A pedestrian passes 200 West Street, where Goldman Sachs Group Inc. located in New York.
Scott Eells | Bloomberg | Getty images
Junior investment bankers at Goldman Sachs suffer from 100-hour workweek burnout and demanding bosses during a SPAC-powered deal boom, according to an internal survey conducted by a group of freshman analysts.
The increase in activity has seriously affected the mental and physical health of analysts since at least the beginning of the year, according to slides published on social media and verified by knowledgeable people.
“The sleep deprivation, the senior bankers’ treatment, the mental and physical stress … I’ve had foster care and this is arguably worse,” said a Goldman analyst, according to a February survey of 13 workers.
“My body hurts physically all the time and I am mentally in a very dark place,” said another analyst.
The slideshow, full of color-coded charts and formatted in the official style of an investment banking pitch book, was created after a group of disgruntled analysts from different teams gathered to question their peers, the people said. Freshman analysts are usually recent college graduates and occupy the lowest level in the Wall Street hierarchy; above that are employees, followed by vice presidents and managing directors.
Goldman Sacks Effect on Physical and Mental Health.
Source: Litquidiity | Instagram
The Wall Street model is to employ thousands of entry-level workers each year, often high-level college graduates, to create a talent pipeline and workforce dedicated to the more mundane aspects of investment banking. Junior bankers trade a grueling workload for wages in excess of the average US salary and an opportunity to ultimately earn millions of dollars in compensation packages as a general manager.
Working conditions on Wall Street became a hot topic in 2013 after a Bank of America intern in London died after a period of sleepless nights. The industry then began adopting sheltered weekends, where junior workers could not work on a Saturday or Sunday without the manager’s approval.
Despite the changes, however, the culture of the industry continues unabated. Goldman survey respondents called conditions “ inhumane, ” saying that working 110 hours a week often leaves just four hours a day for sleep and self-care
Although the survey came from a small sample of Goldman employees, the bank took their concerns seriously, the people said. Goldman executives met with employees last month and told them they wanted to boost the hiring of junior bankers to deal with the workload, they said. The bank has also relocated employees to join busier teams and has been working to automate certain aspects of their work.
The 13 employees were not penalized for taking the survey, some of which was posted to the Instagram account Litquidity this week, the people said.
“We recognize that our people are very busy because business is strong and volumes are at historical levels,” said Nicole Sharp, a Goldman spokeswoman. “After a year of COVID, people are understandably quite thin, so we listen to their concerns and take several steps to address them.”
Hot on the heels of a record year for Wall Street, the IPO market is on fire, driven by an insatiable demand for new businesses. That demand is being met by SPACs, or blank check companies that disclosed companies, and SPAC mergers of $ 164 billion to date have already exceeded the 2020 total, according to Dealogic.
The deal backlog hit a record high in the first quarter, Goldman CFO Stephen Scherr said at a conference last week. Goldman is the world’s top merger advisor, reducing JPMorgan Chase in total number of deals and number of transactions.