Why would anyone knowingly subject themselves to 80-90 hour weeks. The money and success you make in the short term could very well be overshadowed by health problems.
A guy at my work doing high stress support work recently had a heart attack.
A guy at my work doing high stress support work recently had a heart attack.
You drag it while you can, buying a new flat cash with the bonus you get each year. At 32, the bank finally noticed, you are fired with a few years salary and you retire in your all-paid luxury flat, enjoy income from your other 5 flats, get kids and enjoy seeing them grow while living in a luxury.
The only problem of that lifestyle is that in the first 3-4 years, you have basically 1 chance in 10 to make it through. After working in such pressure, you are brainwashed, so it takes some serious willpower to first invest your money properly instead of living the high life and then prepare your exit strategy.
edit: the bank finally notice that you are not as eager as the next batch of freshly promoted coworker. So if your department made slightly less profit, you get selected in the next batch of firing that happen generally just before bonus time.
For me my priorities are providing for my future family and being there with them. I wouldnt want to be gone when my child walks or other small events early in life.
About the priorities, the problem is the brainwashing and easy money that lead people to try to get always more.
If you have the willpower you are able to retire very early and be with your kids full time while still living a life normal people need 2 good full time salaries to live.
I would not have had the willpower my friend displayed so I have limited regrets. But I still need to put my kid at the nursery in November, need to live in a foreign country far from our family and live in poor area of the city that I hope I will be able to leave before I need to send my kid to school.
So if your department made slightly less profit that year, you get selected in the next batch of firing that happen generally just before bonus time.
Note that firing is a regular event for bankers. There is not much stigma attached to it, you just need to have the willpower to use the opportunity to retire.
I enjoy what I do now, corp finance for a tech company, but banking would be ideal.
I would say that it's not a great sign that Ivy types are looking to recreate the happy-slappy Greenspan years in another sector.
My father worked for Goldman in the 1990s, up to a relatively high level. He was home at 7 pm each day and would often eat breakfast with us before school, and he rode the subway to work. Now, he would also often be commuting cross-continent and be gone for all the weekdays at a time, and would have to spend some time reading reports and financial journals on weekends, but still he never went through the sort of fraternity absurdities that seem common now, even when he started in the industry in his early 30s.
Also, clients have more options now and can demand more from the banks -- their relative bargaining position is weaker. Being that they're all public companies now rather than partnerships, the entire culture has shifted, and they're under more performance pressure. The raw dollar amounts are much higher, but the core business model is eroding.
OK, if you're a client, do you want to have your account handled by some frenetic kid on amphetamines working 100 hours a week, or do you want it handled by someone with class who is going to likely be with the firm for the rest of his life? Junior on speed is going to die of a heart attack at 27 and might jump to another firm or a hedge fund. Taking your confidential information with him in his head to some other firm who might use that information against you some day.
Why would you trust your business with a team of substance-enhanced Juniors with impeccable academic credentials?
Like Bill Solomon recently said on his 100th birthday (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-02/billy-salomon-turns...):
"When you are a partnership there is a different atmosphere,” Salomon said. “You’re working for each other.” That discipline helped instill a culture where clients trusted their advisers, he said."
That trust is gone, and it can't be replaced by just throwing amphetamine-fueled-all-nighters at the problem.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Brothers#1990s_Treasu...
Ite not "Solomon" :-)
Right now, somebody in Germany is wondering how I can deal with only having 2 weeks of vacation a year, and speculating that it could lead to serious medical problems.
My father had a series of mini-strokes after having a pleasant salmon dinner.
Was it worth it though? It doesnt look like you are still at that job.
The salmon dinner didnt cause the stroke, its not usually what you are doing at the time that causes the heart attack/stroke. It was probably the decades of bad health/choices whatever that caused it.
>Right now, somebody in Germany is wondering how I can deal with only having 2 weeks of vacation a year
Hell right now I am asking myself why I dont live in Europe.
Factory work can be high or low stress, depending on the pacing and risk of injury.
I knew a guy who worked 60 hours a week putting stickers on a package he loved his job. No stress and his productivity determined his pay no.
Does not compute.
(To me the more curious question is why anyone would employ people to do that, given that you get less done in an 80-hour week than a 35-hour one)
*) Although that's more typical of M&A than finance as a whole. My brother is a trader at one of the big banks and probably works more like 60.