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&lt;p&gt;So say, more or less, several young investment bankers who&#39;ve taken Vault&#39;s latest Banking Survey, which is being administered now to the top 75 investment banking firms across the country.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;According to one such banker who&#39;s feeling his soul squeezed into oblivion due to the cramped and dreary cubicle-without-a-view office system, &quot;This place is old and run down and very late &#39;80s/early &#39;90s.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another analyst calls his unenclosed office &quot;ugly and boring,&quot; citing &quot;steel drawers and gray-colored desks and cubes that have these steel lockers, which are weird looking. I feel like I work in corporate america in some back-office accounting job.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yet another disgruntled ceiling-less officer dweller says, &quot;Our cubes are old, decrepit, and cramped. We&#39;re packed in to four-man bullpens that offer very limited personal workspace or privacy. Furthermore, one of our department printers is in our cube, and it&#39;s very loud.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other complaints from bankers include temperature and lack of quality, gratis food offerings. &quot;The temperature here is volatile,&quot; says one analyst, &quot;and the kitchen space is tiny -- it doesn&#39;t accommodate the number of people who use them on the trading floor. And we don&#39;t have any complimentary drinks except tap water and D-grade coffee products. Plus, they don&#39;t provide creamer or milk.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To some in the investment banking business, a cramped cubicle sounds like heaven. One banker tell us, &quot;We had junior professionals in conference rooms working on folding tables for more than 10 months because there was no space in the office. These people were working 12- to 14-hour days, six days a week. And directors have to share an office, which is crazy, and not conducive to creating a productive, efficient workplace.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, surely to the above bankers&#39; dismay, there are a host of other bankers (at other firms) who are pleased, to say the least, with their four walls.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&quot;I have my own office,&quot; says one analyst who admits it&#39;s a &quot;a rarity in the investment banking industry.&quot; Another happy banker notes that each analyst at her firm &quot;shares an office with a more senior analyst, which is a huge upgrade from what my friends experience at competing banks, where analysts and sometimes even associates work in cubicles.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Another brags, &quot;We have large cubes with plenty of space for our belongings and papers,&quot; while still others report that &quot;analysts have very good sized cubes&quot; or &quot;large cubes&quot; or even an &quot;office that&#39;s more than twice as big as at the previous bulge-bracket firm where I worked.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As for which firm each of the above quotes belongs to, stay tuned: we&#39;ll be releasing our new banking rankings, along with all the qualitative results gleaned from our annual banking survey, in less than three months. In the meantime, enjoy your cube.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Vault&#39;s 2011 Banking Rankings: Office Space)&lt;/p&gt;

Derek Loosvelt

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