7 ms·

Goldman Sachs Tells Interns to End the Late, Late Show

41 points by powertry 11y ago

s_dev 11y ago
It's behind a pay wall. Not fair to make submissions many people can't read. All content I get on HackerNews should be free to read without an implication of paying to join the discussion. The Irish Times allows current articles to be read publicly but anything that gets archived (a few days old) must be payed for to be read. I prefer and pay for this model - would be nice if WSJ adopted it.
- anon8418 11y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+Tells+Interns+to+End+the+Late%2C+Late+Show&oq=Goldman+Sachs+Tells+Interns+to+End+the+Late%2C+Late+Show&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.181j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+Tells+Interns+... Visiting via google removes the paywall.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Here you go. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgoldman-sachs-tells-interns-to-end-the-late-late-show-1434562103&ei=PfGCVe7lLY_xoATFooDIDQ&usg=AFQjCNF2yVfsKx8W03C_eSlJ5ePwTr_6Bg&bvm=bv.96042044,d.cGU&cad=rja https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
  - s_dev 11y ago
    Thanks!
- Rainymood 11y ago
  >All content I get on HackerNews should be free to read without an implication of paying to join the discussion. And why exactly?
  - s_dev 11y ago
    [You need to pay $1 to read my answer to this question]
shepardrtc 11y ago
So interns are expected to stay out of the office from 12am to 7am on weekdays. That's great... Now they're only expected to be there 17 hours a day! But, during those off hours, does that mean that they can remote in and still work?
- joezydeco 11y ago
  on weekdays. Very sneaky, Goldman. I guess weekends are wide open to work as much as needed, right? Gotta prep that big PowerPoint for Monday morning's meeting. This all reeks of polishing the optics and nothing to do with treating their interns with any respect.
  - leroy_masochist 11y ago
    As of about a year ago GS IBD analysts and associates are required to be out of the office from 9pm Friday to 9am Sunday unless they are granted specific permission to work extra hours by the head of the group. It is stupid that the new rule makes people go home from midnight-7am. It would be a lot more aligned with the working hours of investment bankers if that were changed to a 2am-9am embargo. However, the optics would probably look bad; "midnight" sounds a lot more wholesome than "2am". So instead, summer analysts are going to have to be waking up at 5:30 or 6 to make it in by 7am sharp, which is going to absolutely suck for them.
adamnemecek 11y ago
So what exactly do they do there for so many hours a day? I'm having a hard time imagining anyone doing anything productive for that long.
- tinbad 11y ago
  Investment banking is all about dealing with other people's money and the customers usually are pretty demanding when it's well, about their money. From what I hear from my investment banker friends a lot of the day is spent socializing and going on client meetings, lunches, dinners to satisfy the relationship and then usually back to the office to do the 'actual work'. It's a lot of hard work but that's why these guys get paid $200-300k soon after joining.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    ... They don't put the interns out there schmoozing with the customers.
    - tinbad 11y ago
      As an intern, you usually get to shadow the manager, meaning you're still going to a lot of the events. And then you're expected to do all the work.
      - whatok 11y ago
        This really depends on bank as well as group within bank. Definitely not a hard rule.
  - CornerKicks 11y ago
    Investment banking is about helping companies raise equity, debt and engage in M&A, not dealing with other people's money (maybe your friends were in wealth or asset management, which sometimes sit within the investment bank?) Having been a junior banker myself (and with friends at most banks across wall street) I can tell you that virtually no one is being taken to events or spending days socializing as an intern, let alone as an analyst or associate. You spend your days preparing pitchbooks (to pitch companies on why you should be the bank representing them), building financial models and putting together management presentations (in addition to any one-off requests your senior people or the client have). Can go into more detail but it's covered pretty well in comments above. (Also there's no such thing as shadowing a manager in investment banking - just doesn't exist. There are mentorship programs that the banks run, but the vast majority of the time they consist of getting coffee at most once a month)
rdl 11y ago
What do investment banking interns (and bankers) do which benefits from such long hours? Lots of manual data processing? Reading? I absolutely benefit from uninterrupted stretches of 12-24h working on problems sometimes, but only infrequently -- usually hit diminishing returns between 4-12h. The only times where I've been useful >24h was when the task was more "set up this thing which has lots of waiting on other people or long-running processes", or in some cases where external factors (transportation costs, outage window) meant a single 48-72h sprint was worth more than maximum productivity during that period -- and even then, some level of rest during some stage made a huge difference. An entire summer of 17h days is difficult to imagine as a productive way to work. "It's just hazing" is a reasonable answer, but surely that would create a market opportunity for some alternative entity, or at least would mean the hazing has to be limited in duration.
- bayesianhorse 11y ago
  I think it's more than hazing. It may be some kind of costly advertizing, to show off their ability and willingness to function under that kind of stress level. On the other hand this behavior also selects for candidates who are driven more by (the hope of) success and money, than by health, social/family life etc.
- bra-ket 11y ago
  the amount of work that can be generated by a bad manager is infinite
- blfr 11y ago
  Never worked in a bank but I believe it's a matter of being available to senior employees.
- jorblume 11y ago
  It's a gut check for motivation. How badly do you want to be there? Are you willing to give almost everything for the firm? Hazing might be a part of it but I see it more like boot camp than anything else. Weed out those who don't have the fortitude and drive. They don't want employees who value family time over the company, for example. Forcing people to work insane hours will self select for the "right stuff". It's not about productivity, it's about cultivating a specific culture.
cherry_su 11y ago
Note that the curfew (seemingly) does not apply to full-time employees, so a fresh grad could be working the night shift.
nickbauman 11y ago
Investment banking is a religion or something. Long hours of repetitive supplication and devotion wins the day. But then again I do find that what clothes I'm wearing does affect my code. When I wear a bowtie, for instance, I find I use more curly-braces! (facepalm).
logicallee 11y ago
Just a note that a policy to head home at midnight doesn't end the late, late show. It institutionizes it. Midnight is not a reasonable time to leave work.
tdees40 11y ago
A thought experiment: you have a job that pays exorbitantly well, and you want to offer it to someone. It isn't particularly difficult, and any reasonably well-informed, self-motivated college graduate can handle it. How do you hire for that job? The demand is likely insanely high. Spoiler alert: you create an insanely complicated funnel to weed through huge quantities of candidates. And if talent isn't the primary determiner of success (remember that the job isn't that hard), how do you distinguish people? Simple, you work them nearly to death and see who comes out alive. I'm not saying that is exactly the situation here, but I think as a mental model it's not that far off.
- Chinjut 11y ago
  If the demand is so high, why not simply lower the pay to winnow the candidate pool? Why bother with the insanely complicated funnel instead?
  - tdees40 11y ago
    Because your pay is high too! If you can find people to work beneath you for cheaper, why can't they replace you for less money? Edit: also, they do that with intern/entry-level banking jobs. Internships pay well, but it's nothing like what higher-level bankers make. Same with entry-level analysts.
    - whatok 11y ago
      The senior bankers who actually bring in clients are worth their weight in gold. 0 chance anyone in a position like that is going to stick around to get underpaid while bringing in business.
  - dasil003 11y ago
    Because it winnows the wrong ones. They want the extremely tenacious money-driven type, because those are the ones that will help them make billions once they work their way up—and gladly clap on the golden handcuffs as they do.
  - 11y ago
sjg007 11y ago
Herd mentality.
whatok 11y ago
This is a good thing. There may be some work piling up as a result of this but it's not like analysts are lacking for hours in a day to get work done. Since these changes are well-publicized, senior people will have to abide by them and clients will hopefully be more understanding on increased turnaround time.

41 points by powertry 11y ago

s_dev 11y ago

It's behind a pay wall. Not fair to make submissions many people can't read. All content I get on HackerNews should be free to read without an implication of paying to join the discussion. The Irish Times allows current articles to be read publicly but anything that gets archived (a few days old) must be payed for to be read. I prefer and pay for this model - would be nice if WSJ adopted it.

anon8418 11y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+Tells+Interns+to+End+the+Late%2C+Late+Show&oq=Goldman+Sachs+Tells+Interns+to+End+the+Late%2C+Late+Show&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.181j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+Tells+Interns+... Visiting via google removes the paywall.
kelukelugames 11y ago
Here you go. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgoldman-sachs-tells-interns-to-end-the-late-late-show-1434562103&ei=PfGCVe7lLY_xoATFooDIDQ&usg=AFQjCNF2yVfsKx8W03C_eSlJ5ePwTr_6Bg&bvm=bv.96042044,d.cGU&cad=rja https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- s_dev 11y ago
  Thanks!
Rainymood 11y ago
>All content I get on HackerNews should be free to read without an implication of paying to join the discussion. And why exactly?
- s_dev 11y ago
  [You need to pay $1 to read my answer to this question]

shepardrtc 11y ago

So interns are expected to stay out of the office from 12am to 7am on weekdays. That's great... Now they're only expected to be there 17 hours a day! But, during those off hours, does that mean that they can remote in and still work?

joezydeco 11y ago
on weekdays. Very sneaky, Goldman. I guess weekends are wide open to work as much as needed, right? Gotta prep that big PowerPoint for Monday morning's meeting. This all reeks of polishing the optics and nothing to do with treating their interns with any respect.
- leroy_masochist 11y ago
  As of about a year ago GS IBD analysts and associates are required to be out of the office from 9pm Friday to 9am Sunday unless they are granted specific permission to work extra hours by the head of the group. It is stupid that the new rule makes people go home from midnight-7am. It would be a lot more aligned with the working hours of investment bankers if that were changed to a 2am-9am embargo. However, the optics would probably look bad; "midnight" sounds a lot more wholesome than "2am". So instead, summer analysts are going to have to be waking up at 5:30 or 6 to make it in by 7am sharp, which is going to absolutely suck for them.

adamnemecek 11y ago

So what exactly do they do there for so many hours a day? I'm having a hard time imagining anyone doing anything productive for that long.

tinbad 11y ago
Investment banking is all about dealing with other people's money and the customers usually are pretty demanding when it's well, about their money. From what I hear from my investment banker friends a lot of the day is spent socializing and going on client meetings, lunches, dinners to satisfy the relationship and then usually back to the office to do the 'actual work'. It's a lot of hard work but that's why these guys get paid $200-300k soon after joining.
- jonknee 11y ago
  ... They don't put the interns out there schmoozing with the customers.
  - tinbad 11y ago
    As an intern, you usually get to shadow the manager, meaning you're still going to a lot of the events. And then you're expected to do all the work.
    - whatok 11y ago
      This really depends on bank as well as group within bank. Definitely not a hard rule.
- CornerKicks 11y ago
  Investment banking is about helping companies raise equity, debt and engage in M&A, not dealing with other people's money (maybe your friends were in wealth or asset management, which sometimes sit within the investment bank?) Having been a junior banker myself (and with friends at most banks across wall street) I can tell you that virtually no one is being taken to events or spending days socializing as an intern, let alone as an analyst or associate. You spend your days preparing pitchbooks (to pitch companies on why you should be the bank representing them), building financial models and putting together management presentations (in addition to any one-off requests your senior people or the client have). Can go into more detail but it's covered pretty well in comments above. (Also there's no such thing as shadowing a manager in investment banking - just doesn't exist. There are mentorship programs that the banks run, but the vast majority of the time they consist of getting coffee at most once a month)

rdl 11y ago

What do investment banking interns (and bankers) do which benefits from such long hours? Lots of manual data processing? Reading? I absolutely benefit from uninterrupted stretches of 12-24h working on problems sometimes, but only infrequently -- usually hit diminishing returns between 4-12h. The only times where I've been useful >24h was when the task was more "set up this thing which has lots of waiting on other people or long-running processes", or in some cases where external factors (transportation costs, outage window) meant a single 48-72h sprint was worth more than maximum productivity during that period -- and even then, some level of rest during some stage made a huge difference. An entire summer of 17h days is difficult to imagine as a productive way to work. "It's just hazing" is a reasonable answer, but surely that would create a market opportunity for some alternative entity, or at least would mean the hazing has to be limited in duration.

bayesianhorse 11y ago
I think it's more than hazing. It may be some kind of costly advertizing, to show off their ability and willingness to function under that kind of stress level. On the other hand this behavior also selects for candidates who are driven more by (the hope of) success and money, than by health, social/family life etc.
bra-ket 11y ago
the amount of work that can be generated by a bad manager is infinite
blfr 11y ago
Never worked in a bank but I believe it's a matter of being available to senior employees.
jorblume 11y ago
It's a gut check for motivation. How badly do you want to be there? Are you willing to give almost everything for the firm? Hazing might be a part of it but I see it more like boot camp than anything else. Weed out those who don't have the fortitude and drive. They don't want employees who value family time over the company, for example. Forcing people to work insane hours will self select for the "right stuff". It's not about productivity, it's about cultivating a specific culture.

cherry_su 11y ago

Note that the curfew (seemingly) does not apply to full-time employees, so a fresh grad could be working the night shift.

nickbauman 11y ago

Investment banking is a religion or something. Long hours of repetitive supplication and devotion wins the day. But then again I do find that what clothes I'm wearing does affect my code. When I wear a bowtie, for instance, I find I use more curly-braces! (facepalm).

logicallee 11y ago

Just a note that a policy to head home at midnight doesn't end the late, late show. It institutionizes it. Midnight is not a reasonable time to leave work.

tdees40 11y ago

A thought experiment: you have a job that pays exorbitantly well, and you want to offer it to someone. It isn't particularly difficult, and any reasonably well-informed, self-motivated college graduate can handle it. How do you hire for that job? The demand is likely insanely high. Spoiler alert: you create an insanely complicated funnel to weed through huge quantities of candidates. And if talent isn't the primary determiner of success (remember that the job isn't that hard), how do you distinguish people? Simple, you work them nearly to death and see who comes out alive. I'm not saying that is exactly the situation here, but I think as a mental model it's not that far off.

Chinjut 11y ago
If the demand is so high, why not simply lower the pay to winnow the candidate pool? Why bother with the insanely complicated funnel instead?
- tdees40 11y ago
  Because your pay is high too! If you can find people to work beneath you for cheaper, why can't they replace you for less money? Edit: also, they do that with intern/entry-level banking jobs. Internships pay well, but it's nothing like what higher-level bankers make. Same with entry-level analysts.
  - whatok 11y ago
    The senior bankers who actually bring in clients are worth their weight in gold. 0 chance anyone in a position like that is going to stick around to get underpaid while bringing in business.
- dasil003 11y ago
  Because it winnows the wrong ones. They want the extremely tenacious money-driven type, because those are the ones that will help them make billions once they work their way up—and gladly clap on the golden handcuffs as they do.
- 11y ago

sjg007 11y ago

Herd mentality.

whatok 11y ago

This is a good thing. There may be some work piling up as a result of this but it's not like analysts are lacking for hours in a day to get work done. Since these changes are well-publicized, senior people will have to abide by them and clients will hopefully be more understanding on increased turnaround time.