Millennials are not like their predecessors. Yes, they want the high pay associated with junior investment banking jobs. No, they don’t want the crazy, exhausting, lifestyle of 80 hour+ working weeks.
Banks are busy doing something about this. As we outline below, U.S. banks have been addressing juniors’ working hours since 2013. Now the Swiss banks – Credit Suisse and UBS – have introduced their own limits.
Goldman Sachs – average of 72.4 hours worked per week. Introduced ‘Saturday rule’ in November 2013
A survey of users at Wall Street Oasis, an investment banking community site, found junior Goldman Sachs bankers work an average of 72.4 hours per week. This compares favourably to pure investment banks like Lazard, Rothschild and Moelis & Co, where the average is 82 hours a week plus.
Goldman Sachs was also the first bank to proactively tackle the working hours issue. In 2013, it introduced the so-called ‘Saturday Rule’, which states that ‘All analysts and associates are required to be out of the office from 9pm on Friday until 9am on Sunday,’ and that exceptions should not be the norm and that, ‘The expectation is that work will not be assigned on Saturday to be completed Saturday’.
Alexandra Michel, the US academic engaged in a 13 year study of investment banking working practices, told us Goldman Sachs has long had a positive approach to working conditions for juniors. “When I worked at Goldman, it was very hard for senior bankers to become partners if they were ‘people eaters’,” she said.
Credit Suisse – average of 72.1 hours worked per week. Introduced ‘Saturday rule’ in January 2014
If you’re a junior banker interested in moderate working hours, Credit Suisse is similar to but better than Goldman Sachs. Wall Street Oasis puts average working hours at 72.1 per week at the Swiss Bank. In January 2014, Bloomberg reported that Credit Suisse had introduced its own Saturday rule which was more generous than Goldman’s. CS bankers get an extra four hours at the weekend and are compelled to leave the office at 6pm on Friday and return no sooner than 10am on Saturday.
J.P. Morgan introduced ‘protected weekends’ in December 2013
Wall Street Oasis doesn’t put a number on working hours in IBD at J.P. Morgan. However, there are plenty of complaints around the web. The days are ‘never ending’ and it’s ‘impossible to keep up with the workload’ according to reviewers on Glassdoor.
Instead of giving its juniors Saturdays off, J.P Morgan opted to assign them once-monthly ‘protected weekends’ from December 2013. Under this policy, JPM juniors are barred from working for one full weekend per month. The bank also increased its intake of analysts to help spread the workload more thinly.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) introduced four weekend days off per month in January 2014
Like JPM, BAML has gone for flexibility. Instead of commanding its juniors to take Saturdays off, it stipulated that they must take at least four weekend days off every calendar month. Bank of America juniors who want to work more than four weekend days a month need to get sign-off from the bank’s senior managers.
Wall Street Oasis doesn’t provide figures for average working hours at BAML, but when intern Moritz Erhardt died in 2013 he was said to have worked for 72 hours straight.
Barclays – average of 71.4 hours worked per week. Introduced a policy of protecting weekends ‘as far as possible’ in mid-2014
Wall Street Oasis puts average working hours at Barclays’ Investment Bank at 71.4. Barclays introduced a comprehensive raft of measures to discourage senior bankers from overworking juniors in mid-2014. These say that weekends must be protected as far as possible and give junior bankers the power to report on senior bankers who mismanage their workloads.
Morgan Stanley – average of 67.6 hours worked per week. No limits in place on working hours
Ironically – or perhaps understandably, the bank with the best record on working hours has felt the least need to introduce hard limits on juniors’ time in the office. According to Wall Street Oasis, average working hours at Morgan Stanley are ‘just’ 67.6 weeks. Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has consistently said that the bank has no plans to introduce hard restrictions on working hours – either now or in the future. However, young bankers need to work “reasonable’ hours” so that they can have a “balanced lifestyle,” said Gorman at Davos in 2014. Bankers who work too long. “become very uninteresting advisers to companies because they bring a very narrow perspective,” he added.
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