What's up guys. It's currently 3:15 a.m hopefully you guys can see that
and it's just so fitting that I'm working late today because
during my time at J.P. Morgan when I was an analyst there there were so many nights
when I would leave around this time I was actually considering just sleeping
in the studio here and filming in the morning because I'm a little bit tired
right now but I'll stop being a drama queen or drama
king whatever and take off this sleeping bag
yeah. Alright let's get to the video if you're new
here welcome to the channel my name is Ben and rareliquid is a channel where I
usually post tech investing videos on Thursdays and career related videos on
Sundays Today's agenda is pretty simple- I'll
first be going over a super easy week, and then a super hard week, and I'll end
with my top three worst moments in banking
Just as a bit of background I worked in the J.P. Morgan San Francisco healthcare
group for a little less than three years as an analyst and that experience is
what I'll really be basing this whole video on
Okay with that said let's first go into the easiest the week ever gets
in terms of what makes for an easy week, usually it's a combination of the
following: most of my deals are not very active, I'm
working on the beginning stages of a transaction,
I'm only working on one equity deal which makes for busy days but doesn't
require super late nights, I'm working on a non-time sensitive
marketing pitch book, and or I'm not working on any live deals
especially M&A deals In banking there are two types of
projects you usually work on the first is a marketing pitch book where you're
just really trying to earn business from a client
and the second is a live deal and this is when a client has engaged your bank
to run a transaction either an equity deal, debt deal, or an M&A deal
and the M&A transactions are always usually the most intense
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RARELIQUID25 to get 25% off. Back to the main topic
of the video though, here is what the hours would look like for an easy week
Each morning I would usually get into the office around 9 to 9:30 a.m
From Monday to Thursday the earliest I would get off would be around 8 pm but
not for the entire week and so some days I would get off from 10
pm to midnight On Fridays at JPM if you didn't have a
busy week it was pretty common to leave around 5 pm
especially if you had an upcoming protected weekend. A protected weekend
was a policy at JPM where analysts and associates were guaranteed to get one
weekend off per month and I know this sounds really
really sad but I gotta tell you those protected weekends were
just so important and it felt like I was getting entire week off because
most of the time as an analyst you're just one email away from getting staffed
on a really big project or getting an email from a demanding client that
kind of kills your entire weekend or night and so getting that one weekend
off was just huge. So back to the hours here
in a really really easy week, I would just monitor my emails
but have zero hours of weekend work In total, I would have worked 60 hours
and I think in banking this is pretty much about the lowest it ever gets
If you were to add about five to ten hours of weekend work and one to two
more hours each day then you'd get to around
75 to 80 hour work weeks, which I think is around the average for banking
In terms of frequency, I would say something like a 60 hour week would
probably happen maybe 10% of the time but I will say that a very
easy day where you're maybe leaving at around 9 or 10
p.m would happen semi regularly and probably something
like one to two times a week on average By the way if this video is not enough
for you and you're just super super hungry to learn more about investment
banking, then check out this playlist I have on my channel where I cover videos
about things like the day in the life of an investment banker,
why I quit investment banking, and how much investment bankers make
Next up, let me tell you about the hardest a week ever gets
alright so talking about this is about to give me some PTSD
but I'll do it just for you guys. In general a hard week can involve a
combination of the following: I'm working on one super super high
priority live M&A deal, I'm working on multiple live deals that
are time sensitive, I'm way too overstaffed working on too many projects
at one time, analysts have recently left the group so
I'm staffed onto their projects, our client is super demanding and is
constantly changing their minds which means we have to constantly change our
models and presentations, and/or that my managing director is
super demanding and constantly changing his or her mind
In general, I'm a pretty organized guy and so I would always have like a to-do
list with all my projects written on there
and I remember one time I had eight projects I was working on at the same
time Another thing that happened during a
particularly rough week was our client had sent their management
protection figures to us earlier on in the week and we used those numbers to
create our entire model and build a presentation
and then the client decided that they wanted to change their numbers that
Friday at 2 pm which just totally killed my
weekend and meant that we had to change all of our materials
In the hardest a week gets, this is what the hours can look like
On Monday through thursday, a rough day means leaving anywhere from 1 am to 5 am
and sometimes I would work past 5 am but what really makes this a rough week
is the constant lack of sleep Then on Fridays at JPM we were usually
guaranteed to get friday nights off starting at 6 pm
but when you're on a live deal you have to stay until the work gets done
So during a hard week staying until midnight on a Friday is pretty rough
I don't know if I should be sharing this but I remember one time when I was
working until midnight on a Friday night you know that's kind of the night where
you want to meet your friends and you just want to hang out and it was
midnight I was super tired but all my friends had a table
at the club and so I literally walked like I think it was like two blocks or
so to that club straight from work in like
my suit and well I wasn't wearing a blazer but just my suit pants and my
dress shirt and just like partied for like a few
hours yeah so that's a pretty random meaningless story but basically just
kind of I guess goes to show when people say that bankers work hard
and play hard this is kind of why bankers you know play hard after
you know they work and all that because they're just working so much all the
time and with whatever free time they'll have,
they'll usually just kind of drink their sorrows away. Anyway
on weekends we would start the day a bit later around 10 or 11 am
and usually the max number of hours worked on a weekend would be 20 hours
So in total, we're looking at a whopping 105 hours worked during the week
At JPM there was this thing called Intensity and it was where analysts and
associates would log their hours for the week
and then send it to their resource manager who would combine everything and
send a mass email to everyone in the group from the
analysts all the way to the managing directors and basically
from this weekly report you could see which analysts and associates were
working just crazy hours everywhere anywhere from 80
to 100 maybe even sometimes 110 hours and
10 to 20 hours during the weekends. This was always
super super interesting because you could just look at which analysts and
associates were just working 100, 110 hours during the week
and you know we would just be like damn "Eduardo is really getting wrecked right
now" and like "I know man" and we would just talk about it during lunch and of course
eventually at some point we would also become that analyst
that is working crazy hours. In terms of frequency, I would say that a super super
rough week like this where you're working 100 to 110 hours
might happen something like 10% to 20% of the time,
but I would also say that in a super super busy period where
you're on and very very intense live M&A deal,
you could be working for an entire month 90 to 100 hour weeks
Next up, let me tell you about my top three worst moments in banking
Before going into all this though I did want to add a small caveat and mention
that I actually did have a pretty positive experience overall in banking-
I actually don't regret at all going into the industry, learning what I
learned, working super long hours, you know it was
just part of the job and what I signed up for and that was always the
always the mentality that I had going into the job and so
yeah even though I'm going into my worst moments and everything it's not really
representative of the overall experience that I had
Alright with that, said drum roll please number one the time I slept
under a desk so during this time I was working on a super intense
live M&A deal with my associate it was just me and him left in the office
and it was around 7:00 am, I had finished my materials and sent it over to my
associate and he was checking over everything and I told him
you know I'm just gonna take a nap so I went under my desk
started sleeping and I think I woke he woke me up an hour later apparently
because I was snoring and he just told me to go home and you
know it's a bad day in banking when the assistants come in because they usually
come in before an hour before everyone else does and so
around 8 am they're like "hey good morning" and I was like
"Alright see you later" basically. Alright, number two: no protected weekends
for three months I remember there was a super super rough
stretch for a few months where a few analysts had just left the group
and that meant that we were just super super understaffed and so
for three months straight, all my protected weekends kind of
got blown up a little bit where I had to work in them and or maybe I just didn't
have one at all and so that was a pretty rough overall
stretch for me and like I said earlier on in the video, protected weekends are
just so so important they feel like it's like you're taking an entire week off
and so yeah that would excuse me
see just the thought of it is really just hurting my body
Anyway just to finish the thought I wasn't working crazy hours every single
weekend but just going through every single single
weekend and not being able to just have that
protected weekend for a few months straight was pretty tough
Alright last but not least, number three: working straight for 28 hours
I distinctly remember getting into the office at 9:00 am and leaving at 1 pm
not that day but the following day and that's why I can always kind of
remember in my head that I worked 28 straight hours if I forget the number
of hours I just think about those two time periods and just calculate it
and I was working on a pretty complex biotech DCF model
and we were starting with like the US population market sizing
to see how many patients would actually be able to buy this drug
and how many would be or what the total addressable population was
and then that was how we got our revenue then we would project out all costs and
things like that I think it was like a 15, 20 year long
DCF with probably over a hundred assumptions I was
doing something with Boolean modifiers and doing all this like complex stuff
and so I had to build the model super super quickly for an
upcoming presentation with the board of directors and so
yeah it was just a crazy scramble Now I know I may have scared off a lot
of you guys about investment banking but I do want to make clear that I have no
regrets spending my first few years out of
college in banking- I really still recommend the field to
anyone who wants to build a strong technical skill set
and build a strong foundation for finance and business overall-
I think that you know you have your tough moments in banking no matter like
where you're really working but overall I think it was just a huge
positive for my overall career and just for what I
learned and so I would try to also just stick to a lot
of the positives, a lot of the you know stuff I shared today was fun
interesting content that I just hope was interesting to listen to. With that said,
that concludes the video if you want to get some free Bitcoin or
free stocks then check out some of my links down in the description below
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chance to enter and win Alright with that said that concludes
the video I'm gonna go home and just pass out right away thank you so much as
always for watching hope to catch you in the next video,
thanks so much and peace out [Music]