Centerview analyst suing for $5m for not being allowed to sleep 9 hours
Thoughts on this FT article?
Kate Shiber wondered why there was so much hurry-up-and-wait in investment banking. “I would really appreciate if we could strategise how we/I can be more efficient earlier in the day,” she wrote in an August 2020 email to a more senior banker on the “Project Dragon” deal team to which she had just been assigned.
A few weeks earlier, Shiber had joined Centerview Partners, the elite boutique M&A investment bank, as a 21-year-old, first-year analyst. The Dartmouth graduate said she had worked past midnight on the previous day but had signed off before confirming with her colleagues that her assignments were complete. She was contrite the next morning but also concerned that staying up perhaps all night would exacerbate her mood and anxiety disorders.
That day she told the firm’s human resources department about her medical condition and a therapeutic need to get eight to nine hours of sleep a night, later confirmed by a nurse’s note. Centerview immediately expressed compassion for her and implemented what it referred to as “guardrails”, a daily nine-hour window starting at midnight where she was excused from her work duties.
Less than three weeks later in September 2020, Shiber was summoned to a video meeting where two Centerview administrators fired her, tersely informing her the firm could no longer accommodate her sleep requirement. She has subsequently sued Centerview, accusing the firm of violating federal and state anti-discrimination laws that she believes apply to her based on her mental illness diagnoses. She is requesting $5mn in damages.
Junior analyst’s lawsuit against top bank puts Wall Street hours on trial - https://on.ft.com/3umdqhM via @FT
Lmfao according to her LinkedIn she lasted 3 months at Centerview
Lollllll what a bitch. How many chuds out there could easily scrape together a Dr. Note claiming "wah wah wah muh Anxiety" just to take the easy way out and leave their other colleagues to eat shit?
Anxiety/ADHD/Deppression/Etc. diagnoses are all easily available just by giving some telehealth douche self reported symptoms. If you really have a disorder well guess what...not being able to do certain things is a symptom of that. These broads have it backwards, your diagnosis/disorder isn't an excuse as to why you should be given massive advantages that allow you to coast easier than everyone else. When diagnosing yourself with some gay "disorder" carries more upside than being normal, you're living in a regressive society. Victim culture shit.
A few things...
1) Don't ever minimize the difficulty of depression and the significance of other mental health challenges.
2) "When diagnosing yourself with some gay "disorder"..." Seriously? Be better.
You decry "a regressive society" yet you have one of the least sophisticated vocabularies and a professionally embarrassing understanding of mental health. If you actually work in IB, I feel awful for your analysts.
Was just reading this. I don't know employment law enough to know if she has a case but I love the little answer at the end from a CVP executive. Basically said, "She should've known what she got into because everyone else does."
I reckon we'll see more of these cases over time.
Well, if it was not clearly stated in the employment contract, then assumptions or priors are baseless. She has a case and can win.
The only thing that can be dismissed is the disability lawsuit she filed for New York, given she neither worked nor lived in NYC.
From what I've seen, many finance job contracts have a little clause that says "work hours according to business needs" or something like that.
Would that affect it? Then it would be a case of proving that IB hours are necessary. Based on FT comments, that's a tough ask tbf.
seems so:
https://www.rubinfortunato.com/article/out-of-state-out-of-luck-new-yor…
In a recent case out of the Southern District of New York – Shiber v. Centerview Partners LLC, 21 Civ. 3649 (ER) (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 20, 2022) – the court was faced with the question of whether a resident of New Jersey, who worked solely in New Jersey due to the COVID-19 pandemic for a New York company, could assert employment claims under the New York City Human Rights Law or the New York State Human Rights Law. The court applied the long-standing “impact” requirement and ruled that she could not maintain such claims.
Thank you Diversity Recruiting.
this isnt even a diversity hire, at least diversity kids have previous internship experience. this is 100% a nepo hire...
Why would this be diversity recruitment? I'm not sure why someone complaining about the working hours would make them a diversity hire
LOL
She's white, went to Hotchkiss for highschool, and was in varsity Sailing. But sure, keep being a bigot dude.
SHE is already being at advantage. Hit these female quotas.
This is literally the exact profile of your average diversity hire lmfaoooo I worked at a firm doing a diversity recruitment drive for women specifically and they literally just hired 3 or 4 white chick interns, all from the Harvard LAX team
If you’re female, you still qualify for diversity quotas in business and finance. I got scholarships and diversity recruiting invites even though my parents bring in 7 figures
I tried at one point to get accommodation to be able to sleep 7 hours per day as associate when not on live projects. The bank went bonkers even though I explained it was only temporary as was switching between meds and needed extra rest, and got all appropriate approvals etc. Overall, being quite mentally challenged myself, due to family history, I am symphatetic to her partially, but then, if you already know, you struggle with anything less than 9hours of sleep - just do not go to the top bank, and settle for some jobs in finance that are more WLB oriented. Given how long they kept her, and tried to accommodate, I do not think there is that much of case, but looking forward to see what US courts will decide.
I feel for her but trying this only 3 weeks into the job... she seriously had no idea what she was getting into...?
Might be a tough sell, the ADA law only allows accommodations that are "reasonable" for the job. It specifically prohibits "special treatment" which this clearly would be. I'm sure they will settle out of court and never get to this point, but this accommodation essentially means they have to re-staff all her projects past midnight. CVP probably should have offered her an internal transfer.
Looks like she is now on her 4th job since graduating 3ish years ago...
Low key hoping that she’ll win, but also acknowledging that it is more realistic that she won’t.
Why would u hope that she wins when everyone and their mother knows IB is demending. She's just mad she couldn't handle it.
Who cares? Her winning is better for juniors in general.
If she was protected by the FMLA / ADA, she will win. Employment law is very interesting.
Not necessarily. FMLA does not apply here as that relates to unpaid leave and she wasn't even eligible for FMLA given her short tenure... ADA is a maybe but this is no slam-dunk.
CVP will likely just settle this, but if they fight it they do have a case, assuming they did the documentation correctly on their end. For ADA it has to be a reasonable accommodation for the job and not considered special treatment. Her not working nights would significantly impact the other juniors' workloads.
"Depending on the nature of the work assignment and operational requirements, changes to work schedules and hours may be a reasonable accommodation as long as it does not result in an undue hardship."
https://odr.dc.gov/book/manual-accommodating-employees-disabilities/typ…;
What’s tough is that they accommodated her and then terminated her at the same point that they terminated her accommodation. One would think they would keep the employment despite terminating the accommodation.
As easy as it is to make fun of her and wonder why she went into this role (which is all completely fair), everyone here should be hoping she wins - would be a phenomenal precedent for protecting junior bankers and improve all of our lives. I’m sure it’s unlikely but I can hope…
I wanted to write the same! This would be a good lesson for all the shops
I hope she loses and gets humiliated. I, for one, frequently wet my pants dreaming about work-induced sleep deprivation
Don't you think bonuses would take a big hit? Might as well join the soviet union and rename the street to Red Finance Avenue at this point
Not one bit. As much as people like to signal that IB is not all about the money and it’s about the exits, the prestige, the work, the insert whatever people say, we all know that cash is king. If IB paid you $100k flat I think talent would be hard to come by. I’m not saying that banks couldn’t find people but I am saying they wouldn’t find the top people.
The only way investment banks can attract top talent is by paying for it. If banks stopped cutting checks regardless of the hours worked then the shift to tech and other high paying careers would be quite dramatic. This would leave IB hurting for talent. They need top talent at the analyst level to continue to fuel the pipeline of analyst to MD
Most investment bankers aren't really doing productive work from 7 am through to 4am every day. You're smoking crack if you think that the job actually requires you to work every single hour of every single day.
Maybe, but fingers crossed for significant boost of per-hour rate
It will not help because there will be always people who just love to work longer hours. During my analyst years, a bunch of fellow analysts tried to limit the hours by just automating a lot of things and asking for advanced instructions. Seniors actually were happy to embark on track but there were just a few guys who prefer to work extra hard to keep their cloud of being the best. Sadly, this is competitive sport not team based
Total speculation on my part, but I would not be surprised if CVP initially told her it was okay with the intention of firing her from that moment but gave her the few weeks just to show that they legally did try to me accommodating.
No, everyone should not. The only realistic conclusion of lower working hours is lower pay. Clients hire investment banks to go above and boyond and then some. The moment this no longer happens, clients will have no need for an investment bank.... Way exaggerating, as low probability this suit leads to a meaningful change, but this could be a likely trajectory if more of these go in favour of the plaintiff.
hahahahahhahahahaaha man stop watching TV
Against all odds
First, I hope this goes to a public trial, that will set such a strong message to the entire Wall Street and may be they do something’s proactively
Second, hope she fucking wins! That precedent will open the flood gates which means the banks have to definitely implement protective measures
But I know they will settle this pennies on the dollar
This some top G shit, fuck all these other bots in the industry
There are lots of things that I don't get about this story.
First, why would Centerview hire Shiber in the first place if the firm was aware that she had a medical condition which required her to sleep 9 hours per night. It was quite obvious that with junior investment banking hours this could not work out.
Second, according to the the FT article, Shiber claimed that she could still work 105 hours a week for CVP :
So basically she would be working from 9 am until midnight non stop then sleep from midnight to 9 am? no commute time? no showering/eating/shitting time? No day off all week - in this case literally 0 second off all week? Even if CVP did let her have her 9 hours of sleep, did she seriously think that this kind of rythm was sustainable in the long term?
Both CVP and Shiber fucked up and made poor decisions here imho - CVP for hiring Shiver and Shiver for thinking that she'd be able to manage IB hours with her condition.
How would CVP have known about her medical condition before she showed up for work?
She probably did an internship there?
It's against federal law to not hire someone because of a medical condition...
Either way, her condition was mental health/anxiety so I'm guessing she only disclosed it once she had started and was not enjoying the lack of sleep. I put the poor decision mostly on Shiber - IB is not the kind of job you land by accident, she went through the whole long prep process and FT recruiting at CVP, she had to have some idea of what the job was.
Surely there needs to be some exceptions to that. It has to be legal, for example, to refuse to hire a paraplegic applying for a construction job. My guess is there's an exception for disabilities that materially impair the person's ability to do the job.
Now of course, this case is a much closer one than my previous example. But I still suspect there's nuances that apply here. Most of all, I doubt that Centerview's legal department would have allowed them to fire her in a way where they blatantly admit to doing something illegal.
How did you make partner with your reading skills?
It says during COVID era WFH. And 9 hours was set up as guardrails. Offline from midnight to 9 am.
While the “can work 105 and can increase to 120” is crap, but that includes the downtime in between. Unless she is working while eating and while sitting on the toilet.
Conclusion: READ before you go on a rant.
back in my analyst days I worked when eating (sad, i know).
Going further on your opinion...
I have some lawyer friends who can actually bill clients for their own showers - because they keep thinking about argumentation, and points to research during the shower... trust me, you can easily do thinking at any point, and the more senior you get, the more insights you will get what you can multi-task your work with ;)
Respect. Hope she wins
i agree that she is likely mentally ill, but not that she should recover a penny
centerview also should consider firing whoever supported her candidacy. something clearly went horribly wrong during her interview peocess
Bankers are the ones who are mentally ill lol. Don’t even. Completely reasonable request
Why? If CVP broke the law they should pay her. If CVP has a business need for 18 hour days at work, then they'd easily be able to prove it. They really don't.
Think it's more likely for CVP to pay for the settlement -- Even if CVP can win the case in court, any valid points made by her will be in court documents and I will not be surprised if many other juniors, as long as they are not interested in PE/HF, will try to leverage such arguments and create massive chaos over the street.
Blair would have to fire himself because female quotas start at the top.
Looks like she lasted 3 months which... isn't the standard probation period at companies 100 days?
Probation isn’t grounds to discriminate based on disability (which is what she’s alleging)
Usually 90
She knew this before she started employment. With that said, the courts do need to step in to save all the masochists slogging out insane hours wrecking their mental and physical health. Your $200K or whatever you make as a junior banker, on a hourly basis, isn't excellent wage when compared to professions with better WLB balance. If the industry can't reform itself, sooner or later the courts will get involved to knock some sense into the employment/ exploitation practices.
the weakness of this premise is that people are aware of the hourly wage, and still decide to get on board
so the maximum a judge will do is ask the plaintiff if he's retarded. If the plaintiff confirms that he is retarded, only in this case the process will go forward, because if you have an IQ of less than 60/70 then there's the presumption that in EVERY type of social interaction you had along your life you were exploited lol
sure but you can't buy things with an hourly rate
I'm generally against regulations that prevent organizations from doing great work. But then you start to question the utility of the work...this isn't the Manhattan Project.
This reads like someone that has Parkison's disease, becomes a surgeon, and then sues the hospital for firing her after seeing how her issue impacts her work.
Total non-sense and I hope she losses, just to spread the idea among those kids that you must also be self-aware of your limitations. Poor you.
Also, I would love the judge to put in his sentence the following passage from TED, you know, just to wake up those kids to the reality of how the real world works (because she really thought that sending an MBA-type of sentence to some MD would revolutionise the way senior bankers work lol):
Agree with the general message of your post but you sound insufferable
I just hate people that go to courts with bullshit issues, because they're main goal is grab the max. amount of money from others. She just could simply be mature and realize that my issue isn't really compatible with banking, put a resignation to not interfere with their colleagues workload and not let them down in live deals, and move om, but no, let's go to courts ffs.
Courts are intended for serious matters (one party doesn't fullfill his obligations, issues with your landlord = becoming homeless, etc. etc.), but not shit like this or the woman that sued McDonald's for making the coffee too hot lol - those are the insufferables in our society