Posting this anonymously for obvious reasons.
At my previous bank (London office) a few years ago, we had a VP who was working 110–120 hours a week for nearly 10 weeks straight. We were a small team and everyone could see how badly he was deteriorating, his voice shook on calls, he barely ate and I saw him have what looked like panic attacks more than once. One afternoon he collapsed in the office. Instead of calling an ambulance, the MD told a junior to quietly get him a cab to the hospital. The next day, we were told in a team meeting that he was “just dehydrated.” He was expected to keep working remotely from the hospital, they just removed him from calls with client. A few days later, he was back in the office and got screamed at by the MD in Italian for collapsing mid-deal and “jeopardizing his reputation” (he often screamed in Italian during blowups so the other teams on the floor wouldn’t catch on). Afaik nothing was escalated outside the team as there was no action from the HR. This was a high-performing VP holding a team together with no backup (had only one analyst supporting him most of the time, we were a small team). He was doing everything asked of him, even flew to Milan many times last minute when MD wanted him to and the response from MD after he collapsed was essentially not to bleed on his rug. He left a few months after I did. His LinkedIn hasn’t been updated and I haven’t messaged him because, honestly, I don’t even know what to say and don’t dare to ask how he’s doing. The MD is still there, most juniors left, another VP got transferred to NYC.
I work in a less toxic place now, but I still keep thinking how MDs see all this and I’d really like to hear from those who’s been in a senior role long enough to see both sides. Are you not afraid someone on your team might actually die? Do you not see how close to physical collapse some of the people in your team really are? Are there any internal conversations about the physical limits being pushed? Has this kind of breakdown just become “priced in” to how deals get done? Are you not worried about the consequences you’ll face if someone in your team dies?
Would appreciate perspectives from anyone who’s led teams through this level of pressure
I think it’s because the MDs know they will never ever face repercussions.
Did anything happen to the senior leaders when other finance kids died?
Heck, we now have the plane logs that show all the rich and powerful men that were on the flights to Epstein island. Has even one of them ever been charged with anything?
Fact is, it’s hard to hold rich and powerful people to task. That’s just the way it is.
Some seniors are reasonable and others are violently selfish. But neither will ever get in trouble unless the cross someone senior to them or steal from the company itself. That’s life brah.
Totally agree. People at the top protect their own unless there’s reputational damage they can’t contain, but it’s still wild that someone like Gary Howe hasn’t faced any disciplinary action at all. It really baffles me that even self-preservation doesn’t kick in. Like, if someone actually dies on their team, it will be a PR nightmare, possibly even a lawsuit. You’d think that alone would make MDs at least pretend to care, but maybe the arrogance really is that deep
He was never criminally charged or terminated, but for what it’s worth he was pushed around the fintech group internally to lessen his influence. Agree that this is not a harsh enough punishment
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13985255/Bank-America-exec-Gar…
A MD is much more likely to get fired because they don’t bring in enough business vs if they kill one of their juniors. They align incentives accordingly
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For the context, the team was understaffed for the workload for over 2 years (not just these 10 weeks), it wasn’t because someone recently quit or we were working on too many deals. The VP raised it multiple times, but the MD refused to hire or redistribute work and made us lie about the hours. It was a deliberate decision to stretch one person to the edge. So my question becomes: if the MD knows there’s insufficient staffing capacity and they keep pushing anyway, why are they not worried that it can cross into negligence or abuse? Not being staffed adequately shouldn’t be an excuse after someone collapses, but a red flag before. I’d be scared of potential consequences if I was an MD. How come can they be so chill about it?
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I'm sorry, you guys are working for the wrong people. I've worked at multiple BB firms, been a part of the some the largest and most intense deals in my sector, etc. I've never had anyone on my teams at serious risk health-wise because of workload. Any time things were heading in that direction, the deal team leaders (including myself) stepped in to get more staffing, reduce workload, reset client expectations, etc. ~100 hr weeks happen, but the key is for those weeks to be the rare exception, not the norm.
I once had an analyst fall asleep on her keyboard while I was at her desk giving live model comments. I was a Director at the time and it was already way later than I had been at the office in years. I was so worried about her health that I decided to crack a red bull and finish the model myself so she could get some much needed rest. I pulled the all-nighter, she slept.
Most senior bankers (at least those who are not assholes and know what they are doing) have some perspective and know its never really worth it or necessary to put anyone's health at risk. In my experience, it's generally try-hard VPs who drive crazy hours, often unbeknownst to the MDs.
Goated MD. You have my respect and the respect of countless other juniors, I'm sure. Thank you for being a Chad
Man I’d like to work for you, you sound great.
The fact that you noticed your analyst struggling, took it seriously and stepped in yourself to finish the job speaks volumes!! if more MDs thought and acted like you, banking would be a completely different industry.
We seriously need a website/post on WSO with a green list of IB teams with decent leadership. And honestly? A black list too. People deserve to know which teams treat juniors like slaves and run on fear. Reputation should go both ways
I’ve been saying this. The “rate my professor” of Wall Street, only it’s rating a bank/group
First of all, thank you for doing this. It’s a great thing to do. Unfortunately, it’s not the street norm.
The structural issue here, as far as I see it, is that there’s no “check” on exploitative behaviour, either by an MD or a VP. There’s no recourse for an abused analyst or associate. If you tell a group head, they’ll tell you that, “if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” If you tell HR, they’ll make up an excuse to fire you “for your own health.” As such, juniors are entirely dependent upon the good will of seniors, some of whom (like you, it seems) are good people willing to step in, but most of whom (I’d wager) are simply indifferent.
If you’re on a team that will work you 100+ hour weeks, your choices are (1) risk your health, (2) torpedo your career at the bank by taking medical leave, or (3) quit with nothing else lined up.
Legend
King shit, good on you fella
This guy makes it rain for sure.
Go home at midnight. It's as simple as that. The deal will survive.
They'll never face repercussions if they're making money.
Some do. The most recent examples are Edward Ruff or six employees from BMO
The 6 that got fired were all juniors no?
Is this the baird Healthcare MD that moved to Piper and then was fired?
No, that happened in a different bank’s London office. Who’s the MD you’re talking about? The only case I found about Baird was a VP named Aaron Haney from Baird’s Chicago office that was fired in April 2025 for abusing juniors
Italian dude? He wasn't fired from Baird but from Piper.
A CIM should be no longer than 10 pages.
Exec summary is all people read anyways
(Sponsor client proceeds to request a 25 page exec summ)
Hank Paulson's original TARP proposal asking for $750B was three pages long.
First World problems. Some people in the Third World pass through worse to earn below $/£180 on a monthly basis (& sometimes with owed salaries)
Ah yes, the classic ‘someone has it worse’ deflection as if exploitation in wealthy countries was fine because others have it harder… Suffering isn’t a competition and calling what my colleague experienced a ‘first world’ problem only shows your moral failure. Systems that chew people up for profit should be challenged, no matter where they are. I see you’re an intern and I genuinely hope you never have to go through what my VP did
Well, morality in that sense is a bit arbitrary though......it's hard to call a non–deception/theft situation immoral when there is a substantial proportion of the global population (Third World) that would wish for the privilege to be lucky to be in his situation : ) & not have to worry where meals will come from
Of course it’s the “intern” acting hardo 😂
I say this as an MD and group head with 25 years of IB tenure and running a very active group
The idea that people consistently working 90-100 hrs and working themselves to the point of exhaustion will a) make the team more effective or b) make the juniors better banks is beyond ludicrous.
Having that kind of culture is disastrous; you’re not doing better work, you’re not serving your clients and you’re not training your people. High performance cultures empower people vs destroying them.
Also, if you’re working that hard, and you’re exhausted you aren’t going to develop as a banker of professional
Of course, banking requires commitment, hard work and motivation at all levels. But there have to be guardrails where intensity doesn’t turn into exhaustion or burnout. It’s not just the humane thing,to do, it’s also good business.
Some things I do and I recommend others implement:
None of this stuff is particularly challenging to implement, and it makes for a better team, a happier work environment and better results for our clients,
If I ever make it to MD, I’d implement a system like this! Combining hard data logins/activity/card swipes with human oversight (by trusted people!) is long overdue. At my last shop, we technically had to report our hours daily, but our MD told us to lie. His words “If I get in trouble, you’ll suffer the consequences and good luck finding another job in finance in this country because I know MDs from all banks”, so everyone put 79 hours every single week, even when we were regularly doing 100+. Staffers and senior leadership knew, but turned a blind eye… If the bank had just tracked swipe times or screen activity, they could’ve seen the abuse instantly but no one cared. I have a few friends working in MBB and these companies tie management quality directly to comp and promotion, but in IB, it’s almost never done. I wish I had an MD like you
18-26 year olds sign up willing to die in the military for 20k…The chances of dying at a firm are extremely low compared to the military obviously, and the thing is they are part of 1% fighting for their country and we’re fighting to be in the top 1% of incomes. Casualties whether burnout or in the rare case, death are a fair trade off given the reward, imo. As their are plenty of young people that would pursue this route, even if the chances of death were the same as the military. Work harder or someone else will
Worked in a non combat role and the chances even in that role of death are probably much higher and that doesn’t include the cases of young death caused by the chemicals we worked with. Also, we worked longer hours in worst places and with more toxic people. By all means we got shit on at any and every corner possible.
That doesn’t make treating people like shit because no one will stop you okay. Am I coming for someone’s job 100% but I still wouldn’t want to take the high performer who was treated like shits job. I want to remove the people who are just skating or people who don’t actually want to work.military should never be used to scare non military people into not seeking better work environments. I’ll probably die by 50 due to some things I worked with while in, I chose that.
Look at what actual MDs have said in this thread above. Deaths in IB are 100% avoidable. They’re not caused by the nature of the job, but by weak leadership and a culture that confuses chaos for productivity. No one’s saying IB is supposed to be easy, but glorifying dysfunction by comparing it to combat is ridiculous. Soldiers accept life-or-death stakes because that’s war. Bankers die because someone didn’t want to shift a deadline or staff appropriately
Just assume people in finance are purely rational, amoral and self interested then you’ll have your answer. Simply put: you’re completely replaceable and so they have no incentive to treat you well.
If banks were truly full of “purely rational, amoral, self-interested” people, they’d actually treat junior talent better because turnover and staffing chaos are incredibly inefficient and costly. I’ve seen many great people leaving due to poor management and often they were replaced by people who performed well during interviews, but then once they joined were horrible at their job and had to be fired during probation (or sometimes we kept them as we needed people and didn’t have time to replace them). Typical recruiter fee is 15-25% of base salary of associate/VP, add to it internal HR costs and time spent by VPs/Directors/MDs/Head on interviewing, cost of background checks, compliance training, desk training, productivity lost during ramp-up, signing bonuses and sometimes costs of visa as after Brexit it’s very difficult to find people who don’t require it. So no, abusing juniors isn’t “rational”. It’s lazy, short-sighted and driven by poor leadership hiding behind culture
having the culture of crushing junior people probably is fairly efficient in the short run (for 2 years or less) even though it’s unsustainable. Like probably you can physically put up with it for 5 years or something before you burn out and then you get to bear that cost and not them. and for the turnover you have to keep in mind a lot of juniors would turn over anyway. Like what’s the marginal difference in turnover by being nice vs not? Probably maybe 6 months. Like I personally think it’s horrible to treat people this way but that’s a moral belief because I think there’s more value than money out there but I think if you just want to optimize the result then I actually do think it’s actually good to keep the way it is.
You also have to keep in mind that a good associate or VP is actually going to treat you better because they will be good managers Of people and work. But it’s really hard to find good managers and it’s kind of hard to teach. Also the environment is basically conducive to learning really bad habits of management since the whole point of management is to treat work output as sort of a constraint to work within. But this is so hard to teach and you can’t be good at this just because you did an MBA or were an analyst.
When I was in college I didn't believe it was possible that bankers are more sociopathic or narcissistic etc than average, since it's not like they ask you in the interview "Are you a sociopath? If so, you're hired." It would be too crazy that people actually claim to look for reasonable people you'd want to get a beer with, then accidentally end up with a bunch of jerks. So in college, I assumed that the claims people would make had to be exaggerated somehow, maybe because people naturally envy the successful and rich.
The reality is that it is true that careers in finance attract a disproportionate number of people that have personality disorders like sociopathy and narcissism. Even though they don't have you fill out a questionnaire testing for these traits before hiring you, I actually think sociopathy is a useful skill to be promoted to VP. At elite banks, you essentially have a bunch of people that are mostly perfect on paper in a bunch of ways, so to really differentiate I actually think one of the best ways is being a sociopath. The alternative is you are a good target to the sociopath - e.g., you're the type willing to take whatever pain from the sociopath or tell the narcissist whatever they want to hear. There are other types that stay in banking other than these two, but these are two major groups for sure.
So in both cases I mean this person doesn't really sit in an environment conducive to learning to manage work better. From their perspective they want to do anything they can to be promoted and also by that point you’ve closed off a lot of other career options so it makes sense they’d treat analysts horribly imo.
Just as an anecdote, when I was an analyst I did intern interviews with the co-founder of the firm I worked for (a billionaire guy who founded one of the major M&A firms). I felt like I would never get the chance again to do this, so after each interview I pestered him with so many questions about how he thought. It was in his office with just me and him. I honestly will never forget what he said. He honestly was so critical about every candidate, but he also said that he would always defer to what the team thinks is best (as a side point he was an amazing leader even though I'm sort of criticizing him here). But I remember with one candidate who seemed very insecure. He made the point that "she seems fake, insecure and eager to please. there's a lot of these types that go to Wharton - she'll work hard for us" or something essentially like that. At least for me, this confirmed the theory that I actually think there is some of this somewhat toxic dynamic that goes on. I don't think he would have said that out loud normally but I think he figured that saying it to me didn't matter since I was a 1st year analyst at the time (10 years ago) lmao.
The incentive to treat people well is that happier work environments are better for everyone including seniors and more importantly it’s good for the bottom line. Work gets worse not better when people are exhausted and I view retention of good people as highly correlated to success.
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