Do MBB Employees Really Work That Much Less?
Anecdotally, the kids from my school who summered at MBB (BOS/NYC/SF) were working just as much if not more than the IB/PE kids (minimum 12 hour days at least 5 days per week). Pre-COVID, how many hours on average were consultants working?
The standard deviation for hours worked is higher in consulting, but unless you're on a due diligence you shouldn't expect to work Friday evenings or weekends. While I'd argue PE/IB tends to work later on days where they do work, you have to remember they also work weekends to a varying extent
In general, for MBB/T2 strategy consulting I'd expect ~60 hours/wk is average
I'll second this ^^^
My friend who interned at BCG during summer 2020 said the average hours/week of his intern class was 55. Most were in the 55-60 hour range, but he said some people worked 75 (PE Due diligence) and others worked 40. It's all dependent on the project you're staffed on. He also said they had no weekend work and got holidays (4th of July weekend, Juneteenth, etc).
i spoke with a couple of bain ACs recently - they were doing roughly 9-8, 9-9 on Mon-Thurs, and 9-5 on Fridays. That adds up to 50-55 hrs a week
I do think bain tends to have fewer hours than M or B, but it's not that much less - say 5 hrs on avg? making the avg at M/B around 55-60.
As mentioned above, the standard deviation is larger in consulting and workload is very project and office specific. At the junior level though, you'll work 20-30 hours less a week on average, although as you move up the ranks, the hours don't improve as much as in banking, especially given the travel requirement, especially at the partner level (at least pre-covid)
While it is not talked as much as banking on this forum, WFH has made Consulting hours unbearable too. As pointed out, hours are dependent on office and engagement types. Due Diligence projects are shorter but more intense while an Agile transformation project might be more chill (but definitely more boring lol). Pre-COVID I'd say 60 hours average + around 7 hours of travel (go to airport, wait at the gate, flight, drive to client site from hotel).
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