- Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon responded to complaints from junior bankers.
- Solomon, in a message to the team, said the company would work harder to give junior bankers a break on Saturday.
- In a survey that circulated on social media, 13 junior bankers described “inhuman” conditions.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
Goldman Sachs’ chief executive said the company would address issues raised by a group of junior bankers who described “inhuman” working conditions, poor mental health and sleep deprivation in an internal survey.
“This is something that our leadership team and I take very seriously,” said David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, in a voice message sent to employees on Sunday, according to a transcript read by Insider.
The investment bank will work to enforce its “Sabbath rule”, which stipulates that junior bankers should not be expected to be in the office from 9 pm on Friday to 9 am on Sunday, Solomon said. It will also accelerate the hiring and transfer of employees to the company’s busiest divisions to ease the workload of junior bankers.
In an informal survey published on social media, a group of 13 Goldman first-year investment analysts described being so overwhelmed that they barely had time to bathe, eat or sleep.
Analysts said they had worked an average of 98 hours a week since January and slept an average of five hours a night. All respondents said that their hours of work negatively affected their relationships and rated their satisfaction with personal life as 1 in 10.
“Sleep deprivation, treatment by senior bankers, physical and mental stress … I have been to an orphanage and this is arguably worse,” said an unidentified analyst.
Read More: Some Goldman analysts are fed up with 98 weekly hours of work in their room, as a year of WFH forces Wall Street to reevaluate the workload of junior bankers
All 13 respondents said they often faced unrealistic deadlines, and 83% said they frequently experienced excessive monitoring or micromanagement. Seventy-five percent of respondents said they sought or considered seeking mental health counseling because of work-related stress.
At the end of the survey, analysts suggested several management solutions, including limiting workweeks to 80 hours and giving junior bankers the Saturdays off, unless they are told. First-year analysts often receive “quick” work on Saturdays, and it is “incredibly difficult to back off,” they said.
Solomon attributed the high stress conditions to a business boom in the midst of the pandemic. He also said that working from home made it more difficult to find a balance between personal and professional life.
“Customers are active and volumes in many of our businesses are at historic highs. It is clear that the combination of the pandemic and all that activity has put stress and pressure on everyone at Goldman Sachs,” said Solomon. “We recognize that the people who work today face a new set of challenges. In this world of remote work, it seems that we have to be connected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Although strenuous hours and heavy workloads are expected on Wall Street – and are often offset by heavy salaries – junior analysts have indicated that they would hardly remain at the bank if working conditions did not improve.
“Being unemployed is less frightening to me than what my body could succumb to if I maintained that lifestyle,” said one analyst.