So you want to be a banker. You’ve seen the comp, heard the prestige, maybe even watched Billions. But what do investment bankers actually do all day — and why does everyone both want this job and want to escape it?

Investment banking is one of the most common entry points into high finance. It’s also one of the least understood. If you’re in college and even vaguely interested in finance, someone’s probably told you to “go IB.” But most people can’t explain what that even means.

Investment banking sits at the origination point of the capital markets cycle—it’s where capital gets created, structured, and brought to market. Whether it’s helping a company raise money, go public, or sell itself, the banker’s job is to design the deal before anyone else touches it. This work typically falls into a few core categories:

Across all of this, you’re at the beginning of the flow—helping convert corporate ambition into structured capital that fuels everything downstream. Let’s now go into this in more detail.

At its core, investment banking is about helping companies raise money, sell themselves, or buy other companies—and making sure every deal goes through with minimal risk and maximum profit.

Contrary to popular belief, banking is not about investing your own capital. It’s about advising clients (usually big companies or private equity firms) on complex, high-stakes transactions.

Investment banking covers a range of high-stakes corporate finance activities, but most of the work falls into a few core buckets. In sell-side M&A, you’re advising a company that wants to sell itself or a division—your job is to run a competitive process, negotiate terms, and get the best possible valuation. On the buy side, your client is the acquirer, and you’re helping them evaluate a target, model synergies, and figure out how to structure the deal. In IPO advisory, you’re guiding a private company through the process of going public—positioning their story, building the investor deck, coordinating due diligence, and helping price the offering. Then there’s debt and equity issuance, where companies raise capital by selling bonds or stock. Bankers help structure and market those offerings, working with institutional investors to ensure the client gets the funding they need at the best possible terms. Across all of these, you’re part strategist, part salesperson, part spreadsheet assassin—and every deal is a puzzle that needs to get priced, polished, and closed.

This is when your client wants to sell their company or a business unit. You help them get the best price, negotiate terms, and manage the process from initial outreach to closing. Think: the company is the product, and you’re running the auction.

Less common for junior bankers, but similar idea: your client wants to acquire something. You help them value it, assess the strategic fit, and figure out how to finance it.

When a private company wants to go public, you’re the one helping them get ready for the big debut: crafting the story, modeling the numbers, prepping investor materials, and coordinating with lawyers, accountants, and the stock exchange.

Sometimes companies just want to raise capital—via issuing bonds (debt) or selling shares (equity). Your job is to help them structure the offering, price it, and market it to investors.

Not all bankers do the same job. Even within investment banking, there are different groups with distinct roles in the deal lifecycle. Here’s how to make sense of the internal map:

“We know the clients. We speak their language.”

Industry groups are organized by sector: Healthcare, Tech, Industrials, Energy, Consumer, etc. These bankers are on the front lines with clients — building relationships, pitching ideas, and staying close to CEOs and CFOs.

Their job is to understand the client’s business and needs — and then pull in product partners (like M&A or ECM) when a deal is on the table.

“We run the deal.”

M&A is a product group that specializes in executing buy-side and sell-side transactions. They’re the experts in deal structuring, valuation, negotiation tactics, and process management. This is where I spent my time during banking, and it can be a great technical training that will prepare you well for other roles on the buyside that revolve heavily around valuation and analysis.

When a company is buying or selling something, M&A steps in to:

If a deal is live, M&A is in the weeds making it happen — and doing 40 iterations of a merger model in the process.

“We bring the money to market.”

These teams help companies raise capital by issuing stock (ECM) or bonds/loans (DCM). They sit between coverage bankers and the trading floor, acting as the bridge between corporate clients and institutional investors.

Capital markets teams understand investor appetite, market windows, and pricing dynamics. They advise on timing, structure, and syndication.

Everyone works together when the deal’s live — but each group has a lane: Coverage knows the client, M&A runs the transaction, Capital Markets gets it funded.

You need all three to get the deal done.

The work product is where analysts live. Differentiating yourself here is all about demonstrating technical proficiency and knowing your way around how to model, value, and explain the facets of the deal. Here is what you will be expected to deliver on:

These are your client-facing slide decks that explain the rationale behind a transaction, summarize a company’s financials, and position the deal to internal committees or investors. They must be pixel-perfect—no extra spaces, no sloppy charts, no stray footnotes. You’re building narratives and trust. IB culture is level-12 absurdity when it comes to precision. Fonts, footnotes, column widths—you name it. If you’re not the kind of person who triple-checks their footers and nudges text boxes into perfect alignment, this job will break you.

I once spent 40 straight hours on a cross-border merger-of-equals. Nailed the model. Valuation tight. Slides clean. I thought I was done. It’s 4:42 AM and the MD overseeing the deal walks over, flips to the debt capacity slide, pulls a literal ruler out, lines it up to the page and goes: “Your right margins are off.”

Then he looks at me—fully cooked, dead behind the eyes—and says: “You’ve been busting your ass. Go home and get some sleep for a couple of hours. You can fix it in the ‘morning’.” And walks away.

From 3-statement models to LBOs and merger math, models forecast how a business is expected to perform and how a transaction is likely to affect its value. You’ll build these in Excel—sometimes from scratch, sometimes from templates—but always with high stakes. One bad cell = millions of dollars mispriced. I’ll be coming out with a whole section of articles on how to actually build these models, step-by-step and in plain english, so please make sure you sign up to get those updates.

This is the “what are similar companies worth?” part of the job. You’ll track public comps, precedent M&A transactions, trading multiples, and investor sentiment. It’s part research, part benchmarking, part storytelling.

Investment banking runs on hierarchy and lives and breathes by chain of command — not in theory, but in blood, sweat, and title formatting. Everyone has a role, and your life, your hours, and your inbox are largely dictated by where you sit.

It’s not a flat org. It’s a pyramid. And at the base? You.

“Human VLOOKUP. Email sponge. Font consistency vigilante.”

You’re here to grind. That’s the job.

This is the entry level role that undergrads come into. You build the models, update the decks, fix the typos, run the comps, re-run the comps, and respond to every “quick tweak” at 11:47pm on a Saturday night like it’s the World Cup final. Then you re-run the models, again.

Your main job? Make your Associate’s life easier.

Your unofficial job? Survive.

You will:

In a sense, you are the “machine room” of the bank. If it needs to get done, and fast, and at 2am, it’s yours. If it breaks, it’s your fault. If it works, no one says a word.

You’re not “busy” in the traditional sense — you’re staffed, which means your time isn’t fully your own. Banking isn’t a 9-to-5 job; it’s an output-driven environment where responsiveness and reliability matter just as much as raw hours. You may not be working every second, but you’re expected to be available and ready to act when deliverables move. As you get staffed on more deals, the workload can become intense, and managing competing timelines becomes one of the most important skills you’ll build. Here is an illustrative sense of what a “typical” day might look like:

7:30am – Wake up. Roll over. Check Slack and Outlook. You might have gotten a 2am email asking for updated comps. If not? Enjoy your brief, fleeting peace.

8:45am – Head into the office or log in from home (if your firm still allows it). Respond to a few “circling back” emails like they haven’t been sitting in your inbox since yesterday.

9:30am – Internal deal team call. MD speaks for 18 minutes, says nothing actionable. VP ends with: “Let’s tighten up the story — maybe a few backup pages on market feedback?” You know this means 25 more slides.

11:00am – Associate pings: “Do you have bandwidth to turn comments on the sponsor deck?” You say yes, because saying no is never actually an option.

1:00pm – Lunch at your desk. It’s Cava again. You no longer taste food, but the calories help you survive the next 10 hours.

2:00pm – Redline hell. A new slide needs to be created, but the MD wants it “in the style of Slide 6 from last month’s pharma pitch — but more ‘crisp.’”

5:00pm – VP sends a note: “Let’s send this to print by EOD.” You know that means midnight. You mentally cancel the gym session you weren’t going to do anyway.

8:30pm – Final pass on the deck. The font shifts mysteriously when you paste in Slide 17. You rage silently.

11:00pm – Book sent. You’re exhausted. MD replies: “Let’s regroup first thing tomorrow.”

12:15am – Bed. You dream in Excel. You wake up with anxiety about whether you saved the right file version.

Bottom Line: It’s not a 9-to-5 job. It’s an output-driven, team-based environment where deliverables and client timelines dictate your schedule. The best analysts stay organized, communicate bandwidth clearly, and build trust through consistency.

“Middle management meets wartime logistics.”

This is typically the role that recent MBA grads or really really good 3rd year associates are invited to come into. You’re the middle layer — managing analysts, reviewing their work, and translating MD/VP feedback into action. Effectively, the Associate is the glue between the junior chaos and senior pressure. Analysts report to you. VPs bark at you. 

On the plus side, you’re starting to own pieces of the process, run internal calls, making sure the decks go out, the models stay unbroken. You’re no longer just building the model—you’re reviewing it (and accountable for it), managing the analyst who built it, and still somehow on the hook if the model breaks. You translate the MD’s vision into action, the VP’s pressure into deliverables, and the analyst’s chaos into clean pages.

You will:

The Associate role is your first real exposure to execution leadership. You’re not just building—you’re managing people, deliverables, expectations, and time under pressure. You learn what rolls downhill, how to triage crises, and how to keep the train on the tracks. This is where you start earning your stripes.

And for those who make it through, it’s an invaluable apprenticeship — not just for banking, but for the buyside, investing, and any high-stakes role where clarity, speed, and precision matter.

“Your Schedule’s Puppet Master”

The Staffer is one of the most powerful people in your life as a junior banker.

Usually a senior Associate or VP, the Staffer’s job is to assign people to deals, pitches, client fire drills, and random “quick asks” that always seem to come in at 9:58pm on a Friday. They’re your unofficial project manager, resource allocator, and at times, your silent judge and executioner.

They don’t write your year-end review — but they absolutely shape it.

They know:

The Staffer is not your boss — but they do control your life. Handle that relationship well, and you’ll get better deals, more reps, and maybe even a shot at a live model. Screw it up, and you’ll be buried in sell-side pitch hell with no exit. Here are some tips on how to work with a staffer like a pro:

“Air traffic control meets execution quarterback.”

As a VP, you’re in the critical middle layer of banking leadership — no longer doing the work, not yet owning the client. You’re responsible for making sure the deal actually happens: the timelines hold, the decks get built, the calls run smoothly, and nothing slips through the cracks.

You sit at the intersection of execution and client exposure. That means managing the internal team — analysts and associates — while also running point with clients, lawyers, accountants, and internal committees. You’re the one fielding a thousand emails a day, coordinating deliverables, catching model issues before they become public mistakes, and making sure the MD isn’t blindsided on the call.

You will:

For many, VP is the first time they’re expected to not just manage deals, but to start thinking commercially: What are the client’s real objectives? Where’s the next opportunity? What’s our angle? How do we pitch (and try to win) new business?

“The Rainmaker. The Closer.”

This is the top of the pyramid. You’ve climbed through the analyst trenches, survived the associate middle layer, quarterbacked deals as a VP, and maybe even dodged some internal politics as a Director. Now you’re an MD — and the job is simple to describe, but brutal to execute: Bring in revenue. Or don’t come back.

You are no longer judged by your technical chops or ability to run process. You are judged entirely by your ability to originate, pitch, and close deals. That means turning relationships into mandates, mandates into transactions, and transactions into fees.

You will:

The best MDs tend to:

If you don’t generate revenue, you won’t last long. It doesn’t matter how great your Rolodex used to be. This is a what-have-you-closed-for-me-lately business. No deals = no bonus. Enough dry years = off the platform.

For some, MD is the dream — high pay, big clients, big stakes. For others, it’s where they tap out: too much travel, too many politics, not enough upside. Either way, it’s where you go from banker to franchise builder.

Here are some insights into the soft skill layer that defines the top of the pyramid and demystifies how great MD’s operate and how to survive a bad one.

The best MDs are strategic, situationally aware, and client-first. The worst ones are insecure, disorganized, or just trying to survive until comp season.

VP is about control. MD is about creation. One executes the roadmap. The other sells the vision and builds the road.

Want to be great in this business? Study the MDs who move with confidence, clarity, and restraint. Then reverse engineer their game.

Some people — a rare breed — become career bankers. They love the structure, the adrenaline, the client hustle, and yes, the comp. They rise through the ranks, build a coverage franchise, and stay in the game for decades. These are the “lifers”.

But for most, investment banking is a gateway. A proving ground. A launchpad to greener (and slightly saner) pastures.

After two years as an analyst (or a few more as an associate), the most common exits include:

So whether you stay or go, banking leaves its mark. It gives you reps, rigor, and access. It builds scar tissue — and career capital. The lifestyle may suck. But the exit options don’t.