Industry Wide Changes Possible?
Lots of chatter going on about overworked juniors, potential strikes, poor culture and mismanagement due to incompetent seniors
Unfortunately, this is not the first time someone in banking has died due to the job and it won’t be the last…unless juniors across the street grow balls and band together
Personally I don’t think there are enough rebellious personalities in banking for any grassroots reform but I’m curious to hear of ideas to enable a movement/plan for improvement
My fear is without action in the near term, the banking environment is only going to get worse in the coming years as it becomes more commoditized and competitive
People will MS this (because they live in a delusional world where they think they can earn $100ks in their twenties and only work 60 hour weeks without being an instagram influencer).
For junior hours to get better, this means more juniors to do the same amount of work. Which means higher staff costs = lower bonuses to afford the same profitability.
You may see hours get better and larger junior teams, but at the expense of compensation.
There’s a difference between people expecting to get rich working 60-hour weeks, and people expecting to be (CoL adjusted middle class) working 70-80 hour weeks. What people are asking for isn’t to have a laid-back job with boatloads in comp…they’re asking for a job that barely allows you to afford a studio near the workplace to be somewhat humane. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask.
My friends in tech make well above $100k and work well under 60 hours so I think we just chose the wrong field.
With a job ceiling, inferior exit options and,in the coding space, a huge risk of having no career as AI develops.
I wouldn't glamourise tech. But feel free to leave banking.
Adding more staff is not the answer. At a group where you can argue we have too many people for the current deal environment. What ends up happening is the seniors keep asking for more pages and analysis. We participate in all kind of pitches including ones that we know will most likely get shut down internally due to reputational risk after tons of work. Bottom line is more staff just means more new work created.
This is exactly right…more people = more work, pages/analysis are not created to match the demands of clients, they are created to match the lack of confidence of seniors
More heads = more pages/analysis in almost all cases
Nobody said it was the answer. I agree it's not. I said the only way uour hours get better, with workload in the group staying the same, is more resource.
The point is that you'll never change the amount of work downwards. Asking the bank to pitch less isn't going to happen, especially in a down turn.
In a down turn, people are desperate to show activity to keep their jobs. So they go after lower probability things than they usually would in an upmarket. That won't change.
There's also huge pressure from senior mgmt to start having kpis around activity. So even if you're an MD who doesn't follow this "throw shit at the wall" strategy, you get steamroller into doing more useless activity.
not sure how it is in other BB groups but at mine a handful do 80-90% of the work so don’t think your thesis is accurate
"In my particular case it's not like that, so your thesis is wrong"
Please apply some common sense before making posts like this.
I’m in my 20s making $100K base and only work ~40 hours a week after leaving my IB analyst program.
And I’m definitely not hot enough to be an influencer
"AFTER LEAVING MY IB ANALYST PROGRAM"
Ok so you used IB, a job with long hours on average to get a good exit. Doesnt disprove my thoughts....
Also I had a s on the $100s. I'm sure you can get to $100k in your twenties in a lot of jobs. Devil is in the detail.
What do you do? I recently learned that I enjoy life too much to stick it out in banking for the amount of money it’ll me .
I think some things will be improved on the margins but the industry won’t drastically change. IB attracts a certain type of person (type A, driven, no complaining, etc) so not enough people will speak up or band together. There will always be a subset of hardos that use an opportunity like this to work harder and prove their “worth” to the MD.
However, if compensation falls enough so the trade off is no longer worth it (as has happened at BofA, they pay significantly below street), you might see some change.
If CoL-adjusted comp falls such that IB faces increased competition from tech, consulting, and even lower-paid corporate jobs (people just deciding that the material lifestyle difference is no longer worth working extreme hours), IB will be forced to raise comp, be okay with hiring people desperate for social mobility with less “polished” backgrounds, or improve conditions.
I get the sense that, of these options, they’d rather raise comp.
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