In a survey, a self-selected group of 13 first-year analysts painted a bleak and unsustainable picture of life at the bottom of the financial food chain, saying that their mental health and relationships with friends and family were suffering.
“My body hurts physically all the time and I’m mentally in a really dark place,” wrote an analyst.
The group presented its findings to management in February, and its report began to circulate publicly last week.
One of the analysts’ appeals to management – in addition to limiting workweeks to 80 hours – was to better apply the “Saturday rule”, which stipulates that junior employees should not be in the office between 9 pm on Friday and 9 am on Sunday. They said they often ask junior employees to do “quick” work on Saturdays, “and it is incredibly difficult to back off”.
“We are reinforcing the application of the Sabbath rule,” said Solomon, adding that the bank would hire more junior employees in its investment banking division.
Solomon repeated the bank’s statement last week, which pointed to “historic” volumes increasing bankers’ workload.
“Customers are active and volumes in many of our businesses are at historic highs,” he said. “It is clear that the combination of the pandemic and all that activity has stressed everyone at Goldman Sachs.”
In the survey, 100% of respondents said that their hours of work damaged their relationship with friends and family. About three-quarters of analysts said they felt they had been abused in the workplace and sought or considered seeking help for mental health problems.
Virtually all analysts said they felt pressure from “unrealistic deadlines” and were avoided or ignored at meetings.
While many hours of work and unglamorous working conditions are not uncommon in the cruel world of finance – especially among first-year analysts – this report was extreme, even by Wall Street standards.
“I didn’t arrive at this job expecting 9:00 am to 5:00 pm,” wrote one analyst, “but neither did I expect consistent 9:00 am to 5:00 am.”