (limited deal flow/low deployment, limited exits, IPO market closed, syndicated financing market effectively closed), so the current IB or PE associate experience doesn't really typify the role, at least not on a longer-term basis.
No, it isn’t possible (probably one or two exceptions) at any decent returning private equity fund. The reason is because the industry is mature and everyone is trying to chase down any kind of perceived (true or not) alpha or edge. This means hard work to uncover opportunities that others haven’t, or to formulate an investment thesis that others haven’t diligenced as much in detail.
These are all time consuming and means that even during deal downtime you are doing diligence to be ready for a deal before it comes. Again there are always rare exceptions to this, but in most cases this is the case for the industry.
Not a single one of my banking friends works even close to 50 hours a week.
MM, T2 city, Sr. Assoc. Working ~50 hours a week currently. Able to enjoy hobbies as generally not working weekends at all and getting 8 hours of sleep per night...
As others said, the deal markets been really slow the last year and a half, but there's still plenty of portco work and add-ons to get done. I got lucky closing a few deals before it all slowed down. That said, even when it was a "normal" market I was only working 60-70 hours vs. 80+ in banking.
Once you get past 70 hrs per week regularly, the job starts to take a toll. If you’re able to find a group where you average 50-60 hours weekly, you can certainly have time to get adequate sleep and enjoy hobbies on weekends
Is this just propaganda then?
Day in the life of a senior associate at Blackstone:
9am - 7.30pm in the office
7.30 - 9pm workout
9pm depending on the day, sometimes log back in
12pm sleep
source:
https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2022/06/day-in-the-life-privat…
If “sometimes” means “every single day” and “sleep” means “continue doing work,” then yeah, this is accurate
Efinancialcareers is tabloid garbage
This is close to my life as an AS2 in an EB currently. Although some days I would work to 12 or 1am but most of the time I go to gym at 7:30-8 for ~2 hrs
Yeah…you’re definitely the ASO every analyst hates for not doing any real work LOL
MM London - pretty busy, there is always volume.
We don't have a Portfolio team so, portfolio work also falls on us.
Bit like being at HIG, or Audax.
LMM firm. $1B in AUM. Work more now than I did in MM banking (which was during the height of M&A activity). Just as an anecdote that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows everywhere
Felt this, can’t believe I took a pay cut for PE too
Sucks, doesn't it? In the same boat
At UMM / MF - feels like business for us has picked up quite a bit
Working ~as much banking
9am - 9pm in office
Short uber home and maybe 15-30 min break followed by working until 12/12:30am every day (except Fridays)
Weekends are variable - on average doing 2-3hrs / per day
Doesn’t sound too bad tbf
Are you generally happy with this? I’m about to start at a MF in the fall and I’ve had this idea of “if I can sleep from 12-8 every day it should be fine”. Does that resonate at all?
Tbh I’m not the happiest. I can get the ~12-8 sleep somewhat but it’s definitely making an impact on my physical and mental health. (e.g. getting fatter)
Not having to work on the weekends all the time though let’s me recapture some of the missed time during the week. But I guess it’s on the better end of PE WLBs? (Unless something better exists)
This sounds like pretty standard associate hours IMO. Hang in there - improves thereafter (even between first and second/third year).
MF in NYC, get to office by 9-10am, leave around 7-8pm and eat dinner with the gf until 9pm, work until 2am average. Difference btwn PE (imo) and banking is that feels like there is always work to do, even in slow markets + every hour I spend in this job is 2x more stressful than in banking (made worse by cutthroat culture). Sometimes daydream about what my life would’ve been like if I had stayed…
ymmv
In what ways is the work more stressful?
Not OP, but it’s the constant stuff going on (management changes, refi’s, bids) and compounded with the pressure of making sure things are right to the $ or £.
MM on West Coast with $2B+ latest fund. In by 8am and leave by 6-6:30/7pm at the latest most days but can run longer on live deals. Expectation is to get work done but very little FT culture. Have found that several other friends either work at absolute sweatshops or have great WLB as well. Even when hours get longer, culture wouldn’t be described as cutthroat and don’t work with any clear sociopaths, which is refreshing compared to nyc banking that I came from
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