The hours in IB are longer, and there is no downtime that you would normally get in between projects. Despite the obvious financial benefits, I do get a lot of satisfaction in having a helluva lot of reponsibility and automony. It beats coming into a new client for a few weeks, having a dig about and thereafter re-hashing a powerpoint slide that was previously done at another clients six months previously. As another post alludes, many traditional clients of Consulting firms are now starting to wise up and a lot of business is driven not by quality, but cost and MC's are starting to be treated as another standard service provider. Hence, this was a key driver for my leaving consulting and moving into IB.