From Quora, the OP asked the come doubt : An anonymous bill poster provides the following answer :
As for me, I worked at Goldman Sachs in investment bank for a bit before running off to the buy-side. I did not leave because I disliked GS, but it was just what everyone did.
200 West Street, Goldman Sachs World Headquarters Looking back on it, I am grateful that I did my time with Goldman Sachs and, if I had to repeat everything, I would do it again without reluctance. The things you learn in investment banking extend far beyond bare corporate valuation or fiscal model. The biography skills you learn are invaluable, for better or for worse. #1: The Hours & Compensation
Hours are barely a badly as everybody says. cipher ‘s kidding when they say that bankers ( analysts at least ) work on median 80-90 hours per week, with many of those weeks extending to 100+. It takes a certain brain to get through this all right, but once you’re used to the hours it no longer is something you detest. certain, sometimes it absolutely sucks ( friends down in the city, you ca n’t hang out because you have to work ), but for the most part you stop fighting against it because it ‘s a futile battle. I adopted the mentality of “ my life is all about function from nowadays until the end of my analyst gig ” and it was approve from then on. I guess, for me, what besides helped me get me through it all was knowing there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and opportunities to escape into a much better, more honor life. I besides knew that many of my friends worked less than I but earned far less and had to worry about good fiscal constraints. While I did n’t earn that much, I had car service at night and a dinner allowance that I occasionally used to buy the next day ‘s lunch equally well – as a leave, outside of rend I did n’t have many expenses. I ‘m not going to cite figures for recompense, but it was generous. however, while many people say bankers are badly overpaid, I ‘d say that ‘s a phenomenon reserved for people in higher positions. Analysts tend to view year-end bonuses as ‘accrued recompense, ‘ or wage we claw back because we worked so many hours through the year. GS had three buckets ( high performers, average guys, poor people performers ) which made rival within the analyst class pretty chiseled. That undermined the spirit of teamwork that management tries to instill within all of us, but it was not a big enough bargain to cause any real friction between analysts. #2: Culture and Work
While I have had brief stints at other banks ( internships for the most share ) I would say that Goldman ‘s culture is the best out of the bulge brackets ( the biggest banks like Bank of America Merrill Lynch or J.P. Morgan ), but it does not stack up to the culture that is touted by “ elect boutique ” firms ( e.g. Blackstone Advisory, Centerview Partners ), where analysts are expected to stay for the long test.
Goldman recently abandoned the biennial analyst plan mannequin that has become therefore prevailing on Wall Street, alternatively trying to convince new talent to commit to investment banking for the long function. This may change the mentality of incoming analyst classes for the better, and hopefully the culture will improve from there. It will likely take some time though. Knowing that your stint will be over in a few years and that you will finally leave is a strange expectation when entering a caper. I guess it felt like fair another internship for me – two years of anguish followed by the promise of a buyside speculate and a set of money. As a consequence, analysts are work identical hard and forced to put in very long hours and do a batch of function, as detailed earlier. however, investment bank is not all bad. The work I did, while largely mundane or useless, can sometimes prove to be very interesting. The people I worked with were extraordinary, and many of them can be considered the best in the world at what they do. VPs and MDs typically have their own offices, the huge majority of which have exposed door policies, meaning they are more than willing to talk to you at any time. People outside of your group – complete strangers – would be happy to sit down and talk if you schedule a meeting with them. Everybody is courteous, down-to-earth, and focused on work. It can sometimes be a very high coerce environment to work in, specially when there are a big measure of deliverables that need to be completed in a shortstop total of fourth dimension. People are more than willing to help if you ask, and identical understanding of any problems that may come up. however, it is by no means a light standard atmosphere, and many people sit staring at the screen with headphones in, focused wholly on shape. There is little friendly chatter and most conversations center on work-related subjects. That may be different in other groups – my group was quite focused though. Something that our managers stressed very heavily was to not make the lapp error twice, and to escalate all questions – they ‘d preferably you ask a stupid question than make a dazed err. Errors are n’t treated lightly, and so investment bank is not for those who have low attention to detail. Pitch decks go through hundreds of revisions before they pass timbre standards, with fixes ranging from fiddling things like formatting to critical changes like altering model inputs or output pages. Goldman ‘s perks are o – car service, late-night dinner compensation, etc. lunch and breakfast can be expensive when bought in the cafeteria, and the unblock coffee bean is disgusting. overall I would recommend Goldman as a springboard into something else, but not a place to stay indefinitely. possibly entering as an consociate could yield different results, but I can not imagine going through many more years of the brutality that a job in bank entails.
While it may seem like an obvious choice for some to take the 100 hr/wk, high-paying finance job over the 40 hr/wk low-paying job after gradation, very few do not feel pangs of repent as they ‘re a year and a one-half into the banking stretch, standing over the ruins of fail relationships ( it ‘s impossible to date as an analyst, do n’t even try ) staring at piles of knead to finish. It’s hard to truly appreciate what an opportunity it actually is until after you ‘ve moved on. I hope this avail. comment below if you have any questions. Best of luck !