Goldman Tells Summer Interns To Go Home Before Midnight

This may just be an attempt to make up for all of the recent bad press about working conditions. Many banks have these sorts of "policies" that HR loves to talk up at recruiting events but if you actually talk to the junior people, you'll see that nobody takes them seriously.

Pretty sure 99% of interns are thinking to themselves, "Wow, if I come in on Saturday when nobody else does, I'll definitely impress everyone with my work ethic!"

EDIT: After reading the comment from EnergyHOU below, it seems as though I stand corrected. Bravo, Goldman.

EnergyHOU:

A contact of mine in IBD NYC this summer says it has been strictly enforced since Monday. If you're caught it gets formally documented and you have a "talk" with HR among others. That's all I have heard. Also said they've been doing 1 hour meetings with HR on the daily basis.

yeah... seems like lip service.. It would be cool if they fined/fired any analyst whose card is swiped after midnight :)

I'm gonna respectfully disagree. I think, given the current climate, anyone caught swiping out way too late of swiping in on Saturdays will be reprimanded and appearances will be kept up. This is not a hard policy to enforce and because it's in the spotlight, Goldman has to keep appearances, because god forbid someone leaks that it's not being followed to the media and cause more bad press and backlash. In another year or two, it'll go back a bit to being closer to what it was... now... not so much.

It seems as if Wall Street firms aren't really attempting to reduce stress and improve conditions, just give the appearance that they are.

A contact of mine in IBD NYC this summer says it has been strictly enforced since Monday. If you're caught it gets formally documented and you have a "talk" with HR among others. That's all I have heard. Also said they've been doing 1 hour meetings with HR on the daily basis.

Not to mention this only applies to interns, not analysts.

maybe it means that interns must go home before midnight but come back in before 4 am... :)

Why is the responsibility on the interns and not the people directing their work? If this was meant to be a serious policy, then reprimand the intern's boss if they swipe in too late.

This will never work. Interns are never going to ease up regardless of regulation. Who do you think is going to get the full time offer? The guy who works till midnight only or the guy who stays until the job gets done?

They can't be in the office from 12 AM - 7 AM. There are still 17 more hours in the day.

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it's not like interns do any real work anyway.

Better than nothing, but that's still 17 hours a day --> 102 hours a week (with the no-Saturdays rule)

Even better hours policy well enforced in my non-GS groups. We basically send the interns home/expect them not to do it. They won't be penalized for it. FT analyst and associates are supposed to get it done, not summers.

WFH. Simple. The policy says nothing about a staffer dropping a pile of work on someone at 11:59PM and expecting it done by 8AM.

I thought the issue is was that analysts and associates were overworked on a regular basis, aside from the Merrill Lynch intern a few years back I haven't heard of issues with interns (though I'm sure they work just as hard if not harder). Doesn't seem to make sense to make the policy only for interns, and as for the overworking problem I don't see a way out of it at the current moment without taking on more staff tbh...

Deleted

apparently if you log in from home it also gets documented and same consequences. like people said, this is for interns, it's not like they are actually useful anyways.

The SA know that FT will be different. They wouldn't get GS IBD without dedication to the industry. This is a great excercise in effectiveness and time management. It shows which intern works most efficiently, which interns complain the most, which interns can't handle the work/ are too slow, and which interns are worth keeping. All while attempting to keep face and reduce OT pay. Excellent move, GS.

I think all of these policies are bull shit. I get why they are being implemented and I'mm very sympathetic, but at the end of the day the only thing that would make work conditions better is less work. If I have a constant volume of work, then my company trying to manage my time for me actually exacerbates my stress levels.

So they pamper interns in order to kill them when they are analysts? It's a publicity stunt without making any sort of compromise from Goldman's side. Law firms have been doing this for ages. Interns - as a rule - do not add much value to a deal compared to the hours invested in training. At best, they break even. GS will not lose any competitive edge over other banks in terms of client delivery by forcing interns to go home early.

If GS truly had intentions to make life better for their employees, and would in fact be prepared to compromise a little, they would install this policy for analysts or associates, with perhaps 5 - 10 weeks a year per analyst during which this policy does not apply for (closing) live deals.

Glad I'm not in IB.

Even their 'best-effort' sounds like absolute shit.

Here's a simple fucking policy, senior guys don't leave until the juniors do, last one out kind of a thing. Does anyone actually think the goal of that policy wouldn't be fulfilled?

I think i can work 20 hours if my boss is a hot blonde milf with big bouncy juicy tits with exotic perfume and wide blue eyes

Also, I'm claiming credit for the idea. The six day workweek rule was something I posted about a week and a half ago:

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/the-work-always-gets-done

As usual with my best ideas, I pissed a lot of people off and everyone hated it, but the smartest guys in the business are giving it a shot, and I'm convinced it can work.

That will be interesting to see. I do think this is a dry run for extending it to FT employees.

Placing limits on work hours is a very controversial idea, as I discovered. An MD at Lazard even told me he hated it and thought it was a terrible idea.

I do think a hard and fast FT policy on this would make GS- or an MS or JPM more competitive for people with multiple offers or considering tech. That said, I'm a guy who thinks anything more than 70 hours a week is crazy and would never have the work ethic to be a great investment banker.

I was always confused as why people say banking and tech compete for talent. They seem like self selecting groups. You do banking for the money and tech for good money/perks/lifestyle. What differentiates the two is the pay ceiling for both (this is where banking trumps tech IMO). I would assume people know what they're getting themselves into when they apply to both, so they aren't really competing. Maybe you get one kid who liked the lifestyle at Microsoft/Google better and would've made an amazing banker down the line, but if I said there was a vacant analyst spot at GS, the line would stretch from NYC to SF.

IBD is a deal business. When there's so much of someone else's money at stake, you can't afford to be working 60 hr weeks and going to your kid's soccer game on the weekend. If the client isn't pleased, then the deal can be killed instantly (at a HF this isn't the case). No one WANTS to work 80 hours a week, it's just the nature of the work...you can't afford not to work a lot. If I wanted to IPO and heard that a bank only makes people work 70 hrs a week, you can be damn sure I will pick the other bank that works around the clock as the lead left.

Anyone knows if other banks are following a similar set of measures? What about JPM, MS, BAML??

LOL looks like someone is really pissed off about having their nights and Saturdays free.

This policy will probably be upheld because 1) interns don't contribute that much anyway, banks function without them for the other 9 months of the year and 2) it would look really bad for GS to go back on this -- it would reinforce the notion that banking requires selling your soul and being stressed out 24/7, which banks have been trying to dispel.

Will FT analysts receive the same treatment? I doubt it. There are still plenty of people willing to do the job as it stands. It's not a huge hit if banking loses "top talent" to tech or consulting because you really don't have to be that smart to be a decent analyst.

analyst grunt work at wall street is equivalent to boot camp in the army. it is designed to break you down and indoctrinate you. that means long hours, tons of stress and bitch work. such is life. if it's so bad then why so many compete for the spots? people need to chill out

Also at BB in NYC; our hours are strictly capped, and if we are caught breaking the rules not only do we get reprimanded, so do our deal teams. If we need to work later than midnight or on weekends then our deal teams need to submit requests to our staffer, otherwise we are not allowed to work.

I was always confused as why people say banking and tech compete for talent. They seem like self selecting groups. You do banking for the money and tech for good money/perks/lifestyle. What differentiates the two is the pay ceiling for both (this is where banking trumps tech IMO).

I am sure Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel and Travis Kalanick are surprised to hear this!

Hey, are you based in London?

Maybe this is a stupid question (I'm an SA at a HF this summer so I don't have exposure to sell-side SA culture) but what % of the time are interns actually working on something meaningful vs. just sitting around.

Frankly, I see no point in these sort of regulations or why society should even care if junior bankers are overworked. To make myself clear, nobody forces people to go into investment banking and most that do have other options. The main motivation of people in this industry (with exceptions of course) is greed for money, cars, expensive dinners etc. In the end nobody can legally force anyone to work 100 hour weeks, so it is self inflicted damage by greed and ego if someone allows this to happen to them. There are many people who do other things with their lives who still work at least 70% as many hours, but they paid 3-4 times less. One example would be PhD students in Finance , which is ironically the same field. Even cleaners probably have to work at least 50 hours to make a living. It is a really messed up society, when there is so much focus in the media about protecting the rights of those who have it best, because they somehow want a free lunch, in the form of getting paid a lot more, but working only a little more than the average person. Finance 101 says there is no such thing as a free lunch the only options are:

1) Put up with it 2) Go somewhere else

In the end, no matter how many rules are put in place, there will be ways to circumvent them. This is capitalism. It is the system that gave people the opportunity to earn ridiculous sums of money. It is everyone individual choice how they want to participate in it, based on how they value money and status against other things like time spent with family, friends, doing hobbies etc.