> In Japan, there’s a word for it. Karoshi refers to death by overwork, a legal term that allows surviving family to petition a judge for compensation for damages [..] we have no such legal designation of protracted corporate suicide.
Is suicide really the word that should be used here?
Perhaps not, though if you intend to commit suicide, and the difference between a gun and overwork is massive compensation to your family, then there probably is some sort of motivation to die at the office.
Can you even choose to die by overworking? I mean, you can overwork yourself and inadvertently die. But you would never know if you were going to die, or just wake up really tired and go home the next morning.
Jumping off a bridge is one thing, jumping off your office building is another. But going into work and seeing if you can grind yourself out, that takes motivation. You'd have to feel the need to perform your job well, which gives you the feeling of stress. It doesn't strike me that a suicidal person would knowingly choose their work as an avenue of death.
>Is suicide really the word that should be used here?
I don't think there is a right word for it. Its not really murder because the employee more or less did it voluntarily. And its not really suicide because there was no intention to kill oneself.
Death by overworking is about as good as it gets imo.
How is it not manslaughter or some form of negligent homicide? The company created a culture that celebrated unhealthy work practices. It's no different than if a company were paying its employees to smoke cigarettes.
Should a site like HN get taken to court if someone dies from working 100 hour work weeks at their startup? Reading through many articles makes me believe that's what I need to do to succeed.
Only, I doubt the premise. Productivity will fall at some point. And in your startup you only care about productivity, not about impressing people with your actual hours. (You might want to impress people with tales of your alleged hours..)
It's one thing to internalize something you've read and apply it to your life. It's quite another to fear a) not getting a job or b) losing your job because the company allows ridiculous work practices to run rampant. They knew what was up, and the shame is on them.
The banking culture...how can such idiotic counterproductive mores dominate the allocation of capital...or more colloquially...how does bullshit still rule. we as makers, innovators, and inventors have to topple the inefficient stupidity of the system, as is. I honestly believe we are the only ones on the planet that can correct this stupidity of the suits.
Indeed, this is a very hard problem that needs to be solved. I just learned of JAK bank, IMHO it's a step in the right direction. Constantly accelerating systems are not natural or sustainable. Hopefully we can find solutions to money, banking and investing that are sustainable and productive without being predatory to parasitic towards most of humanity.
I don't know about that. Sure the perception is that "technology" is constantly accelerating. But if you look at it a more finite, measurable sense, for eg. Steam Engine/Steam Propulsion technology (I picked an arbitrary one, based on my assumptions, so apologies if this technology is "accelerating"), can be said to have decelerated. In this sense, the constant "acceleration", IMHO is more of a perception thing.
However, companies setting higher and higher sales forecast no matter what, is the type of acceleration that is quantifiable and not quite sustainable indefinitely. There are limits. You can keep profiting till you've got a monopoly on EVERYTHING... and then you just make all the minions work harder, or make people produce more babies so there are more consumer? That type of acceleration is unsustainable and quite frankly, absurd.
Consider software. No matter what new tools and amazing techniques to reduce and control complexity, everyone is still operating at or beyond the limits of the human mind to manage that complexity. That pretty much defines the state of the art in any technical field. I'm sure that applies in finance, too. And whoever invents more effective tools to manage complexity will be richly rewarded, on average.
Just think of all the GDP that's tied up in investment banking. We'd probably all be better off without a stock market. Imagine if those people had to actually introduce wealth into the economy for a living instead of just pocketing percentages.
We'd probably all be better off without a stock market.
Would you care to describe the mechanism by which middlemen get less of the economy without a public market? Because that is not the experience of assets without public markets. (And, indeed, this is why investment banks make most of their money away from "the stock market.")
To use an example which many HNers are intimately familiar with, if you happen to have $100,000 to invest towards your retirement and decide to park it in an index fund, you will pay approximately $150~$500 a year for the privilege. If you were to invest it via a venture capitalist (who specialize in making markets between people who have money and people who have companies in the absence of public markets which can connect them), it would cost you $2,000 a year and 20% of your investment gains... in the unlikely event that your VC of choice had positive returns. Also, you wouldn't be allowed to invest in the first place, because the VC model does not include talking to poor people like yourself.
It's a system that depends on the next generation buying into the idea of what a company is worth at a higher value. What happens when the next generation has no interest in buying into the idea of what a share of a company is worth? What happens to the last generation that has no one to sell shares to? Why does retirement depend on the young effectively giving the elderly money with wall street taking a percentage?
We used to have pensions in this country before the 401k loophole was exploited. 401k was never intended to be a middle class retirement vehicle. Instead of just pocketing the matched 401k funds, it is required to go to wall street where they take a percentage. Built in customers, even though 75% of managed funds perform worse than index funds. It's a joke.
I'm amazed the banking industry puts its interns to work right away - it looks like they have no difficulty coming up to speed very quickly if they're working this hard. What exactly is it that banking interns are doing?
It always struck me from my personal interactions with them that lots of what tech industry interns do is have a good time...
Banking interns are the cream of the crop, they will usually have done a lot of self study and be fully competent in financial modelling, research etc... These kids beat out 1000's of applicants for a handful of spots.
Usually though IBD/Corp Finance Summer work consists of assisting with pitches which includes menial work like powerpoint design, spreadsheeting, pitchbook creation etc. If they are on a live deal work may include due diligence etc.
Let's not overstate their qualifications. You could take any smart STEM major with a good attitude and train them to be a good summer intern in an afternoon.
I have a STEM education (PhD in Organic Chemistry) and consider myself a bright person (you are free to disagree). The guys that I knew that were good at banking were very skilled and intelligent. There is no way I could spend an afternoon in training and perform at their level.
I didn't say you could train for an afternoon and perform at the level of experienced bankers. That would be ridiculous. But I was referring to the training of a banking summer intern, and for that narrow job requirement, I stand by my statement.
And compared to your intelligent banker friends, you could absolutely be up to speed in six months, in terms of technical skill, industry knowledge, product knowledge. If you can master o-chem, you can master corporate finance. Check out the rest of this thread for more descriptions of the work...your qualifications are way overmatched for what the work actually is.
Having interned within these exact environments myself (BBIB), interns are students that are absolutely top of the game. So I also have to disagree. Being a "good" summer intern wont get you hired. You need to be exceptional. You dont become that in an afternoon... Most interns are incredibly well qualified and have very unique and strong backgrounds.
On my first day of work (FT, not internship), a director pulled me into his office, closed the door, and said, "Look, this job really isn't that hard."
And he was right.
Attitude is what separates good bankers from bad bankers.
>Attitude is what separates good bankers from bad bankers.
I don't disagree, although arguably M&A requires less specific domain knowledge for a new starter than say what might be required within structuring or DCM teams. Also I'm curious as to why you left banking?
I doubt that. I'm going to school right now for finance. At the school I attend, it seems every serious finance student not only knows the basics (Excel, Bloomberg, Powerpoint), but also statistics packages (R, Minitab), and several programming languages (everyone knows SQL and VBA, most know at least one of Python, Java or C++). Knowing how to create trading algorithms is required knowledge.
On top of that, everyone knows how to do a sales pitch, most are comfortable in a suit talking to execs, and classes in marketing, management, accounting, and computer science are all mandatory.
Finance courses at a proper business school are highly demanding, and the technical abilities of the students who attend are on par with any STEM major...
I did M&A at a well known IB, I speak with first hand knowledge. I wonder if you have done a banking internship yet? It doesn't sound like it, because if you did, you would know how the work interns actually do differs from all of the qualifications that you mention. I have no doubt most of your classmates are exceptionally bright and hard working, that describes most kids entering banking out of college.
Reread my comment, I could take a kid with a "good attitude and train them to be a good summer intern in an afternoon." In fact, I have actually done that. Let's define what I mean by "good." Week 1: a good summer intern needs to know how to make PIBs, bind books, spread comps, use Google, learn from mistakes, and most importantly, know when to ask questions. Of course, as they get real experience and prove themselves, they get more responsibility -- just like with any other job. For example, I've had superstar interns building merger models for live deals after a couple months.
Knowing the "basics" (Excel, Bloomberg/FDS/CIQ, etc) isn't that important on Day 1 since they'll learn those things. I mentioned STEM students, in particular, because they can usually speed up the learning curve.
And remember, I'm talking about banking. Trading is a whole different animal.
No comment on banking interns, but I occasionally mentor developer interns. We always have real work for them to do. Usually prototyping something using a new technology that we're considering. Or, prototyping a new product that hasn't been resourced yet.
They work a normal work week. 40-45 hours/week. No clue what we pay them, but they are paid and provided housing. We usually hire a few of them full-time when they finish school and they're generally very successful employees.
I assume they have a good time. They're 20-21 years old; I hope they do. Stressing at a desk sounds like a pretty lame way to spend your 20s.
It's hazing. They don't need to accomplish things, they just need to work hard. A banking intern acquaintance of mine recently bragged to me that he was up until 5am printing and binding things.
They do not have them do terribly important things, but there is always a lot of work. It is usually research. Usually pulling information from various sources and collecting it in Excel spreadsheets.
It does not have to be something important. The person requesting the research may hardly look at it. But there is always work to be done. When you think about it, there is so much information in the financial world that there are a million things one may want to see researched.
If you think this stuff is interesting from both a "what the hell is going on here" standpoint and a "no, really, what's it like in an investment bank?" standpoint, read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. It's a pretty interesting look at Wall Street in the late 80's, and it does a good job of avoiding an outright demonization of the industry while offering an honest appraisal.
As an aside note, I'm always amused when I hear my tech friends lambast investment bankers' crazy work schedules and then go on to brag about pulling an all-nighter Thursday and then hit up a hackathon after work on Friday. (Just because you get free beer and t-shirts doesn't mean its not unhealthy.)
At least in tech it's a choice, though; I know lots of techies who work 40 hours a week (and, you're right, lots who don't), but I don't know a single banker who doesn't pull this sort of crap. And I know a lot of bankers.
You're completely right, but while I'm not going to look these numbers up I'm very confident that the average investment banker works longer hours than the average software engineer; or even, yes, the average startup founder. I can promise you Google interns don't die from overwork.
Yes and there were many people very confident that the world would end last year. The amount of confidence you have doesn't prove anything, especially if you have no basis for that confidence outside of a few anecdotes.
Hmmm I love getting down-votes when I don't agree with the circle jerk.
Random anecdote: A good friend of mine is working as an investment banker and he often puts in a 40-50hr work week. Of course, there are the 80+ hr weeks, but he's got a sweet gig.
The difference here is that an all-nighter Thursday and then hackathon Friday will not be happening every week, or result in a 100 hour work week. These kids are literally doing 90+ hours every week for three months. A hackathon once in a while won't be near as detrimental as the hours this kid was working.
I second the Liar's Poker recommendation. Besides being insightful, there are some great anecdotes. My favorite was the one where traders would ask interviewees to open a window, which had been previously nailed shut. One interviewee was so exasperated that he tossed a chair through the 43rd floor window.
I once got told of a trader at a large bank that was called "Keep the fucker".
He had been late to work that morning and had parked in a board member's parking space. A security guard was sent to ask the trader to move his car. The trader was mid-deal and angrily waved the security guard away.
Seeing this, the trader's colleagues asked the security guard to keep asking him in order to wind him up further. In the end the trader snapped, threw his car keys at the security guard and said "It's a 3 year old BMW, and I'm doing a billion dollar deal. Just keep the fucker."
The difference between tech people and banking people are that tech people are trying to build an actual new idea and only secondarily are interested in making money (which often happens as a pleasant side effect).
I don't think there's anything inherently awful about 100+ hour work weeks (in that I would never want to do them, but people know what they're getting into when they join a BAML internship), but anecdotally the culture of working long hours at an IB is much more destructive than, say, working long hours at a hospital -- there's a much more pervasive drug life, and the long hours are borne much more out of showmanship and capriciousness than actual necessity.
It's a pretty shitty industry that attract specific personalities, but it's not going to go away anytime soon -- mainly because of the massive amounts of money.
If you have a work environment that only kills the marginal...then you have a work environment that kills the marginal. You need to start thinking about physical requirements and medical examinations before hiring, much like the military. Or maybe you need to think about putting a stop to a system that is really about hazing instead of getting stuff done.
The second might improve other things about the efficiency of your business as well. That will have economic consequences not just to you and your employees, and is therefore a thing of proper public scrutiny.
For every Wall Street banker working 100+ hours a week, there is a startup founder on Hacker News that also works for 100+ hours a week.
Who's providing more value is up for debate (I'm inclined to side with the founder of a tech startup :) ), but it's bullshit to chide only one industry for putting too much pressure on employees.
I was a Google intern, and I had plenty of colleagues (including myself) that put in 100+ hour weeks. And that was no one's choice but our own.
There's a big difference in expectation though. Sure, you CAN put in 100 hour weeks at lots of companies, but at IBanks you're admired for it [and mocked/disrespected/sabotaged if you don't]. I have a lot of friends in banking internships, and whenever I manage to pull one to dinner at 9pm on a friday night they tell me "I had to take so much shit to make it to this!"
Just look at all the press (and the initial forum threads) around this death; notice how everyone's describing him as "one of BAML's best interns"? Why do you think they called him that? Because of the quality of his work, or because of the hours he pulled? I'll give you a hint: IBanking work, at least at the intern level, is really easy.
If the argument is that quasi-mandatory long hours in tech should also be scrutinized, fully agree. Working hours in the game industry, one of the areas where it's most prevalent, have been getting some scrutiny for the past 4-5 years, and I believe the tide is slowly turning there.
> Most articles I've read say he had epilepsy. If that's the case, he could have had a fatal seizure in the shower on any given day, regardless of work schedule.
Uhh no.
> Sleep deprivation is the second most common trigger of [epileptic] seizures. In some cases, it has been responsible for the only seizure a person ever suffers
Usually the first time you realise you have a form of epilepsy like Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy is when you pull an all nighter in college (perfect hat trick of bad lighting, drinking and sleep deprivation at the age when symptoms are likely to first appear).
What just seems like clumsiness or aloofness in your personality develops into traditional seizures.
How is it voluntary if everyone else is pulling crazy hours and you need to keep up (or pull ahead) to stand a chance of making the jump from Intern to Real Employee?
Directly from the article:
“Sure, you may not be achieving much by midnight, but do you really want to be one of the first in the team to leave your desk?” George Herbert at PolicyMic asks. “If you’re always the one who leaves first will your boss question your commitment when it comes to calculating your annual bonus or deciding whether to take you onto a regular contract?”
Well, lack of sleep causes epilepsy seizures. Not to mention a bunch of other health problems in people who don't have epilepsy.
It's ridiculous to expect people to work this long, and saying people choose to be put in the situation is just irrelevant. We have workers rights for a reason. All of the people who have died doing manual labor over the last 1000 years 'chose' to be in that position as well but that didn't stop us putting in protections for them. Doesn't mean people don't do dangerous shit we just make sure they're well trained, aware of the dangers, given the best safety possible and not forced to do things that are gratuitously dangerous. That happens in the army too. It definitely doesn't happen in IB.
I don't know a single McKinsey consultant who regularly pulls 100+ hour weeks. Those are definitely an exception in MC. 80 hours maybe, but definitely not over 100 regularly if you're not in IBD.
Startup founders worth their salt? I doubt that too. I just don't think 100+ is productive. Pulling 3 all nighters in a row is just ridiculous. You need to get a sense for the difference between even 4 hours sleep (which is really not enough to be near productive) and 0 hours sleep (which just ruins a person).
Nobody's saying people shouldn't work 80 hour weeks, there just has to be limits in place. Nobody's asking for a 40 hour a week cap, just don't make someone work 3 all nighters, simple.
You're mistaken on workers rights being a response to asymmetric information, it's a response to asymmetry in power. However, whether or not an IB worker's power position is exploitive is more arguable.
I'm saying people shouldn't work 80-hour weeks. I'm asking for a 30 hour a week cap. The data is pretty clear that your judgment starts going downhill after that, and much faster than you subjectively think it does, and as you say, the data is also pretty clear that this area is a market failure.
You don't need any all-nighters to pull 100 hours a week. Live next to the office, work while you eat, take 2 hours off and sleep 8 hours a day - work the rest, and you're at 100 hours.
>If somebody chooses to literally work themselves to death, that's their own damn fault
You need to read up on employment law. The Employer/Employee relationship is more complex than a contracting agreement. By law, (at least in my jurisdiction) the employer is legally liable for on the job injuries. (there are some exceptions, depending on jurisdiction.) But generally speaking, if one of my guys tries to lift a server he can't handle and ends up crushing his foot? that's my problem. Of course, I'm insured against that (in my jurisdiction, not having workers compensation insurance is a criminal offense)
I mean, I have had guys who won't wear earplugs, and will use ladders that are breaking. Most employees will do moderately dangerous things if you let them. I think that giving the employer a financial reason to say 'no, throw out that broken ladder and buy one that isn't broken' is a good thing, personally, but good thing or not, it is the law.
This is a huge deal for construction companies, and the primary reason why there is such an emphasis on safety in construction. This insurance is a huge portion of the cost of a construction worker. Workman's comp for desk workers is... a trivially small amount of money, and most of my folks have been desk workers most of the time.
Now, I don't know if the death was related to work or not... but if it was related? legally (and personally, I think ethically) the employer is certainly liable.
From the article: "Regardless of the specific cause, the circumstances leading to his death seem unforgivable for a young man bent on proving himself. The hours he kept, though evidently typical, were inhumanly arduous and exploitative. Any doctor will tell you that fatigue that great can make a person susceptible to fatal collapse."
You, sir, are pathetic for your lack of empathy and your dickish tone.
> And that's bullshit because in each of these cases, the person CHOSE to be there and CHOSE to undertake those risks. That doesn't mean we have the right to regulate what they choose to endure.
I'm honestly flabbergasted at your response. Your profile says you have been a program manager at Microsoft. I can't imagine you're stupid, how can you have such a naive view of people?
For someone fresh out of college, in a highly competitive environment (IB is more competitive than anything you've likely ever done), there is huge pressure to perform and succeed. You really expect a young kid to make rational choices about his well-being in that sort of situation?
You're right, my comment was extreme and definitely naive and not ubiquitously true. I was simply suggesting that we not place sole responsibility of that on his employer.
I've deleted my original post because in hindsight I feel that it was disrespectful.
As someone that worked at that exact office for many years and then thankfully got out of that rat race I can sympathize with someone being exposed to the culture that exists there.
Generally people work ridiculous hours because they want to. They do it because the environment is highly competitive and the rewards can be huge. It is not the place for sensitive people, or indeed people with ethics and morals. It is all about the buck$ and screw the rest. People that can make money are Gods, even if their decisions only make money in the short term, no-one cares - all that matters is the next quarterly result and the annual bonus.
There is a reason that Merrill Lynch is now called Bank of America Merrill Lynch, their short term decisions came back and bit them in the ass and they got bought out. I doubt that any lessons were learned. Lots of lip service but I would be beyond stunned with surprise if any meaningful changes have taken place - the fact of this intern's death probably means I am correct, although of course nothing has been determined as to any link or otherwise.
I am probably over dramatizing here but if you value your soul, stay the heck away from Big Investment Trading & Commodities Houses.
i'm sure in a few weeks (if not ALREADY) this guy will be the going-joke around the offices as "don't pull an X. don't be the guy who can't handle the grind."
"If you ever care to see how all the world's most awful jokes spread, spend a day on a bond trading desk. When the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated, six people called me from six points on the globe to explain that NASA stands for 'Need Another Seven Astronauts. "
...That's it? If you think that's an example of the world's most awful jokes, I have some news for you. You should probably spend some time in just about any other industry, or even in a high school.
It's unfair to stereotype bankers this way. You could find books that similarly portray politicians, lawyers, etc. I know a few bankers and they're not like that at all. It's a mixed bag.
I've also heard far worse jokes in the kitchen of a restaurant. You want to be offended? Thems' a good place to start.
You give them too much credit; check out twitter.com/GSElevator for typical banker humor. Bankers pride themselves on borderline-sociopathic cynicism mixed with arrogance and workaholism. It's not pretty.
I don't think there's any real proof those tweets are submitted based on real experiences, to be fair. I know a few bankers, and I've spent holidays with them even. The ones I have seen are pleasant, polite, and more than willing to talk about things other than money/politics/things they're typically stereotyped with.
Not that I'm saying they're all like that. But they're not all arrogant or cynical. Maybe workaholics.
Like any high pressure job, there is a certain amount of gallows humour. This is no different than what you would find amongst, say, A&E (ER) medical staff.
On the one hand, no, that sort of cavalier attitude wouldn't be prudent, and most human beings wouldn't say things like that publicly (even sociopaths, who ironically might be less likely to do so).
On the other hand, this sort of humor emerges even in high school among guys. If a group of bankers not very connected to him hear about it, I could see a joke like that beinf said. But the same could be said of any profession. That's humanity for ya.
The other possibility is, "X is a hero, we should aspire to have that level of dedication to our work. Only shows how serious you got to be to get anywhere"
It depends where you work in the Bank. I worked at BAML for a while and apart from staying late on a Friday to release outside of US business hours, I didn't have many late nights.
The most insane period of work I had was when I worked at another bank and we had to put in place modifications to a system by a certain date, otherwise a downstream core trading system was predicted to fail (by capacity management) and the bank would be out of that particular market.
Even that was only every weekend for 6 weeks or so and regular nights of 9pm+
I have cousin who worked for Nomura in London and 100+ hours per week are normal thing in IB industry. I doubt that all-nighters were mandatory for interns, but it is very competitive environment and there are dozen of other interns/students waiting for opportunity and ready to do it.
Someone wrote its for the face-time but nobody pulls all-nighter for face time.
One thing to remember is that a lot of those 100 hours are sitting around waiting. Not to say they don't put in a lot of hours, but a friend of mine (banking intern) was told a 7pm to wait for a signed document to be signed and faxed in.
It eventually came at 4am. He basically sat around for 8hr waiting for it.
I worked a couple of years in a company called BlackRock. There's a group there called PAG (Portfolio Analytics Group), made up of mostly fresh college graduates. In the beginning, the head of the program would feed us the Kool-Aid about how the long 16 hour days would be so worth it after a year or 2. Sure, we'd be half-awake when we came in at 6 AM, and half-dead when we got to leave at 10 PM.
The kicker was he told us while it'd be tempting to just go home and sleep after we left, we should instead head straight to the GYM and workout for 30 mins, then go to the bar for a few hours because it would keep our "sanity". Hah.. sure, you know what else would keep you sane? QUITTING and working elsewhere.
Another point no one has mentioned...banking summer interns almost never do anything critical. If he needed to work 70+ hours straight, he probably was really slow at whatever shit work he was doing. (Young bankers reading this, learn all the Excel shortcuts!)
Good bankers know how to manage expectations. Who knows what this kid was working on, but it's easy to ask the graphics department for presentation help, the India team to pull some data, other bankers for help with numbers, etc. There's literally nothing he could have been doing that someone else in his firm hadn't done before.
Erratic hours are part of being an investment banker, but what this kid was doing to himself sounds completely unnecessary.
Such a shame that people are willing to literally work themselves to death at a task that delivers no true value to society.
Not really related, but it's also extremely scary how much of this industry relies on convoluted, fragile excel spreadsheets.
> Not really related, but it's also extremely scary how much of this industry relies on convoluted, fragile excel spreadsheets.
Why single out this industry? Every company I've worked for large enough to have an accounting department lives and breathes by those evil spreadsheets.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss. Are there shitty practices screwing things up and misaligned priorities? Certainly, but fundamentally banks and investors make capital and investment much more fluid and simpler.
Are you sure about that after reading the rest of the thread? From what I can tell, banks are where they are not because they're good at what they do but because they're solidly entrenched.
Well, clearly the answer is put a price on the lives of the sweet young things who are so eager to throw themselves into the jaws of Moloch. I mean that would be the Capitalist solution; and it would make banking into an heroic activity once again; and if telecast would surely outrank many other reality shows...
Think of a nine-week show called The Bankers Ordeal that would use go-pros to record every moment of the grueling work schedule that would not stop until one of the contestants fell. A riveting tribute to the allure of capitalism, how heart rending to see the contestants lined up at the start; one of them sure to die in the service of the only god our society worships unreservedly. Truly it would be a revival of the ancient tradition of the sacrificial lamb.
What exactly are they doing during those 100+ hours a week? Fiddling with MSFT Excel? It's easy to imagine a programmer working 100+ a week, since there's never a real end-point to software. It can literally go on forever if you please.
But...finance? I can't imagine even Black–Scholes required that kind of crazy dedication.
Speaking of Fischer Black, while he worked quite a bit because he enjoyed it and was given a lot of flexibility due to his reputation, he took great pride in having the smallest percent ownership in Goldman Sachs out of any of the partners while he was there.
He was not a banker himself, and was known to play Super Mario Bros. in his office and spend his evenings at comedy clubs. And he had a bigger impact on finance than arguably any banker since JPMorgan, without working their hours.
Perry Mehrling wrote a great biography of Black which I can't recommend enough.
In an internship it's all about the face time of proving you can work hard enough to survive an associate position or 2 year analyst stint. The competition is amplified because firms don't want to hire someone who got rejected from their prior place of employment.
The reason such a strange system exists is the top positions are so lucrative but it's hard to screen for the right abilities so they base it on brute work ethic.
That's not an answer to the question, though. I'm also genuinely curious. What do people "in finance" actually do on a day to day basis? My naive understanding is that the industry is highly automated already, so what activities are these 100 hour weeks spent doing?
I've spent most of my career servicing the financial services and investment industry. While I've enjoyed much of it, I also found a lot of it surprising to say the least.
What many people in finance haven't realized is most of the industry is an IT problem. Much of the work I see involves ingesting data, analysing it, and reporting on it. Most everything else is sales.
Most of the people doing this work come from a finance background and only have a rudimentary understanding of IT or programming. Many know Excel and PowerPoint pretty well, and those tools are pushed to extremes.
The work I see being done by junior analysts is often manual IT work. You wouldn't believe what goes on behind the scenes assembling the statements and reports that are sent to clients. It can be surprisingly difficult to sell software in this environment, because many stakeholders would rather get another junior analyst than solve the problem with software. There are some enlightened firms when it comes to technology, but I would say that is the exception.
Ultimately what I think is going to happen is that companies that are built from the ground up around a technology infrastructure will become more efficient and win business from traditional companies. It will take a long time to displace the bigger players, but it will happen. WealthFront is a good example of a financial company that is built around technology. Eventually these types of firms will win out in the market.
Update: Here is an example of the type of work I see analysts doing:
Manually copy data from 5 different systems into a spreadsheet at the end of the month. The data always has flaws, so go back and validate the data and resolve the issues. When the data is clean, do some processing on the data in the spreadsheet and create some graphs.
Then cut and paste output from the Excel spreadsheet into 150 client PowerPoint presentations, and combine that with commentary saved in an Word document from another department that is stored on a network drive.
At the end of the month an analyst will work 80 hour weeks to complete this in 3-5 business days. This type of workflow is not uncommon.
The cynic in me wonders if the inefficiency and inaccuracy that comes with using humans to crunch numbers gives them more room for error. It's pretty hard to pressure a computer to make the numbers work in your favor, but it's pretty easy to push a low level employee to do something unethical.
It might happen, but at least in the segments of the industry I work in, I don't think it is common. What is more common is human error. Most of the businesses I deal with are highly regulated, and they wouldn't risk fudging the numbers. In fact much of our business these days is related to enforcing compliance regulations.
If you knew how dirty most financial data is when it is released, you would probably be checking your statements more carefully.
Investment bankers are masters of Excel, Powerpoint, and Word and they're messing around in one of those all day long. Mostly building financial models and writing or formatting presentations. The work to do is endless, and if it's not the senior members of a team will make something up for you to do.
A huge part of what i-bankers do is pitch - either pitch to a company that you'd like to bring on as a client, or pitch to potential buyers of your client (and variations of that). Junior guys basically make the presentations for those pitches. There's generally horrible project management going on at the senior level as well, and senior team members have no qualms about making you make pointless updates to a presentation (for example, update the numbers in the presentation for the stock price today even though nobody will see the presentation for a week, and you'll have to update it then anyway). In fact, it's sort of part of the deal.
I guess showing them a live data source for the stock price in the presentation would just make their heads explode. I thought that was a reasonably out-of-the-box Office feature?
Unlikely, most data points in presentations are specifically given to paint a certain view! Last weeks figure will be last weeks low or high, not some arbitrary figure pulled from the middle of a session...
Speaking of what many consider classic investment banking, or Mergers & Acquisitions:
- Senior People (Managing Directors and Senior VPs) meet with clients during the day, figure out what to pitch, and what deals need to be done.
- Mid-level Managers (VPs) divide up the work ("create this pitchbook", "model this stock price", "come up with values of comparable companies"), do some of it themselves, assign work out, and check it.
- Low level folks (Analysts & Associates) spend a lot of time waiting for work, and then execute it until it's done.
- Interns try to impress that they have the stamina to get a lot of work done.
There's a lot of waiting implied in this for the juniors that are doing 100 hour weeks. For up to half the day they're goofing off, surfing the net, and looking busy. Then they crunch spreadsheets, and write pitch books.
Other divisions have similar hierarchies, but a little less busywork. Research spends a lot of time writing models and coming up with research papers, pitching trade ideas.
In trading, the hours aren't necessarily that bad, though they can be for juniors. Trading hours are 8-10 hours a day, but the jobs are hard to get so juniors spend a lot of time trying to look and impress.
Finance is weirdly disorganized. Everything I hear is you have a long empty period during the day and then a work dump whenever the MD goes home that you scramble to do. You wind up throwing out a lot of work halfway through because someone didn't bother to check whether it was the right thing to be doing or even relevant, just handed you an assignment. Everything's last minute and disorganized, but no one cares because the gaps always get filled with heroic efforts from the interns and junior people.
This sounds like the definition of the next place for software to eat an industry. I guess the number of domain experts is too small, or the knowledge changes too quickly to build into some extremely profitable process management software?
I think there are a bunch of fields, like medicine, medical research (except doing some software simulations of stuff), finance (the process management, not the calculation part), politics and law etc. that are inherently hostile to revolution by software - most competent programmers run away screaming after contact with any such domain and only the dumb ones remain, churning dumb software that doesn't actually solve the problems. And the few good ones that stay become dumbed down and only work at ~40% of their iq and productivity because their minds basically choke on the sheer amount of disorganized domain specific knowledge they have to absorb.
I think if we were to make an analogy of "information as alcohol", a programmer's mind is like an installation that only works well with very "distilled" information (say "vodka" and "whisky" :) ) and may work ok with "wine", but it completely sluggs down if you give it "beer" (completely undistilled information). In some domains (medicine is one that I know of), information is so undistilled, diluted and corrupted that it's basically the analogue of "beer with piss in it and rats swimming in the kegs" ("the rats" are my analogue for the "mud minded" people that "just don't get it and never will" and prevent smart geeks from actually doing their jobs)... that's why I wouldn't touch it with a 100 foot pol and I imagine lots of people feels the same about these areas. I imagine this part of finance is a similar "beer pool".
Bits of the business are being replaced slowly. But a lot of it is essentially sales which is harder to replace. Profit margins are extremely high. Best to build a replacement externally that is not very good then improve it. Don't underestimate the regulation though which is anticompetitive too.
1. Excel work. Valuing companies or modeling a merger or acquisition or financing. Sometimes it goes beyond this, but that’s the bread and butter of what you do in Excel.
2. Writing (PowerPoint or Word). For pitches you’ll write slides on industry trends, executive summaries and explanations of your analysis… for deals you will create marketing documents that “sell” your client in Word or PowerPoint.
3. Research. This can be finding reports for senior bankers, doing industry research, or Googling for hours on end trying to find the adoption rate of cell phones in a southern province of Kazakhstan.
4. Administrative Tasks. I hope you like scheduling meetings, taking notes, and sending out status updates to your team, because you’ll be doing a lot of that.
This is just insane, and sadly mirrors the experience of everyone I know interning in finance.
But do they also treat their tech/engineering employees like this? I can't imagine an engineer working 80 hours on Wall St. when they could make quite good money Facebook, etc. as well.
I had a roommate who worked in the banking industry and kept similar hours. Her "day off" was an 8 hour work day on Sunday. One (late) night we had a drink together and figured out that while she made twice my salary annually, I made three times her's hourly.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadIs suicide really the word that should be used here?
Jumping off a bridge is one thing, jumping off your office building is another. But going into work and seeing if you can grind yourself out, that takes motivation. You'd have to feel the need to perform your job well, which gives you the feeling of stress. It doesn't strike me that a suicidal person would knowingly choose their work as an avenue of death.
I don't think there is a right word for it. Its not really murder because the employee more or less did it voluntarily. And its not really suicide because there was no intention to kill oneself.
Death by overworking is about as good as it gets imo.
Only, I doubt the premise. Productivity will fall at some point. And in your startup you only care about productivity, not about impressing people with your actual hours. (You might want to impress people with tales of your alleged hours..)
Either way, i found this topic kind of a "uneasy" to discuss in many industries, mostly because the glass houses.
You know, all of technology is one giant constantly accelerating system.
well, if the kid was working in M&A he was working FOR the innovator trying to get his acquisition done.
truth is, if there wasnt as much hustle in IB, deals would fall apart. lots of deals need momentum to close.
That's why many of the wealthiest people you meet around the world got wealthy by working directly in property or finance.
Would you care to describe the mechanism by which middlemen get less of the economy without a public market? Because that is not the experience of assets without public markets. (And, indeed, this is why investment banks make most of their money away from "the stock market.")
To use an example which many HNers are intimately familiar with, if you happen to have $100,000 to invest towards your retirement and decide to park it in an index fund, you will pay approximately $150~$500 a year for the privilege. If you were to invest it via a venture capitalist (who specialize in making markets between people who have money and people who have companies in the absence of public markets which can connect them), it would cost you $2,000 a year and 20% of your investment gains... in the unlikely event that your VC of choice had positive returns. Also, you wouldn't be allowed to invest in the first place, because the VC model does not include talking to poor people like yourself.
We used to have pensions in this country before the 401k loophole was exploited. 401k was never intended to be a middle class retirement vehicle. Instead of just pocketing the matched 401k funds, it is required to go to wall street where they take a percentage. Built in customers, even though 75% of managed funds perform worse than index funds. It's a joke.
It always struck me from my personal interactions with them that lots of what tech industry interns do is have a good time...
Usually though IBD/Corp Finance Summer work consists of assisting with pitches which includes menial work like powerpoint design, spreadsheeting, pitchbook creation etc. If they are on a live deal work may include due diligence etc.
I have a STEM education (PhD in Organic Chemistry) and consider myself a bright person (you are free to disagree). The guys that I knew that were good at banking were very skilled and intelligent. There is no way I could spend an afternoon in training and perform at their level.
Could you spend a year and get up to speed? Sure.
And compared to your intelligent banker friends, you could absolutely be up to speed in six months, in terms of technical skill, industry knowledge, product knowledge. If you can master o-chem, you can master corporate finance. Check out the rest of this thread for more descriptions of the work...your qualifications are way overmatched for what the work actually is.
And he was right.
Attitude is what separates good bankers from bad bankers.
I don't disagree, although arguably M&A requires less specific domain knowledge for a new starter than say what might be required within structuring or DCM teams. Also I'm curious as to why you left banking?
On top of that, everyone knows how to do a sales pitch, most are comfortable in a suit talking to execs, and classes in marketing, management, accounting, and computer science are all mandatory.
Finance courses at a proper business school are highly demanding, and the technical abilities of the students who attend are on par with any STEM major...
Reread my comment, I could take a kid with a "good attitude and train them to be a good summer intern in an afternoon." In fact, I have actually done that. Let's define what I mean by "good." Week 1: a good summer intern needs to know how to make PIBs, bind books, spread comps, use Google, learn from mistakes, and most importantly, know when to ask questions. Of course, as they get real experience and prove themselves, they get more responsibility -- just like with any other job. For example, I've had superstar interns building merger models for live deals after a couple months.
Knowing the "basics" (Excel, Bloomberg/FDS/CIQ, etc) isn't that important on Day 1 since they'll learn those things. I mentioned STEM students, in particular, because they can usually speed up the learning curve.
And remember, I'm talking about banking. Trading is a whole different animal.
They work a normal work week. 40-45 hours/week. No clue what we pay them, but they are paid and provided housing. We usually hire a few of them full-time when they finish school and they're generally very successful employees.
I assume they have a good time. They're 20-21 years old; I hope they do. Stressing at a desk sounds like a pretty lame way to spend your 20s.
It does not have to be something important. The person requesting the research may hardly look at it. But there is always work to be done. When you think about it, there is so much information in the financial world that there are a million things one may want to see researched.
Also... Imagine if something even remotely similar happened at Walmart.
Here, it gets cheaper clerk-hours per dollar with part laborers surviving on food stamps.
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/foo...
As an aside note, I'm always amused when I hear my tech friends lambast investment bankers' crazy work schedules and then go on to brag about pulling an all-nighter Thursday and then hit up a hackathon after work on Friday. (Just because you get free beer and t-shirts doesn't mean its not unhealthy.)
Hah. Overeating and binge drinking, probably.
Hmmm I love getting down-votes when I don't agree with the circle jerk.
He had been late to work that morning and had parked in a board member's parking space. A security guard was sent to ask the trader to move his car. The trader was mid-deal and angrily waved the security guard away.
Seeing this, the trader's colleagues asked the security guard to keep asking him in order to wind him up further. In the end the trader snapped, threw his car keys at the security guard and said "It's a 3 year old BMW, and I'm doing a billion dollar deal. Just keep the fucker."
I don't think there's anything inherently awful about 100+ hour work weeks (in that I would never want to do them, but people know what they're getting into when they join a BAML internship), but anecdotally the culture of working long hours at an IB is much more destructive than, say, working long hours at a hospital -- there's a much more pervasive drug life, and the long hours are borne much more out of showmanship and capriciousness than actual necessity.
It's a pretty shitty industry that attract specific personalities, but it's not going to go away anytime soon -- mainly because of the massive amounts of money.
The second might improve other things about the efficiency of your business as well. That will have economic consequences not just to you and your employees, and is therefore a thing of proper public scrutiny.
Who's providing more value is up for debate (I'm inclined to side with the founder of a tech startup :) ), but it's bullshit to chide only one industry for putting too much pressure on employees.
I was a Google intern, and I had plenty of colleagues (including myself) that put in 100+ hour weeks. And that was no one's choice but our own.
Just look at all the press (and the initial forum threads) around this death; notice how everyone's describing him as "one of BAML's best interns"? Why do you think they called him that? Because of the quality of his work, or because of the hours he pulled? I'll give you a hint: IBanking work, at least at the intern level, is really easy.
Uhh no.
> Sleep deprivation is the second most common trigger of [epileptic] seizures. In some cases, it has been responsible for the only seizure a person ever suffers
Directly from the article:
“Sure, you may not be achieving much by midnight, but do you really want to be one of the first in the team to leave your desk?” George Herbert at PolicyMic asks. “If you’re always the one who leaves first will your boss question your commitment when it comes to calculating your annual bonus or deciding whether to take you onto a regular contract?”
No, its their responsibility to foster a workplace that doesn't lead people to die from overwork. Everybody else already does this.
It's ridiculous to expect people to work this long, and saying people choose to be put in the situation is just irrelevant. We have workers rights for a reason. All of the people who have died doing manual labor over the last 1000 years 'chose' to be in that position as well but that didn't stop us putting in protections for them. Doesn't mean people don't do dangerous shit we just make sure they're well trained, aware of the dangers, given the best safety possible and not forced to do things that are gratuitously dangerous. That happens in the army too. It definitely doesn't happen in IB.
I don't know a single McKinsey consultant who regularly pulls 100+ hour weeks. Those are definitely an exception in MC. 80 hours maybe, but definitely not over 100 regularly if you're not in IBD.
Startup founders worth their salt? I doubt that too. I just don't think 100+ is productive. Pulling 3 all nighters in a row is just ridiculous. You need to get a sense for the difference between even 4 hours sleep (which is really not enough to be near productive) and 0 hours sleep (which just ruins a person).
Nobody's saying people shouldn't work 80 hour weeks, there just has to be limits in place. Nobody's asking for a 40 hour a week cap, just don't make someone work 3 all nighters, simple.
You need to read up on employment law. The Employer/Employee relationship is more complex than a contracting agreement. By law, (at least in my jurisdiction) the employer is legally liable for on the job injuries. (there are some exceptions, depending on jurisdiction.) But generally speaking, if one of my guys tries to lift a server he can't handle and ends up crushing his foot? that's my problem. Of course, I'm insured against that (in my jurisdiction, not having workers compensation insurance is a criminal offense)
I mean, I have had guys who won't wear earplugs, and will use ladders that are breaking. Most employees will do moderately dangerous things if you let them. I think that giving the employer a financial reason to say 'no, throw out that broken ladder and buy one that isn't broken' is a good thing, personally, but good thing or not, it is the law.
This is a huge deal for construction companies, and the primary reason why there is such an emphasis on safety in construction. This insurance is a huge portion of the cost of a construction worker. Workman's comp for desk workers is... a trivially small amount of money, and most of my folks have been desk workers most of the time.
Now, I don't know if the death was related to work or not... but if it was related? legally (and personally, I think ethically) the employer is certainly liable.
You, sir, are pathetic for your lack of empathy and your dickish tone.
I'm honestly flabbergasted at your response. Your profile says you have been a program manager at Microsoft. I can't imagine you're stupid, how can you have such a naive view of people?
For someone fresh out of college, in a highly competitive environment (IB is more competitive than anything you've likely ever done), there is huge pressure to perform and succeed. You really expect a young kid to make rational choices about his well-being in that sort of situation?
I've deleted my original post because in hindsight I feel that it was disrespectful.
Generally people work ridiculous hours because they want to. They do it because the environment is highly competitive and the rewards can be huge. It is not the place for sensitive people, or indeed people with ethics and morals. It is all about the buck$ and screw the rest. People that can make money are Gods, even if their decisions only make money in the short term, no-one cares - all that matters is the next quarterly result and the annual bonus.
There is a reason that Merrill Lynch is now called Bank of America Merrill Lynch, their short term decisions came back and bit them in the ass and they got bought out. I doubt that any lessons were learned. Lots of lip service but I would be beyond stunned with surprise if any meaningful changes have taken place - the fact of this intern's death probably means I am correct, although of course nothing has been determined as to any link or otherwise.
I am probably over dramatizing here but if you value your soul, stay the heck away from Big Investment Trading & Commodities Houses.
i'm sure in a few weeks (if not ALREADY) this guy will be the going-joke around the offices as "don't pull an X. don't be the guy who can't handle the grind."
- Liar's Poker
It's unfair to stereotype bankers this way. You could find books that similarly portray politicians, lawyers, etc. I know a few bankers and they're not like that at all. It's a mixed bag.
I've also heard far worse jokes in the kitchen of a restaurant. You want to be offended? Thems' a good place to start.
Not that I'm saying they're all like that. But they're not all arrogant or cynical. Maybe workaholics.
On the other hand, this sort of humor emerges even in high school among guys. If a group of bankers not very connected to him hear about it, I could see a joke like that beinf said. But the same could be said of any profession. That's humanity for ya.
The most insane period of work I had was when I worked at another bank and we had to put in place modifications to a system by a certain date, otherwise a downstream core trading system was predicted to fail (by capacity management) and the bank would be out of that particular market.
Even that was only every weekend for 6 weeks or so and regular nights of 9pm+
I have cousin who worked for Nomura in London and 100+ hours per week are normal thing in IB industry. I doubt that all-nighters were mandatory for interns, but it is very competitive environment and there are dozen of other interns/students waiting for opportunity and ready to do it. Someone wrote its for the face-time but nobody pulls all-nighter for face time.
It eventually came at 4am. He basically sat around for 8hr waiting for it.
The kicker was he told us while it'd be tempting to just go home and sleep after we left, we should instead head straight to the GYM and workout for 30 mins, then go to the bar for a few hours because it would keep our "sanity". Hah.. sure, you know what else would keep you sane? QUITTING and working elsewhere.
Good bankers know how to manage expectations. Who knows what this kid was working on, but it's easy to ask the graphics department for presentation help, the India team to pull some data, other bankers for help with numbers, etc. There's literally nothing he could have been doing that someone else in his firm hadn't done before.
Erratic hours are part of being an investment banker, but what this kid was doing to himself sounds completely unnecessary.
Why single out this industry? Every company I've worked for large enough to have an accounting department lives and breathes by those evil spreadsheets.
Think of a nine-week show called The Bankers Ordeal that would use go-pros to record every moment of the grueling work schedule that would not stop until one of the contestants fell. A riveting tribute to the allure of capitalism, how heart rending to see the contestants lined up at the start; one of them sure to die in the service of the only god our society worships unreservedly. Truly it would be a revival of the ancient tradition of the sacrificial lamb.
But...finance? I can't imagine even Black–Scholes required that kind of crazy dedication.
He was not a banker himself, and was known to play Super Mario Bros. in his office and spend his evenings at comedy clubs. And he had a bigger impact on finance than arguably any banker since JPMorgan, without working their hours.
Perry Mehrling wrote a great biography of Black which I can't recommend enough.
http://www.amazon.com/Fischer-Black-Revolutionary-Idea-Finan...
The reason such a strange system exists is the top positions are so lucrative but it's hard to screen for the right abilities so they base it on brute work ethic.
I'm not defending, just explaining.
What many people in finance haven't realized is most of the industry is an IT problem. Much of the work I see involves ingesting data, analysing it, and reporting on it. Most everything else is sales.
Most of the people doing this work come from a finance background and only have a rudimentary understanding of IT or programming. Many know Excel and PowerPoint pretty well, and those tools are pushed to extremes.
The work I see being done by junior analysts is often manual IT work. You wouldn't believe what goes on behind the scenes assembling the statements and reports that are sent to clients. It can be surprisingly difficult to sell software in this environment, because many stakeholders would rather get another junior analyst than solve the problem with software. There are some enlightened firms when it comes to technology, but I would say that is the exception.
Ultimately what I think is going to happen is that companies that are built from the ground up around a technology infrastructure will become more efficient and win business from traditional companies. It will take a long time to displace the bigger players, but it will happen. WealthFront is a good example of a financial company that is built around technology. Eventually these types of firms will win out in the market.
Update: Here is an example of the type of work I see analysts doing:
Manually copy data from 5 different systems into a spreadsheet at the end of the month. The data always has flaws, so go back and validate the data and resolve the issues. When the data is clean, do some processing on the data in the spreadsheet and create some graphs.
Then cut and paste output from the Excel spreadsheet into 150 client PowerPoint presentations, and combine that with commentary saved in an Word document from another department that is stored on a network drive.
At the end of the month an analyst will work 80 hour weeks to complete this in 3-5 business days. This type of workflow is not uncommon.
If you knew how dirty most financial data is when it is released, you would probably be checking your statements more carefully.
A huge part of what i-bankers do is pitch - either pitch to a company that you'd like to bring on as a client, or pitch to potential buyers of your client (and variations of that). Junior guys basically make the presentations for those pitches. There's generally horrible project management going on at the senior level as well, and senior team members have no qualms about making you make pointless updates to a presentation (for example, update the numbers in the presentation for the stock price today even though nobody will see the presentation for a week, and you'll have to update it then anyway). In fact, it's sort of part of the deal.
There's a lot of waiting implied in this for the juniors that are doing 100 hour weeks. For up to half the day they're goofing off, surfing the net, and looking busy. Then they crunch spreadsheets, and write pitch books.
Other divisions have similar hierarchies, but a little less busywork. Research spends a lot of time writing models and coming up with research papers, pitching trade ideas.
In trading, the hours aren't necessarily that bad, though they can be for juniors. Trading hours are 8-10 hours a day, but the jobs are hard to get so juniors spend a lot of time trying to look and impress.
I think if we were to make an analogy of "information as alcohol", a programmer's mind is like an installation that only works well with very "distilled" information (say "vodka" and "whisky" :) ) and may work ok with "wine", but it completely sluggs down if you give it "beer" (completely undistilled information). In some domains (medicine is one that I know of), information is so undistilled, diluted and corrupted that it's basically the analogue of "beer with piss in it and rats swimming in the kegs" ("the rats" are my analogue for the "mud minded" people that "just don't get it and never will" and prevent smart geeks from actually doing their jobs)... that's why I wouldn't touch it with a 100 foot pol and I imagine lots of people feels the same about these areas. I imagine this part of finance is a similar "beer pool".
1. Excel work. Valuing companies or modeling a merger or acquisition or financing. Sometimes it goes beyond this, but that’s the bread and butter of what you do in Excel.
2. Writing (PowerPoint or Word). For pitches you’ll write slides on industry trends, executive summaries and explanations of your analysis… for deals you will create marketing documents that “sell” your client in Word or PowerPoint.
3. Research. This can be finding reports for senior bankers, doing industry research, or Googling for hours on end trying to find the adoption rate of cell phones in a southern province of Kazakhstan.
4. Administrative Tasks. I hope you like scheduling meetings, taking notes, and sending out status updates to your team, because you’ll be doing a lot of that.
But do they also treat their tech/engineering employees like this? I can't imagine an engineer working 80 hours on Wall St. when they could make quite good money Facebook, etc. as well.