Why do investment bankers work insanely long hours?

Before you shout the obvious "beause they make 140k+ starting salary," read what I have to say below.

I've always wondered why many investment bankers, especially entry level are forced to work 80-100 hour weeks. As far as I can tell, the only effect this has is to make them completely ineffective at work and draw in people who are more interested in money than in what they are actually doing.

There have been numermous studies that show that when people work those kind of hours, their work exhibits low quality as they are always tired and do not have the attention span to focus.

Also by making the job so tough that the only reward is the high salary, the people drawn into the industry are people more interested in the money than the science of finance.

I postulate that if the banks hired more people and worked them 55 hours per week and paid them less accordingly they would get employees who are less money motivated and do higher quality work.

Do any banks do this?

Ignore the previous poster, she has no idea what ibankers do. Investment banking is a sales job where the item they're trying to sell (for example, a smaller public company) has limited quantities, fluctuating price tag, and targeted potential buyers.

The entry-level bankers are basically number crunchers who type in financial information in a spreadsheet, modify numerical assumptions to make the product attractive, edit presentations, and other mindless work.

The reason they work so much is because:
1) the deadline for ANY project is always "2 days ago, and you're not done yet?"
2) intricacies of the financial models is usually understood only by the creators, which means its actually less efficient to have 2 people working 55 hr shifts because a lot of time will be spent on teaching the other person what has been done to the models.
3) the hours are "face time." A good bit of analysts' time is waiting for the associate to proof read the comps, the VP to ok the presentation, the client to call etc etc.
4) Bankers are busy only when they're working on a deal. When they're not workign on a deal, 50~60 hr work weeks can be expected (although not for long, short work load = bad business = layoffs)

I know a few middle market firms' analysts who only work 60~70 hrs a week. If you want manageable hours, stay away from the bulge brackets.

This job involves a lot of presure. And since ur dealing with people's money, the paper work shud b perfect and up to date. Dats the reason y bankers work so long. Coz in the daytime they are busy completing their targets and in the evenings doing the paper work. Also the documents are audited anytime. Dats one more reason y they work so long. Just to b up to date

omg and i want to be an investment banker. i dont know if i can commit to 70-80 hours a week. hmm... what should i do....good pay but not worth dying for.

$140K to start is nothing. Senior I-bankers make unprintable sums of money. To be one of those chosen few you need strong sales skills, a reasonable but not exceptional head for business, and an overwhelming desire to make unprintable sums of money. Having a gift for the science of finance doesn't really apply. (Those types tend towards sales and trading or the buy side.) Needless to say, there is an inexhaustible supply of people willing and able to be junior bankers in the hope of becoming a senior banker. And the nature of the work the junior people do is such that being a little groggy doesn't have much of an impact.

So the senior guys (and occasionally gals) who run the show can get away with anything they like. And they like to have a smaller number of people working crazy hours rather than a larger number working reasonable ones for three reasons. 1) Smaller numbers of people are easier to manage 2) The business is very cyclical and you are likely to go through dry periods when a large staff would be unprofitable. 3) It's a good way to find those individuals who are most bloodthirsty and obsessed about making the firm more money. After all, a system that got the bank "employees who are less money motivated" would be rather counter-productive. This is Wall Street.