Earlier quoted context omitted.
see also: bootcamp, fraternity hazing
And, if "The Internship" is at all accurate, big tech companies are no better.
It's not.
Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
151–160 of 225 posts
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#152You have to experience working in an IB to appreciate the article. They are very very much swamped down in politics process and paperwork (albeit electronic these days). It takes ages to do small things, forever to do the rest. No one has a long-term view beyond the next quarter, and most believe in doing just enough to grab some bonus and run. You will encounter big swinging dicks who like to lord it over the intern…
sounds like grad school....
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is "you'll have to work insane hours, but we'll pay you a shit ton of money" a perverse incentive?
The guy says that he wasn't doing any work. He was just a warm body. Thus "You'll have to be at your desk for insane hours. You won't be doing much work. You increase the chance of fat-finger[1] errors. We know you'll probably have to take illegal drugs to stay awake that long. We're borderline illegal. We're opening ourselves up to serious legal liability (eg, causing harm to our workers). But hey, you'll get a shit…
The guy says that he wasn't doing any work. He was just a warm body.
Why do you care? In particular, why do you care enough to force the employer and the employee into a different understanding?
People do all kinds of things that I don't want for myself. I wouldn't want to be a boxer since I don't like having people punch me in the face repeatedly.
Doesn't mean I would want to forbid others from being boxers.
Let people have their freedom and stop trying to control everyone else's lives and choices.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
These comparisons never work for me. There's literally no amount you could pay me that would make me willing to be a plumber or electrician, and I'm grateful every day that there are a subset of people out there who will do those jobs competently without completely bankrupting me.
While I understand the hesitation to become a plumber, why would working as an electrician be so unpleasant?
Risk of shock/electrocution (pity we don't have pictures of my electrician grandfather's blackened arms) and/or falls. Physical problems from extended time in awkward positions. Boiling hot or ice cold attics. Dead animals or worse in walls and crawlspaces. God knows what in the insulation you're elbow-deep in. Every small-business problem you've ever heard of, plus coordination with other contractors who lie to each other every bit as much as they do to their customers. And you can top it off with inspectors who don't actually have the first fucking clue what code is, or think it's both a minimum and a maximum (12 gauge on a 15-amp circuit? NOPE! That's not code, you've gotta use that little 14 gauge crap instead!).
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
"for what?" I don't think you are a measure of what is meaningful for other person and what's not. If I choose to work 12 hours it's my free choice, not affecting you, and I may have my own reasons. If I don't want to do so I will find another job. If there are more capable people like me employers will have to change conditions to attract talent. But I won't modify my reasons to other peoples ideas about what is mea…
I think part of the complaint is not that people have different goals and motivations for doing things; it's that they often engage in behaviour that is actively counter-productive to achieving their stated aims.
Isn't the measure of all that what the free exchange of labor for pay or a career is all about?
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm of the opinion that people can adapt to less sleep. I spent quite a while sleeping exactly 6 hours per night, and then spent about 11 weeks alternating between 3 and 4.5 hours of sleep on weeknights and about 7.5 hours of sleep on weekends. This almost certainly wouldn't be a healthy thing to do for years on end, but for the 11 week period that I did this I felt pretty good (maybe 90-95% mental capacity) and was…
> I'm of the opinion that people can adapt to less sleep. Your opinion has been proven wrong by every single scientific study on sleep. Humans do not effectively adapt to less sleep. Error rates go way up, productivity goes down disproportionally, focus goes down, etc.
Here is my problem with people like you pulling out their study reference lists against every anecdote: results drawn about people in aggregate do not necessarily mean much for this specific person in this specific situation.
"I am not the exception" is a good principle to live by, but it is also important to note that sometimes you are the exception, you are in exceptional circumstances, or you can become the exception (through exceptionally hard work for example, or exceptional stupidity. Being the exception is not always a good thing).
My experience is similar to lightcatcher's. When I was younger, before I was married and had kids, it was common for me to sleep 0-3 hours for a few days while I was working on something and then crash for a few days, sleeping 10-14hrs. Basically I slept when I felt tired, stayed up if I still felt alert. At the time I did not feel less productive and I did not feel like I was putting out lower quality work. Looking back objectively those were the most productive times of my life to date, and the quality of the work was on-par or better with anything else I have done. Temporary sleep deprivation under specific conditions was highly effective by all the objective measures I can think of.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#157This 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.
Capitalism is just engaging in free exchange with others. You can't have real freedom without having capitalism.
So when you say that capitalism should be told what to do, you're saying that people should not be free to exchange with others as they will. The alternative is to be coerced, manipulated, and controlled by some overarching authority. In a democracy, presumably that authority would be the government.
That brings us full circle... the people too stupid to voluntarily participate in free exchange are somehow smart enough to elect benevolent intelligent leaders who will instead make their choices for them.
Do I have that about right?
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#158People 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…
Are you seriously saying it's okay because you got three whole hours of sleep?
5-6 sleep cycles is healthy. Three hours is like 2.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm of the opinion that people can adapt to less sleep. Your opinion has been proven wrong by every single scientific study on sleep. Humans do not effectively adapt to less sleep. Error rates go way up, productivity goes down disproportionally, focus goes down, etc.
Here is my problem with people like you pulling out their study reference lists against every anecdote: results drawn about people in aggregate do not necessarily mean much for this specific person in this specific situation. "I am not the exception" is a good principle to live by, but it is also important to note that sometimes you are the exception, you are in exceptional circumstances, or you can become the except…
Okay, but driverdan was saying "people can adapt to less sleep" not "I have adapted to less sleep." As if it's reasonable to expect that from people in general when, empirically, it's not.
Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern
#160This type of environment is not exclusive to banking. Both doctors (during internship and residency) and lawyers (during the first few years at big firms) go through similar experiences.