26 ms·

Intern’s death puts banking culture under microscope

158 points by bitops 13y ago

arbuge 13y ago
I'm amazed the banking industry puts its interns to work right away - it looks like they have no difficulty coming up to speed very quickly if they're working this hard. What exactly is it that banking interns are doing? It always struck me from my personal interactions with them that lots of what tech industry interns do is have a good time...
- phyalow 13y ago
  Banking interns are the cream of the crop, they will usually have done a lot of self study and be fully competent in financial modelling, research etc... These kids beat out 1000's of applicants for a handful of spots. Usually though IBD/Corp Finance Summer work consists of assisting with pitches which includes menial work like powerpoint design, spreadsheeting, pitchbook creation etc. If they are on a live deal work may include due diligence etc.
  - bigbossman 13y ago
    Let's not overstate their qualifications. You could take any smart STEM major with a good attitude and train them to be a good summer intern in an afternoon.
    - refurb 13y ago
      I'd have to disagree. I have a STEM education (PhD in Organic Chemistry) and consider myself a bright person (you are free to disagree). The guys that I knew that were good at banking were very skilled and intelligent. There is no way I could spend an afternoon in training and perform at their level. Could you spend a year and get up to speed? Sure.
      - bigbossman 13y ago
        I didn't say you could train for an afternoon and perform at the level of experienced bankers. That would be ridiculous. But I was referring to the training of a banking summer intern, and for that narrow job requirement, I stand by my statement. And compared to your intelligent banker friends, you could absolutely be up to speed in six months, in terms of technical skill, industry knowledge, product knowledge. If you can master o-chem, you can master corporate finance. Check out the rest of this thread for more descriptions of the work...your qualifications are way overmatched for what the work actually is.
    - phyalow 13y ago
      Having interned within these exact environments myself (BBIB), interns are students that are absolutely top of the game. So I also have to disagree. Being a "good" summer intern wont get you hired. You need to be exceptional. You dont become that in an afternoon... Most interns are incredibly well qualified and have very unique and strong backgrounds.
      - bigbossman 13y ago
        On my first day of work (FT, not internship), a director pulled me into his office, closed the door, and said, "Look, this job really isn't that hard." And he was right. Attitude is what separates good bankers from bad bankers.
        phyalow 13y ago
        >Attitude is what separates good bankers from bad bankers. I don't disagree, although arguably M&A requires less specific domain knowledge for a new starter than say what might be required within structuring or DCM teams. Also I'm curious as to why you left banking?
    - johnpmayer 13y ago
      Not every STEM major can write a quality, detailed, qualitative analysis, with proper jargon.
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      I doubt that. I'm going to school right now for finance. At the school I attend, it seems every serious finance student not only knows the basics (Excel, Bloomberg, Powerpoint), but also statistics packages (R, Minitab), and several programming languages (everyone knows SQL and VBA, most know at least one of Python, Java or C++). Knowing how to create trading algorithms is required knowledge. On top of that, everyone knows how to do a sales pitch, most are comfortable in a suit talking to execs, and classes in marketing, management, accounting, and computer science are all mandatory. Finance courses at a proper business school are highly demanding, and the technical abilities of the students who attend are on par with any STEM major...
      - bigbossman 13y ago
        I did M&A at a well known IB, I speak with first hand knowledge. I wonder if you have done a banking internship yet? It doesn't sound like it, because if you did, you would know how the work interns actually do differs from all of the qualifications that you mention. I have no doubt most of your classmates are exceptionally bright and hard working, that describes most kids entering banking out of college. Reread my comment, I could take a kid with a "good attitude and train them to be a good summer intern in an afternoon." In fact, I have actually done that. Let's define what I mean by "good." Week 1: a good summer intern needs to know how to make PIBs, bind books, spread comps, use Google, learn from mistakes, and most importantly, know when to ask questions. Of course, as they get real experience and prove themselves, they get more responsibility -- just like with any other job. For example, I've had superstar interns building merger models for live deals after a couple months. Knowing the "basics" (Excel, Bloomberg/FDS/CIQ, etc) isn't that important on Day 1 since they'll learn those things. I mentioned STEM students, in particular, because they can usually speed up the learning curve. And remember, I'm talking about banking. Trading is a whole different animal.
- alistairSH 13y ago
  No comment on banking interns, but I occasionally mentor developer interns. We always have real work for them to do. Usually prototyping something using a new technology that we're considering. Or, prototyping a new product that hasn't been resourced yet. They work a normal work week. 40-45 hours/week. No clue what we pay them, but they are paid and provided housing. We usually hire a few of them full-time when they finish school and they're generally very successful employees. I assume they have a good time. They're 20-21 years old; I hope they do. Stressing at a desk sounds like a pretty lame way to spend your 20s.
- lmartel 13y ago
  It's hazing. They don't need to accomplish things, they just need to work hard. A banking intern acquaintance of mine recently bragged to me that he was up until 5am printing and binding things.
- hristov 13y ago
  They do not have them do terribly important things, but there is always a lot of work. It is usually research. Usually pulling information from various sources and collecting it in Excel spreadsheets. It does not have to be something important. The person requesting the research may hardly look at it. But there is always work to be done. When you think about it, there is so much information in the financial world that there are a million things one may want to see researched.
aswanson 13y ago
The banking culture...how can such idiotic counterproductive mores dominate the allocation of capital...or more colloquially...how does bullshit still rule. we as makers, innovators, and inventors have to topple the inefficient stupidity of the system, as is. I honestly believe we are the only ones on the planet that can correct this stupidity of the suits.
- Killah911 13y ago
  Indeed, this is a very hard problem that needs to be solved. I just learned of JAK bank, IMHO it's a step in the right direction. Constantly accelerating systems are not natural or sustainable. Hopefully we can find solutions to money, banking and investing that are sustainable and productive without being predatory to parasitic towards most of humanity.
  - chad_oliver 13y ago
    > Constantly accelerating systems are not natural or sustainable You know, all of technology is one giant constantly accelerating system.
    - Killah911 13y ago
      I don't know about that. Sure the perception is that "technology" is constantly accelerating. But if you look at it a more finite, measurable sense, for eg. Steam Engine/Steam Propulsion technology (I picked an arbitrary one, based on my assumptions, so apologies if this technology is "accelerating"), can be said to have decelerated. In this sense, the constant "acceleration", IMHO is more of a perception thing. However, companies setting higher and higher sales forecast no matter what, is the type of acceleration that is quantifiable and not quite sustainable indefinitely. There are limits. You can keep profiting till you've got a monopoly on EVERYTHING... and then you just make all the minions work harder, or make people produce more babies so there are more consumer? That type of acceleration is unsustainable and quite frankly, absurd.
      - 13y ago
AsymetricCom 13y ago
Clearly, time has come to nationalize the banking system.
- ha-ha-ha 13y ago
  Clearly, the bankster have privatized and corrupted the political system long time ago.
deleted 13y ago
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cpncrunch 13y ago
It's ridiculous to think that working those kind of hours for 6 weeks is actually productive.
- fatjokes 13y ago
  As the article mentions, it's mostly for face-time.
pilsetnieks 13y ago
> In Japan, there’s a word for it. Karoshi refers to death by overwork, a legal term that allows surviving family to petition a judge for compensation for damages [..] we have no such legal designation of protracted corporate suicide. Is suicide really the word that should be used here?
- YokoZar 13y ago
  Perhaps not, though if you intend to commit suicide, and the difference between a gun and overwork is massive compensation to your family, then there probably is some sort of motivation to die at the office.
  - coryl 13y ago
    Can you even choose to die by overworking? I mean, you can overwork yourself and inadvertently die. But you would never know if you were going to die, or just wake up really tired and go home the next morning. Jumping off a bridge is one thing, jumping off your office building is another. But going into work and seeing if you can grind yourself out, that takes motivation. You'd have to feel the need to perform your job well, which gives you the feeling of stress. It doesn't strike me that a suicidal person would knowingly choose their work as an avenue of death.
- Havoc 13y ago
  >Is suicide really the word that should be used here? I don't think there is a right word for it. Its not really murder because the employee more or less did it voluntarily. And its not really suicide because there was no intention to kill oneself. Death by overworking is about as good as it gets imo.
  - dclowd9901 13y ago
    How is it not manslaughter or some form of negligent homicide? The company created a culture that celebrated unhealthy work practices. It's no different than if a company were paying its employees to smoke cigarettes.
PedroBatista 13y ago
No one will be charged with anything, maybe some pocket money will be offered to the family (maybe). Either way, i found this topic kind of a "uneasy" to discuss in many industries, mostly because the glass houses.
8ig8 13y ago
This seems like hazing to me. _You don't have to work all these crazy hours, but it might help if you want to join our club._ Also... Imagine if something even remotely similar happened at Walmart.
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  Walmart just exports its working-to-death to the third world countries like Bangladesh. Here, it gets cheaper clerk-hours per dollar with part laborers surviving on food stamps. http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/food-stamps-subsidize-wal-mart-696042/ http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/foo...
jmduke 13y ago
If you think this stuff is interesting from both a "what the hell is going on here" standpoint and a "no, really, what's it like in an investment bank?" standpoint, read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. It's a pretty interesting look at Wall Street in the late 80's, and it does a good job of avoiding an outright demonization of the industry while offering an honest appraisal. As an aside note, I'm always amused when I hear my tech friends lambast investment bankers' crazy work schedules and then go on to brag about pulling an all-nighter Thursday and then hit up a hackathon after work on Friday. (Just because you get free beer and t-shirts doesn't mean its not unhealthy.)
- lmartel 13y ago
  At least in tech it's a choice, though; I know lots of techies who work 40 hours a week (and, you're right, lots who don't), but I don't know a single banker who doesn't pull this sort of crap. And I know a lot of bankers.
  - s3r3nity 13y ago
    eh -- anecdotal evidence != real data though
    - lmartel 13y ago
      You're completely right, but while I'm not going to look these numbers up I'm very confident that the average investment banker works longer hours than the average software engineer; or even, yes, the average startup founder. I can promise you Google interns don't die from overwork.
      - acchow 13y ago
        > I can promise you Google interns don't die from overwork. Hah. Overeating and binge drinking, probably.
      - s3r3nity 13y ago
        Yes and there were many people very confident that the world would end last year. The amount of confidence you have doesn't prove anything, especially if you have no basis for that confidence outside of a few anecdotes. Hmmm I love getting down-votes when I don't agree with the circle jerk.
deleted 13y ago
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- jmduke 13y ago
  I sorta agree. I don't think there's anything inherently awful about 100+ hour work weeks (in that I would never want to do them, but people know what they're getting into when they join a BAML internship), but anecdotally the culture of working long hours at an IB is much more destructive than, say, working long hours at a hospital -- there's a much more pervasive drug life, and the long hours are borne much more out of showmanship and capriciousness than actual necessity. It's a pretty shitty industry that attract specific personalities, but it's not going to go away anytime soon -- mainly because of the massive amounts of money.
- schoper 13y ago
  If you have a work environment that only kills the marginal...then you have a work environment that kills the marginal. You need to start thinking about physical requirements and medical examinations before hiring, much like the military. Or maybe you need to think about putting a stop to a system that is really about hazing instead of getting stuff done. The second might improve other things about the efficiency of your business as well. That will have economic consequences not just to you and your employees, and is therefore a thing of proper public scrutiny.
  - ngoel36 13y ago
    For every Wall Street banker working 100+ hours a week, there is a startup founder on Hacker News that also works for 100+ hours a week. Who's providing more value is up for debate (I'm inclined to side with the founder of a tech startup :) ), but it's bullshit to chide only one industry for putting too much pressure on employees. I was a Google intern, and I had plenty of colleagues (including myself) that put in 100+ hour weeks. And that was no one's choice but our own.
    - lmartel 13y ago
      There's a big difference in expectation though. Sure, you CAN put in 100 hour weeks at lots of companies, but at IBanks you're admired for it [and mocked/disrespected/sabotaged if you don't]. I have a lot of friends in banking internships, and whenever I manage to pull one to dinner at 9pm on a friday night they tell me "I had to take so much shit to make it to this!" Just look at all the press (and the initial forum threads) around this death; notice how everyone's describing him as "one of BAML's best interns"? Why do you think they called him that? Because of the quality of his work, or because of the hours he pulled? I'll give you a hint: IBanking work, at least at the intern level, is really easy.
SeanDav 13y ago
As someone that worked at that exact office for many years and then thankfully got out of that rat race I can sympathize with someone being exposed to the culture that exists there. Generally people work ridiculous hours because they want to. They do it because the environment is highly competitive and the rewards can be huge. It is not the place for sensitive people, or indeed people with ethics and morals. It is all about the buck$ and screw the rest. People that can make money are Gods, even if their decisions only make money in the short term, no-one cares - all that matters is the next quarterly result and the annual bonus. There is a reason that Merrill Lynch is now called Bank of America Merrill Lynch, their short term decisions came back and bit them in the ass and they got bought out. I doubt that any lessons were learned. Lots of lip service but I would be beyond stunned with surprise if any meaningful changes have taken place - the fact of this intern's death probably means I am correct, although of course nothing has been determined as to any link or otherwise. I am probably over dramatizing here but if you value your soul, stay the heck away from Big Investment Trading & Commodities Houses.
- beachstartup 13y ago
  of course you're not over dramatizing. i'm sure in a few weeks (if not ALREADY) this guy will be the going-joke around the offices as "don't pull an X. don't be the guy who can't handle the grind."
  - ludston 13y ago
    I find it very hard to believe an attitude like that would be overtly displayed. Bankers should be attributed some empathy shouldn't they?
    - beachstartup 13y ago
      3 young bankers walk into a bar...
    - patmcguire 13y ago
      "If you ever care to see how all the world's most awful jokes spread, spend a day on a bond trading desk. When the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated, six people called me from six points on the globe to explain that NASA stands for 'Need Another Seven Astronauts. " - Liar's Poker
constapop 13y ago
If someone wants to know how one of those all-nighters in IB looks like, he should read this: http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-analyst-life-worst-day/ http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-ana... I have cousin who worked for Nomura in London and 100+ hours per week are normal thing in IB industry. I doubt that all-nighters were mandatory for interns, but it is very competitive environment and there are dozen of other interns/students waiting for opportunity and ready to do it. Someone wrote its for the face-time but nobody pulls all-nighter for face time.
- refurb 13y ago
  One thing to remember is that a lot of those 100 hours are sitting around waiting. Not to say they don't put in a lot of hours, but a friend of mine (banking intern) was told a 7pm to wait for a signed document to be signed and faxed in. It eventually came at 4am. He basically sat around for 8hr waiting for it.
hardwaresofton 13y ago
but for how long?
AznHisoka 13y ago
I worked a couple of years in a company called BlackRock. There's a group there called PAG (Portfolio Analytics Group), made up of mostly fresh college graduates. In the beginning, the head of the program would feed us the Kool-Aid about how the long 16 hour days would be so worth it after a year or 2. Sure, we'd be half-awake when we came in at 6 AM, and half-dead when we got to leave at 10 PM. The kicker was he told us while it'd be tempting to just go home and sleep after we left, we should instead head straight to the GYM and workout for 30 mins, then go to the bar for a few hours because it would keep our "sanity". Hah.. sure, you know what else would keep you sane? QUITTING and working elsewhere.
- vladimirralev 13y ago
  I don't know about that. I often see a huge stream of people at 6PM sharp leaving the BlackRock building.
  - Killah911 13y ago
    Probably the guys who just encouraged the interns to stick it out till 10 :-P
  - wtetzner 13y ago
    Maybe not all groups there are like the PAG group.
  - deleted 13y ago
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- cmbaus 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, what software were you using?
bigbossman 13y ago
Another point no one has mentioned...banking summer interns almost never do anything critical. If he needed to work 70+ hours straight, he probably was really slow at whatever shit work he was doing. (Young bankers reading this, learn all the Excel shortcuts!) Good bankers know how to manage expectations. Who knows what this kid was working on, but it's easy to ask the graphics department for presentation help, the India team to pull some data, other bankers for help with numbers, etc. There's literally nothing he could have been doing that someone else in his firm hadn't done before. Erratic hours are part of being an investment banker, but what this kid was doing to himself sounds completely unnecessary.
kenster07 13y ago
Perhaps the subprime crisis could have been avoided altogether if our banking sector wasn't so sleep deprived. Seriously.
avty 13y ago
Was it worth it?
kyleblarson 13y ago
Such a shame that people are willing to literally work themselves to death at a task that delivers no true value to society. Not really related, but it's also extremely scary how much of this industry relies on convoluted, fragile excel spreadsheets.
- cosmie 13y ago
  > Not really related, but it's also extremely scary how much of this industry relies on convoluted, fragile excel spreadsheets. Why single out this industry? Every company I've worked for large enough to have an accounting department lives and breathes by those evil spreadsheets.
- rtkwe 13y ago
  I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss. Are there shitty practices screwing things up and misaligned priorities? Certainly, but fundamentally banks and investors make capital and investment much more fluid and simpler.
  - makomk 13y ago
    Are you sure about that after reading the rest of the thread? From what I can tell, banks are where they are not because they're good at what they do but because they're solidly entrenched.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Yes, the allocation of money and resources has no value to society...
olefoo 13y ago
Well, clearly the answer is put a price on the lives of the sweet young things who are so eager to throw themselves into the jaws of Moloch. I mean that would be the Capitalist solution; and it would make banking into an heroic activity once again; and if telecast would surely outrank many other reality shows... Think of a nine-week show called The Bankers Ordeal that would use go-pros to record every moment of the grueling work schedule that would not stop until one of the contestants fell. A riveting tribute to the allure of capitalism, how heart rending to see the contestants lined up at the start; one of them sure to die in the service of the only god our society worships unreservedly. Truly it would be a revival of the ancient tradition of the sacrificial lamb.
mynameishere 13y ago
What exactly are they doing during those 100+ hours a week? Fiddling with MSFT Excel? It's easy to imagine a programmer working 100+ a week, since there's never a real end-point to software. It can literally go on forever if you please. But...finance? I can't imagine even Black–Scholes required that kind of crazy dedication.
- loganfrederick 13y ago
  Speaking of Fischer Black, while he worked quite a bit because he enjoyed it and was given a lot of flexibility due to his reputation, he took great pride in having the smallest percent ownership in Goldman Sachs out of any of the partners while he was there. He was not a banker himself, and was known to play Super Mario Bros. in his office and spend his evenings at comedy clubs. And he had a bigger impact on finance than arguably any banker since JPMorgan, without working their hours. Perry Mehrling wrote a great biography of Black which I can't recommend enough. http://www.amazon.com/Fischer-Black-Revolutionary-Idea-Finance/dp/0471457329 http://www.amazon.com/Fischer-Black-Revolutionary-Idea-Finan...
- mathattack 13y ago
  In an internship it's all about the face time of proving you can work hard enough to survive an associate position or 2 year analyst stint. The competition is amplified because firms don't want to hire someone who got rejected from their prior place of employment. The reason such a strange system exists is the top positions are so lucrative but it's hard to screen for the right abilities so they base it on brute work ethic. I'm not defending, just explaining.
  - throwit1979 13y ago
    That's not an answer to the question, though. I'm also genuinely curious. What do people "in finance" actually do on a day to day basis? My naive understanding is that the industry is highly automated already, so what activities are these 100 hour weeks spent doing?
    - 13y ago
tonetheman 13y ago
seriously... how long does it take to fuck people out of their money...
morgante 13y ago
This is just insane, and sadly mirrors the experience of everyone I know interning in finance. But do they also treat their tech/engineering employees like this? I can't imagine an engineer working 80 hours on Wall St. when they could make quite good money Facebook, etc. as well.
- gadders 13y ago
  No, they don't (15+ years in banking IT)
robbyking 13y ago
I had a roommate who worked in the banking industry and kept similar hours. Her "day off" was an 8 hour work day on Sunday. One (late) night we had a drink together and figured out that while she made twice my salary annually, I made three times her's hourly.
- itengelhardt 13y ago
  Effiency For The Win!
geetee 13y ago
As the person being overworked, at what point do you put your foot down and say this is ridiculous?
- tsotha 13y ago
  This was an internship. Normal employees don't work these kinds of hours.
deleted 13y ago
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spiredigital 13y ago
Right out of college I took an investment banking job, and it didn't take me too long to realize it definitely was NOT what I wanted to be doing for the next 10 to 20 years of my life. I had it relatively easy - working for a small firm, our hours were more in 50 to 80 hour range - so not nearly as stressful as many. But it was still pretty brutal, especially when things got busy. I worked with good people and it's not true that all bankers are insanely greedy and immoral. I met some of the best people I've ever known in the banking world, and also some real scumbbags. But one stereoype is true: just about everyone I worked with was insanely driven and incrediblely competitive. Already a skinny guy, I dropped at least another 10 to 15 pounds due to the long hours and no lunch hour. Most of the guys simply ate soup at their desk so they could get more work done. I remember my out-of-town girlfriend coming into town for a rare weekend visit and I spent 8 hours at the office on a Sunday. That might have been the day I vowed to quit. So I started saving my money like a miser, and after a few years had enough in the bank to quit cold turkey. Had no idea what I was going to do, but just let them know I was done at the end of my two-year commitment. At my going away party, the wives of my co-workers secretly told my girlfriend she was incredibley lucky I was getting out and were happy for her. I ended up starting an eCommerce business and have been doing that - and loving it - for the last 5+ years. Apart from marrying that incredible woman who stuck with me when I was in banking, leaving to pursue a more balanced life was the best decision I've ever made. If anyone is interested in the full story, I wrote a blog post about it here: http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/ http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/
- iyulaev 13y ago
  Question for you - how much more productive were you on your 80th hour than on your zero-th? I ask because I typically work 50 hour weeks. I've pushed to 80 when projects are wrapping up but I find that the extra hours are mostly only useful for rote work like writing/running tests, fixing simple bugs, and not for creative work. In fact most of the most difficult problems I solved in my off hours rather than at my desk. So I've always wondered what the net benefit is of working crazy hours like that in the long term, especially when there's always the option of hiring two employees and paying them 1/2 of the salary (I know I prefer x for 40/wk rather than 2x for 80/wk, the marginal cost of that 80th hour is huge!)
jgamman 13y ago
there's probably some 'thinking fast, thinking slow' decision substitutions going on in the industry ie, i don't want to acknowledge that i'm vastly overpaid for doing something that is likely to have net-zero value (or massively negative in the long term) so my brain switches to thinking that my salary is justified if i work absurd hours. that plus a chase the cheese mentality for all those alpha personalities.
null_ptr 13y ago
I think one sign of maturity is learning to watch out for your own well being, as a long-term investment in your own future. These companies take advantage of young, immature people that are still finding their way and learning life's many ropes. Unacceptable.
readme 13y ago
American culture does not yet recognize this as a problem. It should. "Hard work" is severely overvalued and even dangerous. The Japanese even have a word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi Whenever someone like Moritz pulls 8 all nighters, there is some greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch, benefiting from that. When are we going to realize that capitalism is not the ideal and "free" system we idealize it as?
- tsotha 13y ago
  >The Japanese even have a word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi ... which was in the article, for those of us who read it. >Whenever someone like Moritz pulls 8 all nighters, there is some greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch, benefiting from that. Yeah, that greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch was Moritz Erhardt. You don't get this kind of internship by accident, nor are there press gangs roaming the street looking for people to force into investment banking. >When are we going to realize that capitalism is not the ideal and "free" system we idealize it as? You have an odd notion of freedom. Did B of A keep him chained to the desk, you figure?
  - readme 13y ago
    Literal chains are not the only ones that exist in our society. Unfortunately, you can't expect all the world's type A personalities to suddenly stop throwing themselves on the line like Moritz did. The only way to create a safe working environment for everyone is to legislate it. Look how effective OSHA was. All I'm suggesting is to legislate that companies could not assign work to employees beyond what human capacity can handle. To you, it is "freedom" to allow the corporation to oppress the worker. To you, "freedom" is to say "do whatever you want", and allow the corporation to oppress the worker by controlling his income. To me, freedom is not just "do whatever you want" the government will stay out of it. Freedom is being able to live like a human who is not constantly enslaved by some master, whether it be a corporation or a government. To achieve that, we need to keep corporations in check, since they will always have their claws around every worker's lifeblood, which is more than enough to take someone's freedom away instantly. Working more than 8-10 hours a day is crossing into dangerous territory. Your assertion that if someone doesn't like it they could just get up and leave is naive, since the problem will always be perpetuated by thousands of other oppressed workers in line to take his place.
navs 13y ago
I've done much the same while both working and going to university. Still do. Is not the tech industry just as competitive? It might not force labor on you but however indirectly, long hours of coding with 0 sleep is considered a badge of honor. Freenode channels are full of users claiming they only slept x hours.
lhh 13y ago
I spent two years working as an analyst at a "bulge bracket" (ie top 10) investment bank in NYC (plus a summer as an intern). It seems that a lot of HNers are unfamiliar with the world of I-Banking, so here's the my view of what it's like, or at least what it was like in my group at my bank (though I believe my experience generalizes fairly well): Analyst jobs are extremely competitive to land. It's an intensive interview process, and the vast majority of analysts do an internship first and are then hired on full time for the following year. As you might imagine, the job pays very well. Market rate at a bulge bracket firm for a first year analyst is $10k signing bonus, $70k base salary, and anywhere from $0 to ~$85k in bonus, though typically bonus is in the $55k - $75k range, depending on individual, group, and bank performance. As a second year, base and expected bonus each receive a $10k bump. Plus dinner is paid for every night, and lunches as well on weekends, which adds up to about another $10k. Most banks have a two year analyst program. A small percentage of analysts stay for a third year if offered (maybe 10%), and maybe 50-75% of those continue on to become associates, which puts them on track to eventually become a senior banker. Most associates were never analysts, but were instead hired in after doing an MBA. After putting in the time as an analyst, a host of other opportunities await. Those with bulge bracket investment banking experience get all sorts of attention from recruiters. Many go on to work in private equity or for a hedge fund, both of which tend to pay significantly more than banking but with much more sane hours and a far better quality of life. Others do things like biz dev or take other misc finance roles. A very select few decide to go the startup route (eg this guy). The combination of perceived prestige, high pay, and quality exit opportunities draw legions of juniors and seniors to apply. Senior bankers know that the role is in extremely high demand, and therefore they tend to be very tough on their analysts. If one analyst burns out, there are hundreds more frantically trying to network their way in to take their place. There's a very clear divide between what a senior banker does and what a junior banker does. Senior bankers are glorified sales people. Their job is to maintain relationships (and develop new ones) with clients so that when the client decides to do a deal (any sort of M&A, financing, or restructuring), they'll hire the bank that employs said senior banker to execute/advise on the transaction. A junior banker's job is to do anything and everything that senior bankers tell them to do. Junior bankers have very little control over their own lives. They're staffed on many projects at once (at one point I had 12 different projects I was juggling), and usually have minimal say on what projects they're assigned. These projects are generally all with different sets of people. Each senior banker tends to have a sub-industry and group of clients they cover, but junior bankers get shuffled around to work on any project that needs staffing. This staffing is determined by a "staffer" (usually a semi-senior banker), which is entirely discretion based. They try to make an effort to make the distribution of work equitable, but they have their job to do outside of being a staffer, and being a good staffer doesn't advance their career in the slightest, so they're not incentivized to really get this right. The work generally goes to the analyst that looks/seems the least busy. I can't begin to describe how fucked up of a dynamic this creates. Insidious, underhanded politics. Analysts essentially forced to stay at the office until everyone above them has left the office regardless of whether or not they have anything to do. If you leave before the staffer leaves, you're guaranteed to get hit with the next staffing. If you leave before everyone above your level has left, they'll be bitching the next day about how they're working so hard even the analysts are leaving before them. Analysts subtly dropping hints to senior bankers about how much harder they're working than the other analysts, both in an effort to get staffing diverted away from themselves and because analysts all get ranked against each other at the end of the year, which determines their bonus. Analysts are ranked on a bell curve against each other, and bonus payouts among them are a zero-sum game. Recruiters and interviewers will ask you point-blank what your ranking and compensation was. Analysts carry a blackberry with them at all times, and a staffing can blow up their next two weeks literally at any moment. You live in constant fear that that little red light blinking on your blackberry isn't another staffing or fire drill (ie "emergency" work that needs to be done immediately). You can't plan anything. Being too slow to respond to emails, including at midnight on weekends, is grounds for getting sat down for a stern conversation in a conference room. My blackberry was never more than 20 ft away from me for two solid years. My average day was about 9:30am - 12:30am on weekdays, and about noon to 6pm on weekends. I didn't have my first day off, including weekends, until 4 months into the job. Sometimes it was as light as 50 hours per week, and sometimes as bad as 110+. Some of the time you actually have so much work to do that you're eating every meal at your desk and working solid the entire time, especially if you're working on a live deal, but a lot of the time you're just waiting around for other people to get back to you. They give you some work to do on a document or presentation, you spend a few hours doing it and get it back to them, and then you wait for them to get it back to you for another round of edits. You'll usually be doing this with 4 or 5 projects at a time, all with varying levels of complexity and urgency. This is one good part about the job. During the "day shift", life usually isn't so bad. A lot of times you can get away with long lunches and frequent starbucks runs without anyone really noticing. But then after a fairly leisurely day, come around 5pm or so, the "night shift" starts. You'll get edits to do for all of your projects at once and occasionally end up pulling an all nighter, even when the majority of the work you're doing involves formatting charts, transcribing pages of handwritten notes, and various other trivial, mind-numbing tasks. You'd be amazed at how much effort we'd be asked to expend on some task relative to the benefit that that task could possibly hope to provide. Like put together this 10 page weekly update for every company in X industry, including what research analysts said about them that week, what the media has said about them, individual product sales, graphs of their stock price movements and their valuation multiples, etc. All painfully slow, manual work. There were 40-50 companies in this industry. For an update that was sent to a single client. Unsolicited. When the CFO hated the senior banker who ordered the update and would never do a deal with him in his life. Doing mind-numbing work is one thing, but spending hours and hours doing it when you know it's all for nothing is an indescribable feeling. I wanted to bash my head in with a stapler. It took me THREE MONTHS to finally convince the staffer to tell the senior banker it wasn't going to happen anymore. All sorts of absurd shit like this was thrust upon us in the name of potentially winning business. I could keep going and probably fill several volumes about how horrible of an experience it was, but I'll stop there. The best day of my life to date was the day I turned in my blackberry and walked out of the building for the last time. I don't think that the people I worked with were inherently evil or anything like that. All else equal, they'd be senstive to our well being. But at the end of the day, we were just another class of indentured servants, like the many classes they'd seen before us and the many they'd see after. When I would describe my life to friends and people I'd meet that weren't a part of the finance world, they would literally think I was making things up. The idea that someone would be willing to subject themselves to such insanity, or more accurately that an employer would demand it, wasn't part of their world view. I assure you, it was really that bad. I'm a pretty stable person, but there were a couple times where I came very close to coming unglued. Somehow we managed to convince ourselves it was all worth it. The jury's still out on that one.

158 points by bitops 13y ago

I'm amazed the banking industry puts its interns to work right away - it looks like they have no difficulty coming up to speed very quickly if they're working this hard. What exactly is it that banking interns are doing? It always struck me from my personal interactions with them that lots of what tech industry interns do is have a good time...

phyalow 13y ago
Banking interns are the cream of the crop, they will usually have done a lot of self study and be fully competent in financial modelling, research etc... These kids beat out 1000's of applicants for a handful of spots. Usually though IBD/Corp Finance Summer work consists of assisting with pitches which includes menial work like powerpoint design, spreadsheeting, pitchbook creation etc. If they are on a live deal work may include due diligence etc.
- bigbossman 13y ago
  Let's not overstate their qualifications. You could take any smart STEM major with a good attitude and train them to be a good summer intern in an afternoon.
  - refurb 13y ago
    I'd have to disagree. I have a STEM education (PhD in Organic Chemistry) and consider myself a bright person (you are free to disagree). The guys that I knew that were good at banking were very skilled and intelligent. There is no way I could spend an afternoon in training and perform at their level. Could you spend a year and get up to speed? Sure.
    - bigbossman 13y ago
      I didn't say you could train for an afternoon and perform at the level of experienced bankers. That would be ridiculous. But I was referring to the training of a banking summer intern, and for that narrow job requirement, I stand by my statement. And compared to your intelligent banker friends, you could absolutely be up to speed in six months, in terms of technical skill, industry knowledge, product knowledge. If you can master o-chem, you can master corporate finance. Check out the rest of this thread for more descriptions of the work...your qualifications are way overmatched for what the work actually is.
  - phyalow 13y ago
    Having interned within these exact environments myself (BBIB), interns are students that are absolutely top of the game. So I also have to disagree. Being a "good" summer intern wont get you hired. You need to be exceptional. You dont become that in an afternoon... Most interns are incredibly well qualified and have very unique and strong backgrounds.
    - bigbossman 13y ago
      On my first day of work (FT, not internship), a director pulled me into his office, closed the door, and said, "Look, this job really isn't that hard." And he was right. Attitude is what separates good bankers from bad bankers.
      - phyalow 13y ago
        >Attitude is what separates good bankers from bad bankers. I don't disagree, although arguably M&A requires less specific domain knowledge for a new starter than say what might be required within structuring or DCM teams. Also I'm curious as to why you left banking?
  - johnpmayer 13y ago
    Not every STEM major can write a quality, detailed, qualitative analysis, with proper jargon.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    I doubt that. I'm going to school right now for finance. At the school I attend, it seems every serious finance student not only knows the basics (Excel, Bloomberg, Powerpoint), but also statistics packages (R, Minitab), and several programming languages (everyone knows SQL and VBA, most know at least one of Python, Java or C++). Knowing how to create trading algorithms is required knowledge. On top of that, everyone knows how to do a sales pitch, most are comfortable in a suit talking to execs, and classes in marketing, management, accounting, and computer science are all mandatory. Finance courses at a proper business school are highly demanding, and the technical abilities of the students who attend are on par with any STEM major...
    - bigbossman 13y ago
      I did M&A at a well known IB, I speak with first hand knowledge. I wonder if you have done a banking internship yet? It doesn't sound like it, because if you did, you would know how the work interns actually do differs from all of the qualifications that you mention. I have no doubt most of your classmates are exceptionally bright and hard working, that describes most kids entering banking out of college. Reread my comment, I could take a kid with a "good attitude and train them to be a good summer intern in an afternoon." In fact, I have actually done that. Let's define what I mean by "good." Week 1: a good summer intern needs to know how to make PIBs, bind books, spread comps, use Google, learn from mistakes, and most importantly, know when to ask questions. Of course, as they get real experience and prove themselves, they get more responsibility -- just like with any other job. For example, I've had superstar interns building merger models for live deals after a couple months. Knowing the "basics" (Excel, Bloomberg/FDS/CIQ, etc) isn't that important on Day 1 since they'll learn those things. I mentioned STEM students, in particular, because they can usually speed up the learning curve. And remember, I'm talking about banking. Trading is a whole different animal.
alistairSH 13y ago
No comment on banking interns, but I occasionally mentor developer interns. We always have real work for them to do. Usually prototyping something using a new technology that we're considering. Or, prototyping a new product that hasn't been resourced yet. They work a normal work week. 40-45 hours/week. No clue what we pay them, but they are paid and provided housing. We usually hire a few of them full-time when they finish school and they're generally very successful employees. I assume they have a good time. They're 20-21 years old; I hope they do. Stressing at a desk sounds like a pretty lame way to spend your 20s.
lmartel 13y ago
It's hazing. They don't need to accomplish things, they just need to work hard. A banking intern acquaintance of mine recently bragged to me that he was up until 5am printing and binding things.
hristov 13y ago
They do not have them do terribly important things, but there is always a lot of work. It is usually research. Usually pulling information from various sources and collecting it in Excel spreadsheets. It does not have to be something important. The person requesting the research may hardly look at it. But there is always work to be done. When you think about it, there is so much information in the financial world that there are a million things one may want to see researched.

aswanson 13y ago

The banking culture...how can such idiotic counterproductive mores dominate the allocation of capital...or more colloquially...how does bullshit still rule. we as makers, innovators, and inventors have to topple the inefficient stupidity of the system, as is. I honestly believe we are the only ones on the planet that can correct this stupidity of the suits.

Killah911 13y ago
Indeed, this is a very hard problem that needs to be solved. I just learned of JAK bank, IMHO it's a step in the right direction. Constantly accelerating systems are not natural or sustainable. Hopefully we can find solutions to money, banking and investing that are sustainable and productive without being predatory to parasitic towards most of humanity.
- chad_oliver 13y ago
  > Constantly accelerating systems are not natural or sustainable You know, all of technology is one giant constantly accelerating system.
  - Killah911 13y ago
    I don't know about that. Sure the perception is that "technology" is constantly accelerating. But if you look at it a more finite, measurable sense, for eg. Steam Engine/Steam Propulsion technology (I picked an arbitrary one, based on my assumptions, so apologies if this technology is "accelerating"), can be said to have decelerated. In this sense, the constant "acceleration", IMHO is more of a perception thing. However, companies setting higher and higher sales forecast no matter what, is the type of acceleration that is quantifiable and not quite sustainable indefinitely. There are limits. You can keep profiting till you've got a monopoly on EVERYTHING... and then you just make all the minions work harder, or make people produce more babies so there are more consumer? That type of acceleration is unsustainable and quite frankly, absurd.
    - 13y ago

AsymetricCom 13y ago

Clearly, time has come to nationalize the banking system.

ha-ha-ha 13y ago
Clearly, the bankster have privatized and corrupted the political system long time ago.

deleted 13y ago

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cpncrunch 13y ago

It's ridiculous to think that working those kind of hours for 6 weeks is actually productive.

fatjokes 13y ago
As the article mentions, it's mostly for face-time.

pilsetnieks 13y ago

> In Japan, there’s a word for it. Karoshi refers to death by overwork, a legal term that allows surviving family to petition a judge for compensation for damages [..] we have no such legal designation of protracted corporate suicide. Is suicide really the word that should be used here?

YokoZar 13y ago
Perhaps not, though if you intend to commit suicide, and the difference between a gun and overwork is massive compensation to your family, then there probably is some sort of motivation to die at the office.
- coryl 13y ago
  Can you even choose to die by overworking? I mean, you can overwork yourself and inadvertently die. But you would never know if you were going to die, or just wake up really tired and go home the next morning. Jumping off a bridge is one thing, jumping off your office building is another. But going into work and seeing if you can grind yourself out, that takes motivation. You'd have to feel the need to perform your job well, which gives you the feeling of stress. It doesn't strike me that a suicidal person would knowingly choose their work as an avenue of death.
Havoc 13y ago
>Is suicide really the word that should be used here? I don't think there is a right word for it. Its not really murder because the employee more or less did it voluntarily. And its not really suicide because there was no intention to kill oneself. Death by overworking is about as good as it gets imo.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  How is it not manslaughter or some form of negligent homicide? The company created a culture that celebrated unhealthy work practices. It's no different than if a company were paying its employees to smoke cigarettes.

PedroBatista 13y ago

No one will be charged with anything, maybe some pocket money will be offered to the family (maybe). Either way, i found this topic kind of a "uneasy" to discuss in many industries, mostly because the glass houses.

8ig8 13y ago

This seems like hazing to me. _You don't have to work all these crazy hours, but it might help if you want to join our club._ Also... Imagine if something even remotely similar happened at Walmart.

joe_the_user 13y ago
Walmart just exports its working-to-death to the third world countries like Bangladesh. Here, it gets cheaper clerk-hours per dollar with part laborers surviving on food stamps. http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/food-stamps-subsidize-wal-mart-696042/ http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/foo...

jmduke 13y ago

If you think this stuff is interesting from both a "what the hell is going on here" standpoint and a "no, really, what's it like in an investment bank?" standpoint, read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. It's a pretty interesting look at Wall Street in the late 80's, and it does a good job of avoiding an outright demonization of the industry while offering an honest appraisal. As an aside note, I'm always amused when I hear my tech friends lambast investment bankers' crazy work schedules and then go on to brag about pulling an all-nighter Thursday and then hit up a hackathon after work on Friday. (Just because you get free beer and t-shirts doesn't mean its not unhealthy.)

lmartel 13y ago
At least in tech it's a choice, though; I know lots of techies who work 40 hours a week (and, you're right, lots who don't), but I don't know a single banker who doesn't pull this sort of crap. And I know a lot of bankers.
- s3r3nity 13y ago
  eh -- anecdotal evidence != real data though
  - lmartel 13y ago
    You're completely right, but while I'm not going to look these numbers up I'm very confident that the average investment banker works longer hours than the average software engineer; or even, yes, the average startup founder. I can promise you Google interns don't die from overwork.
    - acchow 13y ago
      > I can promise you Google interns don't die from overwork. Hah. Overeating and binge drinking, probably.
    - s3r3nity 13y ago
      Yes and there were many people very confident that the world would end last year. The amount of confidence you have doesn't prove anything, especially if you have no basis for that confidence outside of a few anecdotes. Hmmm I love getting down-votes when I don't agree with the circle jerk.

deleted 13y ago

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jmduke 13y ago
I sorta agree. I don't think there's anything inherently awful about 100+ hour work weeks (in that I would never want to do them, but people know what they're getting into when they join a BAML internship), but anecdotally the culture of working long hours at an IB is much more destructive than, say, working long hours at a hospital -- there's a much more pervasive drug life, and the long hours are borne much more out of showmanship and capriciousness than actual necessity. It's a pretty shitty industry that attract specific personalities, but it's not going to go away anytime soon -- mainly because of the massive amounts of money.
schoper 13y ago
If you have a work environment that only kills the marginal...then you have a work environment that kills the marginal. You need to start thinking about physical requirements and medical examinations before hiring, much like the military. Or maybe you need to think about putting a stop to a system that is really about hazing instead of getting stuff done. The second might improve other things about the efficiency of your business as well. That will have economic consequences not just to you and your employees, and is therefore a thing of proper public scrutiny.
- ngoel36 13y ago
  For every Wall Street banker working 100+ hours a week, there is a startup founder on Hacker News that also works for 100+ hours a week. Who's providing more value is up for debate (I'm inclined to side with the founder of a tech startup :) ), but it's bullshit to chide only one industry for putting too much pressure on employees. I was a Google intern, and I had plenty of colleagues (including myself) that put in 100+ hour weeks. And that was no one's choice but our own.
  - lmartel 13y ago
    There's a big difference in expectation though. Sure, you CAN put in 100 hour weeks at lots of companies, but at IBanks you're admired for it [and mocked/disrespected/sabotaged if you don't]. I have a lot of friends in banking internships, and whenever I manage to pull one to dinner at 9pm on a friday night they tell me "I had to take so much shit to make it to this!" Just look at all the press (and the initial forum threads) around this death; notice how everyone's describing him as "one of BAML's best interns"? Why do you think they called him that? Because of the quality of his work, or because of the hours he pulled? I'll give you a hint: IBanking work, at least at the intern level, is really easy.

SeanDav 13y ago

As someone that worked at that exact office for many years and then thankfully got out of that rat race I can sympathize with someone being exposed to the culture that exists there. Generally people work ridiculous hours because they want to. They do it because the environment is highly competitive and the rewards can be huge. It is not the place for sensitive people, or indeed people with ethics and morals. It is all about the buck$ and screw the rest. People that can make money are Gods, even if their decisions only make money in the short term, no-one cares - all that matters is the next quarterly result and the annual bonus. There is a reason that Merrill Lynch is now called Bank of America Merrill Lynch, their short term decisions came back and bit them in the ass and they got bought out. I doubt that any lessons were learned. Lots of lip service but I would be beyond stunned with surprise if any meaningful changes have taken place - the fact of this intern's death probably means I am correct, although of course nothing has been determined as to any link or otherwise. I am probably over dramatizing here but if you value your soul, stay the heck away from Big Investment Trading & Commodities Houses.

beachstartup 13y ago
of course you're not over dramatizing. i'm sure in a few weeks (if not ALREADY) this guy will be the going-joke around the offices as "don't pull an X. don't be the guy who can't handle the grind."
- ludston 13y ago
  I find it very hard to believe an attitude like that would be overtly displayed. Bankers should be attributed some empathy shouldn't they?
  - beachstartup 13y ago
    3 young bankers walk into a bar...
  - patmcguire 13y ago
    "If you ever care to see how all the world's most awful jokes spread, spend a day on a bond trading desk. When the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated, six people called me from six points on the globe to explain that NASA stands for 'Need Another Seven Astronauts. " - Liar's Poker

constapop 13y ago

If someone wants to know how one of those all-nighters in IB looks like, he should read this: http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-analyst-life-worst-day/ http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-ana... I have cousin who worked for Nomura in London and 100+ hours per week are normal thing in IB industry. I doubt that all-nighters were mandatory for interns, but it is very competitive environment and there are dozen of other interns/students waiting for opportunity and ready to do it. Someone wrote its for the face-time but nobody pulls all-nighter for face time.

refurb 13y ago
One thing to remember is that a lot of those 100 hours are sitting around waiting. Not to say they don't put in a lot of hours, but a friend of mine (banking intern) was told a 7pm to wait for a signed document to be signed and faxed in. It eventually came at 4am. He basically sat around for 8hr waiting for it.

hardwaresofton 13y ago

but for how long?

AznHisoka 13y ago

I worked a couple of years in a company called BlackRock. There's a group there called PAG (Portfolio Analytics Group), made up of mostly fresh college graduates. In the beginning, the head of the program would feed us the Kool-Aid about how the long 16 hour days would be so worth it after a year or 2. Sure, we'd be half-awake when we came in at 6 AM, and half-dead when we got to leave at 10 PM. The kicker was he told us while it'd be tempting to just go home and sleep after we left, we should instead head straight to the GYM and workout for 30 mins, then go to the bar for a few hours because it would keep our "sanity". Hah.. sure, you know what else would keep you sane? QUITTING and working elsewhere.

vladimirralev 13y ago
I don't know about that. I often see a huge stream of people at 6PM sharp leaving the BlackRock building.
- Killah911 13y ago
  Probably the guys who just encouraged the interns to stick it out till 10 :-P
- wtetzner 13y ago
  Maybe not all groups there are like the PAG group.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
cmbaus 13y ago
Out of curiosity, what software were you using?

bigbossman 13y ago

Another point no one has mentioned...banking summer interns almost never do anything critical. If he needed to work 70+ hours straight, he probably was really slow at whatever shit work he was doing. (Young bankers reading this, learn all the Excel shortcuts!) Good bankers know how to manage expectations. Who knows what this kid was working on, but it's easy to ask the graphics department for presentation help, the India team to pull some data, other bankers for help with numbers, etc. There's literally nothing he could have been doing that someone else in his firm hadn't done before. Erratic hours are part of being an investment banker, but what this kid was doing to himself sounds completely unnecessary.

kenster07 13y ago

Perhaps the subprime crisis could have been avoided altogether if our banking sector wasn't so sleep deprived. Seriously.

avty 13y ago

Was it worth it?

kyleblarson 13y ago

Such a shame that people are willing to literally work themselves to death at a task that delivers no true value to society. Not really related, but it's also extremely scary how much of this industry relies on convoluted, fragile excel spreadsheets.

cosmie 13y ago
> Not really related, but it's also extremely scary how much of this industry relies on convoluted, fragile excel spreadsheets. Why single out this industry? Every company I've worked for large enough to have an accounting department lives and breathes by those evil spreadsheets.
rtkwe 13y ago
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss. Are there shitty practices screwing things up and misaligned priorities? Certainly, but fundamentally banks and investors make capital and investment much more fluid and simpler.
- makomk 13y ago
  Are you sure about that after reading the rest of the thread? From what I can tell, banks are where they are not because they're good at what they do but because they're solidly entrenched.
Mikeb85 13y ago
Yes, the allocation of money and resources has no value to society...

olefoo 13y ago

Well, clearly the answer is put a price on the lives of the sweet young things who are so eager to throw themselves into the jaws of Moloch. I mean that would be the Capitalist solution; and it would make banking into an heroic activity once again; and if telecast would surely outrank many other reality shows... Think of a nine-week show called The Bankers Ordeal that would use go-pros to record every moment of the grueling work schedule that would not stop until one of the contestants fell. A riveting tribute to the allure of capitalism, how heart rending to see the contestants lined up at the start; one of them sure to die in the service of the only god our society worships unreservedly. Truly it would be a revival of the ancient tradition of the sacrificial lamb.

mynameishere 13y ago

What exactly are they doing during those 100+ hours a week? Fiddling with MSFT Excel? It's easy to imagine a programmer working 100+ a week, since there's never a real end-point to software. It can literally go on forever if you please. But...finance? I can't imagine even Black–Scholes required that kind of crazy dedication.

loganfrederick 13y ago
Speaking of Fischer Black, while he worked quite a bit because he enjoyed it and was given a lot of flexibility due to his reputation, he took great pride in having the smallest percent ownership in Goldman Sachs out of any of the partners while he was there. He was not a banker himself, and was known to play Super Mario Bros. in his office and spend his evenings at comedy clubs. And he had a bigger impact on finance than arguably any banker since JPMorgan, without working their hours. Perry Mehrling wrote a great biography of Black which I can't recommend enough. http://www.amazon.com/Fischer-Black-Revolutionary-Idea-Finance/dp/0471457329 http://www.amazon.com/Fischer-Black-Revolutionary-Idea-Finan...
mathattack 13y ago
In an internship it's all about the face time of proving you can work hard enough to survive an associate position or 2 year analyst stint. The competition is amplified because firms don't want to hire someone who got rejected from their prior place of employment. The reason such a strange system exists is the top positions are so lucrative but it's hard to screen for the right abilities so they base it on brute work ethic. I'm not defending, just explaining.
- throwit1979 13y ago
  That's not an answer to the question, though. I'm also genuinely curious. What do people "in finance" actually do on a day to day basis? My naive understanding is that the industry is highly automated already, so what activities are these 100 hour weeks spent doing?
  - 13y ago

tonetheman 13y ago

seriously... how long does it take to fuck people out of their money...

morgante 13y ago

This is just insane, and sadly mirrors the experience of everyone I know interning in finance. But do they also treat their tech/engineering employees like this? I can't imagine an engineer working 80 hours on Wall St. when they could make quite good money Facebook, etc. as well.

gadders 13y ago
No, they don't (15+ years in banking IT)

robbyking 13y ago

I had a roommate who worked in the banking industry and kept similar hours. Her "day off" was an 8 hour work day on Sunday. One (late) night we had a drink together and figured out that while she made twice my salary annually, I made three times her's hourly.

itengelhardt 13y ago
Effiency For The Win!

geetee 13y ago

As the person being overworked, at what point do you put your foot down and say this is ridiculous?

tsotha 13y ago
This was an internship. Normal employees don't work these kinds of hours.

deleted 13y ago

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spiredigital 13y ago

Right out of college I took an investment banking job, and it didn't take me too long to realize it definitely was NOT what I wanted to be doing for the next 10 to 20 years of my life. I had it relatively easy - working for a small firm, our hours were more in 50 to 80 hour range - so not nearly as stressful as many. But it was still pretty brutal, especially when things got busy. I worked with good people and it's not true that all bankers are insanely greedy and immoral. I met some of the best people I've ever known in the banking world, and also some real scumbbags. But one stereoype is true: just about everyone I worked with was insanely driven and incrediblely competitive. Already a skinny guy, I dropped at least another 10 to 15 pounds due to the long hours and no lunch hour. Most of the guys simply ate soup at their desk so they could get more work done. I remember my out-of-town girlfriend coming into town for a rare weekend visit and I spent 8 hours at the office on a Sunday. That might have been the day I vowed to quit. So I started saving my money like a miser, and after a few years had enough in the bank to quit cold turkey. Had no idea what I was going to do, but just let them know I was done at the end of my two-year commitment. At my going away party, the wives of my co-workers secretly told my girlfriend she was incredibley lucky I was getting out and were happy for her. I ended up starting an eCommerce business and have been doing that - and loving it - for the last 5+ years. Apart from marrying that incredible woman who stuck with me when I was in banking, leaving to pursue a more balanced life was the best decision I've ever made. If anyone is interested in the full story, I wrote a blog post about it here: http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/ http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/

iyulaev 13y ago
Question for you - how much more productive were you on your 80th hour than on your zero-th? I ask because I typically work 50 hour weeks. I've pushed to 80 when projects are wrapping up but I find that the extra hours are mostly only useful for rote work like writing/running tests, fixing simple bugs, and not for creative work. In fact most of the most difficult problems I solved in my off hours rather than at my desk. So I've always wondered what the net benefit is of working crazy hours like that in the long term, especially when there's always the option of hiring two employees and paying them 1/2 of the salary (I know I prefer x for 40/wk rather than 2x for 80/wk, the marginal cost of that 80th hour is huge!)

jgamman 13y ago

there's probably some 'thinking fast, thinking slow' decision substitutions going on in the industry ie, i don't want to acknowledge that i'm vastly overpaid for doing something that is likely to have net-zero value (or massively negative in the long term) so my brain switches to thinking that my salary is justified if i work absurd hours. that plus a chase the cheese mentality for all those alpha personalities.

null_ptr 13y ago

I think one sign of maturity is learning to watch out for your own well being, as a long-term investment in your own future. These companies take advantage of young, immature people that are still finding their way and learning life's many ropes. Unacceptable.

readme 13y ago

American culture does not yet recognize this as a problem. It should. "Hard work" is severely overvalued and even dangerous. The Japanese even have a word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi Whenever someone like Moritz pulls 8 all nighters, there is some greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch, benefiting from that. When are we going to realize that capitalism is not the ideal and "free" system we idealize it as?

tsotha 13y ago
>The Japanese even have a word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi ... which was in the article, for those of us who read it. >Whenever someone like Moritz pulls 8 all nighters, there is some greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch, benefiting from that. Yeah, that greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch was Moritz Erhardt. You don't get this kind of internship by accident, nor are there press gangs roaming the street looking for people to force into investment banking. >When are we going to realize that capitalism is not the ideal and "free" system we idealize it as? You have an odd notion of freedom. Did B of A keep him chained to the desk, you figure?
- readme 13y ago
  Literal chains are not the only ones that exist in our society. Unfortunately, you can't expect all the world's type A personalities to suddenly stop throwing themselves on the line like Moritz did. The only way to create a safe working environment for everyone is to legislate it. Look how effective OSHA was. All I'm suggesting is to legislate that companies could not assign work to employees beyond what human capacity can handle. To you, it is "freedom" to allow the corporation to oppress the worker. To you, "freedom" is to say "do whatever you want", and allow the corporation to oppress the worker by controlling his income. To me, freedom is not just "do whatever you want" the government will stay out of it. Freedom is being able to live like a human who is not constantly enslaved by some master, whether it be a corporation or a government. To achieve that, we need to keep corporations in check, since they will always have their claws around every worker's lifeblood, which is more than enough to take someone's freedom away instantly. Working more than 8-10 hours a day is crossing into dangerous territory. Your assertion that if someone doesn't like it they could just get up and leave is naive, since the problem will always be perpetuated by thousands of other oppressed workers in line to take his place.

navs 13y ago

I've done much the same while both working and going to university. Still do. Is not the tech industry just as competitive? It might not force labor on you but however indirectly, long hours of coding with 0 sleep is considered a badge of honor. Freenode channels are full of users claiming they only slept x hours.

lhh 13y ago

I spent two years working as an analyst at a "bulge bracket" (ie top 10) investment bank in NYC (plus a summer as an intern). It seems that a lot of HNers are unfamiliar with the world of I-Banking, so here's the my view of what it's like, or at least what it was like in my group at my bank (though I believe my experience generalizes fairly well): Analyst jobs are extremely competitive to land. It's an intensive interview process, and the vast majority of analysts do an internship first and are then hired on full time for the following year. As you might imagine, the job pays very well. Market rate at a bulge bracket firm for a first year analyst is $10k signing bonus, $70k base salary, and anywhere from $0 to ~$85k in bonus, though typically bonus is in the $55k - $75k range, depending on individual, group, and bank performance. As a second year, base and expected bonus each receive a $10k bump. Plus dinner is paid for every night, and lunches as well on weekends, which adds up to about another $10k. Most banks have a two year analyst program. A small percentage of analysts stay for a third year if offered (maybe 10%), and maybe 50-75% of those continue on to become associates, which puts them on track to eventually become a senior banker. Most associates were never analysts, but were instead hired in after doing an MBA. After putting in the time as an analyst, a host of other opportunities await. Those with bulge bracket investment banking experience get all sorts of attention from recruiters. Many go on to work in private equity or for a hedge fund, both of which tend to pay significantly more than banking but with much more sane hours and a far better quality of life. Others do things like biz dev or take other misc finance roles. A very select few decide to go the startup route (eg this guy). The combination of perceived prestige, high pay, and quality exit opportunities draw legions of juniors and seniors to apply. Senior bankers know that the role is in extremely high demand, and therefore they tend to be very tough on their analysts. If one analyst burns out, there are hundreds more frantically trying to network their way in to take their place. There's a very clear divide between what a senior banker does and what a junior banker does. Senior bankers are glorified sales people. Their job is to maintain relationships (and develop new ones) with clients so that when the client decides to do a deal (any sort of M&A, financing, or restructuring), they'll hire the bank that employs said senior banker to execute/advise on the transaction. A junior banker's job is to do anything and everything that senior bankers tell them to do. Junior bankers have very little control over their own lives. They're staffed on many projects at once (at one point I had 12 different projects I was juggling), and usually have minimal say on what projects they're assigned. These projects are generally all with different sets of people. Each senior banker tends to have a sub-industry and group of clients they cover, but junior bankers get shuffled around to work on any project that needs staffing. This staffing is determined by a "staffer" (usually a semi-senior banker), which is entirely discretion based. They try to make an effort to make the distribution of work equitable, but they have their job to do outside of being a staffer, and being a good staffer doesn't advance their career in the slightest, so they're not incentivized to really get this right. The work generally goes to the analyst that looks/seems the least busy. I can't begin to describe how fucked up of a dynamic this creates. Insidious, underhanded politics. Analysts essentially forced to stay at the office until everyone above them has left the office regardless of whether or not they have anything to do. If you leave before the staffer leaves, you're guaranteed to get hit with the next staffing. If you leave before everyone above your level has left, they'll be bitching the next day about how they're working so hard even the analysts are leaving before them. Analysts subtly dropping hints to senior bankers about how much harder they're working than the other analysts, both in an effort to get staffing diverted away from themselves and because analysts all get ranked against each other at the end of the year, which determines their bonus. Analysts are ranked on a bell curve against each other, and bonus payouts among them are a zero-sum game. Recruiters and interviewers will ask you point-blank what your ranking and compensation was. Analysts carry a blackberry with them at all times, and a staffing can blow up their next two weeks literally at any moment. You live in constant fear that that little red light blinking on your blackberry isn't another staffing or fire drill (ie "emergency" work that needs to be done immediately). You can't plan anything. Being too slow to respond to emails, including at midnight on weekends, is grounds for getting sat down for a stern conversation in a conference room. My blackberry was never more than 20 ft away from me for two solid years. My average day was about 9:30am - 12:30am on weekdays, and about noon to 6pm on weekends. I didn't have my first day off, including weekends, until 4 months into the job. Sometimes it was as light as 50 hours per week, and sometimes as bad as 110+. Some of the time you actually have so much work to do that you're eating every meal at your desk and working solid the entire time, especially if you're working on a live deal, but a lot of the time you're just waiting around for other people to get back to you. They give you some work to do on a document or presentation, you spend a few hours doing it and get it back to them, and then you wait for them to get it back to you for another round of edits. You'll usually be doing this with 4 or 5 projects at a time, all with varying levels of complexity and urgency. This is one good part about the job. During the "day shift", life usually isn't so bad. A lot of times you can get away with long lunches and frequent starbucks runs without anyone really noticing. But then after a fairly leisurely day, come around 5pm or so, the "night shift" starts. You'll get edits to do for all of your projects at once and occasionally end up pulling an all nighter, even when the majority of the work you're doing involves formatting charts, transcribing pages of handwritten notes, and various other trivial, mind-numbing tasks. You'd be amazed at how much effort we'd be asked to expend on some task relative to the benefit that that task could possibly hope to provide. Like put together this 10 page weekly update for every company in X industry, including what research analysts said about them that week, what the media has said about them, individual product sales, graphs of their stock price movements and their valuation multiples, etc. All painfully slow, manual work. There were 40-50 companies in this industry. For an update that was sent to a single client. Unsolicited. When the CFO hated the senior banker who ordered the update and would never do a deal with him in his life. Doing mind-numbing work is one thing, but spending hours and hours doing it when you know it's all for nothing is an indescribable feeling. I wanted to bash my head in with a stapler. It took me THREE MONTHS to finally convince the staffer to tell the senior banker it wasn't going to happen anymore. All sorts of absurd shit like this was thrust upon us in the name of potentially winning business. I could keep going and probably fill several volumes about how horrible of an experience it was, but I'll stop there. The best day of my life to date was the day I turned in my blackberry and walked out of the building for the last time. I don't think that the people I worked with were inherently evil or anything like that. All else equal, they'd be senstive to our well being. But at the end of the day, we were just another class of indentured servants, like the many classes they'd seen before us and the many they'd see after. When I would describe my life to friends and people I'd meet that weren't a part of the finance world, they would literally think I was making things up. The idea that someone would be willing to subject themselves to such insanity, or more accurately that an employer would demand it, wasn't part of their world view. I assure you, it was really that bad. I'm a pretty stable person, but there were a couple times where I came very close to coming unglued. Somehow we managed to convince ourselves it was all worth it. The jury's still out on that one.