5 ms·

I always wondered why it would make sense to let a single person work > 80h? Are these task they are doing soo sequential in nature, that its not possible to sp

I always wondered why it would make sense to let a single person work > 80h? Are these task they are doing soo sequential in nature, that its not possible to split them to two persons with 40h (and half the pay)? Edit: Especially keeping in mind that half the pay probably nets the 40h person much more than half the salary due to tax progrssion

tkiolp4 6y ago
40hours/week looks already excessive to me. Perhaps for Goldman Sachs 80hours/week looks fine.
- doovd 6y ago
  40 hours is excessive? From a philosophical standpoint, yes, but from the way things are in the world that's totally normal lol
  - qaq 6y ago
    If you remove excessive meetings and other unproductive crap I'd be surprised if median meaningful work hours were above 20h for Soft. Eng.
    - dbattaglia 6y ago
      Totally agree, although for myself personally the other piece that chews up my time is customer support. In previous jobs with standard SaaS applications the support load was there but it was easy enough to just file a bug report in the backlog. Now I’m building managed managed infrastructure and there’s so much that can go wrong that it’s hard to not get sucked in, especially for more senior and tenured folks. 20 hours a week of meetings, OTOH, is brutal amd I don’t miss it. These days I’m much closer to about 5/week average.
1cvmask 6y ago
Would they accept half the pay?
hikingsimulator 6y ago
The current way work is done in Mergers & Acquisitions for instance is that you are expected to be on-site for a long time because you never know when a new project/opportunity must be answered. So you may effectively be at work for 80-100h but it doesn't mean you are consistently working. The second reason is that work is siloed. If you and your team takes on an opportunity, for instance creating a buy-side valuation or a sell-side offer, you and your team only will work on it. It has ties with how teams are split by specialities and know-hows, but also with how your end-of-year bonus is calculated.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  > because you never know when a new project/opportunity must be answered Is there any reason this answer cannot wait until 9am the next morning?
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    Presumably because if you don't answer, another firm will.
    - sgt101 6y ago
      Possibly, or maybe sociopaths in firm A can use the threat of a potential capture by firm B as an excuse to pulverize juniors and consume their souls for personal gratification?
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      I... guess. But if the inquirer chooses the other firm simply on the fact that they responded faster, do you really want to work with them? I’m fairly certain Goldman Sachs doesn’t have to do any (bottom of the) barrel scraping.
gregw2 6y ago
I never worked at Goldman or had close friends there, but I have spent a modest amount of time in circles where people went to or came from Goldman. Possibilities: * Yes, it's sequential. It's hard to partition the task of creating a model of some analysis in a spreadsheet to multiple parties. Amdahl's law affects humans too. * Context. Transferring context -- implicit knowledge -- from a client to partner to a junior associates is hard. Transferring it to two junior associates is harder. The more skilled or more domain knowledge someone gets, the harder the skill/KT transfer gets. * Coordination. Partitioning a task to two associates coherently, getting both to equally understand it, execute on it, having them communicate effectively with each other on it, getting results back that are coherent and consistent, is all a burden you don't have if you have one person working longer. Brooks's law basically. * Competitive culture. Goldman recruits from the most competitive academic institutions and thus gets people who are very bright and work very hard and have spent years competing with others and harnessing those two capabilities when competing with each other or the standard of pleasing someone (professor, client, etc). Even without management pushing, in an environment competing as junior associates, they will continue to use both of those strengths to their utmost in an attempt to dominate (or keep their head above water). * Deadlines - Tight deadlines make all the above problems worse. The sooner the deadline the harder to partition the problem and the easier to just "work more hours" Meta-dynamics: * Firm competitive advantage/moat - If a firm can hire the very brightest people who also work the hardest, they can promise the best results on the tightest deadline. By promising a tight deadline of X quality, they can then offer something their competitors don't/can't. If they sacrifice either of those hiring approaches, they are subject to significant competitive pressures. Thus a firm in Goldman's position is led for competitive reasons to push for shortest deadlines possible which leads to the above effects. * Normally salaries would limit the amount of abuse people would take but there is extra capital for pay available in the financial sector in part because the monetary focus and measurements and payoffs can be so clear and direct (for management). The higher pay allows associates to more quickly pay off college loans and accumulate capital. Ironically, this in turn is partially used by elite universities to justify charging more tuition which then requires a certain set of poeople in those universities to need to go work in a place like Goldman to more quickly recoup their educational investment ... a vicious cycle/positive-feedback-loop. I'm sure there are more and better explanations, but that's what I see...

tkiolp4 6y ago

40hours/week looks already excessive to me. Perhaps for Goldman Sachs 80hours/week looks fine.

doovd 6y ago
40 hours is excessive? From a philosophical standpoint, yes, but from the way things are in the world that's totally normal lol
- qaq 6y ago
  If you remove excessive meetings and other unproductive crap I'd be surprised if median meaningful work hours were above 20h for Soft. Eng.
  - dbattaglia 6y ago
    Totally agree, although for myself personally the other piece that chews up my time is customer support. In previous jobs with standard SaaS applications the support load was there but it was easy enough to just file a bug report in the backlog. Now I’m building managed managed infrastructure and there’s so much that can go wrong that it’s hard to not get sucked in, especially for more senior and tenured folks. 20 hours a week of meetings, OTOH, is brutal amd I don’t miss it. These days I’m much closer to about 5/week average.

1cvmask 6y ago

Would they accept half the pay?

hikingsimulator 6y ago

The current way work is done in Mergers & Acquisitions for instance is that you are expected to be on-site for a long time because you never know when a new project/opportunity must be answered. So you may effectively be at work for 80-100h but it doesn't mean you are consistently working. The second reason is that work is siloed. If you and your team takes on an opportunity, for instance creating a buy-side valuation or a sell-side offer, you and your team only will work on it. It has ties with how teams are split by specialities and know-hows, but also with how your end-of-year bonus is calculated.

Aeolun 6y ago
> because you never know when a new project/opportunity must be answered Is there any reason this answer cannot wait until 9am the next morning?
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  Presumably because if you don't answer, another firm will.
  - sgt101 6y ago
    Possibly, or maybe sociopaths in firm A can use the threat of a potential capture by firm B as an excuse to pulverize juniors and consume their souls for personal gratification?
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    I... guess. But if the inquirer chooses the other firm simply on the fact that they responded faster, do you really want to work with them? I’m fairly certain Goldman Sachs doesn’t have to do any (bottom of the) barrel scraping.

gregw2 6y ago

I never worked at Goldman or had close friends there, but I have spent a modest amount of time in circles where people went to or came from Goldman. Possibilities: * Yes, it's sequential. It's hard to partition the task of creating a model of some analysis in a spreadsheet to multiple parties. Amdahl's law affects humans too. * Context. Transferring context -- implicit knowledge -- from a client to partner to a junior associates is hard. Transferring it to two junior associates is harder. The more skilled or more domain knowledge someone gets, the harder the skill/KT transfer gets. * Coordination. Partitioning a task to two associates coherently, getting both to equally understand it, execute on it, having them communicate effectively with each other on it, getting results back that are coherent and consistent, is all a burden you don't have if you have one person working longer. Brooks's law basically. * Competitive culture. Goldman recruits from the most competitive academic institutions and thus gets people who are very bright and work very hard and have spent years competing with others and harnessing those two capabilities when competing with each other or the standard of pleasing someone (professor, client, etc). Even without management pushing, in an environment competing as junior associates, they will continue to use both of those strengths to their utmost in an attempt to dominate (or keep their head above water). * Deadlines - Tight deadlines make all the above problems worse. The sooner the deadline the harder to partition the problem and the easier to just "work more hours" Meta-dynamics: * Firm competitive advantage/moat - If a firm can hire the very brightest people who also work the hardest, they can promise the best results on the tightest deadline. By promising a tight deadline of X quality, they can then offer something their competitors don't/can't. If they sacrifice either of those hiring approaches, they are subject to significant competitive pressures. Thus a firm in Goldman's position is led for competitive reasons to push for shortest deadlines possible which leads to the above effects. * Normally salaries would limit the amount of abuse people would take but there is extra capital for pay available in the financial sector in part because the monetary focus and measurements and payoffs can be so clear and direct (for management). The higher pay allows associates to more quickly pay off college loans and accumulate capital. Ironically, this in turn is partially used by elite universities to justify charging more tuition which then requires a certain set of poeople in those universities to need to go work in a place like Goldman to more quickly recoup their educational investment ... a vicious cycle/positive-feedback-loop. I'm sure there are more and better explanations, but that's what I see...