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Comment by Paulster0031 | Hacker News Reader

I guess he wants the new recruits to be able to experience the "magic roundabout"

The investment banking culture is notoriously brutal. Analysts typically work until midnight every day. Deals are unpredictable, deadlines are short and clients are demanding. There is a ritual known in banking circles as the “magic roundabout” — a graduate leaves his or her desk in the early hours of the morning, takes a cab home, and the taxi driver waits outside long enough for the young recruit to shower and change shirt before returning to the office.

https://www.ft.com/content/84adb5a4-2e53-11e6-a18d-a96ab29e3...

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Baffles me that anyone would want to live like this. The sooner this bizarre culture dies out, the better.

It won’t. There will always be people willing to put in more, especially when your future of making many millions is on the line. This is what unions are for.

It won’t die out. People like money. Analyst IBD roles represent not only some of the best compensated roles out of Uni, but puts on a path to a long well-compensated career either at GS or another bank. Or an exit opportunity. And the young folks that go into these roles probably busted their butts at Uni after busting their butts at high school. They are ready for it. And once you get in the culture you get normalised to it.

Tech pays so much more though, and you don’t have to kill yourself either for it? (genuinely can’t imagine doing 80-100 hour work weeks)

IBD is a dead meme at this point in my opinion. Like how being a lawyer used to be the most lucrative career path.

Yeah but you need to be a top engineering/CS kid to get those high-paying tech jobs.

All you need to get a job in IBD is go to a top school, have a high gpa, and be able to memorize some basic accounting and finance and not blow your interviews.

Getting a technical degree like CS and then passing the interviews at a place like Google or whatever the hottest unicorn grads wanna work at is way tougher IMO

If you can get into a top school, you can spend the few hours to study for technical interviews. Seriously, I’m not joking. It’s not as hard as you make it out to be.

I wasn't claiming the technical interviews require some genius, but they are way tougher than IB interviews.

You can make almost as much money (well above the average) doing a "normal" 35-40 hour week in tech. I'd rather have a sensible work:life balance and earn a bit less, than spend my entire life working until midnight.

Plus, I find tech is very egalitarian. Nobody cares whether you went to a public or state school, if you have a regional accent or anything like that. Banking still has the "old money" club problems.

It's a pyramid scheme of sorts. The graduates don't even get paid very well. If you succeed though, you can start a modest retirement at 40.

And after they had their share of that life style they start writing books and blogs on what is the meaning of life.

This seems like a form of hazing. How sharp and attentive to details that person is after that day?

It seems more like "I worked like that, so you too should work like that"

I don't understand why they don't just put showers in the office so they don't have to go home.

It's quite funny isn't it - GS has this reputation for brutally insisting their employees working like this whilst Tech companies very quietly and passively set up conditions where people can work like this. If you think "Who has designed their company so that I work there 24/7 with no break" it's not Goldman, it's Google.

To keep the illusion of having a work-life balance. Another possibly is to not store your belongings in your office. So you go to your stor.. ehrm home to change and water your plants.

I'm guessing if they did that it would make the problem a lot more visible.

My office does have changing rooms but they're intended for cyclists.

What I do not understand, it is known that sleep deprivation leads to similiar effects as beeing drunk. So can these people actually do anything non trivial in the 23h shifts? Or is it so easy you can do it on autopilot? Or do mistakes not matter?

But when a deal is not happening you have a lot of time off.

The bonus is good

The money is good

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