"AI is not going to get rid of 18 hour days for investment bank analysts."

I've spent years working in M&A at a top US bank. Thanks to AI, things that used to take analysts multiple weeks will soon take a matter of hours. This doesn't mean investment banking will suddenly become a 9 to 5.

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Those long hours are simply how the industry works and how you're trained. There will always be more things to do and more clients to win. If you're a junior working in finance, you naturally want to do more than everyone else, to win deals and work on profitable desks. That means working 18 hour days, with or without AI. 

Managing directors (MDs) will expect more of you when this work becomes easier too. They'll want to hold more meetings with clients and they'll ask you to conduct much more in-depth analysis. All this means for them is that a meeting that once took 10 days to schedule can now take two or three days; they'll expect the same output. 

That's not to say conditions won't improve. Hours will get slightly better, but not dramatically. I just don't see a world where analysts will uniformly finish at 8pm.

Said Kamali is a pseudonym.

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