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- It sounds like bankers at JPMorgan should expect 72-hour workweeks.
- One of JPMorgan’s executives says the longer workweeks speed up the process of mastering the job.
- Check out more at BroBible here.
Anyone that steps into the Wall Street arena of banking knows what they’re getting themselves into. It doesn’t matter if you’re working at a mid-level bank or one of the biggest corporations in the game, it’s not going to be your typical 9-5 job.
If someone wants to truly make it as an analyst on Wall Street then they’re going to have to sacrifice pretty much every connection to the real world. Not for a brief amount of time, either, but for years. Again, most people know this, but the banks themselves don’t necessarily want to publically announce to the world that some of their employees are working triple the number of hours they’re sleeping each week.
CEO of JPMorgan Chase’s Asset and Wealth Management division, Mary Callahan Erdoes, doesn’t seem too worried about working employees to the bone. For her, it’s all about mastering your craft as quickly as possible, and the only way to do that is to work more hours and more days each week.
“On Wall Street, it’s more like 12 hours a day, six days a week. That cuts you down to about two-and-a-half years before you become mastered in something,” Erdoes told Bloomberg.
Erdoes was specifically referring to graduate wealth management analysts when it comes to working these long hours. The concept of working more hours to master the job faster is based on the idea that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to gain “base-level mastery.” This idea was made popular by sociologist Malcolm Gladwell.
Over 2,000 summer interns recently joined JPMorgan while 3,600 analysts will start by September. I’m sure they’re really looking forward to joining the JPMorgan family after reading Erdoes’ comments.
72 Hour Workweeks Are A Breeze Compared To Goldman Sachs
In March earlier this year, a workplace survey from a group of 13 first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs was leaked, and some of the findings were mindblowing.
According to the survey, first-year analysts were averaging 98-hour workweeks following the new year. During the workweek ending on February 13, analysts averaged 105 hours on the job. With only 120 hours in a five-day workweek, these first-year analysts have just 22 hours over a five-day stretch to sleep, eat, exercise, interact with others outside of work, etc. The 13 analysts said they went to sleep at 3 AM on average.
The survey also listed anonymous quotes shared by the analysts, these are the most alarming:
“The sleep deprivation, the treatment by senior bankers, the mental and physical stress…I’ve been through foster care and this is arguably worse.”
“What is not ok to me is 110-120 hours over the course of a week! The math is simple, that leaves 4 hours a day for eating, sleeping, showering, bathroom and general transition time. This is beyond the level of ‘hard-working’, this is inhumane / abuse.”