Protected Saturdays?

I never got to experience the protected Saturday / weekends while working in banking. I am curious to hear from the younger monkeys how the policy is working? Do you feel the policy is actually protecting your time? Are you simply ignoring emails on your days off? Does it apply to live deals? How does senior management view the policy? Do you find yourself playing catch up all week after using your protected time?

Thanks!

 

I'm sure you'll get variable responses, but I think it's been working at our firm. The group heads and MD's do an outstanding job to establish group culture and try to minimize nonsense work, which definitely helps us over the week itself and lends at least a slight degree of predictability.

I usually don't come in on Saturday unless there's a live deal. Otherwise, I might log in remotely for a few hours, but nothing substantial. It's nice to have a day off occasionally for certain, though to your point I feel like weekdays are slightly busier (though not particularly so). All in all it's a good development for the industry in my view. It's never going to be a predictable 50 hour job, but there are certainly ways to cut inefficiency to some degree and give folks a bit of visibility in their day to day.

There's a closer meaning to my user name. Try reading it quickly. Perhaps you will then understand ;P
 

From what I have seen in the industry and from speaking to younger bankers, the policies regarding Saturdays seems to be very variable and unreliable, but there is definitely a shift in the culture. I think that banks realized they were losing way too much talent to areas like consulting and corp dev, which offered slightly lower pay packages but allowed employees to actually live their lives.

As such, I've heard of a serious shift away from face time and needless work. Previously, when banks spoke about face everyone rolled their eyes and went back to work. It seems now like most offices are actually starting to mean it; if there's work that you can do at home or you don't need to do until later, there's no need to stay at the office. Whether this is from seniors relaxing a little bit, or a lot of work being outsourced (a lot of banks and funds are getting in-house research teams and off-shored graphics teams to take care of a lot of the work the analysts would need to do in the past) is difficult to say, but it seems like the culture is definitely getting a lot softer than it was years ago.

 
Best Response

Saturday policy is/was definitely beneficial from a junior banker perspective, but the "enforceability" does vary to one degree or another from group to group. In my experience, most senior bankers were generally respectful of the policy but there were also some that expected you to work for them on saturdays and not "report it". Ideally you still checked on your email to make sure nothing urgent came up, but generally people weren't randomly getting blown up on saturdays.

As you might imagine, buy-in was stronger from the more administrative, "heads of group" bankers who had more HR responsibility. Mileage varied with individual MDs.

That being said, it was immeasurably preferable from a morale perspective, and I think much more sustainable for those who might have otherwise not considered a longer term stint in banking.

Live deals trumped the policy, but there were processes in place that MDs were supposed to use to make sure the head of the group/staffer was aware of the situation for accountability. Again, mileage varied, but for the most part, people tried to protect Saturdays even where there were live deals going on if possible.

There's probably some residual catch-up involved around the fringes, but I think MDs probably also got a bit more focused on what they wanted, knowing that they no longer had that extra day to iterate needlessly, so on the whole it probably improved from that perspective as well.

 

I had protected Saturdays and it was great. I'd say ~80% of my Saturdays ended up being off. There was still plenty of face time the other six days a week though. Also there were Fridays where I ended up working later because I wanted to make sure I wasn't coming in the next day. When I did work on Saturdays, it tended to be multiple Saturdays in a row because of live deals.

I hear that when the program was implemented, there was a lot of push back, but by the time I joined the firm most senior bankers had acclimated to it. A friend of mine at the firm had an senior MD of the old school who had him come in 10 Saturdays in a row. HR actually reached out to the MD and threatened his bonus, and all of a sudden my friend wasn't coming in on Saturdays anymore. Amazing how that works. Keep in mind this guy was ranked top 5 in fees for our BB multiple years in a row.

I've heard that JPM has a protected weekend policy (one protected weekend a month or so). But since it's less consistent than a protected Saturday (weekly) and the protected weekends are on different dates for different people, they don't get honored as much. I had a friend who went five months (as a second year analyst) without getting a single protected weekend despite the policy.

 

"Exceptions to the weekend guideline must be pre-approved by either the regional head of GCIB for employees outside the U.S., or by one of the business heads within GCIB for employees within the U.S."

When exceptions are this readily available, the policy won't make a huge difference. Plus, either way the work has to be done so it just means full days on Saturday instead of split between Sat. and Sun.

Frank Sinatra - "Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy."
 

@yeahright agreed, both with your post and username. honestly, the novel part of this email to me was the last point: "efficiency and work-life balance could be greatly enhanced through some changes in technology, graphics and production & printing services". Idk how BAML's tech, etc is but more support staff is a much more concrete aid than an easily ignored weekend policy.

 

It's hilarious how skeptical everyone is of these weekend policies.

"For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible."
 

Saturday policy is very true. You could definitely count on it to visit your parents.

Also, even bankers have understanding situations like this. If you can arrange you work well, it's definitely acceptable to take more days off for something like this.

 

The one thing that people fail to realize about this is that just because they are proclaiming this to happen doesn't mean it will. In my opinion the biggest hurdle to cutting junior's required hours will be the existence of the over eager junior (always exists). This junior, wanting to show how hard they “work”, will be the ones staying in the office later and on the weekends. Most other juniors, while they may hate them for it, will follow suit to save face. If a junior truly wants to stay late or come in on the weekend I doubt anyone can or will tell him no.

Nice guys may not finish last but they sure don't finish first. Loyalty is not rewarded, it's taken advantage of. 
 

My firm doesn't have a strictly enforced (or comprehensive) policy, but speaking to people at firms that do, I've heard both.

Analysts at a BB have said they dislike it because they work later M-T when they'd prefer to work a weekend day and go to the gym during the week or something.

An associate at a top BB I know said he loves it because he gets Saturday out of the office every week, but that may just be more of an associate thing and analysts at the same firm may get owned - will have to ask some now, am curious.

 

CS strictly enforces it. Off by 6 PM usually on Fridays and no Saturday's except in extremely rare situations if on a live deal with urgent work. I haven't worked a single Friday night or Saturday since starting in August. It's group specific but most groups adhere to policy. You don't stay any later on the weekdays really because of it... maybe stay a little later on Friday by choice or come in on Sundays to finish up work but that's it. It's really a great deal

 

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