I would like to know what time you start in the morning and finish at night.Also, do you stop for lunch or eat a sandwich in front of the screen?Is the dinner paid by the firm at night if you stay? What about the cab to go home, who pays it?What about friday? I read in many posts that friday tends to be a shorter day. Is any of you staying till midnight also on friday?Please reply specifying the firm you work for.I would interested in the Big 4, ACN, MBB, Atos, LEK, ATK, IBM, Mercer.ThanksP.S. What about if you travel and/or are at the client side. Maybe in that case you do more normal times (i.e by 8 pm you are back at the hotel?!)

<i>I would like to know what time you start in the morning and finish at night.</i>Depends on project stage and the timezones I&apos;m working across. Currently, I have a 3:30-4:00am daily telcon with the team in Japan, then back to bed for a couple of hours. Start in the UK office at 08:00 or so, through to 16:00 when the intensity of emails and calls drops off. Head home early to avoid the rush hour then work with the US team from home until 23:00. When I&apos;m on the bench, hours are more like 10:00-16:00 + socialising (if there&apos;s definite work on the horizon) or 09:00-21:00 (if proposals need writing to win work).<i>Also, do you stop for lunch or eat a sandwich in front of the screen? </i>Sandwich in front of the screen unless there&apos;s a client dinner.<i>Is the dinner paid by the firm at night if you stay? What about the cab to go home, who pays it?</i>If you stay after 9pm, you can claim up to £10 so. Cabs home are only chargeable if you&apos;re working on a client site where that&apos;s the only way to get back.<i>What about friday? I read in many posts that friday tends to be a shorter day. Is any of you staying till midnight also on friday? </i>Friday is similar to other weekdays, but that&apos;s more because I tend to push it out on Friday so that I can have a clear weekend.<i>What about if you travel and/or are at the client side.</i>If I&apos;m on the client site, hours are more likely to be 08:00-21:00, then a couple of hours back at the hotel. If there&apos;s no internet connection at the hotel, then I might stay in the office until 23:00.

Nice. 4.5 hours of uninterrupted sleep.Remind me which firm this is again so I can add it to my poop list and make sure I periodically remind myself to avoid them? Is the clue in the name (DC)?

This is why the UK does so well financially - not only because it bridges timezones geographically, but because it&apos;s accepted that you work across other regions&apos; timezones.Whatever the yanks say about working longer than the brits, they&apos;ll only do it on US time.

Thanks DCThat was very insightful. Apart the early morning time, 9am-9pm is not bad at all and I understand that is 9pm only when deadlines are approaching.What firm do you work for? Can you also specify your level and salary? In other words I hope you get lots of money to sleep 4.5hrs without interruption!!Anyone else to share her/his experience

If you are working those type of hours you need to 1. look at your personal organisation, 2. review you planning and 3. punch your engagement manager and partner repeatedly until they learn to sell jobs properly.Any more than 45 hrs a week is for mugs and the terminally disorganised

Well put, &apos;Get a grip&apos;!!

Get a grip, I think you need to get real!45 hrs a week in consulting is a dream unless you are a PA!If you are lucky u do 50 on average, that means there will be period you do 60+I do 9.30am-9pm monday-thursday, 8am-9pm thursday and 8am-6pm on friday and I consider myself lucky.

...not a dream at all. The reality of my consulting career over the past 8 and a bit years. Of course there are times, like in all jobs, where you need to stick your nose to the grindstone for a bit longer but, the vast majority of the time it&apos;s 45 hours a week.I honestly can&apos;t understand what people are doing for 55-60hrs a week with any regularity

Well said. I&apos;ve done regular 12 to 14 hours daily including weekends but honestly, when things are well planned and no crazy deadlines, I do 8 hrs without a feel of guilt or questions asked...

There&apos;s a difference between a facetime culture and the culture of putting in whatever hours and effort are necessary to get the job done. With both end up you end up working 60 hours, but one is a lot healthier than the other.Unfortunately, with the growth of Big 4 "consulting", there are a lot more consultants who aren&apos;t directly connected to the client&apos;s value chain. It&apos;s completely rational in those circumstances to push back and say you&apos;ll only work 45 hours a week, because it makes no difference to the end result.I dread the day I end up in that kind of firm, or so cynical about my own work that I start to consider consulting to be a 9-5 job.

sounds like we have some true masochists in the room... glad i don&apos;t work for some of you lot

Yeah, the ones on here who cream themselves as they&apos;re MBBB should take a long hard look at their pathetic lives. 9/10 of you will do less than 3 years at these firms yet somehow proclaim you&apos;re better than consultants who make a proper career of consulting when all you can do is make PP slides and Excel models. Consulting is a people business. If you&apos;re working twice as long as the people you work for then you&apos;re just wanking about with stuff for the sake of it to try and look smart. How about act smart and spend your life focussing on the 10% of things that are important and doing them well instead of acting the hard man doing 80-90 hours a week for nobody&apos;s benefit.

For me it varies.Today I finished at 5pm.Last week I was working 16 hrs a day between the office and home.When you travel you tend to work less and by 8pm you are at the hotel.Anyway it&apos;s the weekend folks and I got paid!!

Frankly, no consulting firm pays enough to be working over 60hrs a week.Personally I am

Should have read, personally i am not. work 45 hrs a week. If i wanted to work double that i&apos;d want double the money. simple.

OK so you know that head-hunters are regularly infiltrating this site so please forgive me. A comparison for you. I work a fairly standard week (8-6) as a norm. However, the phone is on constantly and I do a lot of out of hours stuff. As our pay is variable and dependent largely on the revenue we bring in, my rule of thumb is that I only put in the extra hours if it is going to make me money. I cannot for the life of me understand why people would put in ridiculous hours just to impress a boss who could leave the company tomorrow. The irony of the supposed intellectual elite allowing themselves to be manipulated and used in this way has never been lost on me.

I work for a small firm, on client site and generally work 08:30 - 16:30 five days with no weekend working.As some have said, if I worked longer, I would expect additional pay or TOIL.

The reality is that you have to work 60+ hours per week as an analyst just to progress. Consultancies take advantage of analysts and junior consultants, paying them a very low wage per hour because the pool of potential candidates is so high. In the long-term, acceptance of the face-culture and unpaid overtime is difficult to comprehend. However, for 2-3 years, the experience gained significantly enhances lifetime earnings. After three years you can go into PE for significantly more cash or jump in at FTSEs above people who have spent similar time on their grad schemes.Gotta think long-term, if you consider what you are giving for what you are getting ona short-term basis, its wrist-slittingingly depressing

Ok FolksWhy don&apos;t you put your average weekly working hrs, your salary and the firm you work for so we have a better idea.The following is me: 50hrs-55K-ACN

£45K, 37.5 hrs, EDS

60hr-65K-Deloitte

£31,350, Acn, 45-50hrs

£41k, 40hrs, Capgemini

45 hours, £31, Deloitte

75hr / 80K / Mck

90K - 80hrs - BCG

Would also be really useful if you guys posted what positions you are in, and how long it took to get there with your current firm

Perhaps a pertinent question would be hours &apos;usefully worked&apos; with pay, hours and position.I suspect that you&apos;d find the ACN posse do quite well under that metric since the hours of productive, value-adding work that these cowboys generate is infinitesimally small. Any of you intellectually challenged project management people to discuss?ZB

"£45K, 37.5 hrs, EDS"==> About 20 hours of actual work done in a week. Seriously.

55hrs / 55K / ATK

anyone know roughly how much you would be on your second year at MBB from undergrad?I&apos;m guessing all in about 60k, is this reasonable?

anyone??

Seems like an approximate formula for the annual salary in consulting is:(No. of hours expected to be worked per week) * 1000e.g. If you are going to be working 60 hours weeks then you will get 60k per annum

This is a really useful thread as I am wondering the same things. Can anyone shed any light on hours worked forPWC - StrategyDeloitte / E&Y / KPMG - CDDOC&CCommercial AdvantageBoth an average and a quiet vs heavy week would be appreciated.For the record, I am on £40, have been here for 18 months and work 50 hrs / wk for a boutique strat firm.Thanks guys,

Mck,60k is too high, more like 45-50k

Wow, there really are some masochists here. I was working as a senior consultant for a specialist boutique firm, doing about 40 hrs per week for 45K. I recently moved to a manager role at a much larger mainstream firm for 61K, still working about 40hrs per week. Of course there&apos;s the occasional week of 50+ hrs, but only when there are big deadlines. I really wouldn&apos;t want an extra 20K if it meant I were never able to see my family.

To the above: which firms are you talking about? What strategy consultancy firms work below 50 hrs x wk? This sounds too good to be true!

If you&apos;re referring to my post (the one immediately before yours) then you should note that I don&apos;t work in strategy...

Deloitte, 60k, 43hr+10travel (average). How many hrs per week into travel is important guys.

PA, £45K, 40 hrs

40k EUR, 60 h (incl. travel), 4th tier unknown firm.

IBM £65k + car + bonus, 45 hours a week

75k+car+bonus - 45 hours Deloitte- last year it was 60 hoursall depends on the client, industry and project

hey bob (deloitte), how many years experience out of uni do you have, and what level are you at the green dot?

To the post"Wow, there really are some masochists here. I was working as a senior consultant for a specialist boutique firm, doing about 40 hrs per week for 45K. I recently moved to a manager role at a much larger mainstream firm for 61K, still working about 40hrs per week. Of course there&apos;s the occasional week of 50+ hrs, but only when there are big deadlines. I really wouldn&apos;t want an extra 20K if it meant I were never able to see my family."What specialist boutique firm were you working for?

question is would you have 60 hours 75k + car + bonus in consulting or 40 hours in industry 68k + car + bonus and bonus is about double in industry on average?

How many cliche&apos; on here.Mikey, who told you that the bonus is higher outside cosultancy?I used to work at BT in managerial roles and the highest bonus I got was 15% from the base 10%. Even the 10% is not guaranteed since it&apos;s linked to the company performance.Since I moved to consultancy 3 years ago I averaged 23% bonus and last year got 30%.

37.5 hrs £60k + car

MacD, are you a fellow EDSer?? Either way, give us some for info, please.