Why are bankers given such bad computers at BB banks??
I mean is there any logical reason? We spend nearly every waking hour on our computer and I lose hours of productivity every week due to outlook, chrome, excel, ppt being slow and the occasional crash.
We should have top of the line computers / virtual desktops but even a modern standard desktop would eclipse the tech I’m working with, and the increase in productivity would pay for itself.
I’ve worked at two different BB and they both had slow hardware / mediocre virtual desktops, doubting it’s different at other BB and even EB.
Anyone have any insight here?
Chill some banks don't even provide coffee
GS enters the chat haha
Coffee is for closers
Banks are ultimately sprawling platforms with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of employees... constantly having top of the line tech for everyone would be $$$$$. Banks are still just trying to get back office systems migrated to the cloud versus hard drives.
Also I don't think that cost would pay for itself. Yeah it sucks that we lose hours a week to tech, but a new computer is not going to change Excel crashing, and honestly the junior banker $ per hour is next to nothing for banks especially when you aren't paid overtime. It's not like you're missing out on doing additional work for the bank when Excel crashing keeps you up until 3am instead of just 1am.
You could get an extremely solid setup at home for $2,000, Im sure with scale and corporate discounts this could be much cheaper and last ~5 years, so $400 a year
I disagree that excel crashes would still continue, I’ve never had one on my personal computer even running large models / multiple workbooks
To your point on no change in productivity, even spending 5% less time in outlook would add up considerably and alleviate overall capacity which means maybe that analyst has time for another pitch, which could turn into a deal etc.
2000 * 100,000 employees (BBs) is still $200 million and those machines would be outdated again in 5 years
I get you can make the argument that bankers are more ~important~ but the firms don't see it that way. In fact IB has one of the slimmest profit margins compared to other parts of the bank bc human capital cost is so high. No way are they increasing tech spend arbitrarily
To be clear, I 100% agree that there would be some productivity increase - but you can find those in just about any part of a BB, they are sprawling companies not known for their efficiency whatsoever. $2000/employee is a very high cost when it comes to bottom line
Your computer crashes because of comparability amongst the various add-ons, not because you have a computer that can somehow not handle a 20mb excel file despite 16gbs of RAM.
You don’t have 1/10 the add ons on your personal computer
$3000 laptop for everyone at my MF AM, not the best but top specs for a work machine (Nvidia 3000s lol), apparently price has not changed much over the years. Also $450~ 2k monitors 60hz.
Comes down to cost.
It would be awesome if they let you buy a desktop with lots of ram/cpu rather than the piece of shit they make us use. I’d totally do it
I would too but that would be a compliance nightmare.
Not at a bank anymore but my firm has us use a remote log in when working from home and I use my gaming laptop. The firm computers are hot garbage everywhere I've been.
For key meetings we used to have catering, like an in-house restaurant team (from the cafe) preparing and bringing us food. That all disappeared.
Our laptops are below par HP machines now, not even good ones. Leased they are like 8$/month/employee. That's all they will pay.
When we suggested Macbook Pros the IT sourcing guy almost had a heart attack.. it was like 31$ per month, a 4x increase. And tech support wouldn't support the hardware because their training wouldn't allow it. Then the docking stations wouldn't work. Then the insurance for them would be higher. (..) incredible amount of work.
macbooks would be terrible tho for lack of excel and ppt shortcuts just get a new thinkpad had one at a Big4 and it was super nice even with touchscreen
Banks would never switch to macs, and not for cost reasons, mark my words.
Our group got us top of the line, 8k machines and they make a world of difference. Models that would take 20 minutes to open up now take at max 30 seconds and man are fast machines underrated.
Piper had Lenovo X1 Carbons when I was there which were great, was really surprised to learn that the "better" banks tended to shaft their employees more.
Roommate is a consultant at MBB and they have absolute top of the line thinkpads - can have 20 massive excel sheets open without any slowing down of performance. Meanwhile I try to add a column in excel on a model and the thing takes 15 minutes to load then crashes.
Like others have said, banks are just big slow sucky organizations and ya a $2000 laptop seems reasonable when you’re working on a $50M fee, but if you look at rolling that out across X thousand employees I’m sure it’s hard to swallow
I'd imagine folks at mbb are using Mac, although they have sh*t compatibility with MS office.
I also think some part of it comes down to who uses the computers. For the most part, it’s the juniors that are on the laptops all the time and seniors rarely ever spend extended time on their laptops so they don’t truly know how bad it is. But it’s only the MDs and Partners that can really make a change.
Wait. Your banks give out laptops? It’s byod for me and I’m at a BB
did they give you $ to pay for it? we got a technology stipend
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