IB works by doing absolutely unreasonable amounts of work for CEOs for free, to impress them, so they'll pay even more unreasonable fees when they do want you to do something big like a merger. In the meantime the senior bankers just take off-hand comments by the CEOs, turn them into questions, make the junior staff write 100 page slide decks answering them, and send them back to the CEO, who doesn't read them but feels impressed.
this seems to be the main issue. Most other industries which require night work, 24 hour shifts etc have solved these issues DECADES ago already. Either by some kind of rotation/scheduling system, or by having multiple shifts.
Maybe it's the difference between the people that are seen as bringing in money and the areas that are seen as just costs?
I don't think anyone has a problem with working at night or weekends. The issue is working at night or weekends when you also worked during the day and week. Again, just hire more staff. This isn't a hard problem.
Suggesting that this problem can only be solved by working junior staff 100-120 hours a week is ludicrous. Are these junior bankers so rare and talented that you can only hire one to change a title font size from 12 to 14 at 4am on Saturday? Smh.