As someone who went through a 2 year IB analyst program, no amount of money justifies the crap that goes into that job. It’s absolutely awful. I’m sure it was even worse during the pandemic, when there was nothing else to do except work. They have to raise salaries to prevent people from quitting from burn out. Most will quit anyway - the attrition at the junior ranks is insane.
This is true - those capital advisory, IB, private equity jobs are horrible — Answering calls at 12:30am - working till 1am and waking up at 5am to look at a spreadsheet is horrible.
My boss never slept and was always chasing money -had a Russian wife he never saw -
the carrot they dangle is the fat bonus - quarantine caused burnout because there was no place to escape -
I personally had a pipeline of $1BN in dealflow in 2020 - Burned out and quit in Jan 21 -
Spent 5 years doing this work and quarantine pushed me over the edge