This incident is tragically comical.
Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
111–120 of 225 posts
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're a banking intern, it means you're a college kid. If you're in NYC, you can do something like live in NYU student housing for the summer. It's no big deal. As an analyst, you'll be making over six figures, with a base in the $70-$80k range. You can live 20 minutes from midtown Manhattan on that, though you'll probably have to have roommates (but hey you're 22 so again, no big deal).
I think you're confusing interns and employees. I don't think banking interns make anywhere near $70-80K.
I worked as a technology intern at a large investment bank for one summer, and my salary was a prorated 80k. The IB kids were making about the same (although they worked many, many more hours than we did). This was 2 years ago.
N.B.: This was awful and I am now safely far, far away from the banking industry.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#113What I find most intriguing is that the whole banking intern hours thing is that it's not the result of a resource constraint - they have plenty of money and plenty of intern applicants.
It's also not about getting particularly difficult work done - intern-level spreadsheet and PowerPoint work isn't the sort of thing that only a select few can handle.
It's entirely about filtering for people who will submit to abuse.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#114What I find most intriguing is that the whole banking intern hours thing is that it's not the result of a resource constraint - they have plenty of money and plenty of intern applicants. It's also not about getting particularly difficult work done - intern-level spreadsheet and PowerPoint work isn't the sort of thing that only a select few can handle. It's entirely about filtering for people who will submit to abuse.
see also: bootcamp, fraternity hazing
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
* 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-ni…
College students who pull all-nighters do so two reasons: 1. They tend to be terrible at time management and prioritization. They procrastinate until the last minute and then have no choice but to cram. 2. They do it to create a narrative that can protect both their ego and their image. "I failed the exam despite pulling an all-nighter - it was just crazy hard!" sounds a lot better than "I failed the exam because I'm…
There's that, yes, but I think there's a point to be made for workload. I remember back in college all the courses would inevitably pile the workload on at the same time.
Around the same 2 weeks during a semester the profs will load up on all the projects, labs, and other must-dos, across all your courses. Taken separately these workload increases are modest, but as a whole you literally start running out of time.
My coping mechanism back then was to strategically not do some of these things, but then again my only intention going to school was to get a piece of paper that would unlock the Magical HR Gates at companies. My GPA isn't exactly great.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#116This is all really, really wrong. I wonder how we, as a society, have managed to lower our values this much. Working days and nights and for what? Even if you do become rich, then what? You can't have your health back and you wasted years of your life chasing a dream. When you're on the patio of your beach house with your high blood pressure, anxiety and depression, what have you accomplished? Is reality like the dre…
I wonder how we, as a society, have managed to lower our values this much.
We decided to let capitalism tell us what to do instead of our telling it what to do. It is proceeding in the only institutionalized imperative it has: convert the entire planet into money.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you leave work at 5 and start at 9, and are sensible and live within 20 minutes of work (which you can on a banker's salary, at least in NYC), that's like 3 whole hours of sleep." First, as stated, these are interns, which wouldn't have the money to live in NYC. Second, three hours of sleep may help but in the long run it is just as unhealthy. This is shown by the answer to myth #3 on WebMD's "7 Myths About Sleep…
I've had several friends intern as investment bankers and management consultants in the past couple years. The going rate in NYC is about $60k-80k prorated, I believe -- more than enough for a room in Manhattan (which is where they all lived). Even if that weren't the case, most in that career track come from relatively well-off families anyway. I still agree it's an insanely unhealthy and stressful lifestyle, which…
More than enough for where in Manhattan is the real question. $60K a year isn't a great deal of money in NYC. It's very livable - but not if your criteria is "within 20 min of FiDi". You can probably get a decent room on the Upper West Side or Upper East Side, but then you're nowhere close to being within 20 min from work, especially in the middle of the night.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
College students who pull all-nighters do so two reasons: 1. They tend to be terrible at time management and prioritization. They procrastinate until the last minute and then have no choice but to cram. 2. They do it to create a narrative that can protect both their ego and their image. "I failed the exam despite pulling an all-nighter - it was just crazy hard!" sounds a lot better than "I failed the exam because I'm…
I'd like to disagree - at least for my university, which to be fair is notorious for being brutal in terms of workload. It's not unusual for me and many of my friends to have so much work for classes and extracurriculars over the course of a week or month that there literally isn't enough time to do all of it and also eat and sleep in the 168 hrs/week that you have.
Allowing that there may be exceptions such as your own case (assuming you are properly assessing your situation), would you still agree that the generalization holds for the vast majority of cases?
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#119People 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…
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.
Every single time I have done that, in college or grad school, it has fucked me over far worse than if I had just planned ahead, scheduled my work well, and gotten plenty of sleep like a sensible person.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This was not the salary for the internship - this is the salary of the position that this guy was about to be offered -- after his internship
It was probably the same salary for the internship minus bonus's - the IBD interns here are all on 45k + 1k signing, grad is normally about 5k signing and a bonus guaranteed by HR at at least a set level.