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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

#211

Post by saalweachter »

rayiner wrote: post #143
saalweachter wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, if your base is $80k, and you're regularly working 100 hour weeks, your hourly wage rapidly approaches $16 / hour ... which is about what the fast food workers are currently striking for. I do not think I could be coerced to work 100 hours a week regularly for less than $50/hour of cash and equity, and the lower bound might be closer to $100/hour.

You're not working 100 hour weeks consistently over the year. I'd be surprised if the yearly average is over 75 (in IB; I'd be surprised if it were over 60 in trading). Moreover, you don't take the job for the first-year salary. You take it for the potential of making $500k+ before 30 (if you stick it out), or going the MBA route and getting a cushy $200k 9-6 at some F500 afterward.

What is the success rate like? Do 100% of IB starters make it? 1%? 10%?

If you've got decent odds of hitting the big payoff, that's one thing, but if the expected value is low, it just becomes another lottery, with a few winners, a lot of losers, and a the winners enriching themselves at the expense of the losers.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#213

Post by nostrademons »

wavefunction wrote: post #81
jackgavigan wrote: post #48

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

I'm sorry but that's bullshit and unsustainable imo. I say that as someone who has worked nearly 100 weeks of 80+ hours over my career and has worked 100 hour weeks for a month or two. It's not believable that Mayer worked 130 hours per week for 5 years.

Mayer apparently has the gene that makes you not require (much) sleep. About 3% of the population carries a genetic mutation that means they only need about 3.5-4 hours of sleep a night. I had a friend back in college that was like this (her father was too), and apparently a number of famous achievers have "suffered" from this.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#214

Post by nostrademons »

lightcatcher wrote: post #135
driverdan wrote: post #121

Earlier 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.

Although I could have expressed myself better, you still quoted me out of context. I was particularly talking about people dealing with less sleep on a relatively small timescale (less than 3 months). I'm choosing the 3 month window because it replicates the length of a college term and greatly reduces the risk of burnout (which I don't think is as big of an issue in college as in industry, because typical college sc…

Those studies have been performed several times [1][2][3][4]; most of them indicate that moderate sleep deprivation (feel like they're productive, but their actual performance is riddled with errors that then need to be corrected.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1739867/pdf/v057...

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071308/

[3] http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1997-07865-006

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Effects_on_th...

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#215

Post by hncommenter13 »

robertha wrote: post #49
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 th…

Exactly this. I worked in investment banking in NY and SF before moving over to VC/growth equity (and now a hedge fund).

Not only are bankers by definition terrible managers, but there's absolutely zero incentive for them to try to treat the junior people below them well. Junior people's time is viewed as an consumable resource like an oil well or a coal seam.

As a result, the sort of "pizza-sized team" project management that is the heartbeat of software companies is just a total unknown on the corporate finance/M&A side of investment banks. (Less so in consulting.)

Worse, there is no concern for what we used to call "yield loss:" slides or analyses that we'd create because a senior banker demanded them that were never presented to the client or in which they client had no interest. Countless times I've been the creator of and recipient of extensive presentations of which maybe one slide was relevant. I recall numerous instances of sending such books by messenger or FedEx to hotels/partners' houses, only to learn that they were never even picked up, let alone looked at.

As a VC/private equity guy, the presentations and investment memos that were no doubt largely written between 2 and 5 AM were mostly discarded; I extracted the few numbers I needed and tossed them, as I wanted the raw data from management and not the bankers' glossy sales pitch. I had stacks of these things in my office.

I'm not of the opinion that investment banking adds no value. But I firmly believe that the culture and habits of investment banks result in piles of unnecessary work that just burns out everyone associated with the enterprise and is not in any meaningful way related to the quality or value of the service delivered.

Clients don't care how many hours you worked, they care about the end results.

(I make exception here for situations with real economic deadlines like M&A auctions, but the biggest issues are not usually financial--they're business issues that bankers don't actually help much with compared to strategy consultants--I was one of those for a summer too, and the hours were long but reasonable.)

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#216

Post by sklivvz1971 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #207
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #197

I think it's a way of rationalizing the insane amount of money they make and fighting off the guilt they have for basically not deserving most of it. But of course, I'm not a banker.

Our economy doesn't reward workers based on merit, but on dynamics like supply/demand, risk, scarcity, etc...

Our economy certainly doesn't reward one based on hours worked, however it's clearly implicit in this behaviour that extra hours are expected of people because they make more. Why? Clearly that's nor justified by economics...

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#217

Post by lewispollard »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #150
fibbery wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see also: bootcamp, fraternity hazing

And, if "The Internship" is at all accurate, big tech companies are no better.

Interned at IBM for a year and a half and it was one of the most laid-back work environments I've ever been in.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#218

Post by gerhardi »

This kind of work in investment banking sector seems quite sad - you are no longer doing work for living, but the other way around.

I have absolutely no experience on what particular type of tasks are done in these positions. Could someone provide more insight? Maybe there could be opportunity to automate this work, at least partially?

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#219

Post by arethuza »

nc wrote: post #43
JonnieCache wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't pretty much all employers ask you to waive that for anything other than the lowest level jobs?

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#220

Post by adam-a »

danielrmay wrote: post #37
adam-a wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an entry level position that's probably 1.5-2.5x what a software dev could expect to make in the UK. In my experience at least.

London is different in this manner - an entry level software developer position (at a consultancy, bank, hedge-fund, etc) can go from 35k-45k. Outside of London (as I'm sure you're aware), this could be offered as a senior developer salary.

I'm in London, albeit not in a bank or hedge-fund. Perhaps I should be asking for a raise :)
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