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To see the stress mounting again on Wall Street\u2019s junior bankers, just look a half-rung higher, at staffers.<\/p>\n
Not\u00a0staff<\/em>, as in employees, but staffers<\/em>, the unheralded deputy managers who dole<\/a> out assignments to trainees. When investment bankers or clients want something done, staffers find underlings for the drudgery. That\u2019s getting trickier as banks exit a\u00a0slump in deals<\/a>\u00a0with thinner headcount and big ambitions for landing new mandates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trainees and staffers alike are now feeling the strain.<\/p>\n A junior banker at JPMorgan Chase<\/a> & Co. and another at UBS Group<\/a> AG, for example, privately said they\u2019re inflating their weekly hours in internal tracking systems so bosses don\u2019t make them give up their last bits of free time. At Bank of America<\/a> Corp., two trainees said they\u2019re instead understating to avoid breaching 100-hour limits, dubbed \u201ctripping the system,\u201d which can prompt a call from HR and stir up trouble for managers.<\/p>\n When banks do run short of junior bankers to crank out analyses and pitch decks, it falls on staffers to tell the bosses tough luck. A Citigroup<\/a> Inc. staffer recently recalled how nerve-wracking that was her first time.<\/p>\n After emailing a managing director that everyone was too busy, she cried and got physically ill. When the response later arrived \u2014 \u201cI am so disappointed in you\u201d \u2014 she stared at her screen in angst. She later left.<\/p>\n Interviews with current and recently departed junior bankers and their managers show that 100-hour work weeks, which never went away, are once again becoming more common as investment banks chase a modest but growing flow of deals. The employees asked not to be identified to protect their careers.<\/p>\n The swelling workloads are testing promises banks made just a few years ago to give trainees breaks and safeguard their health. And, for young bankers, it\u2019s bringing old frustrations back to the fore.<\/p>\n The death on May 2 of Bank of America associate Leo Lukenas from a heart attack \u2014 just days after the former Green Beret finished work on a $2 billion deal \u2014 triggered an outpouring of those feelings on online message boards. Though authorities attributed Lukenas\u2019 death to natural causes, anonymous posters vented about being asked to do too much and called for a walkout, which never materialized.<\/p>\n Bank of America has said its executives take junior bankers\u2019 health seriously and that the firm frequently reviews policies to ensure they\u2019re protected. As for how they log time, the firm said, \u201cour practice is clear and we expect employees to accurately record their hours.\u201d<\/p>\n Spokespeople for JPMorgan, UBS and Citigroup declined to comment.<\/p>\n Long hours have always been a facet of Wall Street\u2019s training programs. But unlike the\u00a0tsunami of activity<\/a>\u00a0junior bankers handled during the pandemic, the recent sense in the lower rungs is that much of the work is on spec, as bosses try to position their firms for an upswing, especially once interest rates fall.<\/p>\n With many desks just starting to see\u00a0revenue increase<\/a>, trainees have little leverage to demand better conditions. Peloton exercise bikes that some firms offered a few years ago are now gathering dust because, as a young banker at one boutique firm put it, nobody has time to use them anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe culture in banking isn\u2019t keeping up with the times and needs of junior bankers,\u201d said Stephan Meier a professor at Columbia Business School. Instead, supervisors keep making the mistake of viewing trainees as resources to be used or wasted, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cEither firms squeeze out as much as possible of their junior bankers, and that\u2019s good for the business, or if they don\u2019t, it hurts the performance of the organization,\u201d Meier said. \u201cThat\u2019s the wrong mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n Firms have\u00a0bolstered safeguards and perks<\/a>\u00a0in recent years, such as ensuring some Saturdays off or providing free fitness classes. Yet workloads haven\u2019t been curtailed to allow for it, employees said in interviews. That leaves them to argue with staffers or, worse, anger the more powerful bosses they need to impress.<\/p>\n One junior banker who left Lazard Inc. late last year said she couldn\u2019t bring herself to seek help, even as her health deteriorated. She felt pressure in her chest while working, Googled \u201cheart attack symptoms\u201d and contacted a medical hotline, which urged her to see a doctor. But she stayed at her desk, worried that if it were a false alarm, bosses would view a trip to a clinic as a poor excuse for blowing deadlines. Feeling worse months later, she quit to start a new career.<\/p>\n A junior banker at another big bank said he also kept working while experiencing chest pain after gulping an energy drink to finish a 100-hour week. He thought about seeing a doctor, but everyone else on his team was pulling the same hours, and he didn\u2019t want to stand out as the one who couldn\u2019t hack it.<\/p>\n A May survey by the social media platform Overheard on Wall Street found junior bankers are putting in an average of about 80 hours a week \u2014 equating to more than 11 hours a day including weekends \u2014 and sleeping about five hours a night. Yet some of the roughly 200 participants claimed to have notched 140-hour weeks, leaving only four hours a day for sleeping and other necessities.<\/p>\n Asked to score their mental and physical health on a scale of 1 to 10, the average responses were 2 and 3, respectively, according to a copy of the results seen by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n A question about the pressure on young bankers even made its way into JPMorgan\u2019s annual investor day last month. Jennifer Piepszak, co-head of commercial and investment banking, responded that nothing is more important than the well-being of employees and that managers need to ensure that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t just sit in our offices and go through business reviews,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to be out in the field and every one of us are, so that we have a sense of where the pressure might be mounting, and we need to give people the resources to be able to cope.\u201d<\/p>\n At many banks, the role of staffer has existed for decades. They appear in Michael Lewis\u2019\u00a0Liar\u2019s Poker,\u00a0<\/em>portraying life at Salomon Brothers in the high-flying 1980s, and in John Rolfe and Peter Troob\u2019s\u00a0Monkey Business<\/em>, chronicling young bankers at Donaldson<\/a>, Lufkin & Jenrette during the dot-com bubble.<\/p>\n Though many staffers are mere vice presidents \u2014 near the bottom of the management tree \u2014 banks typically ask them to ensure higher-ups don\u2019t demand too much from new arrivals. Indeed, a staffer at a bulge-bracket bank said she requested the job so she could help protect junior bankers after her own training at boutique Houlihan Lokey<\/a> was so rigorous that she began bringing a sleeping bag to the office.<\/p>\n Still, several junior bankers interviewed by Bloomberg described their staffers as clearly conflicted \u2014 more eager to impress rainmakers and climb the ladder than to push back.<\/p>\n A Citigroup employee said that he kept telling his staffer that his weekly hours were surpassing the 100 that the bank\u2019s software would let him log \u2014 only to be told that everyone was stretched and that the deals still needed to get done.<\/p>\n Strolling around Manhattan, it\u2019s easy to find signs of Wall Street\u2019s intense treatment of trainees.\u00a0<\/p>\n A young man was seen doing push-ups on Park Avenue\u2019s sidewalk Thursday, sweating through his dress clothes with the sun overhead. Asked what was happening, he said he was being punished by his boss for screwing up a pitch deck.<\/p>\n For those who stick with it, the goal remains a high-paying career. At investment banks, such lucre may not be quite as abundant as when formal training programs were set up as a gateway into private partnerships. But the experience is still valuable, with many junior bankers soon defecting to private equity or money management.<\/p>\n \u201cGoing into banking, you are making the conscious decision of giving up your lifestyle,\u201d said Hamilton Lin, co-founder of Wall Street Training & Advisory. \u201cYou are selling your soul to the devil, but it\u2019s a fair trade.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nChest Pains<\/h3>\n
Staffer Conflicts<\/h3>\n
\u2018Selling Your Soul\u2019<\/h3>\n