This kind of horrible lifestyle is well-known to everyone applying for a job on Wall Street. Nevertheless, people still apply, and not out of desperation -- all of the successful applicants could get great jobs elsewhere.
There's no deceit here -- the investment banks clearly articulate what the lifestyle will be like, and people sign up for the pay. I know, I did an internship at Lehman Brothers and saw it firsthand -- people staying till 3am just to impress. I managed to keep my weekly hours under 40 by automating my job in Visual Basic, and then decided I wanted to make productivity tools for the general market instead of in-house.
I'm curious which processes you automated in VBA? I'm currently an analyst in an FP&A role. I use VB for a lot of things but I'm not sure I could automate that much of my job. I do a lot of smaller tasks, taking the time to write a macro for each one just doesn't seem to add value. Especially when processes change frequently. Perhaps IB is more suited for VBA automation.
It was pulling in coupon payment data from Bloomberg for an array of securities (by CUSIP number) and aggregating them to create a payment schedule for the combined portfolio.
There's no deceit here -- the investment banks clearly articulate what the lifestyle will be like, and people sign up for the pay. I know, I did an internship at Lehman Brothers and saw it firsthand -- people staying till 3am just to impress. I managed to keep my weekly hours under 40 by automating my job in Visual Basic, and then decided I wanted to make productivity tools for the general market instead of in-house.