Done a few, 0/5 stars, would not recommend. As the poster above notes, after the second night on the bounce things start to get challenging. At the end of one particularly long deal and an all nighter i found myself , mid afternoon at a closing, unable to remember anything in the short term and had to write down every word that was said to me on a piece of paper. A few nights kip fixed that. Wouldn’t do it again without equity.
Really late ones and really heavy weeks are 💯 worse at home because no banter per Davos and literally no one to talk to. But working until midnight because of the odd thing better from home because it is 10 meters to bed at the end not a taxi home and no commute to drag yourself up for in the am.
The absolute shitter though wfh is when you finish heavy weeks or close things out you have f all team “yay we’re done” moment, no drinks, no brief moment to take respite together and use that healthy mechanism of 3 bottles of wine to release - it’s just like cool back at my desk to the 500 emails that piled up while I was working on that thing.
i feel sad for people who had big career milestones through this - not being able to celebrate and take stock of hard work just changing your email footer and being invited to more Management meetings lol.
As someone who during their training contract worked a lot of late Fridays, a 10 pm Friday finish would feel a lot worse than a big night Tuesday or Wednesday finish for this reason. The office would be completely empty save for me and a couple of associates and one partner in my team.
the company of colleagues and takeaway makes up for 10-20% of the shittiness of working late
I don’t mind an all nighter when you’re really into the work. This of course never arises in law but I’ve done enjoyable all nighters in strategy and in academic work.
Far too many all nighters across the years. Would I choose to do it? No. However, the nature of the beast for certain types of work. For me, an all nighter from home wins hands down - at least you can grab sth healthy (or not) to eat, freshen up and, if there is a lull, lie down to power nap (contrast this with using a white book as a head rest on a desk as a trainee to power nap and feeling decidedly less than fragrant after a hard night’s slog in the office where the cleaners think you are an early bird and make a show of vacuuming the office when you are still trying to get a deal over the line). You run on empty until the deal is done, then crash and burn when you next have a full night’s sleep.
There's no glory in working an all nighter, per se, but there's also no glory in boasting you've never done so. In certain kinds of job, if you choose to do them, it's expected from time to time. End of.
I knew some equity shunters who on occasion would do an all nighter. But generally I agree, and that’s my point, I wouldn’t do them now in a law firm. If it was a start up I had skin in then I would.
Quite right on the no glory comment. Sometimes they happen - deadlines are sometimes real - and unpredictability is one of the reasons that quite junior people are paid quite a lot of money. There are always options to avoid it but equally those options have consequences.
I have never done an all nighter but I spent a few years in a firm where they were expected. And I did plenty of late nighters on "deals" with "deadlines". The "deals" were invariably the fevered product of some banker's w4nk fantasy. The "deadlines" always emerged from a circle j3rk meeting where everyone worked themselves into a competitive frenzy. Of course the entire structure was artificial - there was never any real deadline.
I politely declined the all-night bit. And the late nights weren't for me.
In short: NO FVCKING THANK-YOU.
I now work in a firm which actively reviles this culture. We are, unsurprisingly, more productive and therefore more profitable.
I did one last week ( the first for about 20 years and only my second). As someone commented above purely the result of bankers wanc fantasy and n reality a total waste of time.
I once did 4 hours sleep in a 60 hour stretch. That wasn't pleasant.
I then slept for 18 hours straight and my mates thought I might have died (I was so tired I just went into a very deep sleep and didn't hear the phone or the doorbell).
Inhumane really and nothing to be proud of.
How many of these firms that gladly do all nighters (and put people through them) also post on LinkedIn and their website about how mental health and work/life balance are key values for those firms?
The hypocrisy is staggering. You think that they would at least qualify their commitment to mental health as being subject to the assumption that this will not impact on partner profits...
Take your holiday, get rest, except not then, or then. Oh your paternity leave falls over that period, well can you just... We care about you, except this still needs to get done.
All you can do is be the best you can to those more junior to you and try and change the tide.
Yes done a few in my time. Completely unjustified but client's often think they are terribly important.
The last one was quite unsettling as around 4AM I started seeing giant mice. The mice were friendly just pottering round the office floor....Went to bed after that.
I think the only people who boast about/get a rush from all nighters are juniors who initially find it exciting or others with nothing better to do with their time. Most people are Owls or Larks - Larks generally struggle more. The reality is most of us are at the beck and call of clients (service) and if you factor in £££chasing colleagues who don’t manage expectations/don’t give fig for anyone else in their immediate or wider team, tools on the other side who do last minute doc dumps of varying quality’s , cross-border time differences, complexity etc. transactional work at most larger firms or urgent applications (once only and a first for the barristers, all nighter drafting in barrister’s chambers between hearings in different courts) can rarely be compartmentalised into normal hours. I don’t think it is a too senior to deal issue - I am more likely to send juniors home than keep them as admin support (no need for everyone to feel the pain) - but the more experienced you are more likely to be able to push back/manage expectations.
Back in the day before t’internet, juniors on all nighter would be carrying out such vital tasks as colouring in a bar chart at 3 am. And that was just the bankers.
Worked an all-nighter in the Mount Pleasant sorting office once. Was quite merry actually, good camaraderie. Oh and another one inserting label holders into shelves at the Tesco superstore on the Cromwell Road. Actually quite tough.
I'd vote for home. The key I found to all-nighters was eating regular meals like it was a regular day every 4-5 hours, which would be much easier at home.
If nothing else has improved over the years at least people on here regard working all night as stupid, unhealthy and counterproductive, rather than some crappy badge of honour.
I don't think I have ever done it. Night shifts etc aren't the same since you are still only working 12 hours or whatever. I think I once agreed to cover some nights at short notice so went home at about 3pm, rested and came back to work for 8pm. I used to stay up the day before nights anyway so I'd have been awake 24hrs before going to sleep. Wouldn't do that (nor nights) now.
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Horrific. In either. Never done it
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Have done a four nighter, once. Think it would be worse doing it at home
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I have never done this and never will
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"Have done a four nighter, once"
Wtaf this sort of thing triggers psychosis
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Have you ever been in a situation where it was expected? “No I’m off home” seems like a difficult response
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Linda - I slept a bit each night, just on a sofa at work. It was necessary due to a product safety issue
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yeah you lose the ability to function on the second night
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Getting people to work round the clock doesn't seem the ideal way to resolve a safety issue. More like create one
i have spent my career carefully not being in a job that would involve anyone ever asking me to work these kind of hours
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It happened once in the course of ten years at that employer - I was more than happy to do it given the circumstances
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I got five days leave and 500 quid as a thank you, which helped
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Much worse at home. No banter, no one to drink with.
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Never done one, never will.
HTH
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Done a few, 0/5 stars, would not recommend. As the poster above notes, after the second night on the bounce things start to get challenging. At the end of one particularly long deal and an all nighter i found myself , mid afternoon at a closing, unable to remember anything in the short term and had to write down every word that was said to me on a piece of paper. A few nights kip fixed that. Wouldn’t do it again without equity.
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Really late ones and really heavy weeks are 💯 worse at home because no banter per Davos and literally no one to talk to. But working until midnight because of the odd thing better from home because it is 10 meters to bed at the end not a taxi home and no commute to drag yourself up for in the am.
The absolute shitter though wfh is when you finish heavy weeks or close things out you have f all team “yay we’re done” moment, no drinks, no brief moment to take respite together and use that healthy mechanism of 3 bottles of wine to release - it’s just like cool back at my desk to the 500 emails that piled up while I was working on that thing.
i feel sad for people who had big career milestones through this - not being able to celebrate and take stock of hard work just changing your email footer and being invited to more Management meetings lol.
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what londonhead sed
As someone who during their training contract worked a lot of late Fridays, a 10 pm Friday finish would feel a lot worse than a big night Tuesday or Wednesday finish for this reason. The office would be completely empty save for me and a couple of associates and one partner in my team.
the company of colleagues and takeaway makes up for 10-20% of the shittiness of working late
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*midnight on Tues/Weds
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Never worked an all nighter but did a lot of working until midnight and then back in at 7am the next morning. It was soul destroying.
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I don’t mind an all nighter when you’re really into the work. This of course never arises in law but I’ve done enjoyable all nighters in strategy and in academic work.
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A four nighter is nuts but when younger I’ve done a two nighter (in law). Law all nighters are surely better in the office.
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“wouldn’t do it again without equity”
Nobody with equity does all nighters! They’re what you do to get equity.
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I've been sitting at this desk for 21 hours already :(
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Far too many all nighters across the years. Would I choose to do it? No. However, the nature of the beast for certain types of work. For me, an all nighter from home wins hands down - at least you can grab sth healthy (or not) to eat, freshen up and, if there is a lull, lie down to power nap (contrast this with using a white book as a head rest on a desk as a trainee to power nap and feeling decidedly less than fragrant after a hard night’s slog in the office where the cleaners think you are an early bird and make a show of vacuuming the office when you are still trying to get a deal over the line). You run on empty until the deal is done, then crash and burn when you next have a full night’s sleep.
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There's no glory in working an all nighter, per se, but there's also no glory in boasting you've never done so. In certain kinds of job, if you choose to do them, it's expected from time to time. End of.
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I knew some equity shunters who on occasion would do an all nighter. But generally I agree, and that’s my point, I wouldn’t do them now in a law firm. If it was a start up I had skin in then I would.
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Quite right on the no glory comment. Sometimes they happen - deadlines are sometimes real - and unpredictability is one of the reasons that quite junior people are paid quite a lot of money. There are always options to avoid it but equally those options have consequences.
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I have never done an all nighter but I spent a few years in a firm where they were expected. And I did plenty of late nighters on "deals" with "deadlines". The "deals" were invariably the fevered product of some banker's w4nk fantasy. The "deadlines" always emerged from a circle j3rk meeting where everyone worked themselves into a competitive frenzy. Of course the entire structure was artificial - there was never any real deadline.
I politely declined the all-night bit. And the late nights weren't for me.
In short: NO FVCKING THANK-YOU.
I now work in a firm which actively reviles this culture. We are, unsurprisingly, more productive and therefore more profitable.
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Done far too many, but not for a few years. Would not recommend. Passed out on two occasions as a trainee and had to be gently sent home...
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I did one last week ( the first for about 20 years and only my second). As someone commented above purely the result of bankers wanc fantasy and n reality a total waste of time.
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I once did 4 hours sleep in a 60 hour stretch. That wasn't pleasant.
I then slept for 18 hours straight and my mates thought I might have died (I was so tired I just went into a very deep sleep and didn't hear the phone or the doorbell).
Inhumane really and nothing to be proud of.
How many of these firms that gladly do all nighters (and put people through them) also post on LinkedIn and their website about how mental health and work/life balance are key values for those firms?
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Wilbur - probably all of them
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wilbur - the answer is many firms do this.
The hypocrisy is staggering. You think that they would at least qualify their commitment to mental health as being subject to the assumption that this will not impact on partner profits...
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We all know its just fluff, lip service.
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Take your holiday, get rest, except not then, or then. Oh your paternity leave falls over that period, well can you just... We care about you, except this still needs to get done.
All you can do is be the best you can to those more junior to you and try and change the tide.
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In my experience the firms that go on the most about mental health and work life balance are the ones that are the worst.
It's just cover against litigation/employment tribunals.
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I think the latest I've ever worked was 2am on a corporate deal once. It was a Friday night so at least I could lie in the next day.
That was many years ago as a trainee. I don't think I've worked later than 7pm in the last 15 years.
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Re discussion above - I've seen one firm where a notorious slave driver/beaster became an 'ambassador' or some similar thing.
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Yes done a few in my time. Completely unjustified but client's often think they are terribly important.
The last one was quite unsettling as around 4AM I started seeing giant mice. The mice were friendly just pottering round the office floor....Went to bed after that.
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I once left the office after 3pm on a Friday [/Scandinavian]
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I got 100 parrot tulips on my desk on a monday mornign after sending some emails out over the weekend to close a deal. civilised.
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I think the only people who boast about/get a rush from all nighters are juniors who initially find it exciting or others with nothing better to do with their time. Most people are Owls or Larks - Larks generally struggle more. The reality is most of us are at the beck and call of clients (service) and if you factor in £££chasing colleagues who don’t manage expectations/don’t give fig for anyone else in their immediate or wider team, tools on the other side who do last minute doc dumps of varying quality’s , cross-border time differences, complexity etc. transactional work at most larger firms or urgent applications (once only and a first for the barristers, all nighter drafting in barrister’s chambers between hearings in different courts) can rarely be compartmentalised into normal hours. I don’t think it is a too senior to deal issue - I am more likely to send juniors home than keep them as admin support (no need for everyone to feel the pain) - but the more experienced you are more likely to be able to push back/manage expectations.
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Back in the day before t’internet, juniors on all nighter would be carrying out such vital tasks as colouring in a bar chart at 3 am. And that was just the bankers.
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Worked an all-nighter in the Mount Pleasant sorting office once. Was quite merry actually, good camaraderie. Oh and another one inserting label holders into shelves at the Tesco superstore on the Cromwell Road. Actually quite tough.
Both would have been shit at home..
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I'd vote for home. The key I found to all-nighters was eating regular meals like it was a regular day every 4-5 hours, which would be much easier at home.
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That's true warren, you definitely need three meals every 12 hours to keep going.
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If nothing else has improved over the years at least people on here regard working all night as stupid, unhealthy and counterproductive, rather than some crappy badge of honour.
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I don't think I have ever done it. Night shifts etc aren't the same since you are still only working 12 hours or whatever. I think I once agreed to cover some nights at short notice so went home at about 3pm, rested and came back to work for 8pm. I used to stay up the day before nights anyway so I'd have been awake 24hrs before going to sleep. Wouldn't do that (nor nights) now.
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