[jpz]

I've worked all through many London investment banks, mainly front office tech, I have rarely seen traders working weekends, and I was not compelled to work many hours greatly exceeding 40-ish.

I don't know what these jobs are that they are talking about that are greater than 60 hours. I've seen a little of it maybe in the mergers and acquisitions side of things.

[JumpCrisscross]

> have rarely seen traders working weekends

Traders don't work these hours. Bankers do.

As the old joke goes, a bank trusts young bankers with PowerPoint, young traders with its balance sheet. A sleepy trader could lose the bank millions. A sleepy analyst might, at worst, typo a spreadsheet that gets reviewed by an associate. Banks are incentivized to avoid sleepless traders in a way they aren't with analysts. Also, exchanges shut down at night--nobody is gaining an edge by staying up until 3AM. (Counterfactual: FX.)

(Disclaimer: I chose trading over banking. Mostly because the people were more fun. But being able to go home at 6PM on Friday, having put in your 60 hours, and turn off until 6AM on Monday was no small matter, either.)

[MereInterest]

> But being able to go home at 6PM on Friday, having put in your 60 hours

I know you are phrasing this as a better sign, but even here, I would see 60 hours/week as extreme overwork. I started tracking my hours to get a sense for how much I work in a typical week, and found that both my quality of output and my emotional state are impacted greatly by the number of hours. At 40-50 hours/week, everything is pretty reasonable. I can do 50-65 hours/week in short bursts, but not over a prolonged period. 80 hour weeks are barely possible, and will leave me absolutely shot at the end of the week, and the following week will be spent recovering from the overwork.

(Side note, my personal tracking has only gone down to a minimum of 40 hours/week, but it would be interesting to track productivity with a shorter work day/week as well.)

[JumpCrisscross]

To each their own. I’m now in a role where my workload oscillates between 30 and 60-something hours a week. I love it, and I like the bursts, though there is recovery.

After a year or two, in trading, that sixty goes down to 50. After some more time it goes down to 40 or so. That said, those hours are work. They are intense and stressful and horrible for one’s nerves and health.

I left trading after my boss, a trim middle-aged man (I assumed) with extensive balding and some cardiac history, celebrated his thirty-second birthday.

[maest]

British work culture is more relaxed than the very intense US approach.

Also, traders work very little outside of market hours. It's usually IB analysts that burn through weekends and late nights when working on deals.