Did anyone else hear about a summer analyst dying recently at a Chicago MM? Apparently he had worked some crazy amount of all nighters. Unclear as to what the exact cause of death was.
I’m not bringing this up for e-cred but to say that this shit is absurd and needs to change, I’m sure it will take a while to happen but I’d hope that today’s analysts and associates will improve banking culture so shit like this doesn’t happen anymore. The work is important and demanding but in my mind an intern shouldnt ever be working past midnight.
Mod Note (Andy): What can WSO do to help prevent more tragedies like this? Please add your thoughts here: "Death From Overwork (Karōshi) In Finance"
Very sad if true, regardless of the reason. If it ends up being a BAML London or a GS San Francisco issue again, something fundamental needs to change and we need to have a serious conversation about the way we manage ourselves and our teams.
It was Lincoln Intl
An analyst died on 7/4/14 at Lincoln in Chicago.
Nah, it was less than a week ago...know a 2nd year there
Hit the news 20 minutes ago: https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/320584/junior-banker-dies-linc…
WSO cited. Firm has issued a vague denial of "working all-night shifts" (no word on "working nearly all-night shifts"). Lots of glassdoor info but little else.
From article: Lincoln said they have "standards and systems in place" to keep these from occurring. Holy fuck, that's really high standards - to keep people from dying. Put them on the 100 Best Places to Work list.
Can't stand the ridiculous IB hours but why is everyone jumping to conclusions? To my knowledge, the cause of this kid's death is unknown.
I am a family friend of the passing away student and it was not associated with the hours. Even though it is a coincidence, it is not correlated.
Btw, the student was not a out of shape individual, he was an athlete that took care of his well-being.
Let this be a reminder to you junior guys/gals that your mental health and physical health are always more important than the job. Take care of yourselves guys.
shivam chokshi was his name... google it and you'll see the service information and his linkedin...
Thanks for dropping knowledge. To the skeptics, Lincoln International has already confirmed that someone died - only the cause of death is up for debate...
Seeing the service and his typical bio (non-target hustling for internships) really got me emotional.
EDIT: Should his name be kept off here out of consideration for family? Probably not, but just a thought. Let's be sure to be respectful.
i feel like the only way to create change is to actually personalize / humanize things... without a face, a name, it's much easier to just carry on business as usual. let's honor shivam and create positive change so that this sort of incident doesn't continue to happen...
Literally just a non-target kid trying to make it and grind. Def hits home.
Name mentioned above is correct.
It's beyond tragic what happened here. Don't want to go into specifics but I was told (company employee source) he was having seizures at his desk. This happened at the office.
If the doctors come out and say this was induced by work hours related stress that company is fucked. It's one thing when a kid has a heart attack at home in the shower, but at his desk its going to crush the analysts and I can see a bunch of them jumping ship. The company is going to have to drastically raise comp to keep morale at a workable level.
yeah man they just gotta raise comp. If they raise comp then a couple deaths per year should be fine
Absolutely disgusting... I truly enjoy finance and I understand work is important but this shit has to end immediately. Work is never THAT serous.
i find it disturbing that the spokeswoman in the efinancialcareers article offered NO words of sympathy regarding the death... no acknowledgment of how tragic this is -- only deflecting blame. really really awful. hope to see them change their tune here... this was a human life... not some deal gone bad.
especially weird given all the stuff on glassdoor about their culture.
Wow, you're right. That was cold.
It's possible (though not likely IMO) that they did offer words of sympathy, but they weren't included in the article. But if you're right, then I agree.
You would think whoever was looking over him would know better than to let someone work that long continuously... bad management.
MM M&A firms trying to compete with B/S banks mixed with a non-target summer analyst fighting for a full-time spot lead to this I think. Wouldn't be surprised if we see some regulation come up due to this.
So crazy to think how regulated the industry is but no real regulation on the wellbeing of the industry’s employees...
DePaul might be a target for Lincoln.
Wow, really sad news all around. Whoever was the Staffer/VP or whatever on that deal needs to be canned IMMEDIATELY. These are kids at the end of the day and you need to look after them.
This isn't the wild west nor is it combat zone. When is the last time you heard an INTERN dying on the job in any other industry?
For current interns/analysts - it is OK to say no when it is within reason. Working past 1 AM every night for a week? Don't ask, TELL them you need the weekend to catch up on sleep. No client is worth your health.
Well that's all cute and all but the poor kid was probably trying to get a return offer with a non target over his head... how is he going to say no? Disgusting stuff. Some type of curfew law better come out of this.
I agree with you, the VP/Staffer head should be served on a platter and made an example of... He should be jailed for mental and physical harassment if it was known that the kid had seizures at his desk... wow poor kid this is awful.
I don't disagree but that's the mentality we're trying to "change" right? Giving up the right to live for a banking job? Give me a break. Even in hell week in SEAL training they give you the weekend off because you need to heal.
Said differently, if analyst finds an error in a pitchbook before print, do you correct the mistake or let it go? It's the same concept, except the "mistake" is a human life and you need to stop the mistake (in this case, a life...)
This story just makes me sad because I can 100% relate. I went to a non-target and had to hustle my ass off to get the return offer but this does not equate to giving up the right to live for a job offer. Life has much more to offer than 2+2 -> HBS...
The saddest part of this story (if i'm a betting man), is that the deadline was probably driven by the MD/D/VP, not even the client. Lincoln is actually coming to pitch me for an exit, I really fucking hope this intern didn't work on my deal.
Plenty of people commonly work past 1 AM.
10-1 AM is pretty standard M-Th for some groups.
It's not the hours but the responsibility of the analyst/associate to make sure that those directly under their command are in good shape. I always tell them to make sure they eat a healthy diet, rest instead of partying, and workout. The stronger your body the more able you are to endure the long hours.
They aren't your troops, they didn't sign up for the military.
There's no need for 4-5 AM nights for interns. They simply don't have the value to make that ever worthwhile. They shouldn't have to rest instead of partying (maybe on weekdays, I agree), and you need time to unwind.
You risk losing them to other banks or having a headline like this one.
Eh I'm an analyst and don't decide their hours but yes i'd rather they left earlier! If you're going to criticize me for asking my interns to take care of themselves then you're an idiot.
But evidenced by your thread on burning out (see below) you made the wrong decisions "to unwind" and need to step away from the industry as a whole to recover.
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/burnout-life-choices
I’ve got interns too man. There’s no reason they should consistently work past midnight. None. Its not worth something like this happening. I like the pay your dues hierarchical structure that Banking offers, however there is something severely wrong if people think working a 20/21 year old past 2am every night without end is even remotely acceptable.
This is not confined to the banking community but rather to specific work environments. There was a story about 10 years ago, completely documented and true, that a proof-reader at one of the large publication houses in NYC died while sitting at his desk, in his typical posture, hunched over a stack of edits.
Don't recall all of the specifics, but suffice it to say the guy was there nearly a week before anyone actually realized he was doing more than his typical 90-hour work weeks
Not true
Not that it matters, but this story ran in a local newspaper down in the Carolinas so the paper was misinformed as well. After I started thinking about it, this story was more like 20 years ago but I make no assertions as to the veracity of the article.
My primary point was that over-extending oneself for their job is not restricted to banking by a longshot. As a former engineer/project manager who worked startups and outages on power plants, there were hundreds of men on these jobsites who would go from one outage to another around the country, work 6 - 9 months/year and take the rest of the time off. These outages are run around the clock, 24/7 until the outage is over.
I personally have put in 100+ hour work-weeks during outages for 6 - 9 weeks in a row, but these were jobs where I was responsible for the success/failure of the outage for one plant. Incredibly stressful, horrible on the body and mind, but quite nice financially. What I found amazing were the men who owned fifth-wheels, went from one outage to the next, and work 7 days/week until the job was over.
This is really sad but it portrays the reality. Working hours are treated as honor badges and some people in the WSO WhatsApp group have admitted that they work until 3 am regularly. It makes me even sadder that this is my dream... there must be something really wrong with us as a society if 250k people apply for 1000 of these positions. What saddens me even more is that nothing will change and this has been going on for the past 30+ years.
CURRENT INTERNS: The only thing I want to add that besides taking care of your physical health (eating food and staying hydrated) please talk to your closest people if it is difficult for you. It is extremely difficult and there’s no shame in admitting it to your family/friends. Don’t hold it in yourself.
Edit: I may have went over the line by checking his facebook but I did. 37 weeks ago a girl commented “wall street ready” and it broke my heart.. 2nd heartbreak comes from his mother’s comment in which she says “miss you”... he probably went away from his family and just wanted to make them happy and proud. no mother deserves this...
I am very saddened by this news and I send my deepest condolences to Shivam's family.
I am also pissed off and wondering what can be done to stop this (or at the very least make it much more rare)?
The WSO Community has a big voice in this industry and I see it as a voice for junior bankers and these exact students/interns that are pushing themselves to such extremes. I feel horrible that it's been 12+ yrs since we started WSO and the same shit keeps happening.
I don't know the specifics of this exact case but it seems irresponsible to assume it is not at least somewhat related to the working conditions (even if there was an underlying health issue). So how do we change the culture? Most BBs have instituted certain policies that make it harder for abuse on the interns/analysts, but what about the MM and boutiques?
Where can people easily find these policies? Are they publicly posted and compiled anywhere? How do we know if the banks are actually following them? I think WSO could help bring some of this change and put pressure on the industry to treat their junior bankers better.
What if we were to try and create a general industry policy that helped protect the most vulnerable to overwork/abuse at the bank and have the banks sign it? and then as part of WSO Company Database would rank the banks on how well they adhere to the policy?
I'm sick of these horrible headlines - let's change it together. Who's in?
Collecting thoughts here: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/policy-to-help-prevent-death-fro…
-Patrick
Can someone please do some sort of study on the diminishing returns of working each additional hour past some arbitrary threshold such as 80 hours?
Maybe quantifying this inefficiency will resonate with senior bankers as human life clearly doesn't.
You could argue that they diminish to the point of being negative. Can't count the number of times I've looked at work I did at 3 am the night before and wondered what I possibly could have been thinking. (Then in 15 minutes I fixed or redid from scratch 2 hours "work" from the night before).
I think people need to do some probability analysis on this. Between interns and other juniors there are likely 20-30k people. You hear a story like this once every three years. A 1-50k probability. I’d be curious what percent of average 23 year olds have a sudden death.
Sorry he died. But I’m not sure “banking killed him” is correct.
That’s a human life you are talking about. Not an statistic. He was someone’s child and brother and friend and cousin. He was a human being with friends and family just like you. Show some respect even if you can’t find any heart in you to show.
I’m trying to push back on the investment banking killed him meme in this thread. There’s no evidence of that. People want to call the senior managers at Lincoln murderers and the like....put them in jail. I’m pushing against judgements without facts.
Hi everyone. I'm a reporter with the Chicago Tribune. I am trying to learn more about what happened to this young man. If you have any concrete information, or if you know anyone who worked with Shivam at Lincoln or who knew him personally, please contact me: aelejalderuiz (at) chicagotribune (dot) com, 312-222-4986. Thank you very much.
My deterrent is all the people puffing out their chests about the hours, humble bragging over a guy’s grave. At least use a different thread.
RIP buddy, peace and comfort to your family and loved ones.
Spoke to two people who were in the office when it happened, and they said the kid was extremely healthy (ate well and worked out every day). They said it happened around 8:30-9:00pm and that he wasn't getting crushed, that it was just a freak thing
Sounds like something I'd say if I had slammed the kid with work the past week.
Don't let this thread fade! We want this to reach headline news. The negative PR will pressure the banks and therefore, they will be more accepting to change.
Anonymous reporting exists...
Very close to him, til the end. Prefer to be anon in that.
This story has obviously snowballed here into something it is definitely not. He was not overworked, completely healthy, and this seems like a freak thing. Freak things, esp with a beyond healthy 21 y/o kid like Shivam, take time to investigate. It's pretty obvious to those that knew him that stress, fatigue, or management were not at fault here. He took care of himself no doubt. It's been 2 weeks - if anyone thought Lincoln was somehow involved you'd be hearing about it. It's not, so just respect his family's grieving for God's sake.
If you actually do feel for the story of a first gen self-made non-target kid who worked his ass off to get where he is and was known as just an all around stellar guy, look him up, see who he really was from the people who knew him. Make it personal and make him remembered or at least take some compassion from this - Don’t make him just another pawn in this narrative about the cruelty of IB. He wouldn’t have wanted that and truly loved what he did and it fucking sucks he didn’t get to see that through because he would’ve been great.