Goldman Sachs analysts say they work 95-hour weeks and undergo “inhumane” treatment

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About a dozen freshman analysts say they work an average of more than 95 hours a week, sleep only five hours a night, and experience workplace abuse. Most of them say their mental health has deteriorated significantly since joining the investment bank.

“There was a time when I didn’t eat, shower, or do anything other than work from early morning until after midnight,” an analyst said in the report.

The survey comes from a handpicked group of 13 freshman analysts who presented their findings to management in February, a bank spokesman said. The analysts’ research results began circulating on social media this week and were previously reported by Bloomberg News.

The bank says it is listening to the concerns of its employees and is working on solutions.

“We recognize that our people are very busy because business is strong and volumes are at historical levels,” the bank said in a statement. “After a year of Covid, people are understandably quite stretched, which is why we listen to their concerns and take several steps to address them.”

Few people entering the cutthroat world of Wall Street banking would expect a neat nine-to-five. But the analysts in the survey are essentially pleading with their employer to limit their weekly working hours to 80.

“This is beyond the level of ‘hard work’,” said one. “This is inhumane.”

One hundred percent of respondents said their hours had damaged their relationship with friends and family. About three-quarters of the analysts said they felt they were victims of workplace abuse and that they have sought or considered seeking help for mental health problems.

“My body hurts physically all the time and I am mentally in a very dark place,” one analyst wrote in the study.

Most analysts said they felt pressured by “unrealistic deadlines” and were shunned or ignored in meetings. Their report also provided solutions for management to remedy the situation.

“To do our best work and deliver the company’s customers, we need to be rested and free from juggling an insurmountable amount of contradictory workflow,” the group said.

While the Wall Street banks, and Goldman in particular, are known for skyrocketing salaries and even higher bonuses, that’s not always the case for freshman analysts – the bottom of the food chain in finance.
A Goldman spokesman declined to comment on compensation. According to a report by Business Insider last year, first-year investment bank analysts at Goldman and other top companies can expect a base salary of about $ 91,000.

The complaints in the inquiry are at odds with the more relaxed image Wall Street banks have put forth in recent years. Faced with increasing competition for talent from the Silicon Valley jeans-and-hoodie crowd, major banks have relaxed their formal suit-and-tie dress codes and expanded family leave policies.

Goldman has also tried to protect junior bankers’ weekend with a “Saturday rule” requiring analysts to be absent from 9:00 pm Friday to 9:00 am Sunday, except in rare circumstances. (That rule is not always respected in the survey, according to the analysts.)

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