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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

#181

Post by qq66 »

This kind of horrible lifestyle is well-known to everyone applying for a job on Wall Street. Nevertheless, people still apply, and not out of desperation -- all of the successful applicants could get great jobs elsewhere.

There's no deceit here -- the investment banks clearly articulate what the lifestyle will be like, and people sign up for the pay. I know, I did an internship at Lehman Brothers and saw it firsthand -- people staying till 3am just to impress. I managed to keep my weekly hours under 40 by automating my job in Visual Basic, and then decided I wanted to make productivity tools for the general market instead of in-house.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#182

Post by djillionsmix »

rayiner wrote: post #126
No1 wrote: post #113

What 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.

The point of an internship is to give candidates an idea of what the job is really like. At the analyst level, bankers will be subject to abuse. Not because of resource constraints, but because the job itself is demanding. Deals are fragile creatures that need to be completed quickly, and F500 C-suite executives are demanding clients. They need everything to be perfect and they need it done yesterday. That's what lea…

Instead of rationalizing unnecessarily poor behavior, why don't you try not rationalizing unnecessarily poor behavior? It might turn out to be something you enjoy not doing.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#183

Post by tptacek »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #176
crusso wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in both cases true freedom is constrained by a background set of rules enforced by the state No Lord God Mises necessary. The rules for "pure" capitalism are the minimum set needed to allow free exchange between individuals.

Only if you've redefined "capitalism" to mean "any economic system including individual/institutional holdings and trade", in which case you've successfully and retroactively redefined all economies ever as having been capitalistic. A net that catches every fish names none.

"A net that catches every fish names none" is an interesting turn of phrase. Does it come from somewhere? Nets don't usually name things; the net that catches only 2 fishes also doesn't name them.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#184

Post by Nicholas_C »

qq66 wrote: post #181

This kind of horrible lifestyle is well-known to everyone applying for a job on Wall Street. Nevertheless, people still apply, and not out of desperation -- all of the successful applicants could get great jobs elsewhere. There's no deceit here -- the investment banks clearly articulate what the lifestyle will be like, and people sign up for the pay. I know, I did an internship at Lehman Brothers and saw it firsthand…

I'm curious which processes you automated in VBA? I'm currently an analyst in an FP&A role. I use VB for a lot of things but I'm not sure I could automate that much of my job. I do a lot of smaller tasks, taking the time to write a macro for each one just doesn't seem to add value. Especially when processes change frequently. Perhaps IB is more suited for VBA automation.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#185

Post by eli_gottlieb »

tptacek wrote: post #183
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you've redefined "capitalism" to mean "any economic system including individual/institutional holdings and trade", in which case you've successfully and retroactively redefined all economies ever as having been capitalistic. A net that catches every fish names none.

"A net that catches every fish names none" is an interesting turn of phrase. Does it come from somewhere? Nets don't usually name things; the net that catches only 2 fishes also doesn't name them.

No, my brain just mixed metaphors stupidly. It just sounds interesting because it alliterates, which is also by accident.

I was thinking about how tuna fishermen cast dragnets that often catch many other things, up to and including sharks and dolphins. Hence, you couldn't really call such a net a "tuna net", since it more just catches tuna by coincidence of catching everything even remotely fish-shaped.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#186

Post by yetanotherphd »

tanzam75 wrote: post #166
rayiner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon valley types are the devil to the unwashed San Francisco hippies. As an investment banker you also provide a service. When Google buys a startup for $50 million, that transaction doesn't make itself happen.

No -- but the banks are overcompensated for their work on M&A. You could hire a strategic consulting firm -- McKinsey, Bain, BCG -- to do M&A due diligence for half of what the investments banks charge. They hire from the same pool of 25-year-old Ivy League graduates. I doubt they'd do a worse job than the banks. IPOs? You shouldn't need an underwriter to do an IPO. That's the whole idea behind OpenIPO -- which is ho…

Theoretically, the main reason to prefer traditional IPO's to dutch auctions, is the auctions in general may not give sufficient rewards for "price discovery". That is, everyone is relying on everyone else to research the firm and discover its true value. That's not to say there is NO incentive for price discovery in auctions, just not as much as through the traditional process.

In my corporate finance class they described how some countries (I forget which) had experimented with auctions instead of using i-bank underwriting, and in the end they had all gone back to using i-banks.

I don't know anything about M&A, but on structured products I agree they are just for customers who don't know any better.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#187

Post by aaron695 »

No one has to be a banker, if they take you in it means you're smart enough to go elsewhere. It's no secret how hard it is.

Why do people feel the need to put down the jobs of others? Is it because they are different? Is it jealousy because they are not smart enough or don't themselves have the will power? I don't get it.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#188

Post by qq66 »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #184
qq66 wrote: post #181

This kind of horrible lifestyle is well-known to everyone applying for a job on Wall Street. Nevertheless, people still apply, and not out of desperation -- all of the successful applicants could get great jobs elsewhere. There's no deceit here -- the investment banks clearly articulate what the lifestyle will be like, and people sign up for the pay. I know, I did an internship at Lehman Brothers and saw it firsthand…

I'm curious which processes you automated in VBA? I'm currently an analyst in an FP&A role. I use VB for a lot of things but I'm not sure I could automate that much of my job. I do a lot of smaller tasks, taking the time to write a macro for each one just doesn't seem to add value. Especially when processes change frequently. Perhaps IB is more suited for VBA automation.

It was pulling in coupon payment data from Bloomberg for an array of securities (by CUSIP number) and aggregating them to create a payment schedule for the combined portfolio.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#189

Post by beedogs »

b1daly wrote: post #168
rayiner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of an internship is to give candidates an idea of what the job is really like. At the analyst level, bankers will be subject to abuse. Not because of resource constraints, but because the job itself is demanding. Deals are fragile creatures that need to be completed quickly, and F500 C-suite executives are demanding clients. They need everything to be perfect and they need it done yesterday. That's what lea…

This reasoning is suspect: repeatedly pushing oneself to work to exhaustion as a form of training for real work where you need to work longs seems unlikely to offer more than diminishing returns. How often do bankers need to work three straight day and nights? Are you positing a physiological process where the more "three nighters" one does the stronger you get? It seems more likely that the treatment of interns is a…

Basically the higher you go on the pay scale in banking, the more sociopathic everything gets.

Re: Pushed to the limit as a banking intern

#190

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ffn wrote: post #144
pavel_lishin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the hesitation to become a plumber, why would working as an electrician be so unpleasant?

There is inherently nothing wrong with those jobs; both give you adequate skills one needs to not only survive in a company, but also strike out on one's own. In addition, both are positions that will always and forever be needed for as long as women have long hair that clog drains and men build houses with electricity without killing themselves. However, both jobs are stigmatized against by major corporations and go…

Well the thing is, not everyone can be fabulously wealthy and dazzlingly famous. What you're really talking about is a form of zero-sum social status. Think of how nearly everyone today is literate, whereas 150 years ago anyone who could read and write at our level belonged to the elite intelligentsia.

To which I say: fine! Why should we ever claim that a person has no right to call themselves successful unless they've managed to beat X% of other competitors in a zero-sum competition? The whole point of societies is positive-sum collaboration in the first place.

What's wrong with having a world-class standard of living (ie: upper-middle class First Worlder with social services available as back-up), a good relationship with your partner, a good job, and children? I personally could never stand the suburban white picket fence, but I don't get why being a reasonably successful professional with a family is failure.

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