Late Nights

Hey all -

Sorry for the infrequent posts. Next time I get put on a team managing $700 billion I'll have done this before so I'll know how to handle the pressure and time commitments better :). Things are crazy and stressful, but I feel confident that we're moving in the right direction with what we have to work with. I'm learning a ton and am having a blast out here.

Anyway, I wanted to write a post about what it's like to work for 100 hours a week. This is one of those things that you hear a lot about, but it's hard to know what it's like until you've done it. That said, I'll take a shot at describing it. Current bankers can add comments to correct/augment anything I say.

When I first started banking this summer I was so excited and motivated to perform well that I actually looked forward to my first really late night. It came on a Thursday if I remember right. It was about 9:40 PM and I was reading through some primer on the Oil and Gas industry. An associate came over to my desk to see what I was up to and then asked me if I would "help him go through a few things." That translated into going through spreadsheets filled with data and checking all the numbers in them to make sure they were consistent throughout a 100-page pitch book.

Because I was so "gunner" I was excited to "jam" for a few hours. I finished up around 2am and felt great. I was a real banker - working late into the night, coming out onto the street and grabbing a black car as some random tourists watched.

Well this whole attitude soon left after it happened six days in a row. I began to see that it wasn't an anomaly to stay until 2am, but it was normal. When you start to work 100 hours a week or more, things inside you start to change. I could literally feel my brain slowing down toward the end of the week. After a few days/weeks you start to lose track of what day it is. The only way to tell is by what clothes people wear. When you see a VP wearing flip flops you know you are in the weekend (but you won't know if it's Saturday or Sunday).

It's just a strange feeling that comes over you. Your whole life is suddenly regimented. You don't do anything except work. You wake up, take a shower, find some clothes and a new tie, then head to work. You work all day long, get yelled at and build models till the middle of the morning, then you head home. You get home, fall in bed, then wake up and do it all over again. It's a weird cycle to be in because you start to feel like there's nothing else in your life. I guess it's true, but it's just a weird feeling to experience it.

I thought it would be really hard to work that much, but it's not that bad. Physically your body just makes the adjustment and you keep going. You're usually always kind of tired, but I was surprisingly less tired than I expected that I would be. I would imagine that after two years your body wouldn't "handle it" as well as mine did during the internship, but it wasn't too bad.

The hard parts are mental. You have to force yourself to work really hard for many many hours every week. Plus, you never know when you'll be able to leave and do something else besides banking. It's the uncertainty that's hard, not the long hours. You can't plan things in advance very well because when you do the associate will dump stuff on your desk again.

Now that my hours at Treasury are trending back towards the banking summer hours, I'm starting to remember the feeling. It's 2:15 am right now and I'm going strong. When the time comes for you all to get into banking, don't be afraid of the long hours. It's helpful to remember that while you are working the equivalent of two jobs, you are also learning a ton more than your friends who are working 40-50 hours a week.

Sorry if this is rambling and not helpful. If it sucked, just blame the long hours!