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I call BS on the 95 hour claim. Among a lot of people, especially bankers, there is a sort of bragging right about making insane hours. But 95h/week is imposs

by LeonM 6y ago

I call BS on the 95 hour claim. Among a lot of people, especially bankers, there is a sort of bragging right about making insane hours. But 95h/week is impossible. That would be almost 14h per day, for every day of the week. Or 19 hours a day when working week days. My impressions of bankers is that they are like programmers. They are paid to think. Performing research, reading reports, etc. Most people, myself included, can't even do that for 8 hours a day. 14 hours a day is impossible, no matter how work hungry you are. You may be 'at the office' for 14h, but there is simply no way that you can be productive for 14h straight, and certainly not for 7 days a week. But regardless of the amount of hours you make. If you don't like it: get a different job. If bankers expect crazy hours, and you don't want to do that, then don't become a banker.

kaesar14 6y ago
I'm not sure how to disprove what you're saying, but I'm right around the age of these first year analysts and have friends working at top IB firms in similar positions, and 95 hours is usually the extreme end of what they work a week. It's always at least 85 hours, and has gone up to 100 - 105 hours. Yes, it is around 14 hours every day if not more, with some weekdays being closer to 17-18 hours. It's the nature of the industry. Much of the time they're paid to create similar models to stuff they've done in the past, it's not the MOST intellectually demanding job in terms of needing optimal creativity and brainpower. And a lot of the time it's just doing stuff like double checking numbers and rearranging reports.
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buro9 6y ago
I worked for Morgan Stanley in London almost a decade ago, they were a notch down from Goldman Sachs, and there I worked supporting analysts roughly 90-100 hours per week for the entire 6 week engagement (and occasionally this was 6 days per week). I only did 6 weeks, but this was absolutely normal for those in that department. This isn't to say that the whole of the company do it, but some teams, some roles, some functions... they really do these hours. PS: "Notch down"... there was an unwritten hierarchy, if you worked at one rung of the hierarchy then you were good for that rung and the rungs below but not the rung above. This can be translated as "if you could survive in Goldman Sachs you can survive anywhere" and "if you can survive Morgan Stanley then you can survive anywhere except Goldman Sachs". "Survive" isn't just hours, but also being shouted at, whipped to work at a certain level, the sexism/racism... as a programmer I built a reporting system and one of the reports constructed by the manager at Morgan Stanley was nicknamed "the baseball bat" as it formed the basis for ritual punishment and humiliation of low performing analysts and traders.
drewcoo 6y ago
It is possible to like one's job but not like everything about that job. It is possible to want to improve the job. Often employers even encourage people to improve their jobs. In fact, cerebral jobs like finance or software tend to encourage that kind of thinking.
burlesona 6y ago
It’s definitely possible to “work” that much if work consists of being present in the office and nominally working on something or thinking about it. There’s a lot of menial work in most jobs that you can kind of force yourself through for hours at a time. 60 hours a week is easy: just work from 8-6 six days a week. To get past that, the easy option is to add Sundays. But you do burn out if you work all Sunday, so taking Sunday to rest is a good idea. Let’s say you just work from 6-10pm on Sundays to map out the week and get ready for Monday, that leaves plenty of time to rest. So now you’re at 64 hours a week, and you want to bump it up. Not too hard: give yourself a dinner break from 6-8 each night, and work again from 8 to midnight M-F. That’s an extra 20 hours, so you’re at 84. And that’s actually not too bad because you have Saturday nights free to socialize and Sunday morning to sleep off your hangover. Getting past 84 hours is harder, you’ll have to sacrifice Sunday. But if you go ahead and adopt your normal 14h schedule Monday-Saturday you’re already at 84 without working Sunday, and by comparison fitting another 11 hours on Sunday still feels like a little bit of a breather. Maybe you just work 8-7 on Sundays and use the last few hours for some Netflix and go to bed early. All of this is much easier if you’re not trying to spend 8 hours a day in bed. Suppose you find that 6 hours a day in bed can get you through, now you’ve got an extra 14 hours a week to do thinks like go jogging at 6am or whatever else helps you de-stress. TLDR; 60 hours a week is relatively easy. 80 hours a week is harder but still manageable. The difficulty ramps as you go from 80-100. 100 hours a week is very hard. Anything over that is unsustainable, but can still be managed in short bursts if you don’t sleep, and we have lots of drugs that can help you avoid sleep.
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by LeonM 6y ago

kaesar14 6y ago

I'm not sure how to disprove what you're saying, but I'm right around the age of these first year analysts and have friends working at top IB firms in similar positions, and 95 hours is usually the extreme end of what they work a week. It's always at least 85 hours, and has gone up to 100 - 105 hours. Yes, it is around 14 hours every day if not more, with some weekdays being closer to 17-18 hours. It's the nature of the industry. Much of the time they're paid to create similar models to stuff they've done in the past, it's not the MOST intellectually demanding job in terms of needing optimal creativity and brainpower. And a lot of the time it's just doing stuff like double checking numbers and rearranging reports.

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buro9 6y ago

I worked for Morgan Stanley in London almost a decade ago, they were a notch down from Goldman Sachs, and there I worked supporting analysts roughly 90-100 hours per week for the entire 6 week engagement (and occasionally this was 6 days per week). I only did 6 weeks, but this was absolutely normal for those in that department. This isn't to say that the whole of the company do it, but some teams, some roles, some functions... they really do these hours. PS: "Notch down"... there was an unwritten hierarchy, if you worked at one rung of the hierarchy then you were good for that rung and the rungs below but not the rung above. This can be translated as "if you could survive in Goldman Sachs you can survive anywhere" and "if you can survive Morgan Stanley then you can survive anywhere except Goldman Sachs". "Survive" isn't just hours, but also being shouted at, whipped to work at a certain level, the sexism/racism... as a programmer I built a reporting system and one of the reports constructed by the manager at Morgan Stanley was nicknamed "the baseball bat" as it formed the basis for ritual punishment and humiliation of low performing analysts and traders.

drewcoo 6y ago

It is possible to like one's job but not like everything about that job. It is possible to want to improve the job. Often employers even encourage people to improve their jobs. In fact, cerebral jobs like finance or software tend to encourage that kind of thinking.

burlesona 6y ago

It’s definitely possible to “work” that much if work consists of being present in the office and nominally working on something or thinking about it. There’s a lot of menial work in most jobs that you can kind of force yourself through for hours at a time. 60 hours a week is easy: just work from 8-6 six days a week. To get past that, the easy option is to add Sundays. But you do burn out if you work all Sunday, so taking Sunday to rest is a good idea. Let’s say you just work from 6-10pm on Sundays to map out the week and get ready for Monday, that leaves plenty of time to rest. So now you’re at 64 hours a week, and you want to bump it up. Not too hard: give yourself a dinner break from 6-8 each night, and work again from 8 to midnight M-F. That’s an extra 20 hours, so you’re at 84. And that’s actually not too bad because you have Saturday nights free to socialize and Sunday morning to sleep off your hangover. Getting past 84 hours is harder, you’ll have to sacrifice Sunday. But if you go ahead and adopt your normal 14h schedule Monday-Saturday you’re already at 84 without working Sunday, and by comparison fitting another 11 hours on Sunday still feels like a little bit of a breather. Maybe you just work 8-7 on Sundays and use the last few hours for some Netflix and go to bed early. All of this is much easier if you’re not trying to spend 8 hours a day in bed. Suppose you find that 6 hours a day in bed can get you through, now you’ve got an extra 14 hours a week to do thinks like go jogging at 6am or whatever else helps you de-stress. TLDR; 60 hours a week is relatively easy. 80 hours a week is harder but still manageable. The difficulty ramps as you go from 80-100. 100 hours a week is very hard. Anything over that is unsustainable, but can still be managed in short bursts if you don’t sleep, and we have lots of drugs that can help you avoid sleep.

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