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Millennial Employees Confound Big Banks

19 points by brianchu 11y ago

rectang 11y ago
The relative satisfaction of junior bankers matters because Wall Street firms are slashing thousands of more-senior jobs in a push to cut costs. Stay with the company long enough and we'll yank the brass ring out of your hand, too!
- ramy_d 11y ago
  Indeed. Makes sense to front load that risk when you're young.
Grishnakh 11y ago
I can only read two sentences of this "article".
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=Millennial+Employees+Confound+Big+Banks&rlz=1CAASUD_enUS670US670&oq=Millennial+Employees+Confound+Big+Banks https://www.google.com/search?q=Millennial+Employees+Confoun... Click the news story on the top of the page.
  - ars 11y ago
    That doesn't work for many people, for example me. Simpler to just copy the text into an HN post.
  - craigds 11y ago
    A paywall bookmarklet I find handy for WSJ and NYT: > javascript:location.href='https://www.google.com/webhp?%23q=' https://www.google.com/webhp?%23q=' + encodeURIComponent(location.href) + '&btnI=I'
- biot 11y ago
  See the "web" link at the top of the page? Open that in an incognito window, then click the WSJ article.
- WhyDoPeople 11y ago
  Same article is on Reddit with a pastebin link. http://pastebin.com/raw/v1j7bESe http://pastebin.com/raw/v1j7bESe "Millennial Employees Confound Big Banks To stem departures, firms tweak their delayed-gratification models - Daniel Huang At Goldman Sachs, “Managing Millennials” has been one of the most popular training sessions for years. Limiting hours Beginning last year, the bank began limiting hours for its most junior staff, requiring summer interns to stay away from the office between midnight and 7 a.m. during the week. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein’s daughter, a senior at Harvard, interned with the bank last summer. Goldman and other banks have retooled their analyst programs, including new measures to outsource grunt work and invest in timesaving technology. Credit Suisse Group AG has begun putting early-career bankers in front of clients soon after hiring—something that might have taken years in another era on Wall Street. The Swiss bank also appointed a program director to coach senior bankers on communicating with young staffers, providing tips such as “don’t lean on hierarchy,” says Amy Hudson, chief operating officer of the firm’s investment bank and capital-markets division. The appointee, Nancy Nightingale, is a “total mom figure,” says one third-year analyst. She recently helped shepherd an effort to get bosses to send personal emails highlighting junior bankers’ individual achievements. “The things that [young workers] want are frankly the things that all of us always wanted,” says Ms. Hudson. But today’s junior bankers, she says, are “more confident about expressing it in the workplace.” That dynamic isn’t unique to finance. Only 28% of millennials feel their current employer is making full use of their skills, according to a survey by Deloitte & Touche LLP. On Wall Street, however, paying one’s dues has long been part of the culture. Michelle Wu discovered that fact six months into her job as a credit analyst at Goldman Sachs when she sought a transfer to another group to learn new skills. Her team mentors turned her down, she says. “Their responses were, ‘Keep your head down’ and ‘Focus on your work,’ ” she recalls. Goldman declined to comment on specific employees. In December 2014, after less than a year at Goldman, she accepted a job on Google’s small-business team and moved to California. Despite working more than 100 hours a week—about the same as her job at the bank—Ms. Wu says she feels more energized. When she told her boss about an opportunity to increase revenue, she says, he told her to “run with it.” Wall Street’s postcrisis landscape has been reshaped by job cuts and reduced risk-taking, and pay packages don’t tip the scales like they used to. At three elite business schools—Harvard University, Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School—M.B.A. graduates who accepted jobs in investment banking or trading had a first-year base salary of $125,000, on average, similar to those who join technology companies, and less than the roughly $150,000 base at other Wall Street firms such as hedge funds and private-equity firms, according to the schools. Surveys show that young people who came of age during the economic downturn are less trusting of the financial sector in general, and more eager to find jobs that they believe serve a social good. A 2014 Brookings Institution report concluded that millennials are likely to “find an outlet for their desire to change the world for the better somewhere other than on Wall Street.” Some veteran executives say banks should do a better job of explaining how helping clients raise capital and manage their financial risks is good for society. Citigroup announced in March a program to allow incoming analysts to spend a year at nonprofits before beginning their banking careers. Citigroup will pay them 60% of their starting salary during that time. Nine recruits already have signed on. The bank also introduced a program for young bankers to travel to Kenya for a four-week microfinance project, mirroring an initiative launched by Moelis earlier in the year. Moelis employees who have been with the firm for at least five years are entitled to a four-week paid sabbatical program, a spokeswoman said. Some young Wall Street bankers say initiatives to reduce long hours, however well-intentioned, are having unintended consequences. Analysts at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and other banks say mandatory days off have made it tough to spread out workloads, ramping up pressure when they are in the office. Analysts in a few Goldman groups say capping intern hours has undermined team dynamics and created tensions over division of work. Some bankers are baffled by the attitude of their more junior colleagues. There is a pain point among midlevel bankers who “can sometimes get frustrated if the younger analyst isn’t as available as they want them to be,” says Mr. Waldron, Goldman’s investment banking co-head. Nevertheless, he says, “just because other people worked 80 to 100 hours [each week] in their life history doesn’t mean these people should.”"
Joof 11y ago
I'm starting to wonder if WSJ has a team of people upvoting it. I can't read any of it and it's not particularly noteworthy information.
- skylan_q 11y ago
  I'm just going to start flagging them unless we get links to the full story.
- pmiller2 11y ago
  Click the "web" link and then the first link on the page should take you directly to the story.
DannoHung 11y ago
Hahahaahahaha, what a bunch of horseshit. Here's what's really happening (or rather, what's not happening): Wall Street's pay grade model has turned into "Jump ship or get fucked". So people jump ship. End of story. Banks don't want to give people raises, so they leave after a period of time for a new position that does give them a raise. Pretty much every firm does it.
bpchaps 11y ago
Hm.. I worked at a bank whose shortened name rhymes with "Damn'l" that did a LOT of things similar to this article to get younger candidates and college students onto their teams. A few personal examples.. 10k startup bonuses and great pay for the mediocre tech graduates who never stay - largely because of the lack of respect they get. At the same time, I was the youngest on the team, including the college grades and got no such bonus, despite having a "higher" than theirs. I still don't really see what they were trying to do there (besides the obvious) and why.. At the same place I was told by my manager, "I had to step out for a phone call when representing you in bonus talks, so you're not going to get a good bonus. Sorry about that." Sure enough, I got an insulting (in comparison to my peers) bonus and not an extra dime in pay. When I quit, my boss paraphrasingly said, "You should stay because we're severely underpaying you and can increase your pay at any time." Yeah, right. A portion of my work was making sure things were good during Sunday market opens...... by myself until an hour after market open when an offshore team got on. When I quit, that shift had to be handled by four people. Can't give a good bonus, my fucking ass. The complete lack of empathy at places like these is mind boggling.
stegosaurus 11y ago
Is it possible that the pay packages that this article is considering 'large' are actually not that impressive any more as a result of increasing wealth inequality? I don't know what pay packages are like in London nowadays. Five years ago or so my understanding was ~40-60K starting. When an apartment anywhere costs 300K+ it doesn't seem as good a deal any more. It feels like the junior investment banker of the 1990s could have been considered to be on a path to persistent wealth, whereas now it's a fair bit more ephemeral. Working 100 hour weeks, after the initial excitement dies down, might ultimately only really be justifiable as a path to great riches or early retirement, not an upper middle class existence. Would I work 100 hours a week for ten times the amount I'd expect at 10 hours? No, you'd have to give me FU money for that, because the idea there is that I work until I'm burned out and then retire.
avs733 11y ago
This sounds like older folks surprised/annoyed that the millennials aren't just going to play the game anymore...With Wall st. banks, they literally have no one to blame but themselves for pushing this model on the economy. Treat people (or their parents) like crap long enough and they will stop coming back for seconds.

19 points by brianchu 11y ago

The relative satisfaction of junior bankers matters because Wall Street firms are slashing thousands of more-senior jobs in a push to cut costs. Stay with the company long enough and we'll yank the brass ring out of your hand, too!

ramy_d 11y ago
Indeed. Makes sense to front load that risk when you're young.

Grishnakh 11y ago

I can only read two sentences of this "article".

cmdrfred 11y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=Millennial+Employees+Confound+Big+Banks&rlz=1CAASUD_enUS670US670&oq=Millennial+Employees+Confound+Big+Banks https://www.google.com/search?q=Millennial+Employees+Confoun... Click the news story on the top of the page.
- ars 11y ago
  That doesn't work for many people, for example me. Simpler to just copy the text into an HN post.
- craigds 11y ago
  A paywall bookmarklet I find handy for WSJ and NYT: > javascript:location.href='https://www.google.com/webhp?%23q=' https://www.google.com/webhp?%23q=' + encodeURIComponent(location.href) + '&btnI=I'
biot 11y ago
See the "web" link at the top of the page? Open that in an incognito window, then click the WSJ article.
WhyDoPeople 11y ago
Same article is on Reddit with a pastebin link. http://pastebin.com/raw/v1j7bESe http://pastebin.com/raw/v1j7bESe "Millennial Employees Confound Big Banks To stem departures, firms tweak their delayed-gratification models - Daniel Huang At Goldman Sachs, “Managing Millennials” has been one of the most popular training sessions for years. Limiting hours Beginning last year, the bank began limiting hours for its most junior staff, requiring summer interns to stay away from the office between midnight and 7 a.m. during the week. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein’s daughter, a senior at Harvard, interned with the bank last summer. Goldman and other banks have retooled their analyst programs, including new measures to outsource grunt work and invest in timesaving technology. Credit Suisse Group AG has begun putting early-career bankers in front of clients soon after hiring—something that might have taken years in another era on Wall Street. The Swiss bank also appointed a program director to coach senior bankers on communicating with young staffers, providing tips such as “don’t lean on hierarchy,” says Amy Hudson, chief operating officer of the firm’s investment bank and capital-markets division. The appointee, Nancy Nightingale, is a “total mom figure,” says one third-year analyst. She recently helped shepherd an effort to get bosses to send personal emails highlighting junior bankers’ individual achievements. “The things that [young workers] want are frankly the things that all of us always wanted,” says Ms. Hudson. But today’s junior bankers, she says, are “more confident about expressing it in the workplace.” That dynamic isn’t unique to finance. Only 28% of millennials feel their current employer is making full use of their skills, according to a survey by Deloitte & Touche LLP. On Wall Street, however, paying one’s dues has long been part of the culture. Michelle Wu discovered that fact six months into her job as a credit analyst at Goldman Sachs when she sought a transfer to another group to learn new skills. Her team mentors turned her down, she says. “Their responses were, ‘Keep your head down’ and ‘Focus on your work,’ ” she recalls. Goldman declined to comment on specific employees. In December 2014, after less than a year at Goldman, she accepted a job on Google’s small-business team and moved to California. Despite working more than 100 hours a week—about the same as her job at the bank—Ms. Wu says she feels more energized. When she told her boss about an opportunity to increase revenue, she says, he told her to “run with it.” Wall Street’s postcrisis landscape has been reshaped by job cuts and reduced risk-taking, and pay packages don’t tip the scales like they used to. At three elite business schools—Harvard University, Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School—M.B.A. graduates who accepted jobs in investment banking or trading had a first-year base salary of $125,000, on average, similar to those who join technology companies, and less than the roughly $150,000 base at other Wall Street firms such as hedge funds and private-equity firms, according to the schools. Surveys show that young people who came of age during the economic downturn are less trusting of the financial sector in general, and more eager to find jobs that they believe serve a social good. A 2014 Brookings Institution report concluded that millennials are likely to “find an outlet for their desire to change the world for the better somewhere other than on Wall Street.” Some veteran executives say banks should do a better job of explaining how helping clients raise capital and manage their financial risks is good for society. Citigroup announced in March a program to allow incoming analysts to spend a year at nonprofits before beginning their banking careers. Citigroup will pay them 60% of their starting salary during that time. Nine recruits already have signed on. The bank also introduced a program for young bankers to travel to Kenya for a four-week microfinance project, mirroring an initiative launched by Moelis earlier in the year. Moelis employees who have been with the firm for at least five years are entitled to a four-week paid sabbatical program, a spokeswoman said. Some young Wall Street bankers say initiatives to reduce long hours, however well-intentioned, are having unintended consequences. Analysts at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and other banks say mandatory days off have made it tough to spread out workloads, ramping up pressure when they are in the office. Analysts in a few Goldman groups say capping intern hours has undermined team dynamics and created tensions over division of work. Some bankers are baffled by the attitude of their more junior colleagues. There is a pain point among midlevel bankers who “can sometimes get frustrated if the younger analyst isn’t as available as they want them to be,” says Mr. Waldron, Goldman’s investment banking co-head. Nevertheless, he says, “just because other people worked 80 to 100 hours [each week] in their life history doesn’t mean these people should.”"

Joof 11y ago

I'm starting to wonder if WSJ has a team of people upvoting it. I can't read any of it and it's not particularly noteworthy information.

skylan_q 11y ago
I'm just going to start flagging them unless we get links to the full story.
pmiller2 11y ago
Click the "web" link and then the first link on the page should take you directly to the story.

DannoHung 11y ago

Hahahaahahaha, what a bunch of horseshit. Here's what's really happening (or rather, what's not happening): Wall Street's pay grade model has turned into "Jump ship or get fucked". So people jump ship. End of story. Banks don't want to give people raises, so they leave after a period of time for a new position that does give them a raise. Pretty much every firm does it.

bpchaps 11y ago

Hm.. I worked at a bank whose shortened name rhymes with "Damn'l" that did a LOT of things similar to this article to get younger candidates and college students onto their teams. A few personal examples.. 10k startup bonuses and great pay for the mediocre tech graduates who never stay - largely because of the lack of respect they get. At the same time, I was the youngest on the team, including the college grades and got no such bonus, despite having a "higher" than theirs. I still don't really see what they were trying to do there (besides the obvious) and why.. At the same place I was told by my manager, "I had to step out for a phone call when representing you in bonus talks, so you're not going to get a good bonus. Sorry about that." Sure enough, I got an insulting (in comparison to my peers) bonus and not an extra dime in pay. When I quit, my boss paraphrasingly said, "You should stay because we're severely underpaying you and can increase your pay at any time." Yeah, right. A portion of my work was making sure things were good during Sunday market opens...... by myself until an hour after market open when an offshore team got on. When I quit, that shift had to be handled by four people. Can't give a good bonus, my fucking ass. The complete lack of empathy at places like these is mind boggling.

stegosaurus 11y ago

Is it possible that the pay packages that this article is considering 'large' are actually not that impressive any more as a result of increasing wealth inequality? I don't know what pay packages are like in London nowadays. Five years ago or so my understanding was ~40-60K starting. When an apartment anywhere costs 300K+ it doesn't seem as good a deal any more. It feels like the junior investment banker of the 1990s could have been considered to be on a path to persistent wealth, whereas now it's a fair bit more ephemeral. Working 100 hour weeks, after the initial excitement dies down, might ultimately only really be justifiable as a path to great riches or early retirement, not an upper middle class existence. Would I work 100 hours a week for ten times the amount I'd expect at 10 hours? No, you'd have to give me FU money for that, because the idea there is that I work until I'm burned out and then retire.

avs733 11y ago

This sounds like older folks surprised/annoyed that the millennials aren't just going to play the game anymore...With Wall st. banks, they literally have no one to blame but themselves for pushing this model on the economy. Treat people (or their parents) like crap long enough and they will stop coming back for seconds.