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Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#41

Post by Cakez0r »

parasight wrote: post #17
w1ntermute wrote: post #3

Isn't this all just a matter of supply and demand? There are a lot more young people willing to work in this industry than there are positions, so those people who actually get the jobs have to put up with all kinds of stupid shit. I've never understood why these employees (who are clearly quite intelligent) don't just pursue another career where they have more leverage. After all, I don't think they have any particu…

It is rather a matter of missing regulations.

There are regulations (European working time directive). The problem is that employers will ask you to waive the rights afforded to you by that directive...

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#43

Post by nc »

JonnieCache wrote: post #36
jmduke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want your doctor on that schedule? Doctors in their residency have notoriously awful hours, so bad that they had to legislation was crafted merely to cap the hours at a four-week average of 80 hours (meaning that, yes, they could work 3 one hundred hour weeks and one 20-hour week). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours

Good point. It used to be like that here in the UK too, thankfully we now have the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive

You waive that when you work for an investment bank.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#44

Post by sspiff »

danielrmay wrote: post #9
Mikeb85 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because banking makes a hell of a lot more money.

The intern was set to make £45,000 / pa (not including bonuses) as an Analyst, but I suppose it opens doors.

That's not a bad salary for an intern position, especially if there are bonuses involved. In a lot of industries, internships are unpaid or very poorly paid. Software development pays rather well, but I certainly didn't make that kind of money on summer jobs.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#45

Post by kamjam »

JonnieCache wrote: post #20
rayiner wrote: post #14

People like to dramatize this a bit, I think. First, I'll quibble with the definition of all-nighter: "I ended up doing an all-nighter in my first week as an intern, which is when you start work at nine, you stay until five or six the next morning, you go home, have a quick shower and then head back into the office and continue working." If you leave work at 5 and start at 9, and are sensible and live within 20 minut…

>3 whole hours of sleep >100-hour weeks will be interspersed with very dead weeks That still sounds pretty dramatic man. Would you want your doctor on that schedule? Your bus/cab driver?

When I started as an intern developing, I could quite easily spend 70-hours a week in the office, plus my whole weekend on my computer at home. Not because I had to, but because I was keen to figure out how everything fit together, why something didn't work and what I was doing wrong mainly.

The banking industry is well known for being able to make a lot of money in, but having to put in long hours. Unfortunately I can't feel sorry for people working in that industry, you have to keep an eye on the long term goals of earning 6-figure salary with bonuses that double that (I know plenty of people doing that who have "put in the time")

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#46

Post by Cthulhu_ »

rayiner wrote: post #14

People like to dramatize this a bit, I think. First, I'll quibble with the definition of all-nighter: "I ended up doing an all-nighter in my first week as an intern, which is when you start work at nine, you stay until five or six the next morning, you go home, have a quick shower and then head back into the office and continue working." If you leave work at 5 and start at 9, and are sensible and live within 20 minut…

* Three hours of sleep - if that - is far, far too little for any normal human being to function normally. Also yes, working until 6 AM is an all-nighter, it's dawn then.

> Second, how many times did you pull a few all-nighters in a row during college? I can't even count. I certainly didn't die.

Never. I don't get why people do it either, it's not like it makes you a better student. If anything, having to pull all-nighters for college can, in my limited and breezing-through-school opinion, mean only a few things:

* You only started to work on an assignment / study for an exam at the very last moment. * The US school system is terribly broken and puts a disproportionately and unhealthily high workload on its students, turning it into a Chinese sweatshop instead of a nurturing educational facility.

In software methodology, there's an expression called 'Sustainable Pace' [0]. When building software, it's pointless to go and do 'crunch time', since, one by one, your people will start underperforming or even outright crashing, leaving the remainder under duress to compensate. Doesn't work.

I don't know what these 'deals' are, but I can't see how they'd require anyone to work 21-hour workdays for any duration of time.

Personally, I work a 9-5 job as a software developer / consultant, and I close the door behind me at 5. I resist my colleague's excitement over DOING ALL THE THINGS!11one, simply because I know I can't deal with it. I've seen enough colleagues (and my superiors, lol) work too much and unable to let go of their job and becoming unfit for work. So yeah, I like to dramatise this a bit, and not allow myself to fall into the same traps. It's not like I'd gain anything from it, anyway.

Work to live, not the other way around. etc.

[0] http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/overtime.html

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#47

Post by tomgallard »

JonnieCache wrote: post #36
jmduke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want your doctor on that schedule? Doctors in their residency have notoriously awful hours, so bad that they had to legislation was crafted merely to cap the hours at a four-week average of 80 hours (meaning that, yes, they could work 3 one hundred hour weeks and one 20-hour week). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours

Good point. It used to be like that here in the UK too, thankfully we now have the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive

Unfortunately the working time directive for doctors in the UK is also averaged over a longer time period. So my wife has just come off an 80+ hour week of night shifts

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#48

Post by jackgavigan »

When Google was a young company, she worked 130 hours per week and often slept at her desk.

"For my first five years at Google, I pulled an all-nighter every week," Mayer said in a recent talk at New York's 92Y cultural center. "It was a lot of hard work."

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/223723

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#49

Post by robertha »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #8

What does a banker even do during those long hours? I'm genuinely curious.

I worked as an analyst in Investment Banking for a while. To me it seemed that the analysts who worked the really long hours worked on projects in teams, where each team member was responsible for a part of a project. No one can start or continue until that part is done, so they just sit and wait.

There were many times when people just wouldn't respect other people's time. At 5PM I would get an email: "Hey, I need this done for tomorrow morning"..."So why didn't you just tell me earlier? I know you knew about it in advance."

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#50

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jmduke wrote: post #26
JonnieCache wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>3 whole hours of sleep >100-hour weeks will be interspersed with very dead weeks That still sounds pretty dramatic man. Would you want your doctor on that schedule? Your bus/cab driver?

Would you want your doctor on that schedule? Doctors in their residency have notoriously awful hours, so bad that they had to legislation was crafted merely to cap the hours at a four-week average of 80 hours (meaning that, yes, they could work 3 one hundred hour weeks and one 20-hour week). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours

Back here (Netherlands), GP's (local doctors, they get all the booboos for a certain area) as well as pharmacists would get called out of bed in the middle of the night in case of emergencies. (I was carried off to the doctor at night when I developed pneumonia once, got diagnosed, penicillin from the pharmacy, etc in a matter of an hour or so). I'm guessing that happened frequently, so I'm sure doctors would miss quite some sleep from time to time, especially during flu epidemics and the like.

Nowadays, they have a new system, "Doctor's Watch", where the GP's from a certain area operate at night in rotation. It's a bit more official and less personal, but it does allow those not on rotation to get a proper night's sleep. Pretty sure they'd compensate that by working less hours during the day / week.

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