With the massive WFH movement, banks don't have to pay 1 person to work 100hrs per week. They could pay 2 people to work 40hr - 50hr weeks. They just need conference rooms for meetings, they don't need desks. Why does IB push their analysts/associates to burnout instead of hiring more people?
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I am very confused as to why you don't know the answer to this... having 2/3X the people doing the same job is way less efficient. Imagine making sure that 3 people all understood the outcome of a meeting instead of 1 and compound that by the fact that likely only one of them is actually present. It's unfortunate, but the solution is simply reducing the number of meaningless turns/iterations that add little to no value rather than paying more folks less to spread the hours.
There is not one answer to this problem. Someone has recently died due to this. Don’t you think it is time for a change?
I can appreciate the push but if we want to focus specifically on that incident I think there are other things to unpack. Sincerely, what are your thoughts about the the programs designed to literally break people as a part of joining the special forces? Given that this guy was a part of that I think it's relevant. It's well documented that many of these programs have hell weeks that are significantly harder than pounding away on a keyboard. While there is some responsibility on Seniors having unreasonable expectations, I think we need to really acknowledge that the onus lies ultimately on each person to prioritize their health and wellbeing.
I’m not sure I agree. For groups that are already bloated, sure. But I don’t think it’s that hard to have two people on the same page about a meeting, model, etc… “Too many cooks in the kitchen” only applies to a point.
When groups add more analysts, hours improve.
I wouldn’t halve my comp to work less
haha this is a good reason
This is the only reason that matters. No one goes into IB to make the world a better place. We do it because it pays well so that we can eventually do something that we really like.
It’s the difficulty in splitting work streams that makes it impractical to hire more and reduce the workload. Even for RFP responses which have discrete parts it’s not really feasible to split them up that much.
I've worked at a company where some people would split 40hr weeks as 20hrs and 20hrs. I never knew who was working so just sent emails to both of them and whoever was on the clock responded to me. Seemed to work fine.
Depends on the task, some things work very well as shift work, some things don’t. Imagine how muddled things would get for a model if someone clocked out and just handed it off. Also the issue is the delays along the way, I’ve sat twiddling my thumbs waiting for comments, almost everyone has. Have you previously worked in IB?
As another poster said, it's incredibly inefficient to do that + lowers the learning of both parties vs having continuity of an individual running point across the different workstreams. Not to mention that the #1 reason most people go into this line of work at all is the comp - if you have 2 vs 1 person doing 1 task, comp for both goes down. Work life doesn't care about personal life and we sign on knowing that's the case and that some things will have to adjust because of it. I realize that this is inspired by the BofA guy's death, but the harsh truth is aside from the shitty superiors at the bank who thought that work schedule was sustainable, it doesn't matter for the rest of the industry.
He (the associate) could have clocked out (maybe with consequences, maybe not given circumstances, we'll never know). He could have contacted HR and said he needs to take a leave of absence. He could've told the staffer that he needs to step back from it to get some much needed rest. The impetus was on him to be responsible - he has a family to take care of - and while it is also on work to not be shitty about it, we're not automatons and have the ability to make a weighted decision on whether or not to keep working when we know we're sick/declining health wise. Knowing his background as a special forces, he probably took the attitude of "I can soldier through this/ignore it and keep going" which is not a healthy mentality to have 24/7, and sadly we saw the worst case scenario for what sometimes happens.
The handful of professionals who don't set a firm boundary with their work and die because of it, while tragic, are not representative of the norm. There are thousands of bankers, investors, and other people throughout the finance industry who work 70-80hr and even the occasional 100hr+ weeks (maybe not back-to-back-to-back) who aren't dying. I can speak from personal experience that when you are truly being run ragged to the point where it's effecting your health there is almost always a way to step back. If an employer were try and work you like this, you make the problem known, step back for health, and they fire you - that is a HUGE lawsuit that you will almost surely win especially these days.
This isn't a problem that needs to be solved. It's something people need to acknowledge, largely accept, and be aware of the edge cases where in fact taking a step away is the smarter move than just suffering in silence and to your own detriment.
Good points -
A good number of fair points in here, but I also think you're doing quite a bit of rationalizing. It's like how old doctors defend 24-hour shifts for residents. The common explanations are that it improves the continuity of care (fewer handoffs = fewer mistakes). It also allows residents to learn faster because they can see how patients evolve over the course of 24 hours.
That sounds great. The only problem? It's not true. The only reason residents work the hours they do is because of financial reasons. Residency funding is controlled by congress. It also defies an overwhelming amount of sleep research. Patient outcomes also have not changed in hospitals that have done away with 24-hour shifts.
It took the death of Libby Zion in 1984 before 80-hour limit laws were put in place.
"This isn't a problem that needs to be solved. It's something people need to acknowledge, largely accept." I could not disagree more. Yes, we as individuals need to set boundaries, but let's not pretend BoA doesn't share blame for making someone work 100+ hour weeks, for several weeks in a row, and made them feel the world would end if they pushed back. As the saying goes, even if they didn't know, it was their job to know.
I get where you're trying to come from, but I think this is a really poor comparison.
Nothing about finance in terms of the "stakes" is comparable to medicine. Nobody's life hangs in the balance if that powerpoint isn't perfectly formatted or v27 of the model has the wrong color font. This is my main bone to pick with the comparison.
Medicine is reactionary (they're responding to symptoms as they're presented) vs being proactive & process oriented. You don't need the same doctor on call 24/7 so long as all the symptoms and relevant data is being accounted for between shift change offs. Contrast with transactional work where one person will understand demonstrably less about a process when they've only been part of half of it vs been involved in every step.
It's not a financial constraint for big banks as to why analysts work as much as they do. It's because they want someone in the weeds on the deal from end-to-end. We're not measuring things by patient outcomes, though perhaps there's an argument to be made that it doesn't matter materially to the client if the pitch deck has 100 vs 101 appendices. This isn't shift work, this is a low-to-mid 6 figure salary that you accept conditionally KNOWING that there will be long hours expected. It is a choice to be here, it is a choice to work these hours, it is a choice to not pushback/take time off if your health & wellbeing is in the red zone.
I already said that the staffers bear some blame, but I don't place the majority of it on them because staffing a deal is their job and if people are willing to work the hours in exchange for the salaries they're getting then that's that. I've worked 100+ hour weeks back to back several times and I didn't die - in fact I made a fat bonus off one of the deals in question. Why should I be denied the ability to work long hours as a competitive advantage over someone else if I'm able to?
No one is holding a gun to your head to sit at a computer and do work. No one is threatening to fire you if you don't post you 2nd or 3rd 100hr week in a row, especially if you're losing so much sleep that it becomes a serious risk to your immediate health, and if they are that's an easy lawsuit if you can demonstrate physical distress/negative health effects. There is ALWAYS a choice when it comes to your health and the man in question CHOSE to keep working to his own detriment. The outcome is undeniably tragic but more than anything, all the other AN/ASOs out there should take it as a prime example of what happens when you choose work > health. They should recognize the banks do not give a fuck about them and thus should be conscientious of their own wellbeing.
I don’t see what the big deal is about having two people in a meeting or model instead of one, where need be. It’s not a tremendous team to play “broken telephone” with — it just restores some sanity to the situation. I disagree that “it’s on you to preserve your health and not risk losing your job in the face of an abuse manager” — at least some of the responsibility is on the manager to…not be abusive.
Careful with this line of thought, there is a group of crying juniors that will skewer you for suggesting they act like adults and set boundaries.
Process management/disaggregation of information is the reason (or however you want to call it). For example if there’s a model that needs to be built/continually updated under tight timelines, having a “handoff” for a night shift employee or a 2nd half of the week employee would be incredibly hard to manage. If you’re an analyst owning a model, you need to be able to know exactly what’s going on so you can respond to seniors/clients/co-advisors. It’s enough of an ask to make sure the Asso is up to speed, but adding in a second Analyst/Associate team would be a massive headache. Same thing with any other workstream. The more team members you add in that are sharing workstreams, the harder it is for someone to have the full picture in mind, and the less autonomy the jr team would have. For very simple, plain vanilla processes, it may work to split the work at 50hrs a week, but it may be hard to predict which deals can get complicated quickly
Interesting q. Assumes (somewhat) that limited desk space is a reason for the long hours previously. Might have been a factor but I think the main issues are:
1. If you double the junior staff, you're taking a step down in the average worker quality. We've already seen complaints that today's analysts are weaker than 5 yrs ago, imagine how much worse it would be if you needed 2x as many.
2. The number of MDs is determined by the needs of the client base, so that's a fixed number. If you double the number of juniors and fatten up the VP ranks a bit too, that's a lot of people for one MD to manage.
3. If deal team doubles in size, it creates bottlenecks and messier planning for whoever the deal lead is.
Enjoy 50% pay cut then
You will need more real estate.
Personnel costs go up (companies have personnel costs that don't get reflected in paychecks).
Without the higher comp from the crazy hours, more talented people will go to other industries.
More people to manage, mentor i.e., less efficient for management.
With that said, do banks track the average number of person hours burnt to close a deal? It adds another layer to tracking productivity and burnout and should reduce the number of meaningless tasks.
Not necessarily. You can just create mobile workstations in an office. I’ve worked at a company that did this and you can have a cost rate for mobile employees and a cost rate for those who need a dedicated work station (managers).
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