our highly-paid, overworked junior staff keep leaving just as we get them fully trained

by Alison Green on October 26, 2021

A reader writes:

I work in an industry that is well known for long, hard hours, especially at junior levels. It’s one that has been all over the newspaper the past couple years for difficulty retaining junior professional staff and attempts to roll out more work-life balance. That said, it’s also (a) very well paid at the junior level, think 23 years old and making $275k-$200k; and (b) very competitive.

We’ve been having issues with junior staff, who each went through a rigorous interview process where the lifestyle was made clear to them (100-hour weeks, in the office every weekend, two year program), quitting after 6-9 months. That is typically just when they are getting useful in what is effectively an apprenticeship program. Some are leaving us for competitors with bigger brand names, but others are making the jump into corporate jobs, usually in finance with mid-stage start-ups. We have raised pay twice in the past six months and have been in the press for a fair bit of success lately. But we can’t do our jobs effectively without junior resources. It’s a huge amount of work to get a 23-year-old working at a professional level, and because it’s client service if they aren’t available evenings / weekends then I have to be (high level manager bringing in significant business). That’s equated to me working each of the past six weekends to try and get junior staff more time off than I ever got when I was coming up, only to have the fourth team member this year quit.

So, obviously we can’t *force* anyone to keep working, but what else can we be doing to keep people for the full two-year program? We already defer most of the comp to year-end, with some smallish amount withheld for 12-24 months. I’m thinking of something along the lines of a contract that would acknowledge that the training provided has value that must be repaid if the person doesn’t stay for 24 months. Or making the majority of the salary and bonus contingent on staying for the full 24 months (i.e., you make $10k per month before bonus, but if you leave before 24 months you must repay $6k per month). I’m sympathetic to the pleas that this job is life-consuming, but it’s ALWAYS been that way and nobody pretends otherwise during the interview process. And, again, I’m doing similar hours in my mid-40s, with a family. This isn’t a hazing process, it’s just what the job is like. Ideally it gets better, although with the junior team working less than I did it seems like that might not be the case any more.

It sounds like labor conditions have changed and your company will need to adapt.

For whatever reason, what you offered in the past was attractive enough to keep people there for the whole two years, but now it’s not. (I suspect the reasons are a combination of our current job-seeker’s market and a broader shift in what workers consider acceptable to put up with, particularly among younger workers. Both of those and especially the latter are good for society, although they’re causing pain for your company.) You’re getting people signing up thinking they can do the hours, but then realizing that 100-hour weeks are soul-crushing and seeing opportunities out there that they like better.

To keep them, you need to be able to compete with the other options they have. That doesn’t just mean money; it means lifestyle too.

You’re looking at ways to penalize them for leaving … but having exhausted, overworked people who are there only because you will bill them if they leave is a recipe for demoralized and resentful staff.

What if you hired more junior staff, had them work fewer hours each, and lowered the pay accordingly? Everyone might be happier with that in the long run. It’s more people to supervise, and that’s more work … but it’s not more work than training people who then leave just as they’re becoming useful. It would also give you a far healthier workplace and would give you access to a pool of candidates who you miss out on entirely right now because they won’t consider working those hours.

Don’t get too attached to “it’s always been this way.” It’s not serving you anymore. And lots of things were always a certain way until someone looked at them and said, “We can do this better.”

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    1. Web of Pies*

      Indeed, halfway through reading LW’s question I thought, “just hire more people, this seems very simple?” Every work culture is changeable if the will is there.

      1. green beans*

        my thoughts exactly. Hire twice as many people, pay them half as much (if that’s still a competitive salary) and then STAGGER their working times so evenings and weekends are covered within a 40 hr (or at MOST 50 hr) workweek.

        1. Mangofan*

          This is almost certainly investment banking, and it’s not as simple as just cranking out widgets at an assembly line or a customer service job, where somebody else can just step in and resume what you were doing when you leave off. For a somewhat imperfect analogy think about whether you could write a long-form essay twice as fast with twice the number of people. That said, I imagine there is room to hire more people at fewer hours, but it’s not quite as straightforward as commenters here seem to be thinking.

          1. Louise Miller*

            Agree – I am in a similar (though less intense) profession and it unfortunately is a major cultural shift that this particular mid 40s manager does not have the authority to effect change on. It’s crushing to be the one who has to carry the load when you know the structure around you won’t change or move forward. Sucky position to be in.

            1. Observer*

              this particular mid 40s manager does not have the authority to effect change on

              Hard to tell. But if he can’t change the structure, the least he can do is to not try to force the people who he hires to commit suicide or penalize the ones who refuse to do so.

              I’m serious. What they are describing IS life destroying.

              1. Rose*

                And they’re adults who can leave if their lives are being destroyed. No one is forcing anyone to commit suicide – that’s a huge accusation and deeply misplaced.

                1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                  Precisely. At the risk of stepping on an anthill: the people who are making these kinds of comments do not have the stamina, drive, or qualifications to cut it in investment banking. Most — not all, but most — are admins making $50K/year. Love it or hate it, investment banking is not the kind of industry for which you go to Ask a Manager for advice.

                2. Fran Fine*

                  Most — not all, but most — are admins making $50K/year.

                  This is far from the truth. AAM has a yearly, anonymous salary guide that readers can fill out to help others job searching determine what salary to ask for – many people who post here are doing quite well for themselves. Most are making over $50k a year, and most are not admins, lol.

                3. esra*

                  At the risk of stepping on an anthill: the people who are making these kinds of comments do not have the stamina, drive, or qualifications to cut it in investment banking.

                  There’s so much to unpack here. Like. It’s not really all that great, or worthy of praise, to work 100/hrs a week. There have been multiple studies on the negative impact on working in investment banking on physical and mental health.

                4. Zillah*

                  At the risk of stepping on an anthill: the people who are making these kinds of comments do not have the stamina, drive, or qualifications to cut it in investment banking. Most — not all, but most — are admins making $50K/year.

                  This is such a weird thing to say on so many levels.

                5. chewingle*

                  Which is exactly what they’ve done. Hence the OP’s dilemma. All we’ve done here is circle back to, “I can’t keep staff, now what?”

            2. Kal*

              If OP truly can’t affect any change and things stay at the status quo while young workers are going for other opportunities because the outside culture has change, then it sounds like the only options for OP and people in OP’s place are to accept the workload as it is, or to also look outside for other opportunities. Maybe the increasing attrition at higher levels as the workload falls upwards will finally lead to the necessary changes to happen.

              I know it’s not fun when you thought you had a locked-in career path where you pay your dues when you’re young and then you get to have it much easier later, and then have that system fall apart. It can be really easy to be frustrated or mad at people who won’t go through what you went through to get where you are. But a system that requires people to devote their health and sanity to work by working 100hr/week for two years at the very beginning of their career was always bad, and people refusing to participate is a good thing. Its important for everyone to direct their ire at the people above who do have always had the power to change things, not at the young people who refuse to the harmful thing.

              1. The OTHER other*

                Yes, the LW seems to accept “this is what this job/industry is, it’s always been this way” yet seems very unhappy that THEY are now having to work the same hours as the entry level people.

                If the interns are able to find other jobs they like better, maybe the LW can also?

                I’m also wondering why, if these interns are “only really becoming useful” after a year or 18 months, why they are requiring so many work hours, and paying them so much. If they are useless for 18 months, why require 100+ hours of “useless” work from them?

                LW’s ideas about backloading pay to induce people to stay are terrible and will destroy morale. The instant people get those delayed paychecks they are going to disappear, so it’s not as though it’s going to squeeze much more blood from these stones.

                1. Olivia*

                  Interesting question! Is it really that they’re training them for that many hours? Are they literally doing admin work/making photocopies for 100-hour weeks for many months? If so, why are they so well-paid? I admittedly do not know this industry, but I’m very confused by this system.

                2. LurkerVA*

                  Hearing an employer refer to me as “useful” would be demoralizing by itself. I am a human being, not a tool that’s a means to an end. Sounds like this industry needs a major shift.

            3. KHB*

              If the manager has the authority to change the compensation structure as drastically as he’s suggesting (i.e., requiring people to repay 60% of their salary if they don’t stick it out for two years), he probably has the authority to effect other changes too.

          2. Nayo*

            “This is almost certainly investment banking, and it’s not as simple as just cranking out widgets at an assembly line or a customer service job, where somebody else can just step in and resume what you were doing when you leave off.”

            Assuming it is investment banking, at some point it won’t matter if it can be done like that or not, because either OP’s company or the industry as a whole will hit the point of “adapt or die” due to more and more people being unwilling to tolerate the awful work/life balance. They’ll need to figure it out or fold, so they might as well get started now. (Not arguing with you btw—your comment was informative and I wanted to add my thoughts! I know nothing about investment banking.)

            1. mark132*

              Exactly eventually reality intervenes, and at 100hr weeks, a lot of churn is inevitable even in bad economic times.

              1. Betteauroan*

                100 hour work weeks is unsustainable even for the most driven workaholic. I can’t imagine working that many hours for 2 years straight. That is mentally and physically unhealthy. I don’t care how much I was offered. My quality of life, my relationships, and my health are more important than money.

                1. Nervous Rex*

                  My father is a workaholic, to the point that I was around 7 years old before I realized that he lived in the same house as the rest of us. Even he did not work regular 100-hour weeks.

                  Now, in a world where our awareness of our own mortality and that of our loved ones has been newly refreshed, it just seems unlikely that many young people are going to want to trade their precious years this way.

                2. MBK*

                  There’s been this notion I’ve seen in the past 25-30 years of “all work all the time for 10 years; retire with mega millions at 33.” I’ve even heard of a few people managing to do it. But it sounds absolutely miserable to me – lose all your friends and relationships because you never have time for them, and then you have two possibilities: either flame out and have nothing, or achieve your goal and try to start rebuilding those relationships (or new ones) in an atmosphere where most of the people who can stand to be around you are just there for the money.

                3. Daisy*

                  There was a study showing that the more hours Americans claim to work over 50 a week, the less likely they are to be accurate – whether mistaken, lying to sound good, or just pulling a big-sounding number out of the air. I’m pretty sceptical that even in investment banking they are really working 14 hours a day every single day of the year, including every Saturday and Sunday (which is what you would need for a 100 hour week).

                4. AnonoDoc*

                  I trained in the dark ages before “duty hour limits” restricted interns and residents to no more than 80 hour work weeks. 3 years of 100+ hour weeks had permanent effects on my health. And at about 40 hours into a shift even perfectly healthy humans start to hallucinate. There is nothing healthy about it, AND there is a rapid decrease in productivity as number of hours worked per person increases.

                5. Greg*

                  Also, 100 hours a week for that salary in an interview process? Of course a 23 year old who doesn’t have any other frame of reference is going to say, “No problem, sounds manageable!”

                  Until they then have to do it. While watching their friends enjoying their first few years out of school.

                6. MissBaudelaire*

                  This is it.

                  Doesn’t matter how much money is sitting in my bank account if I’m a withered, shell of a person. Everyone chooses their priorities, and it sounds like a lot more people are realizing that they value their quality of life and health over the cash. And that is not a bad thing!

                  I know it sucks for LW, as now it sounds like they’re the ones stuck doing all those hours–but it sounds like instead of punishing the people who decide that really isn’t for them, they should be working on changing the system. The way they put it, those punishments are the equivalent of “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

                7. AnonInCanada*

                  100 hour work weeks is unsustainable even for the most driven workaholic

                  I know that feeling! I remember putting in those kind of hours in a previous job. Having no life outside of work was not pleasurable to say the least, and what few days you got off in a month you spent taking care of household chores. Literally doing nothing but work and sleep with chores on the few days off is not the way anyone should have to live. Take it from someone who’s been there, done that and bought the T-shirt.

                  The Japanese have a word for that: 過労死, Karōshi. Small wonder why OP’s junior staff are leaving. They don’t want to die from overwork!

                9. Olita*

                  It’s really difficult for people — never mind someone coming right out of college — to grasp what a 100-hr work week feels like, so it seems like an easy tradeoff in the abstract to do that amount of work for a hefty salary. The turnover is not surprising, and like others have said, I do wonder what would happen if the industry hired more people and paid less.

                10. Mahkara*

                  Eh, I knew one guy (in investment banking, of course…) who seemed to love it. He’d get into work at 9 am. Work until midnight. Go out and party until 3. Crash.

                  He took a “break” on Sundays for about 3 hours to golf with work buddies. Then he’d go back to work.

                  It was crazy. He was crazy. But he did somehow do it.

                  (He was also in his 20s. I suspect he eventually slowed his roll. But for at least a few years, he seemed to *love* his insane schedule. It was odd watching all the other investment bankers burn out while he *thrived*.)

            2. Liz*

              BigLaw has a similar setup (maybe not 100 hours a week, but 60-70+ is pretty much expected across the board). Not surprisingly, after decades of having their pick of up-and-coming legal talent, post-COVID they’re being pressured to accommodate new attorneys who want to work remotely, job-share, etc.

              Plenty of great attorneys would rather make $80K at a 40 hour a week job than $200K at an 80-hour a week job. At some point, the advantage of higher pay is no longer linear.

              My spouse, not a lawyer, took a pretty significant “pay cut” to go from a 70-hour-a-week job to a 40-hour-a-week job earlier this year. I put pay cut in quotes because even though he makes less now, he is making more for each hour he works. Life is too short to spend it all at work.

              1. CrewellaCoupDeVille*

                It’s because we’ve all figured out that no amount of money can compensate for not having a good life outside of work – whatever that means to people. The secret is out and now we can’t un-ring that bell. It may be another generation or two before anyone’s willing to sacrifice two years of their life to corporate aims in exchange for a paycheck, or it may be never (my bet is on “never”).

                Our current capitalist employment system was based on a lot of ideas that have been proven to be fallacies, like “you can start at the bottom and work your way up and be rich!” and “short-term sacrifice for long-term gain!” Now that we’ve realized that those people who “started at the bottom” were actually hugely privileged to begin with and had a lot of incredible help on their side from many sources, and also that the “short-term sacrifices” mean we’re going to miss critical life events and time with our loved ones. People are seeing those fairy tales for what they are – no different than the stories about a beautiful princess being rescued from a castle by a handsome prince, or someone killing a dragon and taking its treasure. People have seen what a ruthless, mostly-unregulated capitalist system has to offer. It does not reward hard work. It does not reward sacrifice. It rewards privilege, connections, pedigree and whatever other advantages you were born with. So. Why opt into that? Why sacrifice what we know makes us happy to become cogs in someone else’s machine? This is the core behind r/antiwork and the reason why we can’t get people to go back to crappy service jobs: people have realized, finally, it’s just not worth it.

                The answer nailed it: companies can accept that things have completely changed, and completely change their structures and expectations to try to survive, or they can go extinct. Like a dinosaur. Choice is theirs.

                2. Olivia*

                  Yes! It used to be that certain jobs gave you security and loyalty for your time. Things are very different now. If our employers don’t owe us anything, we certainly don’t owe them 100 hours a week.

          3. green beans*

            I’m actually a writer and I could actually write an essay faster if I could outsource a lot of the work – ie, I can spend 40 hours on a long form essay, or I can ask someone to do 20 hours of research for me and spend 20 hours working on it (honestly, maybe less, depending on if they were better at researching than I was.) I could also spend less time with a good editor and a fact-checker.

            I think “more people, less hours” would likely involve a lot of lateral thinking because it’s a systemic change – maybe fewer projects per person, or more people per project, or longer “shifts” where you’re on and then more time off, rather than the traditional 8 hr days (ie, I work 3-4 days on, a half-day transitioning the project, and then get 4 days off.) But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It just needs some creative problem-solving.

            1. Whimsical Gadfly*

              The possibility of good support staff (which requires that they feel like they are getting a reasonable chunk of the pie too if you want them to be good) leading to teams could help.

              The answer might not be direct replacement–having them do research or writing–but obstacle management/making things go smoothly.

            2. Edwina*

              Yes, I’m a writer too and I thought the same thing. You actually see it in TV writers’ rooms–when you have a page one rewrite and it has to be done by the end of the day so the cast can start working on it the following morning, having six or eight writers is what makes it possible. People pitch in and work on a scene together, or someone splits off and does one scene while someone else does the other. It can be awful and end up with committee-driven pablum (see most sitcoms) or it can be terrific and enhanced by having more than one good writer there (see: Mary Tyler Moore show, Arrested Development, etc).

              Likewise, an enormous amount of writing involves research, gathering together information and texture and even just plain synonyms so you can describe the moonlit ocean without having to say the word “luminous” over and over! Many top writers use research assistants for exactly this!

              So I agree completely. The trick is to think laterally–how can the work be divided up so it works best. But these companies have to come to the point where they realize they’re going to have to make a change. It may even end up with a better outcome all round. Certainly it will be more human!

            3. Green great dragon*

              Yes, creative thinking needed. How about 100 hour weeks for the crunch time in the project, but less in the early stages, and some serious downtime between projects

            4. Avril Ludgateau*

              My job is also very, very writing-heavy, and on various projects we have had to split components of the equivalent of a “long-form essay” among several members of my team. This means I have to spend some extra time proofreading, not just for substance and errors but for consistency of tone. However, the work still gets done faster than if I were working on it solo, exclusively and ignoring literally all the rest of my obligations, 40 hours a week.

              100 hours a week, without the aid of illicit stimulants (or legitimate ones obtained illicitly), would probably have much the same results as 4o hours, ultimately, after correcting the errors brought on by lack of focus and exhaustion.

          4. doreen*

            There are lots of jobs where you can’t just pick up where someone else left off at shift change – but plenty of them still allow for twice as many people to be hired and everyone’s workload cut in half. Sure you couldn’t write a single essay in half the time with twice as many people – but you could write two or ten or twenty essays in half the time with twice as many people. And that’s how jobs get shared or work hours get cut a lot of the time- not by one person working 8-12 and another working 12-4 but by dividing the clients/customers/projects so that instead of one social worker working 80 hours a week because he has 60 cases, two with 30 cases each work 40 hours or something similar.

          5. LinuxSystemsGuy*

            I mean, so we’re clear when I was a senior staff officer for a deployed Army battalion in Iraq I worked about 75 hours a week. My “office” was about 5 minutes from my sleeping quarters, and granted I was “on-call” pretty much 24/7, but most weeks I worked 6x 12 hour shifts, and my off time was mostly respected. In a combat zone. Because even the *Army* knows that human people can’t stay “on” that much. 100 hours a week is *crazy*.

            And with proper beginning/end of shift briefings, almost any job can be done by more than one person. In our case my lieutenant and I each did 6×12 hour shifts, and his platoon sergeant picked up the last two. There were definitely weeks where a lot was going on, and I worked 100 or 120 hour week, but that wasn’t the norm, and I literally cannot imagine a non-life-or-death scenario worth doing this to yourself.

            1. Becca*

              Prompted by this, and because I don’t have a good sense of time, I did the math. If we allow for 8 hours of sleep a night (not that people are likely to be getting it, but let’s say they are for the sake of this exercise) that leaves, over a 7 day week, less than 1h45m a day for commute/eating(if they don’t just eat on the job, which they may well do)/housework/whatever other non work things.

              Wow. Yeah, I’m pretty comfortable saying that sustaining that for 2 years would be unreasonable for 99% of people.
              I “burn out” easier than most, but I’ve taken on more than I could do before, because I thought I could. We’re talking about 23 year olds. I have to think many of them thought, no problem, they could handle that for a couple of years. Then the reality of what those hours actually mean hit them and they tried to stick it out, but they ultimately had to leave for their health…

              1. Kal*

                The only people I can imagine maybe being able to do that without serious health repercussions is that one family with the genetic mutation that means they can be perfectly healthy with only 4 hours of sleep. But I’m not sure even they would want to dedicate the extra hours of their waking lives to that.

                For normal people, its not like you can put in your two years then go about your life just fine after. That sort of chronic stress and exhaustion causes serious changes in your body that will follow you the rest of your life. Add in the medical system’s general inability to properly handle chronic illnesses and the cost of healthcare in the US, and you may even spend more money managing your health while being miserable than you gained from working those years. And that’s not even factoring in the significant rates of drug abuse and addiction among people working that sort of schedule, or the effects on your social life and the chronic stress and loneliness you feel never getting to see anyone you love (or getting to even meet the friends or partners you would have loved!) or the stress and loneliness your loved ones feel watching you sacrifice your life on the altar of money.

                Side note: I grew up poor, watching my parents destroy themselves trying to make enough money for us to survive. It sucked having parents too exhausted to have any time to pay attention to me. I don’t think if they were doing that in a high paying job would have been better. I mean, I would have had stuff and not worried about having food or looking poor and out of place at school, but at least I always knew my parents didn’t choose to be absent from my life.

                1. TardyTardis*

                  And then there are the people who can deal with that schedule–but only with chemical assistance, legal or otherwise. The costs of that assistance to the body are well-documented.

          6. Beth O'Connor*

            The fact that the manager has been able to provide staff with time off by covering weekends would suggest that the work is transferable, at least to certain extent. If it weren’t possible to pick up “Jack’s” file and do what needs to be done, then the manager being there wouldn’t have any effect on whether Jack needed to be there or not.

            1. Lizzo*

              I’m envisioning a new structure where you have people work four 10 or 12 hour days across two shifts (Sunday through Wednesday, and Wednesday through Saturday, or some similar configuration so that people do have at least one weekend day off). Have small teams who transfer projects across those shifts so that the number of people who handle the projects is smaller, but is greater than one. That’s still not great, but it’s more manageable (i.e. humane) for the employees!

          7. Observer*

            This is almost certainly investment banking, and it’s not as simple as just cranking out widgets at an assembly line or a customer service job,

            Sure. But that doesn’t mean that staffing patterns cannot be changed. It’s going to take some changes and some hard work. But it CAN be done. It’s high time.

            The likely side effect of that is that the field will wind up with more human being who are actually cognizant of something other than making the MOST money and getting the MOST power at the expense of EVERYTHING else. I don’t just mean at the expense of the rest of the world, but at the expense of everyone in their own orbit, and the expense of their own humanity.

            1. Archaeopteryx*

              Yes, this seems like a monkey’s paw deal where whet wealth at the expense of becoming a much worse version of yourself. It’s not worth it!

              2. TardyTardis*

                Lois McMaster Bujold: “You can trade anything for your heart’s desire–except your heart.”

          8. RebelwithMouseyHair*

            Any industry that depends on people working more than 40 hours a week is insane. Of course tasks can be allocated differently. Jobs can always be broken up into smaller bits. It does sometimes make the work less interesting: I remember a student in investment banking whose job as an intern was simply to check the names and addresses of all the people requesting loans. She then passed the files on to another intern who checked their dates of birth and nationalities. Who then passed the files on to another intern who checked their bank account numbers. It sounded mind-numbingly boring to me, but the interns did get a crack at each of those positions.

            Also, people seriously need to get out of the mindset that more hours equals better work.
            As a part-time worker I was more productive than my full-time colleagues, without even factoring in that I worked fewer hours. I translated more words, managed more projects and proofread more words than almost all the full-timers. And my boss worked the kind of hours OP is describing and wasn’t actually all that productive either, although I don’t know her figures and of course she did have to deal with other stuff too. I remember her spending three full days proofreading a text that I would have translated in two (proofreading should take far less time than translating, I’d have allocated a couple of hours to it).

            1. Media Monkey*

              i think that’s banking, not investment banking. investment banking is stocks/ shares/ commodities. not individuals asking for loans.

              1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                And respecfully, someone who doesn’t understand the difference between (retail) commercial banking and investment banking has zero business lecturing investment banks about how “any industry that depends on people working more than 40 hours a week is insane.” No one is forcing investment banking analysts to work in the industry.

                1. WindmillArms*

                  …except that this LW *is* asking “how do I force people to stay in this unreasonable job?” The answer is “no one can force them and fewer and fewer people are willing to do it.” He just doesn’t seem to want to hear that answer.

                2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                  But OP’s analysts are going to competitors. By and large, they’re working just as hard at those competitors.

                3. RebelwithMouseyHair*

                  Respectfully, I don’t think you need to know all the ins and outs of mining to say that it’s not a good idea to have small children working in minds. Mine owners would argue that they needed small children to climb into nooks and crannies that large adults couldn’t reach. But there were other ways of doing it that didn’t involve child labour, mines are still working even without children.

                  Similarly, you don’t need to know all the ins and outs of investment banking to say that it’s not a good idea to have adults working 100 hours a week either. It’s a matter of treating your workers like they are human beings rather than robots.

                  In Europe the number of hours people can work is capped, yet the EU has plenty of investment banks. The person I mentioned worked a 35-hr week (which is full-time here in France),

                4. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                  I’ve spent several years working in the EU (and the City of London, now former EU). Trust me, bankers in those countries work as much as anyone.

                  And in Asia, a lot people outside of banking are working what in the West would be investment banking hours. China, Korea, and Japan are notorioius for it; in China, they call it “9-9-6,” because many, maybe most, white collar works work from 9am to 9pm six days a week. Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian politician, once proposed making the country’s *official* workday last 12 hours.

            2. jenny20*

              this is definitely not investment banking.
              Investment banking might be pitching that company A should acquire company B, what the value of the target company is, how the acquisition should be financed (issuing new equity, raising debt, or other). What the synergies of the merger are, how the stock of the surviving company is expected to trade post-transaction. Who should be in management and on the board.

              This is just one example, but it’s definitely not going to include checking individuals’ birth dates off a list.

              I work in another field in capital markets with close contact with investment banking, though I am not in banking myself. I probably work 80 hours per week, and yeah it can lead to burnout. It’s really difficult when recruiting because so many applicants will say (and genuinely think) they can handle the hours. I like to look for applicants who show drive and ability to handle long working conditions – whether it is the student who volunteered for all the leadership positions in school, the former athlete with a rigorous training schedule, etc.

              1. jenny20*

                also it’s probably instructive to look at patterns.
                Are juniors leaving your team more than others at your firm? It may be an issue with you (I would suggest laying off the ‘back in my day’ comments). Is your firm losing more people than competitors, or are you losing people TO competitors? it might be an issue with policies at your shop. Your deferred comp sounds really punitive, for example.
                Are you losing more people now than you used to? then it’s probably cyclical. That’s tougher to overcome unless you can pay up at bonus time this year and communicate that in advance.

            3. NotAnotherManager!*

              Not all jobs can be broken down into assembly-line tasks or restricted to a 9-5 basis. I worked in legal for years, and there are factors like institutional case knowledge, client restrictions on how many people could be on their cases, and relationship maintenance (a client paying hundreds of dollars per hour generally wants to talk to whomever they feel most comfortable with, not whomever tends to be on call).

              I think the hours OP describes are INSANE, and that’s after over a decade in BigLaw. There are certainly times when crazy hours are required (like leading up to trial or major briefing), but it’s not consistently insane; there are peaks and valleys. If everyone were working 100-hour weeks and weekends for two solid years, that means you need more people. In legal, you staff to the middle, so some times will be insane and others will be normal. Legal also has billable hours requirements, and working more hours is literally how profit is generated.

              1. The OTHER other*

                I have heard this “peaks and valleys” type explanation before and am curious whether in BigLaw the valleys truly make up for the peaks. I remember interviewing for a job that had high seasonal sales, for the months around the holidays it was 60+ hour weeks (and exempt from overtime). But while they were clear about that, once the holidays were over, it wasn’t reduced hours during slow periods, it was simply regular hours—or even a bit higher, they expected 45 hour weeks. So, regular hours 9 months of the year, and basically working 1 1/2 jobs for 3 months for the same rate of pay. I was not especially interested in the industry, so I passed, but it did not seem like a good deal.

                1. NotAnotherManager!*

                  BigLaw considers a 40-hour week to be a valley, though, in my experience, after a trial or other large peak, the majority of the team takes several days to a week off entirely. To make a 2000 hours requirement, you have to bill almost 40 hours/week. As Don Draper says, “That’s what the money is for.” First-year salary in BigLaw is over $200K right now, plus five-figure annual bonuses. It’s not for people who only want to work a 40 hour week regularly.

              2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                In legal, you staff to the middle, so some times will be insane and others will be normal. Legal also has billable hours requirements, and working more hours is literally how profit is generated.

                …and yet, probably half of BigLaw lawyers who service investment banking clients want to leave to become investment bankers themselves.

                1. Avril Ludgateau*

                  probably half of BigLaw lawyers who service investment banking clients want to leave to become investment bankers themselves.

                  Where are you getting this information? Are there statistics that show 50% of BigLaw lawyers quitting law and re-training to go into IB? Or are you mistaking convivial but perfunctory admiration of your paycheck from the lawyers drafting your contracts as an actual desire to hop over to your industry? “Ha ha boy I got into the wrong field, didn’t I?” when working on 7, 8+ figure deals does not actually reflect an intent to change careers, so I would love to see actual data to support this bold claim.

                  I’m noticing you defending the OP practices all over this thread and it is hard to ignore the aroma of insecurity. I would ask that we leave “they’re just jealous” and “they hate us ‘cuz they ain’t us” attitudes on the playground where they belong, and consider that most people do not wish to live to work, that 100 hrs a week is excessive even if you do love your job, and having different priorities does not actually make anybody inferior to you.

                2. The Buddhist Viking*

                  Speaking as a recovering BigLaw escapee: No, they really, really don’t. As they said in Citizen Kane, “Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money.” Most people want more than that.

                3. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                  Where are you getting this information? Are there statistics that show 50% of BigLaw lawyers quitting law and re-training to go into IB?

                  I trained at BigLaw as a corporate lawyer before making the jump to finance. I’m giving a seat-of-the-pants estimate from what I heard from people around my level of seniority. To be sure, it’s not a scientific poll and (like Buddhist Viking below), YMMV. Moreover, my firm had a reputation for being a possible jumping point into finance, which is one reason I picked it out of law school, and I’m sure others did too. Finally, I’d say only about 20% of those who mused about “life on the client side” actually made any real effort to move (e.g., learning to model, taking the CFA exam, networking more with bankers than lawyers, etc.), and of those, fewer than half were successful. I feel very lucky that I made it.

                  What I will say non-anecdotally, however, is that there’s a small cottage industry dedicated to helping lawyers leave law, a large subset of which preps them for finance. It wouldn’t exist if demand were zero. There’s also considerable traffic on the subject on law blogs and places like Wall Street Oasis.

                  consider that most people do not wish to live to work

                  I’ve never said otherwise. Investment banking isn’t for most people. Neither is BigLaw. The Wall Street/Sand Hill Road/City lawyers who want to make the jump have already self-selected into that world. Plenty of bankers leave at some point, too.

                  What I would as *you* to consider is that not everyone shares your preference to leave work at 5:00 pm. People who seek investment banking jobs have agency. They’ve made the calculation that the money/experience/prestige/whatever other benefits they obtain are worth the tradeoffs. (For me, a big part of the draw is the ability to live in cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, or London.) They’re not being brainwashed into working at banks, and if they get tired of it, they leave.

                  A lot of them go to places like private equity firms or hedge funds, where if they’re lucky, they can parlay their banking experience into something more lucrative that, while still not a 9-to-5 job, has a considerable better lifestyle. Or some leave finance entirely (I read of one ex-banker, from Lazard IIRC, who opened a cupcake bakery).

          10. Barry*

            At 100 hrs per week, if only 25% were amenable to switching, that could take people down to ‘merely’ 75 hours per week.

        2. Curious*

          Back in the Dark Ages (i.e., 1975) there was a book titled “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering.” (I apologize for the sexist term assigned by the author). It noted that “[workers] and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication
          among them.”
          There are inevitable inefficiencies when you add staff to a task (to be sure, there are countervailing inefficiencies when your staff are sleep-deprived. I expect that there is a reason why the staff involved in the post tend to be in their early 20’s). Indeed, increases in necessary communication as staff numbers risk appear to increase complexity at least geometrically.
          The (then-common) demonstration of the limitation of the ability to compress time necessary for delivery by adding contributors, interestingly enough, refers to women: If one woman can have a baby in nine months, how fast can you have a baby with nine women?

          1. BeenThere*

            Came here to mention this book, am not disappointed. I had to mention this book when a lot of our fresh engineers were exposed to the business side calculating how many software engineers we need to hire for all the work they want done. Many objected to being treated as a number, I’ve been around too long to know I am a number. I suggested that our presenter should probably revisit this book and that our engineers should read it too if they haven’t.

          2. Observer*

            That book made some good points. But what he had to say can be take waaaay too far.

            Take an example of the development of covid vaccines. A lot of people were saying “it’s just not possible to do this so quickly”. But it happened. Yes, there is a limit to how fast it can be done, but it turns out that the lower limits was closer to 12-18 months than 5-10 years.

            Sure, it’s a different set of issues, but even in the particular set of industries he was talking about he was not entirely correct. In almost any industry, it’s possible to not task individuals with 100 work weeks. If it REALLY is not possible to do so, then the industry is toxic, dangerous to society and so unsustainable and unstable that it needs to be dismantled deliberately before it crashes with maximum amount of pain and collateral damage.

            1. MsSolo (UK)*

              I mean, part of the vaccine thing was cutting out the literal years spent on bureaucracy and chasing funding – it turns out if you take the capitalism out of medicine it’s a lot more efficient.

              1. londonedit*

                And the fact that they’d been working on mRNA vaccines for years and just needed a global pandemic in order to start using them – the way I saw it explained on a BBC programme was that they had everything ready to go, they just needed the scientists in Wuhan to email over the genetic code for Covid-19 and they slotted that into the waiting vaccines.

                1. Greg*

                  Six hours. Six hours after the Chinese scientists uploaded COVID’s genetic code the vaccine was developed.

                2. Observer*

                  That’s not exactly the whole story. Yes, a lot of things fell into place for this to happen. But some of the people expressing skepticism were aware of all of this. And keep in mind that it wasn’t just the MRNA vaccines that came on line so quickly. There are also the adenovirus vector vaccines, and those are technologies that have been used many times already so this was nothing new.

                  But one of the things that happened was that instead of doing things sequentially and in small bites, some things were done concurrently and at much larger scale. eg Phase 1 and 2 trials were done together. And instead of doing a series of increasingly larger Phase 3 trials, all of the companies did LARGE phase 3 trials at once. Both of those things shaved years off development time.

              2. Green Beans*

                A lot of people were working crazy hours. And a lot of people were working on it period.

                It was a combination of previous work and an almost limitless amount of money and manpower being poured into the COVID response and it burned a lot of people out.

                1. Observer*

                  A LOT of people were working on it – and that’s my point. That’s not the only factor of course, but the fact that they scaled so many of these things up made a huge difference.

                  But it’s undoubtedly true that a lot of people got burned out because they were working insane hours. And that speaks to the OP’s problem. None of them worked those hours for 2 years, yet so many burned out. And they KNEW that what they were doing could literally change the world for better and save uncounted lives. But they still burned out.

                  If literally changing the world can’t keep people from burning out after “only” 9-12 months if insane working conditions, what do you expect when all you can offer is money, unreasonable and entitled clients, and a promise to “try” to cap hours at 100 per week?

            2. Data Bear*

              @Vaca, I’m late to the party, so I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I want to be explicit about some things that other people have been dancing around, and say them as baldly and clearly as I can. Because I think this needs to be said.

              Your job is asking you to do evil.

              You should not do that.

              That’s not in any way hyperbole. Doing harm to other people for your own benefit is evil. Hiring young people to work 100-hour weeks non-stop for two years, no matter the compensation package, will be deeply harmful to their mental and physical health and will do profound damage to their lives. It is immoral and wrong.

              It sounds like similar harm has already been done to you, and that was also wrong. It should not have happened, and you deserved better. You may feel that the money you were paid made up for it, but you were still harmed for others’ benefit, and that was wrong. I’m sorry that happened to you.

              If this kind of soul-grinding overwork an unchangeable aspect of your industry, then to paraphrase the Zoidberg meme, “Your industry is bad and you should feel bad for participating in it.” You cannot ethically ask people to do this. If you want to be a good person, you have to push back in some way and say no to unquestioningly following this course of action.

              Being in the position you are now in, you have a moral obligation to try to change things. Maybe you won’t succeed. Maybe the best option is to quit your job and force them to find someone else to do it (from what sounds like an increasingly smaller pool). But you should try to do something. Even if you can do nothing else, you can choose not to help perpetuate the cycle of violence. Because working people that hard for that long is a form of violence, and it is bad, and immoral, and wrong.

              Don’t do it.

              —

              Working people that hard is also, not to mince words, really stupid.

              (I say it that way not to offend, but to be absolutely clear, and in hopes that it may drive the point home.)

              There are studies from more than 100 years ago that showed, scientifically and objectively, that factory workers are optimally productive working 40 hours per week. More than that and their total productivity drops. That’s for standing in front of an assembly line making widgets. For knowledge work, it’s even less than that.

              Nobody can work 100 hours per week for two years straight and be doing a good job of it. It doesn’t matter what everyone in your industry believes, if they think that people can put out quality work at that pace for that long, they are flat-out wrong. That’s not how human beings work, and the people in your industry are not magical unicorns immune to the limitations of physiology. You’re making your junior staff do bad work. That’s dumb.

              You can get away with pushing hard and working crunch-time hours for a few weeks at best. After that it’s a net loss. By asking junior staff to work 100-hour weeks nonstop for two years, you are getting dramatically less out of them than you would if they were working a sane amount. Your company is seriously handicapping itself by doing this.

              And if this is standard for the industry, it’s probably the case that EVERYONE is operating significantly below capacity all the time, and you’re all too perpetually sleep-deprived, burned-out, and traumatized to realize it. Working that much is a terrible idea, and you should not do that. It’s bad.

              —

              I realize that you’re one person, and these are systemic issues much bigger than you, and your power to enact change is limited. And it really sucks to be in that position. But I also think it’s imperative to be clear about the nature of these problems, and to name them for what they are. The whole situation is seriously fucked-up, and you should try to fix whatever you can, and also you should probably get out of there yourself.

              I wish you well, and I hope you’re able to make a change for the better.

          3. The OTHER other*

            I haven’t read this book and it sounds interesting, but honestly I cannot fathom how a company, much less an entire industry, would expect interns to work 100+ hour weeks for two years, no matter how highly paid, as though it were normal. “Whelp, it’s always been like this” is not much of a reason.

            The vast majority of businesses are NOT like this, and despite this vast body of evidence, plus the interns themselves are saying NO, the LW is thinking of ways to try to reconfigure the pay to force people to stay. IMO the more obvious conclusion is the work hours need to change. That the LW is not seeing that indicates to me there is a huge cognitive disconnect here and the company, if not the entire industry, is inflexible and unimaginative.

        3. Cat Tree*

          Honestly, hire twice as many people and still pay them the full amount. That would surely still be cheaper than replacing them every 6-9 months.

        4. RebelwithMouseyHair*

          Even if you have to pay them slightly more, the firm will be saving money simply because the staff will be prepared to stay on. Also, starting at a much lower salary means they might get phenomenal pay rises once they’ve completed the programme.

        5. Bluesboy*

          But it ISN’T a competitive salary if you cut it in half. An investment bank doesn’t offer high salaries to juniors out of the kindness of their heart – they do it because they aren’t competitive if they don’t.

          I think this idea might work, but in a different way. People on their first experience will still believe they can manage that timetable, will still suffer, will still leave when they realise what it entails. You’ll probably end up with less quality applicants and they will still leave.

          But…you might be able to replace them with already trained applicants from other banks who have realised that they don’t want to live like that and are willing to take a pay cut in order to, you know, actually see their kids occasionally.

          Huge risk though. You might end up with weaker applicants without actually managing to bring in the experienced ones.

          (I’m an investment banker myself, although fortunately in a country without the 100-hour week culture. Believe me, money is 90% of what we talk about, I just don’t believe that a junior is going to join if they can make twice as much somewhere else).

          The whole industry needs to make a huge cultural shift.

          1. MCMonkeyBean*

            But you can’t look at salary without also looking at hours to say whether it is competitive. The change in hours would be part of what the applicants would be applying for. Obviously $130k for 100 hours is not going to but it, but it would be when you do $130k salary for 50 hours per week would absolutely be competitive and more than a kid straight out of school who actually wants to be able to breathe outside of the office and see their family and friends more than once a year would find in most other industries.

            1. Bluesboy*

              I think that you’re 100% right; the problem is that I don’t think the decision makers will agree with you.

              You’re absolutely right that the hours are important. But let’s say that OPs company is ABC bank. A junior decides they would prefer that trade-off, less (but still more than adequate) money and a more balanced timetable.

              Their CV is going to show them choosing ABC bank – a place where they work less. It’s going to be interpreted as showing that they aren’t ambitious, that they aren’t prepared to make those sacrifices for the bank.

              I’m not saying that nobody would choose that. I just don’t think it would be the top choice for most juniors who have something to prove and a whole career ahead of them UNLESS the bank in question were a huge name in the industry. Of course I might be wrong!

              Somebody a few years into the business is different. They have already established something and have a reputation. That’s why if I were the OP I would focus more heavily on recruiting that kind of person than juniors. They are already trained, have made a decision to create a better work/life balance and better understand the compromise they are making. I think you could get real loyalty from someone like that who appreciates what the company is giving them in terms of balance and cut down your turnover that way.

            2. NC*

              One thing people forget when looking at pay per hours worked is how expensive it is to work a lot…. No time to cook? UberEats. No time to clean? Drycleaning. Laundry woman.Car breaks down? No time to fix that, taxis…

              Working hard is not cheap.

          2. Cdn Acct*

            Your post brings up this question for me: if investment banking in the US (I assume) is ‘just this way’, but you work in investment banking in another country and don’t have the crazy hours, then there has to be a way for the original firm to not require them.
            What are 23-year-old junior employees working on for 100 hours a week that can’t be split up across more people? I just can’t think of anything like that, I’d be interested in hearing what exactly is so unique or ‘complex’ that the same person has to do all 100 hours of work.

            1. Bluesboy*

              There are definitely projects where it’s best to have one person working on them. And there are certainly busy weeks when a project is coming to its conclusion.

              But if you’re doing a 100-hour week on one project, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t slow down after that to take a breather, unless you immediately get another project. And if you need to immediately give someone another 100-hour per week project the second they finish one, you’re understaffed.

              Either these juniors are working on multiple projects, in which case the work could be split between more workers, or they are working intensively on individual projects, in which case with more staff you could share those projects around more.

              I think the issue is essentially that you have to offer huge salaries to be competitive; that means that you don’t want to employ the number of people you should to do the work, which means the individuals are overworked. It’s all about containing costs while at the same time paying huge salaries.

              We need one of the big banks, like Goldman to say “we’re not going to do this anymore” and offer a better work-life balance. I don’t see it happening any time soon though. There’s the “I did it and I survived so they have to do it too” mentality.

          3. RebelwithMouseyHair*

            I’m pretty sure that most of those burnt-out juniors would have taken less pay for healthy schedules. Especially given that there’s clearly more money for those prepared to work harder.

      2. Your local password resetter*

        Yeah, 100k is still a good salary, even in a high COL area and with student debts.

        And it wont be as competitive as the 100 hour salary, but you have better life-work balance in exchange, and your employees clearly prefer the latter.

        1. BlueK*

          100k doesn’t go as far as you’d think. I live in NYC and BigLaw pays what it pays because law school is expensive. When you have a quarter million in loans…Plus, taxes. I paid nearly 40% when I was earning that salary. No deductions and fed, state, and city. It adds up. Which it should! I’m all for progressive taxation. Just means 100k only goes so far.

          I know it’s not law though because we don’t have fixed hours (unpredictability is worse in some ways…). And BigLaw’s business model is based on significant attrition. Plus, it’s a jump in the deep end field. You definitely get better at it with time but you learn as you go. Definitely missed some formal training due to actual work taking precedence.

        2. Splendid Colors*

          Not sure what you define as a “high COL area”: I live in a city that’s consistently been in the top 5 highest rents for years. Our Area Median Income is above $100K and people making $80-90K qualify for “affordable housing.”

          1. AnxiousAspie*

            Earning more than 50% of people in the area as a starting salary straight out of school still sounds pretty good to me.

            1. AnxiousAspie*

              Apologies, I missed the word “above” – my kingdom for an edit button. The point still stands, though, that it’s a starting salary, not a lifetime wage limit.

          2. londonedit*

            I live in London and even if I earned $100k rather than £100k it would still be over twice my current salary.

        3. A*

          Definitely depends on the area. I’ve lived in several high COL cities in the US where $100k is really only a bare bones living wage / the starting point where you stand at least a slight chance of not having to live with a large number of roommates and having some level of discretionary spending.

      3. Koalafied*

        Halfway through the question my brain seized up and started repeating “ONE HUNDRED HOURS” like a robot short circuiting.

        I hope to the gods that’s an exaggeration. That’s over 14 hours a day 7 days a week. Ffs at that point you might as well put a room full of cots in and tell prospective hires they shouldn’t expect to leave the premises for 2 years.

        The audacity of an employer who thinks that is an okay thing to make employees do as a routine matter of course.

        1. Rayray*

          Seriously, who wouldn’t get totally burnt out with that schedule? That’s got to be just so insanely unhealthy. No one can work those hours and still maintain their mental and physical well-being. You’d basically work, sleep, repeat with barely any time to eat, exercise, shower, socialize, see family or friends, enjoy hobbies etc.

          This company really needs to rethink how absurdly demanding this is.

          1. Porcubear*

            Makes me think of the employee set up in a book called The Warehouse by Rob Hart. The company is what seems to be a fictional combination of Amazon and a couple of others and it’s a world where the economy is even worse than it is now so getting a job there is a MASSIVE deal. You get to live onsite and everything! Sure, your room is basically twice the size of a single bed (including the bed) and you wear a bracelet that tracks you everywhere you go and security coming on and off shift is massively time consuming but if you’re even a minute late you get a big red mark against your name and you have targets and quotas and in theory you can go to medical if you get hurt but in reality it won’t look good on your record and and and… But hey, it’s a job.

          2. Zelda*

            I mean, the high salary stops being any incentive if it’s purely numbers in a bank statement– if you have zero time to spend any of it on anything enjoyable. What’s the difference whether that digit over there is an 8 or a 9 if it’s just an abstraction?
            Maybe some of them winding up spending it on various stimulants so they can get through their days…

        2. Good Vibes Steve*

          The human brain can’t sustain this, not over two years. People are leaving because their brains are fried.

          What’s the point of all this money if you’re miserable?

        3. Jasper*

          At that point, like… seriously, why would I pay for a most likely Manhattan-priced apartment I never see? Might as well use the dorms on site that they should definitely have and get a hotel room the one night a month I’m outside the company.

        4. London Calling*

          Years ago I did a month of 50 hour weeks, I was an exhausted sleep deprived robot making mistake after mistake, and that was a major factor in leaving that job. I cannot begin to imagine what 100 hours a week is like for 2 years.

          OP, is this Goldman Sachs?

          1. TardyTardis*

            Although I understand SpaceX runs on that kind of schedule and expects to chew up engineers within a few years; still looks good on the resume, and once they’re burned out, there’s always Blue Origins now willing to throw serious money at things.

          2. aghast*

            My company is so strapped for employees right now I’ve been working 60 hour weeks for the last four months – that’s 12/5 for the record. All I have time to do on my days off is sleep and do laundry. My house is a disaster, I haven’t socialized with anyone since June, and I’m starting to really worry about my long term health.

            I informed my agency last week that I’ll be cutting back to 40 hours a week in January because this is killing me. I cannot imagine what 100 hours a week would be like.

    2. MusicWithRocksIn*

      All I could think is it reminded me so much of the frats on campus back when I was in collage. The whole idea of ‘Well, *I* was made to suffer, so the suffering must have been for important reasons, so I need to make the next class suffer too’. I’ve seen that idea so much in toxic ways – when I was lifeguarding, the ways seniors treated freshmen in high school, in sports. Just… why does anyone need to suffer? Can’t you go through the system, realize the system is bad and change it when you have the power to? People act like all the bad stuff they went through was for nothing if the next people don’t have to do it too, but wouldn’t it be better if the bad stuff you went through helped you build up empathy to help the next people in line?

      It just shocks me that ‘Pay them half as much and cut their hours in half’ wasn’t glaringly obvious, because it was super clear to me just reading the letter, and I feel like it was clear to most people here.

      1. Seriously?*

        Right? And his only thought was I must punish them? They are basically working 2 1/2 jobs at one time. The pay is not worth it. People don’t want to do it. Change or die.

      2. Sloanico*

        Also, OP herself would presumably feel better if she was making more / made more at the time versus the new hires. She’s going to have to find a way to feel better about that me vs. them thing (I have to pick up the weekends if they don’t work them, etc); I’ve been there, and the answer is to advocate for yourself and what you need. Not drag other people down.

      3. Kahunabob*

        The frat boy mentality is unfortunately yet another sign of toxic masculinity disguised as a rite of passage. Like hazing. I don’t know what it’s like in the US and Canada, but it feels like in general it’s getting more extreme every year. Like every class is trying to outdo the previous one.

      4. It's Growing!*

        This reminds me of the hospital interns required to work horrible, long hours. If I come into the ER/ED, I really don’t want some zonked out junior working his 92nd hour this week doing anything important to my body. (Do they still do that? It was always a horrible idea.)

        1. green beans*

          To a certain extent, because long shifts are actually necessary to training/education (they need to see as many different cases from start to finish as possible during their internships – there was a push at one point to do “normal” shifts and a lot of feedback came in that interns weren’t getting the exposure/education they needed, from the interns and mentors.)

          but there’s more and more focus on getting the hours down to a more manageable level and balancing the need for long shifts with time off/not working 80+ hr weeks.

          1. L*

            It’s not necessary to have long shifts – if the interns need more exposure, then the internships need to be longer. People don’t learn well when they’re that taxed anyway.

            1. green beans*

              the long shifts are necessary because interns need to see individual cases from start to finish. You can definitely argue for longer breaks in between shifts and therefore a longer internship overall, but I (and many people) would strongly prefer a doctor who has been through the entire diagnostic and treatment process with a patient before whenever possible, as opposed to one who has seen half here and a bit here, and a piece there. Not seeing cases through is a really good way to end up with a doctor who misses a small but critical detail once they’re on their own.

              1. Andy*

                Very very honestly, I would really liked study on that. Even if this was true, there would be no need for such long *regular* shifts all the time. If it is for the purpose of seeing the case from start to finish, they could stay once in a while specifically for that.

                Meanwhile we have studies that show how lack of sleep is detrimental to learning, memory, reflexes, logical thinking. They are being affected by these and no one worries about their learning.

              2. Kal*

                I’m not certain a doctor who saw that small but critical detail in a diagnostic process they got to see all the way through but at the 92nd hour that week is going to actually have a brain capable of recording and recalling that small but critical detail. Given the number of people I know who had glaringly obvious critical details get missed, I can’t say the current system works.

                A doctor who can’t recall seeing something because their residency was an exhausted blur and thus can’t recognise it clearly has not learned from that experience in their residency. A doctor who has seen something before, but only once and thus discounts someone as not having the thing because it can present different ways in different people is a bad doctor, falling into the problem of a little knowledge being worse than no knowledge.

                When I’m in the ER, I prefer doctors who aren’t exhausted, even if they have never seen someone with my issues through the entire process before. Its not like doctors are even able to see all of the possible injuries, conditions and disorders in the world anyway, no matter how many hours and how many years they do a residency. There will always be gaps in their knowledge. A system that acknowledges that a large part of their job is going to be reading and writing notes and researching things they don’t know would go a lot farther than a system that prioritizes the idea that you just have to have seen a patient through the process one time 15 years ago while you were severely sleep deprived.

                Patient hand-off is a critical skill to learn; learning how to read through the patient’s notes from before you saw them and then do your part before writing appropriate notes and handing them off to the next care provider is utterly critical. Because that is what working life for a doctor is – you play an important role in the patient’s care, but you aren’t the only person who will ever be involved. Doctors are always a part of a care team, and seeing half of the patient’s process here and a bit here and a piece there is what the job is.

            2. Koalafied*

              Another reason they do long hours (but should be giving generous days off between shifts) is because most avoidable medical errors are made at the beginning of a shift. Things fall through the cracks or don’t get recorded in meticulous detail. So the idea is “continuity of care” – reduce the number of shift changes during any given patient’s stay so that the people treating them have first hand recollection of what’s happened do far and aren’t trying to clean everything from notes alone.

          2. Academic Physician*

            It’s actually still illegal to work more than 80 hrs/wk (of course there are some tricks to this) as a medical trainee unless you are a neurosurgeon.

            As a person who worked across both sides of this divide as it was happening, there is absolutely a hazing component and some of the “complaints” from trainees about efforts to control hours were coerced from above.

            Another component of the complaints was all of the jury-rigging that happened in order to achieve the letter of the law without having to hire more people (I once had a shift schedule where I had exactly 24 hours off and my colleague also had exactly 24 hours off only if we had no overlap and NO HANDOFF — obviously, we weren’t going to do that because that would harm patients, so we both only got 23 hours off, which was, at that time, technically a violation, because we were supposed to get 24 hours off every week.

            There are legitimate concerns about volume of experience when limiting hours — trainees now absolutely do less than they did 20 years ago — but a lot of that was probably state-dependent learning

            I ABSOLUTELY felt/feel the burden of shifting work from apprentices to more senior persons now that I’m one of the senior people

            There has been a LOT of pushback on work hour limits, but, my experience has been that all of my worst mistakes as a physician have been after midnight when I’d been up since 4am the day before.

              1. AJoftheInternet*

                I’ve heard of cases of 24+ hour brain surgeries. I would guess they need the exemption so they aren’t knee-deep in someone’s brain and suddenly corporate calls and says, “You have to leave because it’s illegal for you to keep working.”

                1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

                  But then they should have an equivalent time off, and it doesn’t seem like that’s part of the “exception”.

            2. green beans*

              Yeah, the system is changing but it definitely needs to change more. It’s a really complex problem, but one that needs to be solved – doctors need to be trained to avoid future mistakes, but they also need to be well-rested to avoid current mistakes.

            3. Observer*

              I ABSOLUTELY felt/feel the burden of shifting work from apprentices to more senior persons now that I’m one of the senior people

              This is ridiculous. There is absolutely no reason for this. We hear all of this handwringing about not enough doctors going into practice and there not being enough internship slots for all the qualified students out there. Well, if we opened more slots, all three problems would be solved.

              2. Boof*

                Opening more slots is actually a funding issue; residency and fellowship slots are mostly funded by the government so they’re the ones who have to approve an expansion.

                That being said when it comes to the raw day to day work many residents do, midlevels (pas and nps) can be very good at doing those too. So yeah the hospital has to hire people not rely on cheap labor (my current hospital does just that, my own residency had not) – just not more trainees

                2. Boof*

                  Observer – nesting end! Yes they can hire midlevels instead
                  I wonder if OP can explore the (investment banking) equivalent of hiring more support staff to unload the trainees from things that they really don’t need to be doing (or only doing for a short time to properly understand what they are/how they work)?

          3. Your local password resetter*

            Can’t they just make the internships longer then?
            I know med schooling already takes forever, but this seems like penny wise pound foolish. Especially if you keep losing people due to burnout and work overload.

            1. AVP*

              Yeah, I actually can’t believe that *that’s* the justification for all of that. Maybe the poster is wrong but eesh I hope all of this hasn’t been ruining lives for decades just so they can see a wider variety of cases and literally no one could make it happen any other way.

              1. green beans*

                …you cannot ethically “make” diseases and disorders happen at a convenient time for training purposes. Which makes training doctors tricky, and a much different prospect than training most professions.
                Not saying the system is okay the way it is, but I’d also like my surgeons to have, whenever humanly possible, performed the entirety of the procedure they are doing on me before with the training of an expert.

            2. green beans*

              No, it’s not about length of internship in years. It’s literally about the length of the shift. You want to see a case in its entirety whenever possible. So I go into the hospital with weird symptoms and get seen by an intern, they do testing, dead end, attending says, oh but look at this symptom/thing you missed or didn’t look for or whatever, they do different testing, ah! diagnosis, they treat, response, great! Or they treat, no response, they try something else, oh that works better for this particular circumstance.

              But if they come in or leave halfway through that, they’ve missed a lot; they weren’t actually able to go through the entire diagnostic/treatment process. And seeing half of a bunch of cases isn’t the same thing as running a differential diagnosis or a treatment protocol all the way through for a patient, or multiple patients. (ie, I do not want my ob-gyn coming in and saying, “I saw most of many labors during my training!” I want them coming in having been present through the entirety of multiple labors and births and experienced in difficult complications from start to finish.)

              Yes, they can read case files and get caught up, but it’s not the same as doing it yourself, which is critical to train in differential diagnosis process. Especially if it’s an atypical presentation or a rare disease/disorder. (rare enough that the hospital sees less than 1 a year, for instance.) You can’t (ethically) make diseases appear when it’s convenient for people to learn.

              So. Training programs have to balance the need to see cases all the way through with the very real need of the interns to have work-life balance.

              1. Boof*

                Ehh, hospitals tend to run a lot slower than you think. One can probably leave for 8-12 hrs and not miss much outside of the icu.
                Rough timelines – routine stuff / mild problems = routine outpatient visit
                Stuff that should be looked at in the next day or two to decide if it needs treatment / workup = urgent care our outpatient urgent visit
                Stuff that needs to be reevaluated daily = inpatient hospital floor
                Stuff that needs at least hourly monitoring/updates = icu (some places have more layers than that but that’s the rough idea)
                I’m also a little dubious about stressing long shifts over teaching good handoff skills.

                I found my attention really starts to flag at the 12-16 hr mark on the long shifts. Icu here i think manages by rounding several times a day and the ongoing and outgoing shifts are present and seeing the pts together with the attending.

              2. MeMeAndMe*

                green beans said: “No, it’s not about length of internship in years. It’s literally about the length of the shift. You want to see a case in its entirety whenever possible.”

                I just…don’t even understand this, or the other comments about long hours are necessary because they allow interns to see a case through from start to finish, participate/witness all the all the triaging, diagnosing, decision-making, backtracking & re-diagnosing, etc.

                But…that’s not happening anyhow?

                You can’t schedule patients/emergencies to arrive at the same time as interns’ shifts begin. Interns will always start shifts with cases that are in the middle of the process. And you can’t ensure the decision-making/diagnostic/treatment planning process will end at the same moment their ridiculously-long shift ends. It’s just…odd to assume a long shift will somehow neatly line up with patient care.

                The ability to transfer cases well, to write good notes, to assimilate information you’re reading or being told, & to make decisions and pick up care seems equally–or more–important. As does the mental capacity to apply high-quality observational & critical thinking skills to patients you’ve ‘inherited.’ Being well-rested is pretty important to performing *those* tasks. As others have said, having a brain-dead exhausted intern doesn’t seem like it provides ideal patient care.

                Insanely long hours seems to be more about a badge of honor, passing on ‘the grind,’ a little (or a lot) bit of hazing, the belief that “suffering means you’re working hard,” and a good bit of “I had to deal with this crap so you have to too.”

                To LW, green beans, & anyone with decision-making power in industries which require insanely long hours to break in…when you require these kind of heartbreaking, mind-bending hours, sure, maybe you weed out anyone who can’t handle them. But who else do you weed out?

                There are great, skillful, smart, intuitive, hard-working people in all fields who simply can’t–or won’t–participate if insanely long hours are the cutoff. There are skill sets and strengths above & beyond “work until you’re psychotic to prove you belong here.” You’re losing all those people.

          4. The Dogman*

            “To a certain extent, because long shifts are actually necessary to training/education (they need to see as many different cases from start to finish as possible during their internships – there was a push at one point to do “normal” shifts and a lot of feedback came in that interns weren’t getting the exposure/education they needed, from the interns and mentors.) ”

            None of that is correct. There is no requirement to do long hours to become a good nurse or doctor.

            The idea an intern needs to see case from start to finish makes no sense since many “cases” (and you really mean patients I think) will often go over multiple days and interns, along with nurses and docs will need to learn the skill of patient care handovers, which are much more important than remembering every detail of a patient you will never see again.

            There is a requirement to do long hours to enrich the people who own the hospitals and insurance companies.

            If the workers are too tired to unionise and organise then the capitalists can do what they do best.

            Exploit people.

            1. green beans*

              It’s not about remembering every detail of a patient you’ll never see again. It’s about the chance to do something in its entirety, on your own, with experienced supervision, as a learning process. Learning through doing is important. I wouldn’t train someone by having them do only partial-processes; sometimes I’m like watch what you can, but there comes a point where I need them there for the entire thing, first to watch and then to do.

              Yes, lots of cases are complex and require multi-day care. Sometimes multi-day care cases have a critical diagnostic period that is relatively short and cannot ethically be delayed until the trainees arrive – and differential diagnosis is a really key point of doctor training. Lots of other things (like surgery) happen in a set, relatively short timeframe.

              This does not mean interns need to work 80 hrs/week. It does mean that there’s a strong argument for long shifts with time to sleep, where after a specific cutoff period the focus is on wrapping up cases, followed by long periods of time off to rest/rejuvenate.

              1. andy*

                I was in hospital and did not had single doctor caring about me for hours. Most of the time there was waiting. Procedures did not took 12 hours, everyone was competed by single te without them having to be there 12 hours.

                Most of care is not urgent. It is planned over multiple days.

            2. Lizard Breath*

              I absolutely agree that the hours can be tough and that there’s probably a way to carve this down. But hospitalized patients have a LOT of details that go into care, and every handoff increases the chances that a ball gets dropped. Even as a resident, and especially now that I’m an attending physician, there is a HUGE difference between the 2 following scenarios:

              1) Intern Aaliyah is on 27 hour call (24 + 3 for handovers). She meets Mr Jones in the Emergency Department where he has been diagnosed with pneumonia. He’s gotten some antibiotics in the ED, she notices in his records that he was recently hospitalized elsewhere and switches them for better coverage of the germs you get in hospitals. Over the course of the day he gradually starts to have more difficulty breathing. She upgrades him to a higher flow of oxygen and, when she checks on him overnight he’s still having trouble but now having chest pain, which she knows he was not having before. She does an EKG and some labs and realizes he’s having cardiac issues on top of his pneumonia and starts appropriate management. He doesn’t look good to her so she calls the ICU. The ICU team swings by around 8AM while she’s handing off her patients to her day team and she is able to give them a full rundown of his hospital course.

              2) Intern Boris is on 12 hour shifts. He meets Mr Jones in the Emergency Department where he has been diagnosed with pneumonia. He’s gotten some antibiotics in the ED, he notices in his records that he was recently hospitalized elsewhere and switches them for better coverage of the germs you get in hospitals. Over the course of the day he gradually starts to have more difficulty breathing. He upgrades him to a higher flow of oxygen and signs out to Intern Claudia. At 10 PM Intern Claudia is called to see Mr. Jones, who is complaining of chest pain. She knows pneumonia can cause chest pain and he is kind of vague about whether he’s had this before, so she spends 10 minutes trying to check his chart to see if anyone noted whether he’s had chest pain before. During this time she gets six pages about other things she needs to do. She finally decides that he hasn’t, so she orders an EKG and labs and realizes he’s having cardiac issues on top of his pneumonia and starts appropriate management. She signs out to Intern Dominick at 7AM, but he’s looked terrible the whole time she’s “known” him so she doesn’t realize he’s deteriorating. The team goes by at 8AM for rounds and realizes that he’s very ill. They call the ICU team, who come by and ask about him and at that point Intern Dominick, who is now responsible for him, shuffles through his notes, says, “uh, I dunno, I just got signout, let’s see, he was admitted yesterday with pneumonia…” and the whole thing has to be reconstructed, wasting a ton of time and offering a lot of chances to miss things. The care ends up being appropriate in both cases, but which patient would you rather be? (And this is a not very complicated patient scenario. Most of the time on internal medicine services patients have 4-8 simultaneous medical problems going on between chronic issues and acute problems. Mr Jones probably also has diabetes, maybe some chronic kidney disease, might be on blood thinners, etc.)

              1. Necandum*

                Hello from a junior doc from over the pond (Australia)!

                In my smallish rural hospital our shifts are routinely 8hours in ED and Med, slightly longer at 12 for the registrar’s doing admissions and on weekends. As far as I’m aware, we do not have worse patient outcomes compared to the US.

                We have a minimum of two, sometimes more, handovers for every medical admission: one from the ED team to the admitting registrar (3-4th year trainee), and from the admitting registrar to the day team. We also have a lovely nursing team who call MET calls (Code Blue -lite) if the patient so much as sneezes out of turn, meaning they get senior review if things are starting to go downhill.

                Scenario number two can definitely happen, but the admission note is usually thorough enough that it is the only document that needs to be referenced in the first 24hrs, so not much digging through the chart required. And honestly, in ED I’ve probably picked up more things after a handover that the first person missed compared to things being lost in translation, although I guess that’s an inherently biased assessment.

                Overall, it seems to work fine. I mean, at least half our patients survive til discharge!
                But seriously, if anyone suggested we work 24hr shifts there would be a riot.

                1. Loolooloo*

                  This! It’s cultural. Everyone in US medical fields I know will tell you about turnover of care, but what is that nonsense when there’s tons of research on how damaging both sleep deprivation is on the brain and reduced productivity over shift length, irrespective of field. Honestly, I think it’s just an industry-wide excuse because scheduling in 12 hour-increments easier. Plus, enough people truly prefer more days off and 3 or 4 days of longer shifts over the week, making sensible shift hours an impossible cultural shift. When you look at data on patient outcomes in the US compared with other countries which don’t routinely work medical staff to the bones, you’ll see that our outcomes are often significantly worse in some widely-used comparative measures. There are of course other factors, like the fact that our medical personnel are more highly-paid than in other countries, but that comes with the expected trade-off of more hours, too.

              2. gmg22*

                The complete absence of the word “nurse” in both these scenarios is … jarring. Basically what I’m coming away with here is this: “I have to work 40 hours at a time so I don’t miss any patient details because an important part of my residency involves being socially conditioned to treat the doctor-nurse relationship as a one-way street, and therefore never to ask the on-duty nurses any questions about what THEY have charted/observed, because they have less formal education than me and therefore are obviously only there to carry out orders I give them.”

                1. Green Beans*

                  ….. It’s literally about practicing the process they are being trained on. Yes, they should work with nurses but part of training is also doing things independently with supervision start to finish.

                  An internship is a training program for a doctor, not a blueprint of how things should be the rest of their careers (and of course their training should also include how to work with nurses and other members of the healthcare team.)

          5. jcarnall*

            A close family member told me the issue isn’t so much the long hours for a medical intern – he agreed that a trainee doctor needs to be there to see cases start to finish – it’s the cost-cutting.

            The intern’s going to be there overnight anyway, so load the intern up with all of these other jobs that COULD be done by support staff but then you’d have to pay support staff to work at night which would cost more but the intern’s going to be there anyway for no extra pay so tell the intern to do it. Think having to take blood samples which need to be correctly labelled and dispatched and the samples have to be taken at exact times so one sample has to be taken at one in the morning and another patient needs the sample to be taken at five in the morning. Pay a phlebotomist extra to be there through the night? Or tell the on-call intern to do it, cost rolled into the intern’s salary? Right. Keep doing that and you end up with exhausted interns who don’t even want to be doctors any more because all it’s come to mean to them is years of drudge work.

            Whatever job it is, if an employee has to work 100-hour weeks for two years, they could shorten the work week by hiring more staff, and if they can’t recruit people to work 100-hour weeks any more, that’s what they’re going to have to do. It’s not a question of saving money by paying people less because they’re working shorter hours – it’s just that endlessly losing junior staff before they finish serving their apprenticeship is ultimately going to be much more expensive for the company than a higher wage bill.

            1. green beans*

              Yes! (And as someone with unideal but not impossible veins – I’ll take a phlebotomist over a doctor for a blood draw any idea. Spend the money to employee experts and then let them do what they are experts at. Let my phlebotomist draw my blood and my doctor diagnose and create treatment plans.)

            2. Former_Employee*

              That’s strange. I’ve never had a doctor take blood from me. Come to think of it, the only time even the nurses were involved with needles was when they had to replace IVs. All hospital blood draws were done by people from the lab. They were the best. When my veins weren’t cooperating (the bigger veins had IV’s) they were able to find little tiny ones to use.

          6. SofiaDeo*

            As a health care professional, I disagree. IMO it’s the fact that the caseload/workload has risen, has made these intensive long hour internships/jobs much more physically and mentally demanding than in previous decades. As far as training physicians goes, the idea of the long hours on call were so that one could follow a disease state and its’ changes. The difference is, having 20 patients versus 200. When you could actually sleep in the on call room, being awakened only when there were patient changes, made it doable. I am sure the same thing is true in whatever industry the OP is writing about. Being on call when you have fewer cases is a drag, but not the extreme mental and physical burnout that current workloads entail. Which is how the cap came onto medical residencies; one couldn’t simply cut the number if patients, or hire more residents, there weren’t enough bodies to do the work. In a non life-threatening industry, it seems cutting the case load so there is less that has to be accomplished in that 100 hour week, may be doable. As well as cutting client expectations. I can’t imagine an industry outside of something life affecting (medical or physical emergency) where a client can’t wait until office hours. Just because we have pandered to the wealthy/people in poweer in the past, doesn’t mean it’s sustainable or desirable moving forward.

          7. What's my name again?*

            Not the case!

            Patient outcomes don’t improve in hospitals/ countries etc that have longer working hours.

            Patients treated by a Dr with eg, 4 year’s experience have BETTER outcomes in countries with shorter working hours.

        2. Porcubear*

          One of my nurse friends is in theory working 12 hour shifts but in reality has been working 16-17 hours multiple days a week because of short staffing. Which to be fair is only *partly* the hospital’s fault – they recently laid off the people who refused to get vaccinated, which IMO is for the better. But it was pretty short staffed even before that.

      5. Bluesboy*

        You might have seen the tweet that went round where someone was grumbling about how much easier the younger generation has it, and someone replied “that’s the goal though, right?”

        If only more people thought like that…

      6. CrewellaCoupDeVille*

        You nailed it. The LW’s company is doing things this way because it’s always done them this way. The company’s leaders could change things if they wanted to. Really and truly, with the amount of money investment banks make, they could hire the very best top-notch consultants in the world to come in and re-engineer their business processes, and figure out how to flow work so they wouldn’t have to have people working 100-hour weeks. They have not changed because they don’t see the need to. They are Masters of the Universe and the world should accommodate THEIR needs, not the other way around. Unfortunately for them, slavery is illegal and you can’t force people to work. It’s a free and open labor market and everyone can make the choices that work best for them. If the companies don’t change the way they do things, eventually Middle Manager up there will quit, and then his boss will quit, and then the recruit pipeline will dry up, and then there won’t be anyone to skim the vig off the billions of dollars they handle on a yearly (maybe monthly, who knows) basis. Seems like that would be good motivation to change the system. But I don’t think the company leaders will want to make a change; they’ll just sit around complaining about it until they go out of business. Because as I suffered, others must suffer also. That’s all it is.

    3. NerdyKris*

      Seriously, 14 hour days seven days a week is not sustainable for anyone, no matter how much money you’re paying. It doesn’t matter if you’re giving them ten million dollars a year, they’re basically working every hour that they aren’t sleeping. Of course they’re going to leave after six months of that. It’s absurd.

      1. Turtle*

        Exactly, it seems like the OP thinks that money buys…everything. That it’s more important than rest, Happiness, a social life, family time, being able to sleep in, going to the beach, feeling refreshed on Monday mornings, etc etc etc.

        1. NotJane*

          And an astronomical salary is essentially “worthless”, especially (probably) to a 23 year old, if they never get a chance to spend it and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

          It’s amazing that OP hasn’t picked up on the well publicized and reported on fact that for many, many people, across many different industries, the pandemic has served as an opportunity to reconsider what’s really important in life and reflect on what actually gives their lives value and meaning. And apparently, a hefty paycheck just doesn’t cut it anymore.

          1. Nayo*

            “And an astronomical salary is essentially “worthless”, especially (probably) to a 23 year old, if they never get a chance to spend it and enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

            Exactly!!! To me, a life where I literally just work and sleep is NOT a life worth living. I need time to play video games and work on crafts. Time to spend with friends and family. It is absolutely critical for my mental health that I get to have free time. What the hell is the point of making bank if I can’t SPEND it on anything besides food and rent?! I couldn’t do it, even for two years.

            1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

              To me, a life where I literally just work and sleep is NOT a life worth living. I need time to play video games and work on crafts. Time to spend with friends and family

              With due respect, the personalities who self-select into investment banking jobs are not those who value playing video games or arts and crafts, or are at least willing to subordinate those hobbies to their career. At the level of new analysts, they’ve already been doing that for eight years, in high school and college.

              1. MyExIsAnInvestmentBanker*

                With due respect, all your comments in this thread are very defensive, Expat.

                Have you ever considered that perhaps you have also been mistreated and taken advantage of in this industry, and that it wasn’t fair on you and that it isn’t fair now?

                There’s also a snobbery dripping off of this response which doesn’t make sense. People who self select into investment banking can be interested in many different types of hobbies if they had any breathing room to pursue them. It’s also worth noting that the behaviours you’re so vehemently defending contribute to and cause ill health (I am coming to you live from the other side of a severe burn-out…)

                It’s fine if you decide that a deal you busted your butt for being on the front page of the financial times is worth giving up on the rest of life, or perhaps you’re one of the few who’s able to thrive when life is stripped of all meaning beyond work, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for OP to ask for ways to force young people into an inhumane and frankly immoral work setup with bizzarely punitive policies.

                I promise you, few people outside of investment banking is impressed by investment bankers, only by your money. I hope that one day you can experience the simple pleasure of indulging in a hobby that’s just yours.

              2. Avril Ludgateau*

                @US expat

                You sure spend a lot of time posting combative comments on an advice column for somebody who denigrates unproductive hobbies.

          2. London Calling*

            I left a job during the pandemic. Decent salary – in fact the best I’d ever earned. Didn’t compensate for all the other issues I had leisure to sit and think about while furloughed.

            1. NotJane*

              “Didn’t compensate for all the other issues I had leisure to sit and think about while furloughed.”

              Exactly. It’s like OP believes that the sole metric when determining the “value” of something is a monetary one. Having issues attracting qualified applicants? Just increase the salary! Problems retaining employees? Threaten them with a hefty financial penalty if they quit before 24 months!

              It’s like there’s no understand that the “value” of a thing is often intangible and unquantifiable, not to mention that what is considered “valuable” is often subjective and can vary widely from person to person.

              (In all fairness to OP, though, I wrote my comment prior to reading their responses/replies in other threads, so I don’t think the post is so much a reflection of their personal beliefs/POV as it is a reflection of their industry/environment as a whole.)

          3. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

            The salary and bonus is a huge reason people go to work in investment banking, of course, but there are others: the chance to see the deals you worked on appear on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, excellent training, exit opportunities down the road, and an entree into top MBA programs. Relatively few people see themselves as staying on the sell side forever; they do it because they’re picking up skills that make them competitive for (somewhat) more relaxed jobs on the buy side.

            There are many, many more applicants for investment banking analyst jobs than there are positions available. Even with attrition, the applicants clearly don’t see the value proposition as “worthless.” Moreover, the leavers are likely getting offers that would have been closed to them absent the two-year stint at Goldman or wherever.

            I’d also strenuously disagree that they don’t know what they’re getting into. Recent college grads have lots of friends back on campus; word gets around at elite colleges as to what banking culture is like.

        2. The Dogman*

          Most speculation is on investment banking, which would explain the greed and selfishness oozing out of LW’s post.

          It would also explain the undertone of “must punish them the way I was punished to get to my lofty perch!”.

          That entire sector of banking should be closed.

        3. A*

          Which is an especially bold claim given that they don’t sound all that content with their circumstances. The letter was giving me ‘misery loves company / boot straps’ vibes throughout, and typically that only comes up when people have resentment. Happy people that are content with their choices and resulting circumstances, don’t typically see the ‘benefit’ in having others suffer.

      2. DJ Abbott*

        Also OP, if you’re like me and some of my friends, working long hours and shorting sleep will catch up to you around age 50 and you won’t be able to do it anymore. It would be a good idea for you to make changes and have a more balanced lifestyle in place before you hit your mid 50s.
        With us it wasn’t working a job, it’s our hobby, but the fact remains you can’t short sleep forever.

        1. Your local password resetter*

          I can’t imagine that schedule is helpful for their family life either.
          It wasn’t the focus of the letter, but if I saw senior workers still had to pull 100 hour weeks and sacrifice many of their weekends then I wouldnt think starting a family or a relationship was a good idea in this company.

          At that point you have maybe one or two hours you’re not working or sleeping every day. I dont think you can raise children, maintain a relationship, and give yourself time to recover during that time.

        2. mark132*

          I’m over 50 and I would have struggled with this in my 20’s, and I could not maybe do it for 1-2 weeks now, before I would be in so much pain I wouldn’t care any longer.

          1. DJ Abbott*

            I don’t think I ever could have worked 100 or even 80 hours a week. I was sick a lot before I learned to manage my allergies.
            I was in the habit of getting 6 to 7 hours of sleep for about 25-30 years, partly because I didn’t know any better and partly because allergies made me tired anyway so I didn’t know the difference. I got involved in social things that happened on both weeknights and weekends and they were my favorite things to do, so I prioritized them over sleep.
            As I mentioned, that caught up with me in my early 50s and I was sick on and off for two years. I didn’t fully break the habit until I was unemployed during the pandemic, when I saw what a difference it makes to get eight hours sleep. Now I prioritize that!

        3. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

          I did it along with a really long commute in my early 30s. I’m not saying it caused my epilepsy but I’d never had seizures till that job.

        4. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

          Also OP, if you’re like me and some of my friends, working long hours and shorting sleep will catch up to you around age 50 and you won’t be able to do it anymore. It would be a good idea for you to make changes and have a more balanced lifestyle in place before you hit your mid 50s.

          OP is an adult and is capable of deciding for himself what tradeoffs he’s willing to accept. There are those of us, and I count myself among them, for whom a “balanced” lifestyle is insufferably boring. I respect that your mileage may vary, but you should also respect that the same is true of us.

      4. Alex*

        I think many are putting themselves through this because by doing it, they can earn 100k$ in half a year of torture…and then use that financial cushion to find a job that still pays reasonable with sane working hours.

        1. Dr Wizard, PhD*

          If I’m reading OP’s note about compensation correctly, they’re actually not. I think most of the money is in year-end or end-of-the-two-year-cycle bonuses, and the ones who quit after 6 months have probably only been earning a token liveable salary.

        2. shedubba*

          I knew people in college that went into investment banking, and this was their plan from the start: work soul-crushing hours for as long as they could stand, put away a nice nest egg, and then get the heck out of Dodge and find a job with reasonable hours.

      5. DoggoMom*

        This is what I was thinking. And the idea of paying back a large portion of your salary if you can’t manage working 14 hours a day, everyday, for 2 years?? It is soul crushing to even think about it.

        1. TrainerGirl*

          Yeah, that won’t make people stay. It will make them avoid you outright and never even apply. I don’t understand why people always leap to the punitive outcome rather than find a new way.

    4. Foreign Octopus*

      I immediately thought of shift work. Why is it even necessary to have people working 100-hour weeks when you can just do shift work?

      1. Amaranth*

        I was thinking teams so that they could be familiar with the same projects/clients but each have their own primary focus. I guess if some are right that its banking, then time zones are an issue? But then that could be handled with shift work.

    6. Still trying to adult*

      Wow. Here’s a thought: a

      Don’t burn them out!!

      I predict that if you treat these employees better by working them more humane hours and treating them with dignity, your retention rate will go up!!

      To quote an old line I got from the Quality Industry: Management ALWAYS gets what it wants. Even if it doesn’t like what it gets, it always gets what it wants. So, obviously, your company is getting people that come in for whatever reasons (the high salary being one) and then when they get exhausted of the rat race, they leave. Management, and management alone are the ones who can change that dynamic.

    7. Varthema*

      LW seems like a decent person and I don’t want to pile on (even more), but I think it bears mentioning – if you put a financial penalty on quitting early, suicides will happen. Young people high on life, thinking they can handle it, then finding out they can’t, too terrified to face a financial penalty, too ashamed to ask for help in paying it, sleep deprived and stressed – yeah. It’s not an if, it’s a when.

      If 100-hour weeks aren’t negotiable, then high churn is just the cost of keeping that workweek. If I were you, I’d consider churning too.

    8. Adam Hayman*

      Ok.
      As someone that’s spent his life in poverty, and only now in my mid 40s finally clawing my way to the bottom of middle class, but still nowhere near ever hoping to own my own home….

      Is this person hiring? 2-3 full time crap paying jobs at a time are what I did my whole life. If he’ll train, I’ll work this. When you are super poor, you don’t have the ability to really enjoy time off either. If I didn’t have to worry about my bare essentials being met? Absolutely I’d do this. 2 years of it would not be fun, but that kind of money would literally be a world changing amount for my family.

  2. e271828*

    100-hour weeks, in the office every weekend, two year program

    Well, there’s your problem right there.

      1. Zona the Great*

        And with those hours and that salary, the money goes to your family so they enjoy life without you and can afford your early funeral when you ultimately die at age 40 of a heart attack.

        1. hamsterpants*

          Yeah that combination of hours and lifestyle, plus being on the younger side and less experienced with relationships, seems like an amazing recipe to be used by someone who only wants you for your money.

          1. Mangofan*

            I would guess investment banking… Big 4 accounting isn’t paying those kinds of salaries for entry level employees.

        3. Your local password resetter*

          Yeah, this is a “get the money and bail” job. Not something you want to stay in for the long term.

          1. The Dogman*

            Yeah I reckon 6-9 month is going ot be about enough to buy a house in a normal state, so people are bouncing once they have the capital to set up a life somewhere.

            I am not going to lose sleep over LW’s worries, seems to be investment banking and that whole sector is immoral.

          2. Avril Ludgateau*

            The OP seems bitter that people are doing exactly that – taking the money and running – but doing it ahead of schedule. It’s literally a system designed for short tenure, as a stepping stone; it is known to be unsustainable. It seems the younger generation is merely stepping off sooner. Frankly? Good for them. At the risk of being glib, there are always opportunities to make money. There are never opportunities to make time.

          1. Speaks to Dragonflies*

            Ya problem is ya work em to death…Throwing money at ya problem won’t always solve it. Just cuz you put up with the sucky hours doesnt folks will go for that any more.

            1. SpaceySteph*

              “Throwing money at ya problem won’t always solve it.”

              In my early career I had a role which was 24/7 coverage and mainly hired entry-level workers who were usually young, unmarried, no kids, etc expecting to work the crap out of them before they burnt out. As salaried/exempt we weren’t paid extra for crappy shifts directly, but they had a point system. Collect enough points (with crappier shifts worth more points– i.e. nights more than days, weekends/holidays more than weekedays, etc) and you’d get a bonus relative to how many points you collected.

              There was a range where the money was good, and worth it to pick up some nights/weekends to get the extra pay. But above a certain level (which likely varied by the person), the hit to your work/life balance was so pronounced that the pay didn’t feel like enough. This seems like the same situation. Making $200k can get you to put up with a lot, but not everything. And continuously working 100 hour weeks, no weekends off for 2 years is WAY above what I’d do for $200k.

              1. DJ Abbott*

                Companies that require weekend work and want to keep their employees have a system where they rotate the weekends so no one has to work every weekend. So each employee might might work one or two weekends a month, but not all of them.

                1. Aaron*

                  There might be opportunities for trading too. If your friend group does fast food midweek may be better but you might want flexibility on which day it is.

            2. Esmeralda*

              OP points out that this is typical for the industry, however, and that the new hires are made abundantly aware of this expectation. No need to be mean to the OP.

              Alison’s point that the new hires may think they can do it, then realize they can’t or won’t after trying it for 6 – 9 months, is on-point. And that it will likely have to change to solve the OP’s problem.

              OP may not be able to solve it, however — may not have the power to increase the number of hires (at fewer hours and lower pay each).

              1. Not So NewReader*

                Then it sounds like OP is outta luck on this one. There is no fix.
                I’m not trying to be mean, sometimes reality is harsh and problems just cannot be fixed.

                Perhaps OP might start a job search.

                1. allathian*

                  Yeah, I agree that the LW is unlikely to be able to change things. But if they at least are willing to internalize that this way of working is no longer sustainable because people are simply unwilling to do it, at least they should realize that there’s nothing they can do to change it. If the industry collapses because it can no longer find employees willing to work that much, then it collapses.

              2. CalypsoSummer*

                “You’re working them too hard.” “But this is normal for our industry.”
                “So change. Hire more people and spread the lavish pay a little more thinly.” “But this is normal for our industry.”
                “It’s not working for you any more.” “But this is normal for our industry.”
                Comes a time when “But this is normal for our industry” just becomes a meaningless noise.

              3. Speaks to Dragonflies*

                I wasnt trying to be mean, just emphasizing the point that 100 hours a week is literally going to work some folks to death. You can dangle the biggest carrot in the world, but if the horse is dead, it isnt going to have any interest in the carrot anymore. And when you figure per hour dollars, that carrot isnt very big.
                Now, if we can get more horses, and swap them out every so often and divide up that one big ol carrot and among all the horses, then more work can be done, its easier on the horses, and the carrot is big enough to go around.
                Op, I apologize for my comment sounding mean. I ment it more as an exclamation. I dont know if you’re in a position to change the situation, but I think your answer is what I and others are saying.

              4. Observer*

                OP points out that this is typical for the industry, however, and that the new hires are made abundantly aware of this expectation

                It doesn’t make it a sane expectation. But because it’s supposed to be normal some young folks without a lot of experience think that “Sure I’m tough, I can do that”. And then they discover that this just doesn’t work.

                The problem here is not just that it’s happening, but that the OP thinks it’s fine because it’s “always been this way”. Which actually id not true. And that the best way to “fix” the problem is to not fix it, but to penalize very harshly anyone who realizes that they are not going to make it.

              5. MCMonkeyBean*

                I don’t think they are being mean, it’s just the truth. The fact that it’s typical for the industry doesn’t mean it’s reasonable, and presumably other companies in the industry are struggling with the same problem as OP.

                As someone who had a very rough busy season last year and was approaching 100 hours per week for a couple of months–and had several breakdowns during just that period as a result–working those hours for 2 years is NOT reasonable or sustainable and will really fuck a person up and no amount of money is worth it. I wouldn’t work those hours for 2 years for a million dollars! More money will not solve their problem. Trying to claw money back won’t solve the problem. They need to find a way to make the hours better or accept that the staff is highly likely to reach a breaking point no matter what they try to threaten financially.

          2. Nesprin*

            Yep, there’s your problem- your workers are essentially making ~33$ an hour to have only 60 hours off.

            1. Kevin Sours*

              Under California labor laws the base rate of pay for an hourly worker would be approximately $27.50 for the $200k upper end.

          3. Cj*

            $175,000/yr at 100/wk is $28.89/hr if it was an hourly job with time and a half overtime. That is certainly *not* well paid.

            1. Sloanico*

              Ha! I remember dating a big time firm lawyer when I was at a small time nonprofit. We realized I actually made a *better* rate than him, hourly. And I had quality of life!

            2. Your local password resetter*

              Its about 75K per year for a normal 40 hour workweek. Which isnt a bad salary at all, but not “sacrifice your health and life” money. Especially in a high COL area.

              1. Cj*

                I make $62,000/yr working 1960 hours/year. 50 hours/week for 4 months and 32 hours/week the rest of the year. In a relatively low cost of living area.

                I’ll take my job/pay over OP’s junior workers any day.

              1. A*

                In regards to hourly rate, or total annual? Cause if you’re making over $175k/year dog walking, I’m in the WRONG industry and want in on that ASAP lol.

                1. The Dogman*

                  Oh yeah, hourly of course! ;)

                  Although a good friend went to Knightsbridge and Chelsea (some of the wealthiest places in London) and did dog walking and sitting there. He bought a house outright in the Cotswolds (very nice place to live, very pricey too!) a few years back after charging £500-$1000 per night to the kids of the ruling class/kleptocrat class.

                  If you take 3 dogs at £500 per night…

                  £1500 per day x 365 = £52500 per year.

                  And on top of that he was charging £100 per hour for walks during the day and taking 10 Chihuahuas at once etc…

                  It can add up.

                  But you have to work for some of the worst humans on Earth and be able to keep your mouth shut about how awful they are to everyone and everything.

                  That is where I would have some trouble.

            4. Rayray*

              You bring up an excellent point, these people could likely find something paying the equivalent hourly rate and not have to put their health and well-being on the line. They could work a normal schedule and actually be able to LIVE, not slave away 14 hours a day 7 days a week.

          4. KDT*

            For reference, there are thousands of college graduates getting in that range working for any of the major tech companies or well funded startups. They aren’t putting in those types of hours.

            $175K is nothing once you consider that you’re putting in 100 hours a week. I wouldn’t have even thought about accepting that type of job when I graduated years ago over one that made less than half as much.

            1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

              [People at] major tech companies or well funded startups…aren’t putting in those types of hours.

              They’re coming close, though. The people here complaining that they’d rather spend time on hobbies or family or whatever would not find startups significantly better than investment banking.

          5. Remedial Chaos Theory*

            There is no amount of pay that would make me want to work 100 hour weeks. None. And I love my job.

            1. Not So NewReader*

              I can’t do it. Younger me topped out at 75-80. That was it. If I had kept doing that, I would not be here now.

              1. Tiny Soprano*

                Hell if I work more than 45 my health suffers and I fall in a heap. Much less if it’s stressful.

              2. alienor*

                Even when I was young and (more) energetic, I couldn’t do more than a 60-hour week without wanting to die. I’ve also found that 10 hours in one day is my limit–anything I produce after the 10-hour mark will be basically worthless.

                1. Remedial Chaos Theory*

                  Yeah, agreed. I don’t do good work after 10 hours; it’s just not going to happen.

                2. Splendid Colors*

                  A friend of mine is a mechanical engineer, and her company periodically goes through crunch time where management mandates a 60-hour workweek. She goes along with it for a while, but notices that she isn’t actually *productive* after that 8th hour, even after trying to push a bit harder for a week or so in case it’s just a habit of “done my 8 hours, time to go home.” Lots of making mistakes and then fixing them because engineering is hard if you’re doing it conscientiously. I imagine anything financial also requires a lot of analytical thinking.

                  So far, she’s managed to explain this to her manager and not be forced to sit at her desk an extra two hours to pretend she’s doing something instead of cooking a healthy dinner and getting enough sleep after relaxing at home.

              3. Remedial Chaos Theory*

                I did a grand total of one 100ish hour week in my life, when I was in my 20s and working multiple jobs. By the end of it I was beyond a zombie, and the only reason I managed to get to each job was because I carpooled. At this point, in my 40s, my body simply would not allow it.

                1. bunnymcfoo*

                  There was a six month period of time in my life in my mid twenties when I was putting in around 70 hours a week between my office job and my second job waiting tables. I was pulling in money like crazy and making a significant dent in my student loans, but I realized I had to stop when I dozed off on the drive home one night after yet another 15 hour work day (plus commute time.) I’m extremely lucky that the rumble strip jolted me awake, because I genuinely don’t think I would be here otherwise.

                  I’m in my 40s now and the idea of working more than 40 hours a week kind of makes me want to cry and hide under the bed.

              1. Jean (just Jean)*

                Literally…. ! Better purchase the cemetery plot and lock down the prepaid funeral plan before you start this high-pay/high-work job. Gives new meaning to the phrase “work oneself to death.” No, thank you.

            3. Your local password resetter*

              I might, if I could retire after 3 months. And I absolutely leave after that, in one way or another.

            4. allathian*

              Yeah, absolutely agree. My standard workweek is 36 hours 15 minutes. I can work, and have worked, 50-hour weeks for a huge project, but when the project ended, I took 3 weeks off just on banked comp time. Believe me, I needed the rest! We’re a bit different, I’m basically salaried in that I have lots of flexibility in choosing when (and where) I work, but hours are still tracked to ensure that nobody is working too much, or slacking off. Those who put in huge amounts of working hours are a much bigger problem than the slackers, though. It also gives management clear signals when more resources are needed for a particular function.

          6. Mel*

            Even if it’s $200,000 the first year, they’re not “well compensated” (especially for a prestigious job). At 100 hours a week that’s less than $40 an hour.

          7. Gru*

            You pay employees 34-38 dollars an hour (which is what the math works out to) to spend their entire lives at work and you’re surprised people are leaving after 6 months?! *Maybe* you could retain people for longer if you paid them more per hour, but I wouldn’t count on it.

            OP, you need a reality check. Your workplace is not okay or normal, and there should be laws against this kind of nonsense. The fact that you’re justifying this kind of abuse (and it *is*) abuse is awful.

        2. BeenThere*

          So they are paying what an entry level software engineer can get in the Bay Area in total comp. Zero shock that these junior staff are going to start ups.

          1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

            But if these people stick with banking, they’ll earn considerably more than $200K as they progress to associate, vice president, and managing director. The software engineer, much less so. Even if they leave banking for the buy side, they’ll have considerable salary gains that the software engineer will not (and if they get lucky their wealth might even eclipse that of those who stay on the sell side).

            It’s the Wall Street lawyers who have a very bad value proposition.

      3. Lady Meyneth*

        Absolutely. I’ve worked one 100 hours week in my work life. One. And it was an emergency, as in a real people-could-die-if-this-doesn’t-get-done emergency. By the end of day 4, I was crying with exhaustion and seriously considering just saying F it and quitting. And I got a bonus plus the next full (paid) week off to recharge.

        People were not made to work 16 hours day in stressful situations, and recently employees began to value their own boundaries and health more than a company. OP’s employer needs to acknowledge that and consider doing things differently from now on.

        1. Siege*

          I did it twice. Once was one week – it was horrible, but it got done and my boss was supportive. The other time it last a couple of months and I was working all the time. I was working from home so I could work more! (I did not have internet at the time.)

          I had a psychotic break the second time. Categorically, I was not in touch with reality. I remember being stunned to see people looking like things were just … normal, because my reality at the time was entirely apocalyptic. Never, ever again. Never. Under no circumstances.

          1. Academic Physician*

            Back when I was a medical resident, I used to routinely hallucinate at about hour 26 of my long shifts in the intensive care unit.

            1. Academic Physician*

              the hallucinations were pretty, at least — I don’t usually get scary ones, so there’s that, I guess

              1. Calamity Janine*

                i would like to second that emotion

                and although it’s a bit off topic, i would like to express that as a patient, i would really rather have a doctor who wasn’t hallucinating from lack of sleep over a doctor with absolute continuity of care. all the continuity of care in the world means bupkis when it’s sliding clean off a brain that is coated with the teflon of sleep deprivation and distracted by the dancing pink elephants of no sleep.

            3. allathian*

              This is horrible, and the reason why few things scare me more than the idea of a hospital stay. I think it’s inconceivable that the health services think this is acceptable or okay.

          2. Speaks to Dragonflies*

            I did 95 hours in a week once. I was on call and we had nextel push to talk phones. Somewhere on night 3 or day 4 (they all run together) I started to shudder everytime I heard that nextel chirp. The commercials were in heavy rotation on the radio, and every.damn.time I heard that noise… We dont use them anymore and I havent heard it in awhile, but just thinking about it causes a bit of dread to rise.

    2. Pony Puff*

      Really quite obvious. Humans aren’t capable of sustaining that type of lifestyle and raising the pay is no good since they have no waking hours to enjoy their salary…come on now.

      1. Claire*

        I realize that OP lives in a very different world but… this is madness. For some if not many people, working high-stress, 100-hour weeks for two years will have permanent ramifications on their health. You are literally destroying people’s health! And all for… what? To make rich people richer? Sorry, but the whole setup is deeply amoral to me. I agree that there are things to address here, but OP, they’re not what you think.

        1. Not So NewReader*

          Hard agree.
          No job is worth dying for and this company is asking people to forego life itself.

        2. Parakeet*

          Yep. I’ve had a few short periods of working 80-hour weeks, but that was very temporary and was also doing work that I cared about and that was socially beneficial. The idea of people burning their lives so that they can benefit the owners of capital…it’s grotesque. It’s their lives, I suppose, but I’m delighted that the younger people are leaving so quickly. I hope more of them leave, more quickly. If the whole industry folds, good.

        4. Splendid Colors*

          Yeah. It’s not like they’re spending 100-hours a week for a month or so saving lives in a natural disaster area or something. And then those first responders would get some time off to decompress and recuperate!

      2. LQ*

        People say that humans aren’t capable of it, but I think that’s missing the mark here. Especially if this is how it was in the past. It doesn’t help and in fact just makes it harder to get people to change when you throw up your hands and say come on now rather than clearly saying, “people can, but they aren’t interested.” The money you’re offering isn’t enough to make people interested in doing this at this point in time. Find another way to accomplish this goal.

        1. RVA Cat*

          This. I have a feeling that many of the people who “did it” in the past drugged themselves with everything from Adderall to cocaine. I also want to know how many of them dropped dead at a young age.

          1. Alex*

            Yeah. I’m familiar with the OP’s industry (I live in Manhattan, it fits a certain profile) and the number of people making it work with cocaine in the past was very high. It’s aderall and other substances now but the fact remains that it’s not great for people or community in many many ways.

            2. Justin*

              All my college classmates did this. My alumni magazine celebrates them and my dad wanted me to do it. He wouldn’t have a son if I had. (That’s not a self-harm joke, I’d’ve truly suffered and burned out.)

          2. Dust Bunny*

            I’m picturing my grandfather, who had a housewife to handle absolutely everything else and barely knew his children. And he worked a lot but not a hundred hours a week.

            1. Tiny Soprano*

              My dad often does 80 at the moment, but again, he has my mother and my godparents running around making sure he gets fed and his clothes are clean. He’s under strict instructions that he is retiring (for real this time) at the end of the year, because they’re not keen on being his chefs/housemaids/secretaries forever.

          3. Not So NewReader*

            I know of docs who drugged themselves to get through medical school.
            Ironic that an arena focused on health avoids sleep and wholesome meals in favor of work.

        2. Maya*

          Like so many formulas, the salary-to-workload ratio is not infinitely scalable. This is the compensation equivalent of “If the recipe says bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees, then 1 minute at 5,250 degrees will work just as well!” Just because people will work 40 hours a week for $X, doesn’t mean they’ll work 100 hours for $2.5X, or $5X, or even $20x.

        3. Observer*

          “people can, but they aren’t interested.”

          Except that this is actually not true. The reason that more people are quitting is because more people are refusing to literally kill themselves, or leave themselves with long term damage.

          I mean in some cases it’s possible that they technically CAN do it, if you mean that they CAN by destroying their health or totally torching relationships etc.

      3. EPLawyer*

        “aising the pay is no good since they have no waking hours to enjoy their salary…” Right there. Money is only good if you can use it. If they are working so many hours, especially weekends, who cares what the salry is, they never get to enjoy what having that kind of money can bring.

        As I was reading, I was thinking “hire more people so the hours can be spread out.” And guess what Alison suggested?

        OP just because you did it and you think its the way it is, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. You can either keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results OR you can change the way you do things. That does NOT mean penalizing the people who decide to prioritize their health over staying in the industry no matter how well paid.

    3. Merci Dee*

      If I were fresh out of school, I would happily take half of that pay if I only had to work half of those hours.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        If I were fresh out of school, I would happily take half of that pay if I only had to work half of those hours.

        I have friends in careers who would be happy with their career peak being half those hours for half that compensation.

          1. Yep*

            And the pay being well over 25% higher than first-job-out-of-school pay; I assume that would be quite interesting to some.

          2. Confused*

            I mean, if I could work from home so I don’t commute, well, commuting is a little over an hour each way at minimum for me. A 10 hour workday and no commute would be equal to an 8 hour workday and a commute in terms of time spent engaged. For half of a $275K salary straight out of grad school? Yea, I’d probably want it.

      2. ThatGirl*

        Yeah there’s no amount of pay that makes me want to work 100-hour weeks, that’s insane. Pay two people 100K to work a 50-hour week and you might get somewhere.

        2. Anonny*

          Yeah, I did a bit of maths on that, and it’s… 9 hours personal time per day. Including time when you’d be sleeping. Your entire life would be work, bathe, sleep, commute.

      3. Clisby*

        Yeah, there are probably tons of good applicants who’d sign on for 50-hour weeks and $88K-$100K. And this isn’t a matter of oh, young people these days aren’t willing to work hard. I’m 68, and wondering who the hell was ever willing to sign on for something this insane.

        1. Anon for this*

          Yeah, I’ve newly found a willingness to work longer hours for more pay… because I know I’m not going to be doing it for long… and even now, I’m getting myself through this by working from home and essentially taking a “hug my cat for five minutes” break every few hours. I’m getting through it with fuzzy cuddles, and I’m not anywhere near 100 hours a week. I can’t imagine what this would be like with more hours and no fuzzy cuddles.

        2. Your local password resetter*

          From what I can tell: The desparate, the drugged, and the people who drank all the kool-aid.

          1. Hamsterjam*

            “The desparate, the drugged, and the people who drank all the kool-aid” could start an entirely new film genre, like a modern spagetti western

      4. Quickbeam*

        Yes! That’s a crazy amount of hours, screw the pay. I had a consultant job with a start up that was 70-80 hours a week; After the first year I told them I was dialing it down to 50 hours a week. No one can sustain that and be healthy at the same time.

      5. Turtles All The Way Down*

        Heck, I’m almost 40 and still don’t make half that much. I’d gladly make $100k-$150k and work 50-60 hours a week. I’d even be available/on-call some weekends!

        I can’t even fathom working 100 hours a week, even from home where I can faceplant into my bed at midnight, never mind commuting.

        1. Kat*

          I did 120 hour weeks last year. I had 2 full time jobs plus massive OT. I only slept 4 hours a night. I was so tired. I do not recommend doing it. I didn’t have the privilege of making bank though. With both jobs I didn’t even hit 50k.

      6. Elenna*

        This.

        As a 25-year-old, if you paid me 100k/year for a 50-hour work week, I would seriously consider it.

        For a 100-hour work week, you’d have to pay me millions. Like, literally, I’d *maybe* take it if I could retire and be rich afterwards, so probably 40+ million a year. Doubling the hours requires a lot more than doubling the pay.

        1. PT*

          A 50-hour week, if you’re compensated well enough such that you can live near work and have a short commute, is entirely doable. Because most people who work a 40 hour week with a 1 hour commute each day are already doing that when you count their commute in. There’s a handful of people who have nice commutes- the people who always get a seat on the train and can read, or the people lucky enough to commute along a scenic bike path instead of having to ride on busy streets- but most people’s commute is to a certain extent just as stressful and hard work as work. If you can reallocate that time to career work, you’d be spending the same amount of time in “work mode” but you’d be getting more out of it career wise.

        2. Anon for this*

          This. I’d *need* to take at least a year off just to decompress after that much of a hit to my mental and physical health. Then that opens up “why did you have such a long gap on your resume, are your skills rusty” questions which would make it hard to get back into the workforce. That would be career ending for most people, and people at the beginning of their career are expected to do this?

        3. Recruited Recruiter*

          At 20, I was working a 70 hour per week job for $30k. Now, I work a 43 hour per week job for 41k. I would gladly go up to 50 if it meant a big raise, but I wouldn’t go any past 55.

        5. londonedit*

          Absolutely. I ‘only’ earn £30k a year but I also only have to work 37.5 hours a week and I’m totally not expected to do anything work-related outside of that. I’ve never been the sort of person who could or would sign up for a job that required insane working hours (and by insane I mean anything over 40 hours a week!) I’d much rather have less money and more time to actually live my life.

    4. HerdingCatsWouldBeEasier*

      This means 14+ hour work days if you work every day or nearly 17 hour work days if you try and have a work free day every week. These numbers only seem vaguely possible if you have a full time stay at home spouse to deal with life for you. If you assume the junior staff only get 6 hours of sleep a night, that means they get less than 4 hours a day to shower, eat, commute, and live.

      The question shouldn’t be: how can we get junior staff to agree to this? It should be: why would we have thought anyone would EVER put up with this, and how can we reimagine our work so that no one has to?

      1. Olive Hornby*

        People with this sort of job are getting most of their meals delivered and living within walking distance of the office and/or taking cabs home. They’re outsourcing all of this stuff–which aside from being dystopian also means that $200k doesn’t go as far as one might think that it might, because you’re living in midtown Manhattan or the financial district.

        1. Vaca*

          OP here – true but worth noting that cabs and meals after 8pm are paid for (they’re extra on top of the salary + bonus.)

          1. Worldwalker*

            If you stick another zero on the end of that salary I *might* consider doing it for two years. For anything less? Not a chance. A week consists of 168 hours. If you spend 100 of those at work and another 56 asleep, you have 12 hours left over for the entire remainder of your life.

            Plenty of people will work 50 hours for $100k a year. Hire twice as many people for half the hours each. The odds are you’ll have a lot less turnover.

            1. Just Another Zebra*

              This exactly. There’s no such thing as a work/life balance with these kinds of hours. There’s working, then the necessary biological functions of humanity. OP, please consider the many suggestions of 2 junior staff members working 50hrs for $100k. I promise, those people are out there.

            3. Anon for this*

              I’m currently working 60 hour weeks for 50k, I would kill for 50 hour weeks for 100k. Maybe not literally. Possibly.

              1. AJoftheInternet*

                I always like to quantify what I would be willing to kill for X hypothetical scenario. “I would kill mice for that.” “I would be willing to kill a bear to get that.” etc.

            5. Your local password resetter*

              I also can’t imagine they’re very productive mentally speaking. After 8-10 hours people are generally spent. Much fewer if they’re chronically exhausted for some mysterious reason.

          2. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

            Is there a good reason not to double the number of folks in the training cohort at 1/2 the salary (still pretty good for straight out of school) and have people do 50 hour weeks? Or is it more that this is how it has always been? If there is a solid business reason why 1 person working 100 hrs is better than 2 people working 50 each, it might be easier to come up with something workable. If there is no business reason, well, then that is your answer

            1. Sloanico*

              To be fair, I’d assume two salaries is more than one salary cut in half, when you add all the backend stuff (insurance, payroll tax, admin, whatever – plus more if it bumps you up over some regulatory standard that now applies because you have more than 50 people or a new business nexus or whatever). But I’m assuming this is an industry that could do it if they chose.

            2. STAT!*

              I know you were only posing the questions rhetorically, but I would be amazed if there was a solid business reason for the 100 hour weeks. Right now the juniors probably produce 50 hours of good work per week at best, and 50 hours of utter zombified delirious deleterious rubbish.

              1. Brave Little Roaster*

                Exactly, there’s no way anyone working 100(!!) hours/week is producing twice as much work of good quality as you’d get from two people each working 50 hours.

            1. Alex*

              Yeah. I don’t work in finance but I am in “the greedy professions” (ie law, consulting, finance) and we get that perk too —it’s more a tool to keep late nights normal. I love my job, but that’s never been a draw.

              1. Momma Bear*

                Right. It sets the expectation that you’ll be working after 8PM, not that it’s a real bonus.

                On a kind of practical note, you can’t outsource your own healthcare so when do these people see a doctor if they need to?

                1. SpaceySteph*

                  Also like what about meals before 8pm. Those kind of hours you don’t have time to grocery shop/cook/meal prep/eat at home, so you’re eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the office/in transit almost every day. But only paying for it if its after 8pm?

                  I am in an external oversight role for a place that works their people to the bone (although not even this bad) and has a delicious onsite cafeteria for 3 meals a day for very cheap. Its a perk for me when I visit to go to their cafeteria, but several of them told me they just miss healthy and homecooked food. The cafeteria has good food and good variety, but not enough to eat it three meals a day every day all week even weekends.

                2. TheCatLady*

                  And how do these people manage to achieve a relatively professional appearance? How do they have time to shower, shave, put on make up and professional clothing, do their hair with product or blow drying? Do laundry or pick up dry cleaning?How do they manage to shop for professional clothing and shoes? God forbid any of them ever need to get a haircut, color, nails done. If I was working 14 hour days seven days a week my only option would be to show up rumpled and in last night’s clothes every day. I’m sure this firm has high standards for professional grooming.

                3. Texan In Exile*

                  @The Cat Lady – I’m reading a novel right now about a first-year associate at some fancy law firm – and the firm has a pickup and delivery service for laundry and there are showers a few floors down at the gym. The firm also has crash rooms for people to sleep.

                  I would not want the life.

                4. londonedit*

                  Years ago I worked with someone who was a lawyer in the City – his company used to pay for taxis to take people home at 4 or 5am, wait around while they had a shower and changed clothes, and bring them back to the office.

          4. BabyElephantWalk*

            If you’d rather be spending the time with your family/on your own hobbies, it’s not really a benefit that the cabs and meals are paid for. My husband used to work a career with lots of evenings/weekends with paid perks.

            He left for a much lower paying career that gave him decent hours – because the paid perks, while boss saw them as a selling feature, were not of value to him.

          5. Me*

            So the fact that you think it’s worth noting really underscores how warped your view is. it’s really not worth noting. it’s essentially more pay in a different form. the problem is the awful hours, treatment and lack of anything resembling a life.

            but sure, thanks for the 10 dollar dinner.

          6. highbury house*

            If you think the junior staff don’t become useful until 2 years in, contemplate how they might improve more quickly if they could get a good night’s sleep and a weekend to recharge.

            2. HerdingCatsWouldBeEasier*

              Not useful until 2 years in, but so essential they have to work every possible minute for two years.

              It’s always fascinating when someone holds two incompatible positions as self evident truths and doesn’t seem the contradictions.

          7. Not So NewReader*

            Yeah, please don’t let people drive, they are no longer in any condition to be behind a wheel.

            A friend whose job entailed driving worked for 24 hour straight. Friend became scared of hurting themselves or someone else, so the friend’s spouse drove for the next 24 hours of work. Yeah, the spouse was not on payroll.

          8. Utterly Appalled at this!*

            All I can say is I am utterly appalled and hope you NEVER find anyone desperate enough to work your form of slavery. For what you are asking of people the salary is not the point at all. You are running a modern day slavery farm.

            1. AJoftheInternet*

              Um, let’s not cheapen the horrors of slavery (involuntary work with minimal/no pay) by saying that this (voluntary work with obscenely high pay) is similar. People can (and do) walk away from this, or decide that it’s worth it to them. People in indenture/slavery situations don’t have that option.

              1. allathian*

                Fair point. But at those hours it still works out to less than $40 per hour, so hardly an exceptionally high salary, certainly not obscenely high.

              2. MCMonkeyBean*

                I agree, but I do think there should be a little more focus on the fact that OP seems to be looking for a way to make it financially impossible or at least financially extremely difficult for people to walk away and that is certainly a troubling way to be trying to solve this problem.

      2. JohannaCabal*

        You would pretty much be living at the office at that point. There are companies that (pre-pandemic but I’m sure it still happens) that subsidize dinners for staff who stay late.

        For the first three months of my post-college job, I had barely two hours between dinner and falling asleep due to my commuting schedule. When I moved closer to my job and had a ten minute drive to work my life improved so much.

        1. HerdingCatsWouldBeEasier*

          Honestly, I’m getting flashbacks to my (thankfully only 2 years) of graduate school in the 1990s. I was accepted into a Biochemistry doctorate program and planning on going into medical research, and was prepared to work long hours and weekends to make it happen. The only thing I asked for was to be able to leave at 5 pm one day a month to participate in a club for a hobby I dearly loved. Instead, I was told how unreasonable it was to make this request. I jumped out with a terminal master’s and switched industries entirely a few years later. My only regret now is that I didn’t walk out right then and there.

          Jobs that fail to allow people to have time to live deserve to go the way of the dinosaurs.

          1. Jay*

            My husband was in a STEM PhD program in the 1980s when I was in medical school and residency. I had one day off a month when I was an intern, usually a Sunday, and if he took that entire day off to spend with me he got untold crap from his adviser and members of his committee. ONE DAY A MONTH. We were the only couple I knew where the non-medical spouse had worse hours and a more abusive environment than the medical spouse.

            As a resident before work-hour rules went into effect, I generally worked at most 80 hours a week, and that wasn’t every week (this was also an unusually humane residency program). I did a one-month rotation at an outside institution that came close to 100 hours a week. It was horrible. I wasn’t safe to drive home post-call so my husband would pick me up and I would be asleep before we left the parking lot – and then have to come back less than 12 hours later. Never again.

            1. Airkewl Pwaroe*

              Did a biomedical research PhD through the 2000s and it’s only improved a little. Towards the end of this time, I heard that the NIH was trying to figure out why so many MD-PhDs were going on to be physicians only rather than becoming the physician scientists (or even just the scientists!) they’d originally trained to be. I don’t know if they ever figured out the very obvious answer.

        2. Porcubear*

          Then there’s my job that, while it pays on the low end of the scale for the work I’m doing, limits us to a MAXIMUM of 60 hours a week and six days in a row, and frequently orders in food for fairly spurious reasons. Yesterday they over-catered with Subway and emailed later in the day telling us to take some home for dinner/breakfast. They have a lot of other good labour practices as well but I always appreciate the mandatory caps on overtime because it’s a very simple, easy to identify way to show what their priorities are.

      3. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        This means 14+ hour work days if you work every day or nearly 17 hour work days if you try and have a work free day every week. These numbers only seem vaguely possible if you have a full time stay at home spouse to deal with life for you. If you assume the junior staff only get 6 hours of sleep a night, that means they get less than 4 hours a day to shower, eat, commute, and live.

        I did that for ~9 months as a singleton in my first real programming job (severe staffing shortfalls). I was able to squirrel the overtime away and it was almost the entire down payment and roof on my home 5 years later, but by the end my mental health was in shambles for over a year afterwards.

        If you’re expecting 24 months at that pace, you’re effectively just killing off the group to get the survivors. Approach it and compensate it as such.

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          If you’re expecting 24 months at that pace, you’re effectively just killing off the group to get the survivors. Approach it and compensate it as such.

          I was a Cross Country runner earlier in life. When my coach heard what college I was going to, he told me “find another activity,” because this is exactly what the coach there would do. He would run everyone who tried out for the team into the ground and race the last 7 runners whose legs still worked.

        2. Spero*

          I think it’s interesting that the amount of time you were able to do (9 mo) is also the amount of time the OP’s people are jumping ship! I’ve made it about 7 mo in a similar setup and I was only able to get through the last 6 weeks by counting down to the end. You just can’t do this for 24 mo straight.

          1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

            I think it’s interesting that the amount of time you were able to do (9 mo) is also the amount of time the OP’s people are jumping ship!

            I totally missed that. Good observation! And the start of my crackup was actually submitting my notice (that I later rescinded).

          2. em_eye*

            That is really interesting because I work in a field with hours like that (political campaigns) and that’s about the longest timeframe I’ve seen it attempted. Anytime programs have tried to start earlier they end up starting with more normal hours and slowly ramping up.

            1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

              In my case, 9 months is about how long it took to recruit, hire, and train reinforcements. I actually think that I might have made it another 2-3 months if not for the catalystic event and my workload dropping just enough to have just enough time on my hands for Madness to seize.

            2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

              Political campaigns, particularly in the home stretch towards election day, are perhaps the closest environment to investment banking that I can think of. All your energy is focused on winning the election (in campaigns) or getting the deal done (in banking) and people become myopic. Campaigns are a lot less lucrative, though.

      4. I think I work*

        The only way I would work that is if they had a campus with accommodations at the office provided for free with free catering, laundry, cleaning services, free ubers when I needed it and I would need at least 1 day off a week.

        You are burning out your employees and fast. I sometimes work 16 hours a day but even then I need time to recoup the next

      5. Anon for this*

        I was overseas in a warzone for over a year, working from 8am to 10pm because we had no need for a social life, yet even then they recognized the need to give us a break. We would eat as a group at the cafeteria, they pushed us to get out every day for physical exercise, and one day per week we started work near noon so that we had time for a coffee with friends and then we ended the day early at 7pm with a pizza party. We also had 3 weeks of vacation during our time, and 3 more weeks at the end of it.

        I can’t imagine anyone working longer hours than we did without breaking. We also dealt with some rather unusual work topics, which were an added stressor, but it sounds like this workplace is all high stress which would burn people out if they never get a break.

        The We Had To Suffer, So You Should Suffer Too style of management is not going to be effective forever. There might be reasons that it was justifiable in the past, but I agree with Alison that you will need to adapt unless you want to fail.

        1. The Editor-In-Chief*

          Same. Deployed, you drop off your laundry and pick it up a couple days later: free. Chow hall is fairly nearby and free. There was no Netflix, no social life, no need to take time to run errands or pay bills. Need shampoo? The PX is in a trailer a block from your office; would you like VO5 or Suave?
          No opportunities to do stuff like go shopping anyway, so you might as well be at work 12 to 14 hours a day.
          Even then, late starts Sunday mornings and EML/Block leave were critical and by month 12 we were all sick unto death of it. After 15 it was the end of everyone’s rope.

          Unless this job is somehow saving lives and there are no more people to hire …. yeah. Pretty amoral.

        2. Not So NewReader*

          Inhumane is exactly the word I was thinking also. Companies must adjust to the idea that they do not own us.

          1. DJ Abbott*

            They’ve had 146 years…
            Though part of the problem is they’ve found people willing to work under these conditions. That’s not so easy anymore, and this was a long time coming!

    5. rl09*

      Right? That’s 14 hour days, 7 days a week. There is no amount of money that would make that a sustainable lifestyle for most people.

      1. lostclone*

        That means literally having no social life, no relationships, never seeing your family, not even being able to watch the latest series on Netflix because you’re working All The Time. I wouldn’t even be able to keep my place clean and my clothes washed on those hours.

        There are things in life worth more than a high salary, and I really hope the OP can see that too.

      2. UKDancer*

        Definitely. When I was a student I interviewed for a company which offered significantly large salaries but expected pretty much to own their staff for very long days. Their company had a shop, a dry cleaner on retainer and provided transport back home when you worked late so you hardly had to leave the office. They expected their graduate trainees to belong to them even to the extent of them all going on holiday together.

        I came away from the interview with a clear view that no money on earth would reward me enough for the time they wanted to own. I took a job which paid a lot less but expected people to have a life apart from work and did not expect. I’m not surprised if people find the time commitment expected unreasonable when they take up the job.

        Perhaps also Covid has made people reassess their priorities. I’ve at least 2 friends in their late 50s taking early retirement. They’ve both lost people to the disease and become more aware of the fact they want to enjoy their lives a bit more as life is short. One of my friends is doing an art degree (something she’s never been able to do) and another one is setting up a small business in floristry.

        1. em_eye*

          Moreover, people just can’t accurately assess their capacity for a life like that when they’re in the interview stage, which probably starts while they’re still in school. This company is probably recruiting top students who have been high achievers their whole life, and those people think “Well, I’ve been juggling class, internships, student organizations, and a healthy social life for the last four years while still getting high grades and I’ve been fine. Besides, I’ve never fallen short of my own expectations for myself. Surely I can handle this too.” Then it’s 9 months later, and they realize that the impact of doing the SAME thing for 100 hours a week FEELS very different from maintaining a busy schedule of a lot of different projects and activities, even if on paper the hours are similar. Meanwhile, their college friends are settling into a more normal existence, and they’re turning down invitations to weddings, weekend trips, and happy hours while their own work consumes more and more of their life. Add in the physical strain (aging comes at you FAST in your mid-twenties after a couple years of living on takeout, no exercise, no therapy, and a high-stress environment), lasting mental health effects from the pandemic, and a generation that cares more about doing meaningful work towards making a better place than making a quick buck in the corporate world, and you’ve got a recipe for burnout. Then a family crisis, breakup, health scare, etc. is just enough to put you over the edge.

    6. COBOL*

      This is really a response to those below, but it’s been industry practice for brokerage houses and top law. Doesn’t sound fun to me either, but it’s the track to make 7 figures by the time you hit 30. Appeals to some

        1. COBOL*

          The OP has some great insight below. When I was in my early 20s I worked 55 hours for much less, but wouldn’t do that now to make $150k. I think the tides are shifting, and most of these investment banks aren’t worth it.

      3. Observer*

        Appeals to some

        Yes. But even a lot of people who think it’s appealing simply can’t do it. Or can only do it with so much damage that they realize that they really need to stop.

    7. laowai_gaijin*

      Yeah, I was like, “So, your overworked staff keep leaving. Have you ever thought of, y’know, not overworking them?”

    8. bishbah*

      The only purpose of hours like that is for hazing. They brutalize the newcomers (“because that’s how it was for us”), destroy any and all ties to a life outside the company, and run roughshod over any and all personal boundaries. It’s not about 100 hours a week of productivity at all, it’s about tearing these junior staffers down as individuals and rebuilding them as “company men.” (And they’re going to mostly be men.)

      1. Vaca*

        OP here – I see a lot of this and I can say, definitively, it is *not* true. I and my colleagues all work very hard to try and make things sustainable, and I would very much love to find a different way to do this work. But I’m just worker ant #2 at a smallish hill. I am not in a position to change the way the industry is. It’s 100% client driven. If I can’t turn the presentation around for tomorrow morning, they will find somebody else who will. If I can’t take on this smallish project, well, when the big one comes along I’m not on the list.

        1. Librarian of SHIELD*

          Your industry seems fundamentally broken. I get that you’re not the CEO and you can’t snap your fingers and get approval to double your staff, but please keep reading these comments and try to understand why this model of employment needs to be on its way out.

          1. Properlike*

            Also, OP, you kinda *are* in a position to change the industry — people aren’t interested in doing it. So your company isn’t going to survive, or it’s going to have to change drastically, or you yourself are going to have to switch places. You sound like you’re pretty high up in management. And…

            *You’re* not interested in doing this lifestyle either! You want junior staff to put in their time so you can have your weekends and your time, because you earned that privilege from doing it yourself for the people higher than you, right?

            I can’t even begin to imagine what your company sees as “work-life balance” if you think it’s being offered under these conditions for new hires. “We feed you so you can eat and give you cab fare so you don’t crash your car or pass out from exhaustion on public transportation” isn’t balance.

            1. Vaca*

              OP here – saying I’m “high up in management” is like saying “Wallace Shawn was the star of Princess Bride.” Yeah, he had a great role and people remember it – but they could just as easily have cast Jason Alexander and nobody would know the difference. Apologies to Dinner with Andre fans.

              2. gmg22*

                Wait a minute. Not to get too far off topic her, but elsewhere in the comments, you seem very focused on “only certain very specific people can do what we do and we can only do it a certain very specific way or else it all falls apart” thinking. Which clearly doesn’t spill over to other areas of your life, or you wouldn’t talk crazy talk like “Jason Alexander could have played Wallace Shawn’s part in ‘The Princess Bride’ and no one would know the difference.” :-D

                So if you really do think that, then why don’t you also think that your job could probably get done just as well if you made your team bigger, experimented with shift coverage, or some other kind of innovation? Is it truly make or break to the clients that the same exact person must answer an email at 11 pm every single night, or could that role be ably played by two people with the information and training they need to do it well? (Or maybe even better, since their brains aren’t fried by 9-9-7 work?)

                1. Momma Bear*

                  And/or is there any wiggle for more administrative/executive assistant people to support the team? Do you need to pay the junior to format that PPT or can someone who is reasonably tech savvy do it and let the SMEs fill in the meat of it? That kind of thing. Maybe have them on a shift schedule to cover the 24hr-ness of it?

                2. Vaca*

                  OP here – so I think that yes, in theory we can make that work. In practice, it’s really, really hard. I’ve explained some of this elsewhere, but a quick version:
                  #1 Problem: BOSS DOESN’T CARE. I go to boss, say here’s my proposed solution, he says, “sounds like you don’t want to work here any more, don’t bring me your ideas, and by the way I’m cutting your bonus.” Yeah, I could leave over that, but it’s not like I’ve done anything to help anyone. Except maybe my boss, who now doesn’t need to pay me.
                  #2 Problem: The industry attracts huge weirdos like me who (at least say that they) want to work crazy hours. If I got my boss to sign off, I’d have to start looking at a completely different pool of applicants. They wouldn’t have any of the (at least theoretical) preparation that those who say that they want IB go and get.
                  #3 Problem: We are dependent on a middle tier of people who came up like this and who expect to have analysts at beck and call. If I tell them that they can’t have that any more? They will leave us. Period, full stop. This is a no-doubter in my mind. They aren’t going to take a pay cut and they aren’t going to endure losing access to people on weekends. They’ll just go across the street and get a job at a place that beats the analysts.
                  #4 Problem: Let’s say we split the job into two. The one who is *really fired up* is going to realize pretty quickly that her income is capped well below what she’d get across the street, and immediately take steps to rectify that. The one who didn’t really consider this career path will stick around. Guess which one is going to be willing to go to the mattresses when bullets start flying.

                  Bottom line, I totally agree that the way the industry works is crazy and I’d love to change it. I am really, really good at my job and my clients love me. But I’m not able to effect change on my own. So where does that leave me? What are my practical steps?

                3. Liz T*

                  -If #4 is truly a problem, then do you have a problem at all? Wouldn’t that “fired up” employee stay in the job under the current conditions?

                  -If #1 is truly a problem, what do you expect Alison to say? Your boss sucks and isn’t going to change. Keep hiring new junior staff every 9 months I guess.

                4. Elizabeth West*

                  @Vaca–What are your practical steps? There don’t seem to be any.

                  Frankly, I’d leave. It’s not worth it and your boss doesn’t give a shit and is not going to change. I’m sure you have mad skills that could be useful elsewhere.

                5. gmg22*

                  A couple of questions:

                  1)Are you working under a non-compete agreement with regard to clients?

                  2)Do you know other smart people in your field — via networking, industry orgs, etc — who are similarly frustrated by these problems? If not, can you start networking with the purpose of finding some of them?

                  If your clients love you (and you won’t face any financial ramifications for poaching some of them over time) but your company doesn’t give a bleep about you, it just seems very clear to me from your story that your best bet is to find somewhere else to do what you do well. That might be a firm that’s more forward-thinking than yours about work-life balance, or it might be a venture that you and some other like-minded people start together.

                  I’m well aware that none of this advice solves the problem you wrote in about (retaining your trainees under your current work regimen), and I’m sorry about that but I hope the body of comments here has made clear that you simply can’t solve that problem on your own. It’s a system problem. Your firm’s work culture is simply not currently compatible with the needs and desires of many of the young people applying to work for you. And you’re right that that could be a temporary problem, that drifts back toward the status quo as we slowly emerge from the pandemic years. But I hope it isn’t, and I think you hope that, too.

                6. Cthulhu's Librarian*

                  @Vaca – Food for thought, but what would you say to one of your analysts who didn’t propose reducing hours worked to reduce churn in the work force to one of your clients in the same position you are now?

                7. Cj*

                  Problem #2. People would start to consider your industry and do the preparation necessary once they could work half the hours at half the pay. It might take a while to get those people in the pipeline, but if they are now quitting as soon as you get them trained, you would eventually be better off.

                  Also #2. You say the industry attack people like you who want to work crazy hours, but in your letter to Alison, you specifically say you don’t want to do this.

                  Problem #3. Those people could still have people at their beck and call. Just twice as many people working half as many hours. And as it currently stands, they already don’t have *trained* people at their beck and call, because they keep quitting.

                  All of your comments are indicative that entire industry needs to change. Because then people can’t just “go across the street.”

                8. glebers*

                  Vaca, one issue seems to be that all of you are trying to tackle this issue part-time. So here’s something practical: can your firm hire someone to be in charge of recruitment and retention? Or make it an important part of someone’s job?

                  You don’t have authority or time and your boss doesn’t value your opinion and also doesn’t have the time. Maybe someone with the time and expertise can make a difference.

                  This seems like a really important and costly problem for your firm and right now your firm’s management is kind of half-assing it in their spare time.

                9. AVP*

                  Honestly, if all this is true, you’re just screwed so you should look for other jobs yourself or know that you’re back on the 100-hr plan. If you absolutely knew that the new kids weren’t going to put up with this bs, what would you do? Is there anyhting you’d change in your own life? Do it.

                10. Cj*

                  I ran out of the available “reply” buttons, so this is in reply to Glebers comment. It’s worth a shot, but most people are just really over working that many hours, not matter how much they get paid. And by “people”, I don’t mean just young people.

                  And 100 hours/week is way, way outside the norm. That only leaves you 68 hours/week to sleep, eat, shower and commute. And probably nothing else.

                  OP said elsewhere that they provide at least some meals (can’t remember how many/when). I’m sure they do, so you can keep working while you eat.

                11. MentalEngineer*

                  It sounds like your central problem here is actually Problem #3. I would encourage you to consider whether any of your middle-tier staff have actually beaten a) an index fund or b) a coin over the last 10 years. Because there’s abundant data that suggests basically nobody is.

                12. DJ Abbott*

                  @Vaca – I think the solution to the problem number three is not to ask current employees to take pay cuts.
                  I know your boss is not supportive anyway but if you ever did get a chance to do this, start the new system of twice as many analysts at half the pay with the next new hires.

                  And

                  Offer it to the current analysts so the ones who are burned out can have that option instead of leaving. Leave the offer open for two or three months so those who initially turned it down and burn out later can stay.

                  If you are worried the hotshot grads will take a job across the street for twice as much money and working around the clock, don’t be! Let them, and they’ll burn out in 6 to 9 months and cross the street to work for YOU. :D

                13. FFS*

                  @ Vaca your “practical steps” could include not punishing people who realize that killing yourself via work is untenable?

                  Like. Okay. You can’t do anything to change the industry. I get that. But what you’re proposing in your letter is inhumane and cruel and you could just…not do that. Keep on doing what you’re doing now, refuse to take on any extra work (and cut your hours significantly), and eventually your boss will realize something’s got to give.

                  Punishing people for not sacrificing their entire lives to the altar of work, which is what your suggestions in the original letter amount to, is not the way to go.

              3. The Dogman*

                Can’t reply further down but you asked

                “What are my practical steps?”

                I answer.

                “Quit.”

                Seriously, you don’t need that job if you are going to work for toxic people like your uncaring boss. Get out, get a dog (get 2 actually, at least one must be a Labrador or Golden), get some walking done and go live in the country somewhere, get a job that helps people live rather than one that enriches some of the worst humans on Earth.

                Good luck!

                1. Wut*

                  Exactly. This is just finances. It’s rich people’s play money, not life or death. You can leave and let them figure it out; they’ll all be fine.

            2. CoveredinBees*

              They don’t pay for that stuff out of concern for employees’ well-being. They charge it to the client as a way to keep staff later. A lot of perks in tech companies (endless food, they do your laundry for you, etc) are the same thing. Get people to spend as much time in the office as possible.

          2. Goldenrod*

            Totally! I think Alison’s suggestion to hire more people + pay them less is so simple, it’s genius. It’s a perfect, elegant solution.

            The work gets done, you’re paying out the same amount of money, and people actually have some work/life balance. It’s a win-win.

          3. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

            But if these people stick with banking, they’ll earn considerably more than $200K as they progress to associate, vice president, and managing director. The software engineer, much less so. Even if they leave banking for the buy side, they’ll have considerable salary gains that the software engineer will not (and if they get lucky their wealth might even eclipse that of those who stay on the sell side).

            It’s the Wall Street lawyers who have a very bad value proposition.

          4. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

            The market — and not Librarian of Shield — dictates what model of employment “needs to be on the way out” — the market does that. OP’s firm appears to be an exception, but in general, large professional service firms are well aware that there is huge employee churn, and their business model *depends* on that.

            Moreover, there are still far more applicants for investment banking analyst positions than there are positions available. No one is *forced* to stay at an investment bank, and comparisons to slavery are offensive. The applicants know perfectly well what they’re getting into; some stay, some leave after their 2-3 year analyst program is up, and others bail midway through. Again, most banks have a good grasp on the percentage of new analysts that will fall into each bucket.

            1. Avril Ludgateau*

              The market — and not Librarian of Shield — dictates what model of employment “needs to be on the way out” — the market does that.

              It seems ~~the market~~ has spoken through the voice of the new generation. Or did we forget that “the market” includes labor, too?

              Nobody is saying anybody is forced to work in IB. I’m not sure why you repeatedly bring and contest a point that has not been made. In fact, the OP’s problem is pretty explicitly the fact that people are not being suitably forced to stay, to the extent they are considering employing financial penalties for leaving. Once OP makes that poor choice, then we can quibble over what constitutes “force” with respect to labor, but prior to that, you need to focus on the arguments that are being made and not the strawmen that serve your perspective.

              1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                Of course the market includes labor. The bottom line is that there are still more applicants for these jobs than there are slots.

                And to repeat a question I put to OP earlier: have they systematically studied where these people are going? If they’re losing people to bulge bracket banks, or to consulting firms, or to FAANG companies or startups, they’re not *really* leaving for better hours. The hours at those places may — sometimes — be marginally better than at banks, but those aren’t lifestyle jobs. They would trigger (and do, in other threads) just as many complaints from the “I can’t imagine working past 6 pm” crowd as does banking. People leaving for those jobs are doing so for attractions like faster promotion/more authority, or the allure of being a CEO under 30.

        2. Ashley*

          Honestly I think this year we are finding there are fewer of those people who will do anything and everything to meet crazy deadlines.

          I can’t help but remember the classic 9 to 5 movie where they talk about job sharing.

          1. Worldwalker*

            There was a time when 9 to 5 jobs went from 9 am to 5 pm, not half an hour on either side of that, and a lunch hour was an hour long, part of the workday, not an unpaid half-hour to bolt leftovers in the break room.

            1. GRA*

              Agreed. I always laugh when I see “9-5” because every job I’ve had has been 8-5, with the promise of an hour “off” for lunch that of times ends up getting interrupted with work.

            2. londonedit*

              I mean, this is how it works in my job (though lunch is an hour unpaid as is standard) but as I said above, I don’t earn very much so it’s swings and roundabouts!

          2. Rebecca1*

            I mean, this year, a lot of the people who were willing to take those kinds of health risks have died.

        3. JimmyJab*

          Yah, but if you have twice as many employees, the same people won’t have to do that last minute job EVERY TIME. NO one is saying you can never expect busy weeks or late nights, etc. Just that every week for 2 years of that is INSANE.

        4. Elizabeth I*

          I get that you need to keep demanding clients happy with quick turn-arounds. But why are you assuming that the answer is 100 hour work weeks, when you could just have more workers that each work less hours?

          You could stagger or rotate people’s schedules (or even have an on-call duty rotation) so someone is *always* available to help. This could actually make you *more* responsive to clients – which is a competitive advantage (not to mention the competitive hiring advantage of being an employer of choice due to the more reasonable hours).

          Plus, the quality of client work would go up so much if people aren’t sleep deprived and miserable. Yet another competitive advantage that you are missing out on currently.

        5. Claire*

          Okay, I’ve heard all this before. The thing is, it’s not working now. If y’all are smart businesspeople you can’t keep saying “this is how it was ” because clearly you’re not. Assuming this is the industry I think it is, definitely look at how senior are treating juniors, are they being reasonable, are they dumping work on them. The people I know who left after 9 months had issues like that. They knew about the hrs etc but the senior not helping things is what made them leave.

        6. Mockingjay*

          You may not be able to change the entire industry, but can you try and make things bearable for your own reports? Recommend the suggestions here to hire more people at lower pay and fewer hours. Tout it as cost effective strategy for retention and recruitment, avoiding the effects of the Great Resignation, whatever it takes. Get your poor staff some relief, because The Great Resignation is continuing. The companies that change now for the betterment of employees will be the ones that survive.

          1. Cj*

            I don’t think the OP is all that interested in making things more bearable for her own reports. After, all, she had to do it when she was new, so why shouldn’t they? And she doesn’t want to work more hours now to take some of the load off them.

            The one and only reason she seems to want to make it better for them is so they don’t quit.

        7. gmg22*

          Does any single client actually demand 100 hours a week from a team? Or are you working these hours serving a list of clients?
          – If the answer is the latter, aren’t we still circling back to “You don’t hire enough people to do all the work”?
          – If the answer is the former, what is the reason that it can’t be addressed by making the team that serves a particular client larger, and equipping everyone with what they need so you can be effective in a shift-type coverage model, ie someone will be available when the big demanding client needs them, but everyone doesn’t have to be available “9-9-6” or worse?

          Before you say “We can’t afford any of that,” consider that you wrote to AAM out of concern that your company investing a quarter of a million bucks a year in people who increasingly won’t stay. It seems clear that your current business model has a false-economy problem.

          1. Vaca*

            OP here – it’s the latter. We have lots of clients. I guess, brass tacks, I’d love to try it. I don’t have any input, though. And I suspect that, as a small firm, we would end up losing the better analysts to bigger banks who do the 100 hour weeks and be stuck with the lower performers.

            There are a lot of folks on here who insist on pointing out that the industry is insane. I agree! It’s insane! But I’m the red queen here, believing six impossible things before breakfast. I can’t snap my fingers and change the industry. All I can do is run twice as fast so as not to stay in place.

            1. JimmyJab*

              Ok, so you accept no solution other than punishing junior employees more than already? Ok, no, you shouldn’t do that, it’s bad. The end.

            2. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

              Maybe if 100 hr weeks from junior staff are required and you keep losing junior staff to bigger firms, your firm might be too small to be viable. Industries change and small-to-medium size business who are generalists have been disappearing in a number of sectors. Maybe yours is one of those industries where, unless small-to-medium sized firms can learn to specialize/find a niche, their days are numbered and their numbers will drop in the next 10-15

              1. Vaca*

                OP here – I’m going to counter that one, hard. I work really, really hard, but I know my family extremely well. I’ve given up everything else to make that balance work. I’m really not some flesh-eating monster.

                1. Nesprin*

                  Sure, I’ve known a ton of surgeons who claimed that there was no way that the 80hr/week cap for residents put in place by the AMA would allow them to learn everything they needed to during their residencies. And after all, they (the old guard) survived working 100+ hrs a week and went on to be great surgeons. Really, the culture of doom and gloom that the next generation of surgeons were going to be under-trained was almost comical in its oppressiveness. And yet, a decade after hours were capped, new surgeons still got trained, and got to sleep/not work for an extra 20 hours a week.

                  OP the point of this parable is that if you are losing people, and losing business because you can’t hold on to people, maybe trying other things would be beneficial. If it worked for you, that’s not a sign that it will work for everyone for ever in all situations.

                2. Apple of the day*

                  And is it worth it to you? Are you happy?

                  My father-in-law worked crazy hours in investment banking and spent all other time with his family. His only “hobby” was mowing the lawn twice a month. He had a lot of plans to retire and golf and travel. Was diagnosed with a terminal disease 6 months after retiring in his early 60s. Never met his grandkids or traveled. My husband is a hard worker but would never take a job that required 100 hour weeks. He knows that what you don’t do today may never happen at all.

                3. IDK*

                  I don’t think you are a monster, but I also think you are looking for excuses and justification for the way things are instead of actually processing the advice being given.

                  I have a colleague who refuses to work any OT. Her personal time is valuable to her. She can afford to give that push back financially. More and more people are finding the value in work/home life balance and realize the almighty dollar isn’t everything.

                  If you truly want to solve your problem, you have to be willing to look into alternatives instead of providing excuses for why things are the way they are. You might be surprised. Maybe those same workers who left for bigger brands will find the value in what changes your company offers to make the switch back.

                4. Cthulhu's Librarian*

                  You mention having family. What would you say to one of your children if they told you about a workplace asking them to work 100+ hours a week continuously for two years?

                5. Not So NewReader*

                  But you have high sitting duck vulnerability going on.
                  You have said here that you would prefer a different method but you are stuck perpetuating what the status quo that the boss wants.
                  How long are you willing to push the round peg into the square hole with out success?
                  How many years can you do this and still feel good about life?
                  Money is nice but at some point we have to think about what we are sending out to the world or our one square foot of the world.
                  Our country is changing and changing and changing, companies will learn to adapt or not.

                  Your company/industry is showing you that they feel no sense of loyalty toward you. They will treat you the way the newbies are being treated. Don’t get sick. Don’t have a family emergency. When people burn out the industry does not care. This telegraphs how you will be treated also. It’s okay to believe them.

                6. Anon for this*

                  @Apple of the Day
                  Your comment clued me into what may be the fundamental problem, although I don’t know why I didn’t see it earlier!

                  This isn’t about working 100 hours a week for 24 months, this is about working many long hours a week for a career, by OP’s own explanation. At some point the young people must be looking at OP and thinking that they don’t want to be stressed and unhappy and unsupported 20 years in future.

                  I also just had the thought that OP isn’t supported by their manager in some basic ways (how to hire more effectively), and their manager deals with problems in a horrible way by threatening the OP with being replaced. Young people may be looking at that dynamic and leaving for a healthier workplace. Other places may also expect long hours but if the environment is supportive then that makes a big difference.

            4. Spero*

              I would also challenge you to re-orient your mind. Is what you do SO impossible that 2 70th percentile performers would not be able to between them do more than 1 99th percentile performer? In most industries, it’s simply not the case. Two minds and sets of hands can do more than 1.

              1. Spero*

                And I’d also add: what you’re actually getting here is one 99th percentile performer with 3 mo experience and exhaustion vs two well rested, 1.5-2 year experienced 70th percentile people. At some point, the increased experience and mental state of your supposedly low performers will make them overtake the abilities of someone who had stellar marks right out of school but is now exhausted and trying to jump ship.

                1. Harper the Other One*

                  Exactly! An exhausted 99th percentile person is functioning way below 70th percentile, even before you work in experience.

                2. Greenbean*

                  Not to mention, if your firm is offering positions for 50 hrs/week, I wouldn’t just assume you’ll be getting low performers as applicants – on the contrary, you’ll probably be getting some high performers who had self-selected out of applying for the 100 hr/week positions. You will have seriously expanded your applicant pool.

                3. STAT!*

                  Agree totally Spero. Those “better analysts” are the hares. Also Greenbean below may be right that the even higher performers already self-selected out before hiring begun.

                4. Porcubear*

                  I’m also pretty fucking dubious that there aren’t any really high quality potential employees who also don’t want to work 100 hours a week. Not to humblebrag but it’s acknowledged that I’m one of the most technically skilled people in my office, as well as in demand for things like mentoring newer staff where we have a strong focus on being nurturing as well as helpful. I also regularly do exactly 2 hours of overtime when the busy time of year rolls around solely because then I can say “Oh, I already did some OT.” Forty hours a week and then I’m out the door. To OP, apparently the fact that I’m not willing to work ridiculous hours necessarily means that my work is poorer quality, and I think my managers and coworkers would all argue with that.

            5. Mattieflap*

              If your only recourse is to treat junior employees in a soul crushing way, your industry isn’t sustainable, no matter how much you claim to work to make it so.

              Maybe it was sustainable for a period of time – decades, even. But times have changed. We have over 700k people dead of Covid, we have more who have left the workforce due to the pressures of child care, long-Covid disability, or just out of sheer refusal to kill themselves for a job that won’t value them. Worker attitudes are shifting toward the idea that work does not equal their entire life, nor should it. If companies and industries cannot adjust to that, they will not get the employees they need.

              Since you can’t make junior employees stay and you’re frustrated by your own work/life balance as a result, I suggest you look for another job with better options to suit your life – just as your junior employees have.

            6. allmylittlethoughts*

              I see that you keep saying that you’ll lose the better analysts to companies that require 100 hour work weeks. My honest question to you is: why are you so sure about that? It seems like you are losing analysts because of the unsustainable hours, so wouldn’t they stay? Even if you do lose some that are interested in the crazy hours and higher pay, why do you assume that those willing to work fewer hours for less money will be the “worse” analysts? These both seem like pretty big assumptions and I’m wondering what you’re basing them on.

              1. TechWorker*

                ESPECIALLY if you’re hiring grads for these roles – there will be a whole bunch of very bright and talented people who self select out of the entire industry because they are not interested in 100hr weeks.

              2. Russ*

                So much this.

                There also seems to be an implicit assumption that how good an analyst is will be independent of how many hours they work, as if humans are motors that you can just turn on and off and it’s more efficient to leave them on for longer. This is not how anything works. I guarantee you that the analysts who are working 100 hours a week are not the best analysts because that’s humanly impossible. You are losing so much work quality to that schedule that it’s insane, and the only reason why you’re not realizing that is because everyone is so burned out your judgment is compromised.

                1. Stargazer*

                  It’s not even how motors work, either! “Burning out” comes from machinery after all. And I’ve seen the metaphor in real life when a clueless bean counter thought we could run them three shifts nonstop, too. It was not good, and not profitable either.

                2. Cedrus Libani*

                  Worse, the assumption is that the best analysts are the ones who insist on working for every last moment their biology allows. Yes, there are bright and ambitious young people who will snap up the largest paycheck offered to them, and who would never consider “buying” shorter hours by accepting less money. There are also bright and ambitious young people who want to kill it for 50 hours/week at work and then go home and do other things, they just know better than to go into the finance sector.

                3. Archaeopteryx*

                  Exactly. Right now, you are firm/industry is only attracting those interested in sacrificing themselves in order to make a ton of money. If you offer more humane hours, you may be able to access a candidate pool that is just as talented, enthusiastic, and skilled, but which has a broader concept of what it means to live a good life. Your culture may see the benefits too! Right now you’re driving away anyone for whom the pay isn’t a big enough temptation.

            7. glebers*

              Alison suggests hiring more people for less pay and fewer hours. You’re concerned you’ll just lose the top performers who are able to handle the hours. Can you split the difference? Have some positions that are lower paid and have other job functions where the grueling hours are expected for higher pay?

              Lots of good discussion here about the merits of the industry’s structure, but one of Alison’s good points is that it’s probably not reasonable to expect new professionals to really be entering this field clear-eyed. They may think they can handle 100 hour weeks but thinking you can and actually doing it is clearly different (and also totally reasonable). Which makes punishing them for leaving particularly awful.

              But if you have a job function that is less demanding, you have an outlet for these folks that are 9 months in and realize they can’t continue. You have a way for these people to switch jobs but not lose the time you spent training them.

              Or maybe you start folks on the lower track and the more intense job is a promotion for those who get an inside look at the industry and know they want it.

              1. Seeking Second Childhood*

                This is a good idea.
                OP, before you protest again that you are not the person who is making these decisions, I will point out that at a good company, someone who has a good idea get the credit for it. Make a business proposition, send it up the chain and see what they say. I really like the idea from glebers of having 2 tracks. I’ll go one further. Have everybody at the 50-hour track, with short, fixed-term assignments at the hundred hour level.

              2. Quinalla*

                Yes, this was what I was thinking too – dual tracks with the old-school way for people that are willing to work 100 hour weeks and the track that basically makes it a 50 hour week for less than half the pay (because benefits, etc. are all costs) and they do a jobshare to split the on call hours essentially. It would likely be challenging to manage at first, but I think you’d have much better luck keeping employees.

              3. Marion Cotesworth-Haye*

                Agreed. This is how BigLaw has tried to address similar issues — some folks have lower billable targets per year, with pay and bonuses prorated to account for that (and sometimes different titles). It does help retain experienced, value-add associates who are on the bubble between leaving and staying. As with any high-demand client-driven business, it’s not perfect because client needs are unpredictable, but it’s worth considering.

                1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                  It does help retain experienced, value-add associates who are on the bubble between leaving and staying.

                  One problem, though, is that those associates have already completed their professional degree, whereas investment banking analysts haven’t, and a lot of them want to gain admission to top MBA programs.

            8. Lexie*

              To me your letter read like you came up with a list of ideas and were looking for feedback on which one to implement or at least which one to submit to the higher ups. So I’m confused as to why you are saying you don’t have any input when people offer alternatives.

            9. LM*

              Then, no offense, why did you write in?

              You are all over these comments claiming you know how “insane” it is (could we not, with the ablist language, maybe?) But you are powerless to do anything! You can change nothing! These are all good ideas, but you can implement none of them! How terrible for you!

              What? If you already know your industry (or your firm in particular) has requirements that are unhealthy and toxic, then your question is all wrong. If you can’t qffect change at all, then why bother asking it?

              To be quite frank, between your post and your comments, it reads like you submitted this hoping for validation; to be told that what you went through was perfectly reasonable and of course there is nothing wrong with putting this generation of recruits through the same crap, they’re all just asking too much and should be perfectly satisfied with a fat paycheque, no social life and decreased life expectancy! How dare they!

              Otherwise you should have phrased your question as “my industry is finally starting to see consequences for its unreasonable behaviour and my position means I am getting the brunt of it as all our new starters quit before they are even halfway through their training period. Is there a way for me to survive this, or will I need to jump the same way all our recruits have done to get out of the line of fire?”

              Otherwise, why ask the question if you can do literally nothing with any of the answers?

              2. Vaca*

                OP here – I know I keep saying this, but:
                1. I do have input. Not really control, though.
                2. I definitely wrote some of those ideas when I was coming into a hellish week that ended up being 110 hours, two all-nighters, after an analyst quit for a competitor at a critical moment. I was feeling punitive.
                3. I have an immediate topic I have been given some purview with, which is “how do we avoid training people who immediately leave for a competitor?” That purview is not extended to “how do we change this industry from our back closet on West Broadway?”
                4. I like some of these ideas. If I leave this bank to start another, well, I might just use them.

                1. Black*

                  I’ve read your comments and unless your company is willing to change, the problem is unsolvable.

                  People have realized that it just ain’t worth it and $30/hr ain’t shit in a major metro area to work yourself to death. You’re going to get candidate after candidate who accepts the role, works long enough to make their resume look good and bails for a job that pays 2/3rds as much for a 40 hour workweek.

                  100 hours a week and no PTO is so absurd that your company has no legitimate complaint on the turnover rate. You abuse your employees, so you can’t complain when they use you.

                2. sagc*

                  It’s wild how committed you are to there being answer to this that isn’t “make the job suck less”. Like, all of this seems to be the result of basic, capitalist logic, and is totally understandable in terms of finance?

                3. Vaca*

                  @sagc – I don’t control any of the things people are suggesting that we implement. Seriously. It’s like telling me that we should all start speaking Mandarin at work. Seriously, it would be so much more efficient! Way more people speak it! It’s the wave of the future! None of us speak Mandarin. My boss doesn’t speak Mandarin. The bank across the street doesn’t speak Mandarin. I agree, aspects of the job suck. But just as Alison says about bosses, I am never going to change it. At least not at my current job.

                  @Black exactly. The challenge for the old school guys is that this party bus is going to crash eventually. And then the old way of doing thing comes back. At least they think so.

                  You all should hear the shade that got thrown at me for suggesting anyone who worked Friday night should get Saturday off.

                4. WellRed*

                  I don’t know if you’ll see this but why are they leaving for your competition? Also, if your mandate is strictly as stated in no. 3, we’ll that’s a big problem because it avoids the root causes.

                5. Apple of the day*

                  I think you need HR, like yesterday.

                  Also some places do a “sabbatical” for employees, they get some additional PTO after a certain amount of time working at the company. What if you gave folks 4-6 weeks PTO (and they truly were off) at 24 months, and maybe a bonus. A small carrot for making it to the end and a chance for people to reset.

                6. Not So NewReader*

                  Then this is who your company is and what your industry is.
                  I get it, you can’t change them.

                  The only thing you can change is YOU.

                  My friend is in X industry (not yours). She did the 100 hour weeks. Before she hit 40 she said, “I. can’t. do. this.” Now this is a person who is very good at their job and highly valued. She went home and stayed there for months. Her ability to function started to return. Now she is doing some freelancing.
                  At some point, and that point is different for different people, our bodies say to us, “If you keep doing what you are doing you are going to DIE.”

                  My husband worked 12-16 hours a day for years. He died at 59.
                  People don’t wanna die young, OP, and I think that is the point that you’re missing here.

                7. Koalafied*

                  You’re going to get candidate after candidate who accepts the role, works long enough to make their resume look good and bails for a job that pays 2/3rds as much for a 40 hour workweek.

                  My nonprofit job pays me nearly twice as much per hour for a 35 hour workweek, flexible hours, and 5 weeks annual vacation in addition to 10 holidays and early dismissal on Fridays in the summer and before holiday weekends. Because of the pandemic strain on everyone this year they upped it to Fridays off during the summer and are giving us the entire week of Thanksgiving instead of the usual Thursday and Friday.

                  More money is great in theory but at some point the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. Working 3x longer to make 2x more is a poor economic proposition.

                8. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                  I have an immediate topic I have been given some purview with, which is “how do we avoid training people who immediately leave for a competitor?”

                  @Vaca:
                  I, unlike most people in this thread, have worked in investment banking and BIGLAW, and on the sell-side. Here’s my three cents.

                  1. My first piece of advice would be to look at where these departing analysts are going.

                  – If they’re exiting for investment banking competitor — particularly if they’re leaving your boutique for bulge bracket firms — the hours are NOT the issue. They knew the hours coming in (yes, believe it or not, college seniors talk to the first-year banking analysts a year ahead of them), and they know that the hours will be equally as bad at most competitors.

                  – If they’re leaving for the buy side, the hours may be the issue, although bear in mind that the hours in private equity, while better than on the buy side, would still leave most of the AAM commentariat aghast. Bear in mind that it used to be that private equity firms looked for people who had spent several years at banks; Increasingly, they’re willing to hire fresh new analysts. Ultimately a lot of bankers see the buy side as their exit, and if they land a spot at a good private equity firm or hedge fund, there can be *more* upside than in banking with a (somewhat) better lifestyle. Why not leap earlier on, if you have the chance?

                  – If they’re leaving for startups, again, hours are less likely to be an issue. Startups may have marginally better hours than investment banks, but the hours are still quite intense. The analysts leaving for startups are likely to be *more* risk-loving than the norm: if you land at a startup that ripens into a unicorn, the position can be much more lucrative than in banking. (One of our portfolio companies had an exit recently; the early employees are now all multi-millionaires, and the later senior employees are mere millionaires.) Also, startups are less hierarchical. A fresh college grad at a bank may get to hobnob with senior folks at meetings, but she’s not the decisionmaker; the MD is. At a startup, she will have real clout. The same is even more true of new grads who go into politics: they do it for the influence, not for the money.

                  2. Investment banking is never, ever going to be a 9-5 job. The people above complaining about how banking leaves no time for crocheting or what not are not bankers and, in all likelihood, were never realistic candidates to become bankers. But that said, there’s a tremendous difference between working 70-80 hours a week, and working 80-100 hours. I do think that most banking work is compatible with a 60-80 hour workweek, particularly if you’re able to give people some down time in between deals.

                  3. Consider whether having analysts report to a single MD/VP/associate team, rather than being generally available in a firm-wide pool, might reduce unnecessary hours.

                9. esra*

                  The people above complaining about how banking leaves no time for crocheting or what not are not bankers and, in all likelihood, were never realistic candidates to become bankers.

                  I’m sorry to harp on this, but legitimately people are here complaining that working 100/hr week for years will harm you physically and mentally and that is provably true.

                1. More anon today*

                  Really, this may be your only option. Right now, you are feeling all the pain from people leaving. You said your boss doesn’t care. Of course not, you are insulating boss from the pain by covering for the staff you can’t keep. As Alison often says, you won’t get this boss to care until you can pass some of the pain on to them. If saying, “nope, I’m done, Xty hours a week is my limit, you’ll have to take over” isn’t an option, then I’m not sure what else you can do besides leave.

                  And yeah, one person leaving won’t instantly change things, but if it’s truly this hard to keep new staff, then eventually it will get bad enough that people at your level start leaving too, and eventually your boss and same level people at other companies might see the light. Until then, all you can really do is decide what you are willing to put up with – and be sure to tell them why if you leave.

              1. silverpie*

                Split verdict. The white queen believed the six impossible things, but the red queen did the running-in-place bit.

            12. gmg22*

              Ah ha. I wasn’t clear why changes like what I’m describing would automatically mean that better analysts would want to leave your firm and jump from the frying pan back into the 100-hour-a-week fire. But then I realized that we never discussed salary, and you’re assuming that what I’m describing means people get paid a lot less.

              I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m suggesting that your firm should realize it’s created a false economy by paying a small number of people a lot of money to work themselves into the ground, and should keep pay competitive (realistically maybe lower, but not that much lower) but invest upfront in hiring some more people. Profits in the short term will be lower, which, ah, there’s the rub. (I don’t know the ownership model of your firm, obviously, but if it’s small I’m assuming it’s private.) In the long term, however, it seems pretty clear that improved retention is going to save you an awful lot of time and money. But I know from fairly close-up experience (at a political risk consulting firm that had a lot of your industry as clients) that investment bankers are fatally bad at thinking in the long term, which I suspect is the Achilles’ heel you’re dealing with.

              What you are seeing from these early departures is practically shouting through a bullhorn: These kids want work-life balance — yes, even some of the really smart ones who have the stuff to become franchise players. Your firm should be brave and take a shot at making that happen.

              1. Vaca*

                Preaching to the choir on that one! I’ve been singing from the hymnbook of “we should be paying more!” for years. Unfortunately senior partners are immune from the power of the Lord.

                1. Madame Hardy*

                  Senior partners are not, however, immune from the power of a changing society.

                  What you are trying to do now is not working. Senior partners are insisting that it must work, because it has always worked, and therefore no change is possible. I have seen this line of thinking up close in the computer industry. All those companies are now out of business, or headed that way.

                  You can’t keep doing the same thing, expecting people to have no lives outside work, if the people who sign up to do it universally quit after six months. There isn’t an answer to “I need people to work these hours so I don’t have to work these hours.” You can’t fix your senior partners’ problem, being unable to hire people who can stand up to extreme pressure, when they’re unwilling to change the employment conditions. At least once you’ve found that person *and they left to get more pay*.

                  You can’t change how the senior partners think, and you can’t change how your employees think, either. You’re stuck in the middle. In my employment experience, you are also on a sinking ship. The whole corporate model falls apart — you’ve already mentioned this, that you’re losing bids — without people working exploitative hours.

                  Stop looking at your (very substantial) sunk costs in this firm, and ask yourself if you’d hire on at this firm, today, as a junior employee. If not, do your best to go join a firm where new employees do want to join.

                2. Not So NewReader*

                  My husband had a addition to an old saying.

                  The saying is “Crap rolls down hill.”
                  My husband added, “But the stench drifts upward.”

                  In years to come, OP, you could be come known as “one of them” who perpetuated this barbaric system.

                  You are saying your boss does not care. OP, the newbies who left are saying YOU do not care. They see you as entrenched.

                3. allathian*

                  Paying more won’t help with the unsustainable hours. Paying more, in the sense of hiring more people and allowing them to work less, might. I bet you’d get a lot better retention if you managed to cut working hours so that they never exceed 80 hr/week, and even that’s double the standard 40 hour week.

                4. allathian*

                  Oh, and also, given that working such long hours is unsustainable, you might just find that having people work a bit less means no loss in productivity, because they’re working more efficiently.

            13. Cthulhu’s Librarian*

              I suspect that you’d find a bunch of the older, more experienced analysts from larger banks, who are fed up with that lifestyle, willing to move to a less demanding role.

              And it wouldn’t take you two years to make them useful.

              2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                At the analyst level, they’re gunning for spots in top MBA programs. There aren’t a lot of “older analysts” at large banks; it’s an up-or-out culture. They either go to B-school, get promoted to associate (in rare cases) without an MBA, or leave for non-investment banking positions (whether on the sell side or outside of finance altogether).

            14. Phony Genius*

              I think the industry, the clients, the company, and the employees would all be better served by having more employees working with fewer clients each. I know that it’s not a 1:1 ratio, so one 10ohr/wk employee would probably have to be replaced by two 60hr/wk employees. This is still a significant amount of work for one to gain experience. Yes, it would take 3.33 years to reach the same level of experience as the current systems allows, but the quality of the work may well be much better, along with the quality of the employees.

            15. Sandman*

              This will be a tough problem to solve if you don’t have any real input, OP, but I wonder if losing the better analysts is as much of a problem as you fear. Maybe it is, it’s your industry and not mine, but if you can only keep people for a few months you’re not getting the payoff for those better analysts – or, since this sounds like an entry-level role, people who you think will be the better analysts but haven’t proven themselves yet. It could be interesting to think about what shifts you could make there.

              Also – are bigger banks keeping new staff at 100 hours a week, or are they having the same problem? That could shed some light on whether this is a larger cultural shift or if there’s some more specific issue with your firm.

            16. MK*

              Vaca, that’s really interesting about losing the best analysts to bigger firms – ultimately I guess you won’t know unless you try it, and you could be right. Alternatively though, if you’re not the only firm having this problem (and you probably aren’t), maybe you’ll be in a position to scoop up some awesome candidates who tried to do 100-hour weeks and just burned out at other places!

            17. Adam*

              > And I suspect that, as a small firm, we would end up losing the better analysts to bigger banks who do the 100 hour weeks and be stuck with the lower performers.

              Why do you suspect that? My industry (tech) used to be known for ridiculous working hours, and they eventually realized that the best employees care a lot about their working conditions and will move to the places that treat them well. You’ll probably lose the people who are willing to work twice as many hours for twice as much pay, but you’ll gain access to a bunch of people who would otherwise never touch your industry with a 10-foot pole, and it doesn’t seem at all obvious that the former people are more valuable than the latter.

              1. Porcubear*

                I commented further up about my job having a maximum of 60 hours a week, six days in a row, even during our busiest time of year. And you know what? I work in tech too. Another bonus of the good working conditions is that we have an incredibly diverse staff even if you’re *not* comparing only to other tech companies, which similar to staff not being overworked has been proven to lead to better outcomes as well because of the variety of perspectives (and just having cool coworkers). I could get more pay by switching jobs, easy, but it’s not worth it to me because I don’t want to risk losing the people focus my management has.

              2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                they eventually realized that the best employees care a lot about their working conditions and will move to the places that treat them well.

                Um, when did this happen? People in Silicon Valley or Guragaon brag about their long hours every bit as much as bankers.

                1. Silicon Valley person*

                  the braggarts are not necessarily the best – they are just the loudest.

                  Also, time spent working is not the same as productive time.

            19. Salsa Verde*

              “I suspect that, as a small firm, we would end up losing the better analysts to bigger banks who do the 100 hour weeks”
              “The one who is *really fired up* is going to realize pretty quickly that her income is capped well below what she’d get across the street, and immediately take steps to rectify that”

              I feel like what these two statements are saying is that you are concerned that if you hired people who would take less money to work fewer hours, those people wouldn’t be as good as the ones who are willing to work 100 hour weeks for more money. But the people that you decided were good enough to hire are leaving anyway. So you don’t have less fired up analysts, you don’t even have any analysts.

              So I would say A. maybe less fired up analysts are better than no analysts at all, and B. you don’t actually know that those who want more money and are willing to work 100 hours/week to get it are better analysts than those who are not willing to do that. It seems like that assumption is being made with no evidence, since no one in this industry has tried to work shorter hours for less pay in a long time, if ever!

            20. becc*

              I also want to challenge your core assumption here: “we would end up losing the better analysts”, i.e. “high performer” == “would only be happy working 100 hours per week”.

              That seems demonstrably false. You’re losing analysts right now — some of whom must be good — so they can have a more sustainable lifestyle. Surely many of them would be happy to stay with you and have that sustainable lifestyle without having to switch employers.

              I’d also offer myself as an example. I’m a former high performer in another stressful industry, and I consciously chose to cut my pay substantially to have more work-life balance. I’m no less of a high performer. I don’t see why that isn’t also true in your industry.

              1. aebhel*

                This. If you’re requiring 100 hour weeks, you’re selecting primarily for candidates who are willing and able to work 100 hour weeks. They’re not going to necessarily be the best candidates by any other measure.

            21. lunalae*

              I’m likely in a semi-related field to what you do, I know we compete with the Big 4 accounting firms for candidates and such, and we have some incredibly talented analysts working for $50-75K a year but 40 hr weeks and incredible health insurance. I’m not sure how much more our NYC counterparts make but I promise the talent isn’t going to be an issue.

            22. Academic Physician*

              ” . . . we would end up losing the better analysts to bigger banks who do the 100 hour weeks and be stuck with the lower performers.”

              From your original question, it seems that you are ALREADY losing (have lost) your analysts

            23. Cold Fish*

              Could you try small steps? Instead of hiring two people for 100 hr work weeks, try hiring 3 people for 80 hr work weeks. Still insane hours but a little more manageable. Use the excuse that you’re going to hire 3 knowing 2 will quit.

              I’m not trying to be mean here but people are offering solutions and you just keep shooting them down with “No, that won’t work” but you aren’t really giving reasons why that wont work that don’t boil down to “that’s just how the industry is”. You are a smaller firm, you are going to have to try and break that box and try something new because you can’t compete with the larger firms doing it their way.

            24. AVP*

              Look, if you don’t have any input, then we’re back to “your boss suck and you can’t change him, accept it and figure out what your next step is.” Someone is going to have to figure out how to hack this at some point, or you’re going to lose all your talent to Google. Go find that person and work for them, maybe?

            25. Elizabeth*

              But why do you assume the “better analysts” would leave?? Maybe the better analysts would also prefer a more sane work-life balance and you’d attract a huge group of loyal, happy analysts doing great work for you?!?

            26. Becca*

              You’re already losing staff. Apparently some to bigger banks (I think the letter said this?) but also to burnout. What you have isn’t working. If you can’t convince your current firm to change, maybe you should move to one of those big banks that apparently don’t have the same problems losing staff to burnout too? Of course the calculation is a lot more complicated than that. For you and also, I suspect, for the good analysts you fear losing.

            27. NotAnotherManager!*

              I want to push back on your idea that only lower performers want to have work/life balance. My organization is smaller for the industry, but we offer a better (not great, but better) work/life balance than the big dogs as well as more opportunities to lead earlier in one’s career.

              Also, if you have someone who’s not performing, get rid of them. You’re paying less for fewer hours, not for lower quality. I suspect your industry, like mine, is all about people with elite educations and high-falutin’ qualification – guess what? There are lots of smart, hard workers who dream of the opportunity to work in your industry and just didn’t grow up in the “right’ socioeconomic strata to be positioned for an Ivy/SLAC. I stopped letting principals interview junior candidates because they were looking for the wrong qualifications, and I rely heavily on situational interview questions to find people with the right raw materials. Find people for whom this is a great job.

            28. Former Borders Refugee*

              You’re not KEEPING the “high performers,” so what’s better? 6-9 months of a high performer that goes “I cannot do this anymore” and bails or 2+ years of a “lower performer” that actually learns the job and hangs around?

              Are the other larger banks also having this culture shift? Because that’s what this is. It’s a culture shift. Adapt or die.

          1. Vaca*

            OP here – I work weekends and evenings to try and free up time for juniors. I fight routinely to turn down mediocre assignments. I document training materials nobody else will, spend time on the phone reviewing documents live as a training exercise rather than just marking them up. I could easily just stop doing *all* of that.

            1. sagc*

              None of these, except for the first (which you clearly resent) is actually making their lives easier, really? Not better, at least.

            2. Slightly Burned*

              Okay so why don’t you? What would happen if no one else did these things? I don’t understand why you’re burning yourself to the ground for your employer when it doesn’t even seem like you enjoy it. I’m not trying to sound snarky, you genuinely sound miserable.

              I’m not sure what type of advice your looking for, but my advice to you would be to quit your job and do it soon. This doesn’t sound like a situation that’s going to get better any time soon, in fact I would bet money that it’s going to get significantly worse as more and more people are reevaluating what treatment they’re willing to accept from their employers.

            3. Rusty Shackelford*

              And yet they’re leaving. Why? What are they getting from their next employer that they aren’t getting from you guys?

            4. Yikes, op*

              I mean. Yes, you could actively choose to be a worse manager. That is a thing that you could choose to do. That is a thing you could dedicate your limited human lifespan to doing. You could do that. You could deliberately make your employees more miserable and stressed out, if that’s what you chose to do. You could give them another reason to leave for less abusive, greener pastures

              Or you could try improve things for the people you interact with. That is also a choice available to you.

            5. cyllan*

              But they’re still required to work 100 hour weeks. So you burning yourself out clearly isn’t the solution here. Hire more people; accept less work.

            6. Calamity Janine*

              with all due respect and kindness –
              if you’re struggling to deal with the added work that the junior associates would have done, and are clearly resenting the fact that you have to work such hours and burn yourself out…
              then… well… it’s a sign you’re not being kind to those employees, right? you’re showing that burnout is inevitable and this role is unsustainable, because you’re trying to do it yourself and struggling. instead of blaming the juniors who don’t want to be in your predicament, maybe look to the system that has put you in this predicament. it will mean swallowing your pride of “but i did my time in the sludge mines! i’m supposed to be past this! i put in the work, how dare they make me return to this sort of schedule!”, and that hurts. but if you can’t hack it, you can’t really get too mad that other people also can’t hack it. it’s not a personal betrayal any more than you suffering right now is a personal betrayal. if you’ve been doing this work for years and you know all the ins and outs, and you’re still burning out, it means the junior associates are absolutely doomed when they try to keep up, right?
              it sounds like it might be a really good time for you to look at your own situation and ask yourself about your own suffering, your own burnout, and your own willingness to do this to yourself. it might be that you’re in a situation where nobody is happy, including yourself, and everyone is being harmed, again including yourself. and that might mean it’s time for you to think about what’s good for you as a human individual instead of what is good for your company and your career.

              and it might mean deciding to vaca-te your toxic workplace, lol

              1. HerdingCatsWouldBeEasier*

                This is such great insight. I was reading this more as the OP going ‘well, this is expected, and they need to just soldier on regardless’ and less as the OP going ‘I am having to go back to these hours and I am drowning’. They know the 100 hour weeks aren’t sustainable- but they’ve convinced themselves or been convinced the only way to make it possible for /anyone/ in the industry to work less than 100 hour weeks is to have a constant stream of new people who do.

                1. Academic Physician*

                  We did this 15 years ago in medicine. I heard all the same THERE IS NO WAY WE CAN DO THIS — THE SYSTEM WILL COLLAPSE!!! stuff.

                  Guess what — the system did not collapse. Can I rest on my laurels the way mid-career academic physicians could when we flogged the snot out of our juniors? No, I can not. I still think it was the right choice, and I do think we could improve further.

                2. Calamity Janine*

                  honestly!

                  and sometimes, you can say “systemic change is impossible for me to manage”… but then follow that up by prioritizing personal change.

                  the personal change of not being yet another dead horse on the floor, worked to death and being flogged for not getting up to work yet more, is still change! and it’s change that OP deserves to consider! OP is also valuable as an individual – it’s not just about the glory of the company forever and ever.

                  that’s what i keep getting flustered over. and honestly what really worries me for OP.

                  please know you’re also okay to be prioritized as an individual, Vaca. not only can you do this, but you should! it’s okay to not fix the industry’s ills. it’s okay to make the choice you do have – and not stick around to become another victim of the industry.

              2. Not So NewReader*

                Why is your own misery so apparent to you, but you cannot see that other people are having a similar experience? This is what extreme fatigue does, it takes away our ability to think logically.

                Ya know. Years ago I started out waiting tables. I had a real “power through it all” mindset. I ended up jealous/angry/upset with people who said, “I am not going to work this hard, for so little money and be treated like dog crap.”

                OP! They were RIGHT! I had no perspective or sense of what was reasonable. It was ME who was off base, NOT the people who had the audacity to seek something better!

                We go toward what we believe. I believed that if I just pushed a little harder, I’d be okay, my work was sustainable. (False belief) Once I changed that belief to I believed there was something better for me, then my work life and life in general got better.

                I remember a friend stunned me. She said that in high school she hung out in the guidance office. She did odd jobs for them and chatted with the counselors. The reason she did this was because she believed that she could find something better and she wanted to put herself in a place where she would find it. Dang. I wish I was that put together in high school. But it’s never to late to learn this lesson.

            7. Liz*

              OP, I’ve worked in a similar industry. You really need to take a step back and realise thar you’ve drunk the kool-aid. These demands are not client-driven. The most talented graduates are not the ones who perform well in this dysfunctional environment. Your picking up extra work does the graduates no favours and will not be recognised by the partners – in fact, it’s likely to lead to your being sidelined for promotion and potentially retrenched. It’s time to take yourself to somewhere that values your talents, not just your willingness to work yourself into the ground.

          2. boo bot*

            Yeah, I am also curious about this. I believe the OP that they’re doing what they can, but I can’t really think of anything that would make this sustainable!

        9. Rainy*

          The thing is…you’re clearly not making this model sustainable. It’s not happening. You and your colleagues accept this lifestyle as a given, but the next group of professionals in your field are clearly not accepting it. The people who are trying to make it work for two years so they can then slow down are finding it unsustainable, or they wouldn’t be leaving.

          Things are changing, whether you like it or not. Trying to lock people into employment contracts that specify absurd punishments if they fail to do what basically everyone you hire is demonstrably failing to do is just going to end up with the pragmatic candidates laughing in your face and everyone else *still* quitting but now ghosting you entirely or getting a lawyer when you try to enforce those punishments.

        10. StellaBella*

          Vaca – I live and work in Europe. This is abusive and labour laws here would never have this – this is exploitation. If this was asked of people in several of the countries there would be riots. Workers here have strikes and riots over a lot. of right issues. Hired 3x the staff of juniors and give them work life balance and decent pay and an actual reward at the end of the two years – a paid month off, then a bump in salary for a permanent job. Also assuming you have this, get rid of the system of commissions you are relying on from the clients too and invest in your workers.

          1. TechWorker*

            I also live in Europe and the European working time directive is opt out. I am 100% certain there are companies this bad in London and very likely in a lot of other (though probably not all) European cities too.

            1. londonedit*

              Yep, every job I’ve had has asked me to opt out of the Working Time Directive. Luckily in my industry people aren’t routinely expected to work beyond their contracted hours (usually 35 or 37.5) but we’re asked to opt out so that they can ask us to work overtime if necessary. There are absolutely firms in the City with working practices just like the OP describes – I said above that I knew of a lawyer who worked for a City firm that would lay on taxis to take people home in the early hours of the morning, wait for them to shower and change, and bring them straight back to the office. I’ve also had friends working for companies where pizza would be laid on at 9pm and the expectation was that everyone would be there until at least 10. People would compete to send the first email in the morning and the last one at night so the boss would know they were still working until midnight and back on it again by 5am.

          2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

            This is abusive and labour laws here would never have this

            100% false. I’ve worked in the City of London, and the hours are basically the same as on Wall Street. In Asia, they’re marginally worse.

        12. TechWorker*

          So make it explicitly shift driven and have a 7am-5pm shift and a 4pm-2am shift. No-one does good work at the end of a 14 hour day.

        13. KDT*

          I work in consulting. Every project I work on, I estimate hours and estimate delivery time based on 6 hour days. I’ve occasionally worked crazy hours trying to figure out something (software development). But if the client wants it sooner and we don’t have the resources to add people. They have only two choices – accept the date given or reduce scope.

          Yes our compensation for working *40-45* hours is in the same range for *mid level* consultants. Seniors make more.

        14. EPLawyer*

          But why does the presentation have to be done by tomorrow morning? Has anyone, I dunno, tried to manage client expectations? Hey client you want that presentation done well and not by sleep deprived crazy people who will make mistakes, we need 3 days lead time.

          The clients need to learn that you are not available 24/7. They will live, really. But as long as you feed the belief that you are, they will continue to expect you to be.

          Now some jobs have to have people available 24/7 or people die. But you know what they have SHIFTS. Not the same people working insane hours. I hate to break it to you but your industry is not vital to life. Everyone will be jsut fine if you cut back the hours or go to shifts or something. NO ONE will die if the presentation is not done by tomorrow. Oh they will just find someone who will? Apparently not if people are quiting rather than continuing.

          1. Not So NewReader*

            I worked a lot of retail and the saying I heard so much was “control your customer!”.

            “No, I will not check the fluid levels on your vehicle after I pack your purchases into your car! Just NO!”

            1. Koalafied*

              I’m also fond of the reminder that “saying ‘no’ makes your ‘yes’ more valuable and more powerful.” The person who never pushes back gets all their efforts taken for granted – “Of course Millie will jump as high as we want her to, that’s what Millie does and has always done, why would I ever have reason to doubt she can do anything I ask when to date, that has always been true,” vs, “everyone wants Millie’s help because she’s that good, so we only have a few hours of her time – make sure you’ve prepared your questions for her ahead of time so we can get the most value out of that time.”

        15. Wendy Darling*

          I mean, what if NO ONE could turn the presentation around for tomorrow morning? Then your clients would have to suck it up and learn to plan ahead like the rest of the world.

          Because that’s the way this is heading. You can’t keep employees doing things the way you’re doing them now. Your competitors almost certainly can’t either. At some point the bottom is going to fall out of this “just kill the juniors with overwork for 2 years so clients don’t have to learn delayed gratification” model.

          You claim you don’t have any power to make this better, but you kind of do — you can shout up the chain about why turnover is so high. You can push back on unreasonable demands from clients. You can vote with your feet and find a workplace that doesn’t treat people this way. If you try to manipulate juniors into putting up with horrible conditions you’re part of the problem and I think you know it.

          1. Not So NewReader*

            If the clients are that fragile that they would leave over something like this, they were never your clients to begin with.

            As a homeowner, I have learned who in my area is good at what they do. I call them. They tell me, “I am available in two weeks.” I wait. And that is because I know for a fact that once they get here my concern will be permanently solved. I won’t have this particular concern again. So waiting is okay, I will still call them the next time I have an issue.

          2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

            Then your clients would have to suck it up and learn to plan ahead like the rest of the world.

            With due respect, clients in most industries aren’t doing $400 million deals.

            1. Wendy Darling*

              So? This is not in any way relevant to anything I said.

              Skip me with your rise-and-grind apologia. I don’t care how much money is involved in the deals. There is no valid excuse for that level of urgency that doesn’t involve nuclear weapons.

            2. yikes*

              Lol do you think that anyone outside of your little club of capital-worshippers finds that impressive?

        16. lunchtime caller*

          The only thing I can recommend is, coincidentally, what I have recently been hired to do for an IB firm, which is to outsource anything an admin or assistant can do ASAP. On my side I get paid extremely well for the kind of admin work I’m doing, so they can attract someone with the years of experience I have doing it, and on their side I’m immediately freeing up the hours of someone considerably more expensive than me. Especially in New York (assuming that’s where you are, but applicable to any major city) you can get career admin people who are used to working with big execs, who probably do all that stuff better and faster than your IB trained people anyway, since I assume their training is mainly in finance and NOT in lightning fast itineraries/bookings/presentations/etc. Once your junior people are looking at 70-80 hours instead, their feelings might change dramatically!

        17. AJoftheInternet*

          OP, I just want to say I’ve seen you around in the comments and you’re doing a great job keeping your head and not getting defensive or (visibly) upset. I’m sorry your industry is broken. That’s an awful place to be in.

          When I’m pitching to clients, what I’m pitching isn’t the core benefits of my job, because they already know those. I’m pitching why it’s best to work for me specifically. Is there any leeway you have in alluring workers with the benefits of your specific bank, or the long-term goals that aren’t financial that they can look forward to?

        18. Observer*

          I see a lot of this and I can say, definitively, it is *not* true.

          Stockholm syndrome?

          It could be that *you* cannot change it. But it IS changeable.

          And regardless, the right answer to your problem is NOT being more punitive. You can’t punish people into doing more than they can do. And you (I hope!) don’t want to punish people into doing illegal things to manage to do what you want them to – if you don’t know how many young people in your field use drugs to make it through, you need to get more air.

          The answer to your question is to recognize that the model is fundamentally broken. Your industry needs to adapt or it WILL be forced into change. Or you could look for a change of industry.

      2. rl09*

        “(And they’re going to mostly be men.)”

        This is such a good point. I saw a comment down below about how the high salary doesn’t go as far if you have to outsource everything else in your life. And I started mentally calculating the cost of a housekeeper/maid, a live-in nanny, eating-out/ordering-in every meal, etc.

        But then I thought….Or, they could just have a stay-at-home-wife. And that’s probably exactly what the schedule was designed for: men who have a stay-at-home-spouse. (Which is bad for many reasons, but also because you’re going to end up losing most of the women on your team if they ever have kids. I’m willing to bet this company hires some women at the entry level…but then somehow everyone in management is a man.)

        1. lostclone*

          Honestly, I’m pretty sure I would be heavily looking into divorce if my husband told me he wanted me to be his maid-cook-life organiser and, btw, I was only ever going to see him for maybe two hours a day for the rest of his working life. And also he’d be tired and grumpy when I did see him.

          That is to say – a lot of spouses just aren’t putting up with this kind of stuff anymore – which is a good thing, but not great for employers expecting 100 hour weeks.

          1. UKDancer*

            Definitely. The number of women who do the “stay at home and run husband’s life” thing is a lot less than was historically the case. Most of the time women expect their partners to take an equal role as a partner and co-parent and want a career of their own.

          2. Mellow Yellow*

            I nearly called off my engagement to my now-husband when his job started demanding unreasonable hours. And we’re talking 80 hour work weeks, not 100 like OP! I told him I refused to be married to someone I never saw.

        2. PT*

          This job is for kids just out of college. These are people who share a studio apartment in Manhattan with a wall down the middle because they’re never home. They aren’t married or have kids, they have no significant others, they’re probably don’t date beyond Tinder hookups and any groupies they managed to get while flashing money like jerks in very trendy nightclubs.

          Then yeah, if you get into the upper echelons of the company you start getting into the Devil Wears Prada/Nanny Diaries type lifestyle. Which is why those books/movies are all written involving people who live in a very specific square of Manhattan. They’re all about (mocking) the very small subset of people whose very unusual lives are built around this very unusal industry.

          1. rl09*

            Right, but isn’t the goal of the program to have well-trained staff that stay long-term? They won’t be “kids just out of college” forever, eventually most of them will start to have obligations outside of work. At which point, this job is only going to be sustainable for men who live a very old-school 1950s lifestyle.

            1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

              Right, but isn’t the goal of the program to have well-trained staff that stay long-term?

              No — that’s precisely the point. Professional services firms, including banks, *depend* on churn. In the case of banks, the assumption is that analysts will leave after two, possibly three, years. Many of them go to top MBA programs, and the banks may want to hire them back as associates (who have better working hours than analysts). Others go straight to the buy side, or to corporates, or startups, etc.

        3. Lily of the Meadow*

          But how long would most stay at home wives put up with this insane schedule themselves? How many wives and/or partners of these junior executives want to live as, essentially, single people who have someone else pay the bills that they never see and with whom they never interact? I cannot think most people would stay for very long in a relationship like this; I know I wouldn’t, and I am one of the most introverted people I have ever met.

      3. DJ Abbott*

        This rings a bell! It’s the exact same technique as an abusive relationship. I’m sure you all have read, as I have, about how an abuser isolates their abusee from their friends and family and runs over their boundaries and controls their life. This sounds much the same.

    9. Katie*

      You can “make it clear to them” perfectly, and they could very well think they could do it or that the money would make it worth it, but the reality will always win out. They can’t do it, and very few people could, or should.

    10. Mental Lentil*

      Yeah, this is nuts. If this pays $250k, then hire two people, have them work a 50-hour, six day week, and pay them $125k.

      This is so damn simple, but again, this is one of those toxic “company culture” or “industry norm” standards.

      100 hour weeks is just plain stupid when this is so easy to fix.

      1. Guacamole Bob*

        It’s not quite that easy because of benefits, IT resources, office space, taxes, etc. – companies pay a lot more than just the salary in order to employ someone. Contractors typically get paid 30% more than employees just to cover the taxes and benefits pieces.

        But yeah, cut hours and pay and hire more people.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          But since training always costs money, they’re not recouping any of that if people leave once they’re finally making money for the company. Hiring more people ultimately IS a cost-saving measure.

          And it would probably increase quality & cut down on errors. Nobody is at their best when they’re overworked, overtired, & overwhelmed.

          1. Guacamole Bob*

            Yeah, if you can increase retention then it’s definitely a good financial move. I just see a lot of people in the comments doing the math on the salary and number of people and hours per week per person, and wanted to point out that it’s not quite that straightforward.

            Fortunately OP works in an industry where someone ought to be able to come up with a model on the costs and productivity and retention and forecast out some scenarios…

      2. Goldenrod*

        “Yeah, this is nuts. If this pays $250k, then hire two people, have them work a 50-hour, six day week, and pay them $125k.”

        Exactly!!

    11. Pants*

      Sounds like a tax firm to me. You could not pay me enough money to go back to tax, simply because of the hours. No one should have to buy underwear and have it shipped to the office because they can’t find time to do laundry.

        1. Pants*

          I thought about that after I posted. It worked out to 6 to 9 months a year, depending on the size of your team. It was still absolute hell. I’d rather go back to waiting tables.

        1. Pants*

          You’re absolutely right.

          And it’s terrifying that tax is light by comparison. Tax is a living hell. Capital Markets therefore must be inside Satan’s anus.

      3. Leah K.*

        Definitely not a tax firm. Those guys might be working 100 hour weeks, but usually only during “busy season”. And they don’t get paid nearly as much.

    12. Momma Bear*

      Agreed. One thing this pandemic has highlighted for a lot of people is what their real breaking point is with their job and how much or little wealth matters. Quality of life balance seems to be a big tipping point. Will they get yelled at by customers? Feel unsafe? Work terrible hours? Complaining about people leaving and saying “that’s just the way it is” isn’t really figuring out root cause. Seems that a bump in salary isn’t enough for in-demand workers to stay and kill themselves. I agree with the suggestion to lower the salary, hire more people, and give them a better work/life balance. There’s no amount of money anyone could pay me to work 100 hrs ever, especially now with a family. You admit upfront they are overworked. Maybe it’s time to change that before the next round of interviews.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        And also, most people just don’t do their best work if they’re working more than 50-60 hours a week and not getting much sleep or time to relax. (I work 12+ hour days to coordinate events, but that’s for 1 week a year and then it’s over.)
        Unfortunately, it sounds like the OP doesn’t have much ability to change their company or industry culture, so they will likely be stuck with this crappy system. And the people who think it’s a good idea will cling to it even though it causes deaths. Some senior doctors here in the UK were complaining a few years back when junior doctors were trying to negotiate their hours down from (I think) 100-hour weeks, even though that kind of schedule has to have an impact on patient safety, not to mention staff mental health

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          The residency system has come under fire in the US, too. Even if you don’t care about the doctors’ health, it can’t be doing any favors for patient care. (FTR – I want all to be healthy.)

          1. The Prettiest Curse*

            Yes, I was just reading a comment further down this thread mentioning how the US medical residency system was invented by a doctor who was a cocaine and morphine addict (both legal back then.) And yeah, I don’t want anyone who is working a 100-hour week coming near me with a needle.

            1. Momma Bear*

              Same. There are a lot of industries where the work hours are unsafe. I don’t want that truck driver not stopping for sleep or bathroom breaks, either.

            2. Wendy Darling*

              One time I said I’d prefer that the doctor treating me not be someone who’s been working for the last 23 hours straight and someone well-actually-ed me to tell me that doctors are actually MORE SAFE if they work longer hours.

              Last time I worked that long I started hallucinating sheep, so I was and remain unconvinced.

      2. Detective Amy Santiago*

        I feel like the real headline of this letter should be “How do we force junior staff to continue accepting our well paid for abuse”

    13. freddy*

      Oh my god, there is nothing, NOTHING, N.O.T.H.I.N.G. on the planet that would be worth that kind of work load to me. When she said “grueling hours” I assumed 60 hours/week, which is bad enough! Holy crap, I can’t believe anyone ever agreed to this. Is this what crippling student debt forces people to agree to?

      I need to take a shower and a walk to shake off my visceral reaction to this letter.

      1. Not So NewReader*

        It’s the new indentured servant. Better make big bucks and stash it, gonna need it for those medical bills later on in life.
        My husband’s out of pocket for THREE months was 20k. Project that out, it would have been 80k per yr if he lived.
        The internal damage from living and working like this impacts us for the rest of our lives. And companies whine about health care costs, how odd.

    14. Boof*

      Not saying it was great, but medical residency – 80+ hr weeks, 50K pay, 2-3 weeks vacation, for 3 years. Admittedly 1 day off a week, usually, 3 weeks per month.
      Not sure exactly what’s going on but yes OP, find the root of the problem. Are people leaving because the money’s just not worth it? Is the environment toxic? Is there so little protected off time to sleep/exercise that people realize doing this for 2 years is actually going to be really bad for them? (like, are they on call and usually getting woken up q2 hrs even when not officially in “the office”?) I don’t actually know exactly what this program is and if it’s better solved by spreading 2 years into 3 years, reducing the wage, and hiring that many more people, or if it’s the sort of thing that yeah, people would be willing to do the work except they way you try to do it is untennable (again, atmosphere too toxic, what down time there is isn’t actually protected, etc) but there are ways and there are ways. Agree with Allison that just making it more punitive is most likely just going to drop your pool of excellent candidates.

      1. Elizabeth I*

        Well, medical residencies are also known for being abusive. And frankly, bad for patient care: I don’t want someone who’s been working 36 hours straight to treat me in an emergency! That’s absurd.

        1. Worldwalker*

          Or not in an emergency.

          Is that *really* the filter we want for our prospective doctors? Not medical knowledge, not skill, not bedside manner, not maximal patient outcomes … but tolerance for lack of sleep? Is that really giving us the best doctors?

          When I was younger and stupider, I could pull two all-nighters in a row. At the end of which I would take 3x as long as normal to complete simple tasks, because I was just so fried. That is not the condition I want my doctor (or my accountant, or my lawyer) to be in.

        1. Nesprin*

          I posted above- residents are now capped at 80hrs/week, after 100hrs/week being the norm. The changeover was met with much doom and gloom, but turned out to be fine.

        2. Boof*

          I’m not saying it was a good thing, but when I did it, 80 hrs a week was the IN HOSPITAL time… and I usually took more home but only reported the “in hospital time”. I’m going to guess it might have pushed 100hrs/week many weeks though I wasn’t really counting. I did know what I was signing up for, and in some ways there’s no comparison to just seeing/doing a whole lot, but I do think there are better models and residencies out there. But my objections are less about the actual hours, which in some ways were very valuable in learning things that you just have to see/do to understand, and more about that kind of baggage that tends to come with the programs like that (not enough time spent on principles / overviews, once I couldn’t call in sick when I was actively fevering and coughing my lungs out because “coverage is already covering maternity leave” — I mean what? That’s… not an unexpected thing, etc)

    15. Artemesia*

      And I did it — so it’s the right way. Reminds me of doctors who think it is fine to run interns ragged (who then are likely to kill me at 3 am by mistake) because that’s the way they came up. And this is for a business that arguably adds little value to the world unlike medicine.

      I know a couple of young people in my extended family who quit after a year of those 100 hour weeks. They moved on to very lucrative jobs where they work hard, are very successful and yet have had time to date, marry, have kids and be happy. Time to rethink a business model that depends on hazing juniors.

    16. S*

      Yup. OP is running up against actual physical limitations. It’s not that his new hires are lazy or awful, it’s that it’s physically hard for people to be able to handle those hours, and the trade-off is no longer worth the damage to the people doing it. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess they also have terrible gender imbalances because they have no flexibility and it turns out that pregnancy and 100-hour weeks don’t actually work for most people.

      As an economist, I can tell you that your solution is almost certainly what Alison suggests–maintain your per-hour compensation but spread it among more associates. My brother in BigLaw tells me that means it will take far longer to get associates up to snuff, but your attrition is already costing you a *lot* of training and recruiting cost, so why not try to reduce your people’s workload by 30% and expect that it’ll take 30% longer for them to achieve the level of ability you’re looking for? Make this a 30 month program instead of 24 months. The relative worklife balance (70 hours a week, yikes) is a perk among the population you’re recruiting, and if you end up with too much retention, rebalance to 80 hours and see how that goes for you.

      1. PenName*

        I’d be willing to bet it wouldn’t take that much longer to get them up to snuff. After so many hours working continuously, the brain is not working optimally. It’s like when you’re having difficulty doing a problem and stop and rest. Then when you restart, it’s so much easier because you’re rested. How much can a person really retain working that many hours?

    17. Alexander Graham Yell*

      Truthfully, if you cut the salary but hired more people you’d probably end up with less turnover…

    18. a tester, not a developer*

      Even $137,500 for 50 hour weeks, working one day of every weekend for two years, would still not be appealing to me, but I’m old and have a kid. As a junior employee, that sounds pretty sweet.

    19. Dust Bunny*

      Yeah, I’d like to make more than I do but I’d happily make considerably less than $200k a year to never, ever, have to work those kinds of hours.

    20. INFJedi*

      7 days = 168 hours!
      Working 100h of those 168 is way over the top! It means no downtime to just watch some television, no hobby(‘s), no social life, no family life,… just work and sleep (and probably a lot of the paycheck that goes to take-out food as well). This is so not healthy.

      In fact, doing this for 2 years will shorten one’s life drasticly.

      LW: people don’t just live to work, people work so that they can have nice lives. The job you’re offering is not it!

    21. Federal Worker Drone*

      Right? Shift work, people. it’s a thing. It works. Doctors are highly paid professionals and many of them work shift work in their early years of practice. Cut your work week by 60%.

      Good lord, that’s insane.

    22. EngineerMom*

      Exactly! This is more than 2 complete full-time positions, not 1 person working these kinds of crazy hours.

      And kudos to Alison for calling the OP out on the crap-tastic “well, this is how it was when *I* was coming up through the ranks!”

      Just because something has worked a certain way doesn’t mean you have to continue that method, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S TOTALLY SHITTY.

    23. Amethystmoon*

      Right? I have to wonder if the company only hires atheists, since no religious people will ever be able to attend their services. Better not have a baby or get sick either, I am betting.

    24. Rainy Day*

      Is my company asking too much of people, which is why they won’t stay?

      No, it’s the junior staff who are wrong.

  4. FionasHuman*

    Or simply re-train your clients not to expect weekend and evening hours? If your industry isn’t emergency room medicine, firefighting, or anything else where individuals’ lives may be hanging in the balance…there is no job that is more important than a person’s quality of life. And no matter how good the pay, the fact is that each hour we spend doing anything is gone forever. I’m going to be 100 hours closer to the day I die whether I spend that time in ways that are meaningful to me, or spend it making the owners of your company richer. Guess what I’d choose every time?

    1. Cat Lover*

      Even with emergency stuff, times are changing.

      I’m an EMT and we recently switched to a new 24 hour staffing type schedule, and it’s been brutal, especially on firefighters (there are less released firefighters than there are EMTs/Medics/etc). There is amazing PTO, but it’s not worth it to a lot of people. People are leaving for the next county over who have better scheduling.

      2. FionasHuman*

        You’re right; I should have worded my post better. Because of course workers in emergency-related occupations should be afforded reasonable work-life balance as well. The idea that a company that isn’t involved in life-or-death level work feels it can require those kinds of hours, though, is particularly appalling — I mean, who bloody cares if the client has to wait until Monday, or if the shareholders see a few dollars less value?

        1. Cat Lover*

          Oh, I agree!

          EMS (emergency med. service) obviously need 24 staffing and that makes it super hard on workers, but we (as EMS workers) know that it’s necessary, and we chose this profession. Same with nurses, doctors, etc.

          Letters like this make me go ???? Like, why does banking off all things need 100 hour weeks?

          1. FionasHuman*

            My guess is that banking “needs” these hours because the rich in this country are used to everyone else bending over backwards and kissing our behinds for them.

          2. Andy*

            So I will go there. The 24 hours shifts are choice by management. It is not something necessary. And sleep deprivation affects doctors, nurses, etc all the same as other people.

          3. DJ Abbott*

            There’s another reason – working this way is exciting! Oh the adrenaline, the urgency, the sense of purpose! I spent over enough time around this as a temp in the 90s to pick up on that. It didn’t have to be that way, but it was/is for the excitement.
            If you make it to upper level management, you’re treated like a king. All your meals in restaurants. All your life stuff taken care of for you by the administrative staff. You can come and go as you please for haircuts, doctor appointments, etc.
            All this looks good to young people who want adventure and success. At least, it used to.

    2. Jackalope*

      Or alternatively, have people work different shifts. If it’s 100% necessary to cover evenings and weekends, then hire people who have 5 day work weeks Tues-Sat or Sun-Thurs as well as M-F shifts. Have an early shift, swing shift, and night shift. Something like that if you’re sure the hours need to be covered so that people can work a reasonable number of hours but business needs will still be met.

      1. Ace in the Hole*

        Yes, exactly. I work at a facility that is open literally every day of the year in some capacity. We all work normal 40 hour weeks. We just have staggered schedules… one person works Mon-Fri, another Wed-Sun, a third Fri-Tues, etc.

        1. caps22*

          Definitely do the staggered schedules. I am in a field notorious for crazy hours (law), and realistically there isn’t a way to simply adjust client expectations since they’re being driven by other factors often out of their control, such as statutory requirements. I’ve been on both sides of the counsel fence, internal and external, and there is no short term fix to the crazy hours requirement. However, I’m 100% supportive of working as teams to enable a better work life balance. Now that I’m internal, I always ask for my external counsel to have a team or at least a designated back up so that when the primary attorney is unavailable, the secondary can take over smoothly. Less stress for everyone, and hopefully a better work life balance for counsel. Now for me, OTOH, I’m still trying to convince my boss to hire someone to support me!

      2. A Penguin of Ill Repute*

        When I worked at an Amazon warehouse (over a decade ago, things there seemed pretty good compared to the horror stories you hear in more recent years) we had four ten-hour days each. Some people worked Sunday to Wednesday, some people worked Wednesday to Saturday, and I was one of the lucky ones to work Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday off, work Thursday and Friday, weekend off. We called it the donut shift for that hole in the middle.

      3. Parakeet*

        Right. There’s one particular function of my org that runs 24/7. Full-time staff cover it on weekdays, with one person whose job it is to cover it on weeknights. Volunteers (like I used to be before I was staff) cover it on weekday evenings. Part-timers cover it on weekends. If someone has an emergency and nobody else among the front-line staff is available to cover the shift, whichever supervisor or director is on “backup” duty that week covers it. Nobody has to work ridiculous numbers of hours (and indeed, the front-line staff are non-exempt, so we couldn’t anyway unless the org wanted to pay overtime).

    3. Jules the 3rd*

      This. How do you get there?

      1) Pare your client list. If they always want evenings / weekend services, charge them more. Some will drop out or switch their preferences to business hours.
      2) Analyze what kinds of requests are coming in evenings / weekends. Deal with them by:
      * Having an evenings / weekends team specifically trained in those requests.
      * Building tools to let clients do stuff themselves, even if it’s just visibility.

      If you’re smart enough for the big bucks, you’re smart enough to analyze your assumptions, especially the one that says ‘it must always be this way, and money makes it worthwhile.’

      1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

        1) Pare your client list. If they always want evenings / weekend services, charge them more.

        That’s not how banks get compensated. They most take a percentage of deal size.

          1. US Expat Soon-To-Return to Asia!*

            Great. And why would the client would pick your boutique bank to run its IPO for 8% of gross proceeds when JP Morgan offers 7%?

    4. SleepyKitten*

      This is good advice, but given the industry they might be hamstrung by international exchanges only being open outside of US office hours.

      2. Jennifer*

        Yeah I was thinking they have international clients too. But they can easily just hire people do separate shifts.

  5. I Faught the Law*

    It’s almost like huge amounts of money aren’t enough to make up for having an otherwise crappy life.

      2. Metadata minion*

        Yeah, I could *maybe* see doing that sort of job for as much as a year if I had massive debt or something, but it would absolutely be with the intention of making enough money to fill my immediate need and then going back to something that wasn’t soul-sucking.

      3. AnonInCanada*

        But think of all the money you’ll be leaving your relatives after you die from exhaustion! That’s worth working all those hours for, isn’t it? /s

    3. Ms. Ann Thropy*

      Bingo. The question is disingenuous. OP knows that $ is not the reason they are leaving. OP enumerates the other terrible aspects of the job then wonders how to keep people working a job that is so bad that even a large salary isn’t enough to retain them. MAKE THE JOB BETTER. Hire more people, and treat them like human beings with actual lives. And know that the sort of people who can command $200-275K right out of school have options.

      1. Vaca*

        OP here – look, I get it. The challenge for me personally is that I can’t control the industry. Even if I wanted to hire twice as many people and pay them half as much, it would likely kill the firm if we were the only ones trying it. I said as much up above, but I’m not, like, CEO of anything. I’m Cookie the Clown. I come out when Bozo says come out and the kids laugh when I take a pie to the face. Put the same makeup on any poor schmuck and the kids won’t know the difference…

        1. Anonymous Koala*

          You’ve said this in a few comments, but I have to wonder if it’s true. How many people like this work, are good at it, but left because they’re totally unwilling to work crazy hours? How many people had children and self-selected out of the industry because it wasn’t flexible enough for parents? How many entry-leave candidates who are jumping ship are leaving for lower paying positions that don’t require these schedules? You don’t have to replace all your 100 hour positions with two lower hour, lower paying positions. But could you create a group of positions that allow for more flexible hours? Allow people to switch to a flexible schedule with set hours after they’ve gone through 6 months of training? Higher more support staff to ease the pressure on your junior staff? There might be room for more flexibility without nuking your current set up.

          1. Andy*

            > How many people had children and self-selected out of the industry because it wasn’t flexible enough for parents?

            I would guess not many. Because the schedule she describes prevents you to actually find a partner or date in the first place. And the partner you will find will care primary about your money anyway, because there is no way to have real relationship with these working hours.

            So, some people will have kids, but most of them will have trouble to get to stage when you have someone to have kids with.

        2. Olive*

          Sounds like you need to draft a Jerry Maguire manifesto then, on the off chance someone who CAN change it, asks you why everyone keeps leaving, lol.

            2. gmg22*

              Oof. OK, Vaca, I’m kinda rooting for you at this point and I hope you are taking all this tough love as it is meant. I see elsewhere in the comments that you basically don’t want to leave your job for two reasons: You’re owed a lot of money from the firm (options or profit-sharing, I assume) and you don’t want to burn your clients.

              My take: Whenever you can recoup as much of the money you’re owed as possible, find another gig. Or heck, start your own firm. If you don’t want to burn your clients, that says something good, which is that you believe you offer them something unique. Use that.

              Your firm is running scared, trying to work kids into the ground and act like it’s one of the big dogs when it isn’t. Boutique firms should be focused on what they can offer that Goldman can’t: innovative, non-system thinking and analysis is a big one, specialty knowledge is another. But with staff, in 2021, the killer app is going to be work-life balance. Which, yes, even some of the best and brightest are increasingly realizing they should want. And that is what you are seeing over and over again in your day-to-day.

              They’re calling it the Great Resignation for a reason. Make your plans. Take the leap.

            3. Starbuck*

              Then what advice are you really hoping for? It doesn’t sound like you’re able or willing to do any of the things that people have pointed out would actually help the turnover issue you’re having. If your question is ‘how do I enforce indentured servitude to keep people in this awful job’ no one is going to tell you that you can or should do that.

              1. aebhel*

                how do I enforce indentured servitude to keep people in this awful job

                DING DING DING

                LW, the job you’re hiring for is so terrible that nobody will voluntarily work there even for a pretty sizeable paycheck. That’s the reality. You either change the job, or you accept that this level of attrition is just what you’re going to have to live with from now on.

                1. Not So NewReader*

                  I mentioned this above, if you remain in the system you become part of the problem. This goes for any bad system.

            4. ThatLibTech*

              Echoing the choir here: there actually *is* no answer to your core question that you’ve asked here (and that I’m assuming your bosses have tasked you with coming up with ideas for). It’s completely out of your hands. You, who you are in your company, cannot stop people from leaving because you cannot offer the work-life balance or the benefits necessary to retain people.

            1. sagc*

              Look. You refuse to/can’t change the structure of your company’s hiring. You are unhappy with their failures in in hiring, because they’re working you too hard.

              What, exactly, are the sort of answers you’re looking for? “Here’s the contract language to claw back their bonuses”?

              Like, you’ve dismissed everything in the comments section with a split of “always been that way” and “I can’t change it”. Given those premises, what are your options but get a better job? Like your employees have?

              1. StellaBella*

                Agree here. Vaca is not listening and does not seem to want advice. if you have no power, Vaca why are you wanting the junior folks to stay? Why do you care? You are pushing. all our ideas off, so just hire others like the juniors who left, use them for 9 months and then get new ones.

        4. CoveredinBees*

          So, if you truly have no power to affect any sort of change in your office, what were you hoping to accomplish by writing to AAM?

          1. Vaca*

            Honestly, I want some real ideas here. I have some power to effect change. I can advocate for things. I can’t force anything to happen though. What did I really want from AAM? Frankly, two things:

            1. Some short term solutions. Really, we are delivering exactly as promised and it sucks to put in a ton of effort and have it flushed.
            2. Better thoughts about how to implement something like this. I agree that I would love to hire more people and pay them less. I think there are some real logistical issues that would need to be addressed and that I’m not in control of.

            3, I suppose, I was hoping for some explanation as to why we *can’t* do the things I laid out, so I can go back to my boss and explain the same…

            1. Slightly Burned*

              To number 3, read through this thread and you will have a long list of answers to bring to your bosses.

            2. Three Flowers*

              Vaca, I think you aren’t going to get practical suggestions for getting people to work an obscene schedule here because as you can see, most of us agree that what you’re asking of your juniors is outrageous. Personally I think it would be actively unethical to help you perpetuate this.

              I’m trying to think of how to say this…you trained in this system, which people are rightly pointing out is indoctrination a la boot camp. If you weren’t already inside the house, do you think it would seem structurally sound and inviting to you? (I’m asking as a PhD and therefore someone very very familiar with apprenticeships that are anywhere from inhumane de facto hazing to outright abusive, excused as “we’ve always done it this way.” And I’ve also worked an unrelated job with 100-hour weeks part of the year.) Please, for the sake of your juniors and your last six weekends, think about this.

            3. S*

              You said earlier that your competitor is offering a guaranteed free weekend a month and luring away your employees with it. Sounds like that’s some strong proof that free time is compensation in your industry. Yes, those idiots may fire their lower-hour workers if the economy contracts, but you don’t have to imitate their stupidity.

              Meanwhile, if you claw back salary for people who don’t stay, your workplace policies will be worse than your competitors’ and your already-challenging recruitment landscape will become worse. At best, you’d have to make it up by increasing your starting salary. But most likely you’ll just have your people get bought out of the contract by their new employers and you’ll still be hemorrhaging people.

            4. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

              For #3 you will have less people apply for your program if no one else requires the same. And, if medical tuition reimbursement plans for underserved areas are anything to go by, people will either quit and go elsewhere as soon as they are out of obligation or will just pay the fines because it is better than working there.

              1. JM60*

                “or will just pay the fines”

                Or will not work as hard, since getting fired may get them out of paying the fines for quitting.

                1. Calamity Janine*

                  and talk about setting up a perverse incentive for your employees there!

                  “this job is miserable, but i’ll owe them money if i just quit… time to sabotage this and do a worse and worse job until they fire me!”

                  sure, there’s the threat of a bad reference… but that doesn’t mean much if people are burning out so hard they sometimes leave the industry altogether.

            5. glebers*

              Your comment below that you are having trouble even finding candidates is key. It’s not just that people are leaving, you’re also having trouble finding people to start! You likely have lots of otherwise talented people self-selecting out because of the lifestyle issues. For your question #3, I’m not sure how punishing those that leave is going to help when you’re struggling to hire in the first place.

              All sorts of things are possible with an improved candidate pool

              1. glebers*

                (Basically for #3: how is making the job less attractive because leaving is punished going to help when you’re already not getting the quality of candidates you want?)

            6. Anon for this*

              I guess my comment down below went into moderation, but since you mentioned you need some real ideas (and I agree, you’re not getting them here): you could look into hiring under contract, not work for hire. They can’t quit, but you also can’t fire them, and Alison’s point about having a “demoralized and resentful staff” would be something you’d really have to work hard to prevent (or correct).

            7. gbca*

              For #3, I think the point to take back to your boss is that punitive measures like claw-backs on salary is going to get you a really crappy reputation in the industry with these junior workers. So you’re going to have an even harder time competing with the big banks. I know the MBA IB recruiting game pretty well, I didn’t do it but I went into corp finance so I observed plenty of classmates who did. You will quickly get a reputation for putting in punitive policies and have an even harder time getting top talent. You want the carrot, not the stick.

              1. A Wall*

                Right, like, if you know they’re leaving for your competitors because the competitors are offering them a better deal, you offering them a worse deal is not going to get you more candidates or better retention.

            8. Cthulhu’s Librarian*

              Short term solution? Consider starting to train people earlier, when they’re still working on relevant degrees, but also working them less hours. Offer an apprenticeship program where your firm pays for their classes while they work for you and learn to do what you need.

              Then, when they finish their degree a year into working for you, maybe they’ll be ready to hit the ground running… and maybe your company will have enough invested to listen when they say “n’way mate” to the ridiculous 100 hour weeks

            9. Former IB Analyst*

              Vaca –

              I’m going to assume this is IB because I don’t know what else it could be. I spent two years as an investment banking analyst at a Bulge Bracket before leaving for greener pastures so I do understand your position (including why simply hiring more people and decreasing pay is not something that will easily work). I have a lot of thoughts on this topic:
              1. It’s true that analysts know what they’re getting into (on the surface) when they go into the job but frankly it’s hard to understand how brutal 100-hour weeks for weeks on end can really be on your physical and mental health until you actually go through it. For me, I totally underestimated how tough it would be for two main reasons: 1) I, like many others, always worked extremely hard in school and didn’t sleep that much so I thought it could do it. However, even then, staying up studying or whatever was always my choice and I could set my own schedule. It was so much harder to keep working on a Friday night after staying up until the wee hours of the morning for days on end when I felt like collapsing. 2) I didn’t find the internship to be so bad, but it wasn’t until later that I realized that the full-time job wouldn’t be like the internship and that during the internship, the analysts were shielding me from how bad it really was. Once I realized it was a totally miserable job, I wanted to get out, but ended up staying for almost two years because it took time to figure out what to do instead and also took awhile to successfully interview on top of working so much.
              2. While I felt bad that the more senior folks had to go through the same brutal treatment (if not worse) as an analyst, I didn’t care for the argument that because they did, so should we. I didn’t feel that that was any excuse for perpetuating bad working conditions decade after decade. It’s not really that relevant what folks had to go through in the past; what’s relevant is what the job market is now. I now work in tech which is a WAY more attractive deal in my opinion. Extremely high pay for pretty normal hours and amazing perks, even as a relatively junior person. My opinion is that unless something seriously changes with banking, you’re going to lose more and more people to tech.
              3. Increasing pay is a short-term band-aid that won’t work in the long run. All analysts ask for is better hours / more reasonable working conditions, but all banks are ever willing to do is to increase their pay.

              I do think it’s tough for you / your company to enact change on your own because it is such a competitive industry. I actually think many of the suggestions that the Goldman Sachs analysts had last year when they released that junior working conditions survey were pretty reasonable. But I feel like it takes a company like Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan to enact that kind of change. Once they do, other banks may follow.

              2. Current Lawyer*

                Funny, I assumed it might be law! Apparently they’re all bad because I’m with everything you said 100%.

              3. tech finance*

                This is such a good point. I recently moved into tech, and it pays stupid good money for much better WLB than banking. Even considering living in Silicon Valley or NYC, let alone getting paid big tech money to live anywhere in the country, which a lot of companies are allowing.

            11. Yea okay*

              You came to a blog that very strongly advocates for reasonable workplace practices looking for help to better perpetuate really exploitatively unreasonable workplace practices. I’m not sure why you thought it would work.

            12. HoundMom*

              I have worked with a lot of investment firms and I agree, this has been the nature of the industry. A lot of people worked crazy hours for two years, got their masters and then moved on. It sounds like you are now encountering two types of employees. 1. they burn out and move on into related industries where this background helps them and they have more life balance (and probably make more money because of their IB pedigree) and 2. those who move onto other 100 hour firms.

              You can’t do anything about the first group — they have opted out and there may be more people in that boat now than in the past.

              For the second group, have you asked why they think changing jobs is better. The hours are probably the same, but are they given more access to being in the room, tuition paid for the MBA, or whatever?

              One of my friends who works at a small IB said that it has been harder to retain junior folks during the pandemic because of the remote work. Another friend in a similar role is not having the same issue, but their team never left the office.

              Have you asked the current employees what would make their lives better, putting out the parameters that the hours requirements are a no-go?

              It seems you are trying to solve a problem, but have not really delved into the data gathering stage.

            13. VicePope of the Almighty Bunny*

              Vaca, everyone’s been giving you ideas, but your responses have all been “we can’t do that, it’s unworkable, we can’t do that, I have no power.” Bluntly, you don’t sound like you want ideas. You want support for the abuse your company is pushing.

              Well, guess what? If your company can’t change, it ain’t gonna survive. Period.

              To paraphrase a well-known, hard-working cargo shipper: “What good’s your pay if you ain’t around to spend it?”

            14. Not So NewReader*

              #3. The primary answer is because people are going to die young. But before they die, they will drive your health care costs through the roof.

              You boss is either rigid or entrenched. Either way, you will probably not be able to communicate to him what is wrong here and have him comprehend it.

              You can’t have a logical conversation with exhausted people. They are too exhausted to be logical.

              And honestly, OP, I am hearing exhaustion in your own writing here.

            15. Violette*

              You’re hiring cut-throat capitalists who can spot a razor thin profit margin from a mile away. That’s your talent pool, right?

              OF COURSE they’re going to take your money and get out. Ruthless self-interest is exactly the trait you’re selecting for. At least doctors in training get the reward of actually helping human beings. What possible reason could anyone have for being loyal in your industry?

              Do you really want to hire people who can’t ruin the very basic math to realize how pathetically low the hourly rate you’re offering is?

              Stop being surprised or peeved that your staff exhibits the behavior the market rewards, because responding to market incentives is literally the whole job.

              2. Hippo-nony-potomus*

                “Do you really want to hire people who can’t ruin the very basic math to realize how pathetically low the hourly rate you’re offering is?”

                $60/hour for someone fresh out of college is a not a “pathetically low” hourly rate.

                1. Anon For This*

                  Except that at 100 hours a week, it’s really more like half that…on the high end.

                  *I* make more money than that an hour, and I have reasonable hours and a degree in English.

            16. Formerly Ella Vader*

              I was wondering if … instead of paying bonuses for people who make it through the two years – what if they got paid more right from the start, and it increased a bit every month, so that the people who decide at 6-9 months that it’s not worth it might stick it out a few more months. Presumably, the better-trained they get to be, the more effective they will be – so they can accomplish more in the same hours? resulting in an incremental decrease in the workload?

              I had a family member who was in a much lower-level job which was difficult and unpleasant and a lot of hours without enough rest time. The deal was that if they stuck it out the whole tourist season, they’d get a bonus in October. But around about mid-summer, my young family member’s ability to delay gratification couldn’t withstand his limited tolerance for sleeplessness and getting yelled at, and the bonus didn’t seem as appealing. I think if he had had more money in each paycheque or a day off, he might not have quit.

            17. Andy*

              The juniors are making decisions for themselves. Very likely, they initially think they want do it for money or that there is no choice. They might initially think they are lucky to have any job.

              Then they realize what it is doing to their lives. They cant get girlfriend/boyfriend. Their existing partners break up with them. They cant have family or friends. They are loosing existing friends, they cant visit parents. They cant be there for relatives that needs help. And then they realize there are other options out there. They can actually get different jobs.

              And second, I would look at whether the environment itself is not toxic. I doubt relationships between people are good if they are leaving so quickly so often.

            18. Koalafied*

              #3: “Boss, after an extensive investigation, I’ve confirmed that it’s impossible to dig your way out of a hole.”

            19. DJ Abbott*

              This may have already been suggested, but can you start small with changes? I think I saw that your competitors offering one day off a month to its analysts. Could you offer the same and a little better, say two days off a month? Or two days in six weeks, or 1.5 days a month?
              I could develop into an escalating back-and-forth, but that would be a good thing for the industry!

            20. bschool grad*

              Okay, why don’t you increase the amount of time off like your competitors have? That may entice people to stay even if they would be laid off in the next recession. They likely came in only planning to stay 2-3 years so that may not even be relevant.

        5. Spero*

          We’re not trying to get you to change the industry. We’re trying to make you do, say, a pilot program of 5 of your 100 hr week superstars at 25ok vs 10 of your supposedly less great 50 hr weekers at 100k each, and then look at who stays the whole two years and the work product at the end of it. And then AFTER you have those results you can start your industry revolution…although I’m guessing it will happen as people knock down your door for your better environment.

          1. Frank*

            Right? I don’t understand why OP thinks top performers wouldn’t be falling all over themselves to work in an industry they enjoy at a sustainable pace in a company that’s brave enough to lead an industry-wide transformation. One good company can have a domino effect on what’s considered normal.

            1. HungryLawyer*

              Because investment banking is literally all about making as much money as possible regardless of human cost (I mean, that’s pretty much the MO of all for-profit companies, it’s just laid bare in IB). OP’s problem is that they cannot conceive of a reality where someone isn’t interested in earning as much $ as possible at their job, even if the trade-off is fewer working hours. That’s why they repeatedly assume through the comment threads that the top performers will leave if they offer lower salaries no matter what.

              1. A Wall*

                The gag is that all their top performers are already leaving for more time off or a better work schedule, that’s the whole reason they wrote in.

              2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

                OP’s problem is that they cannot conceive of a reality where someone isn’t interested in earning as much $ as possible at their job, even if the trade-off is fewer working hours.

                …but if the analysts are leaving for bulge brackets, or even boutique bank competitors, they’re still encountering the long-hours culture; they’re leaving either for better compensation, or to have a better name brand on their resume for B-school applications.

        6. Paper Librarian*

          What I gotta wonder when you say that you’re easily replaceable, why don’t you leave? Surely you could find a job someplace where you’re not treated so horribly?

            1. SuperBB*

              Please don’t worry about your clients, because they spend zero time worrying about you. If you’re serious about leaving, negotiate your new salary to cover the money you’d be giving up if you left now, or recognize that the lost money is a sunk cost and you’ll be trading it for a better life.

            2. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

              Your clients honestly don’t care since they will just be assigned someone new. I’m sure they like you, I’m sure they appreciate your hard work, but if you disappeared tomorrow they would be just as happy working with someone else

                1. Slightly Burned*

                  This isn’t to be mean or heartless, but it is 100% true. If you died tomorrow they would be forced to find someone new and they would be fine. Companies do this all. the. time. It’s not personal, it’s literally just business.

                2. HungryLawyer*

                  You said above that if your company doesn’t complete a project on a client’s timeline then the client will go to the firms across the street. Clearly, they do not care about you. Don’t jeopardize your career and health worrying about them!

                3. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

                  Better half works on the client side of your industry and it is very true. Best case scenario, “Did you hear Vaca retired/quit/died/was abducted by aliens? Sucks, she was good to work with. Hope the new person is as good.” and that is about it. Remember, this is not a personal relationship, it is a business one, so anyone who can do the role well is just as good as anyone else who can do the role well. And this is no shade on the quality of work or you as a person. Your clients can genuinely appreciate your work, be sad you left, and still shrug and move on because, push comes to shove, they are going to assume the new person assigned to them are going to be just as good as you. If not, they will go to a new firm.

                4. Prolix Prolix*

                  Why wouldn’t it be true? You’ve said repeatedly that you can’t make changes because if you do your clients will leave. You’ve admitted repeatedly that everybody at your firm is replaceable. Of course that includes you.

                5. Neptune*

                  You literally just described yourself as “Cookie the Clown” and that if you “put the same makeup on any poor schmuck and the kids won’t know the difference”. If that’s how you view yourself I’m not sure why you think your clients wouldn’t too. Nothing you have said so far suggests a warm and fuzzy industry full of meaningful personal connection.

                6. WindmillArms*

                  Your clients couldn’t live without you, but they would dump your firm and go across the street if you weren’t available 24/7?

                  You make incredible money, but it’s all still owing?

                  You’re still doing 100+ hour weeks in your 40s, but telling 23-year-olds things will get better once they ‘pay their dues’?

                  None of this makes any sense.

                7. The Dogman*

                  Of course it is true.

                  If you were hit by a bus tmmw (please don’t be hit by a bus!) there would a “Oh Vaca is in hospital for 6 months eh? That’s sad… Anyway…” conversation and someone else would be handed your clients.

                  You work in one of the least humane and ethical industries on Earth, you can’t really be surprised at being disposable can you?

                8. MCMonkeyBean*

                  I honestly don’t understand how it would not be true. This is generally the nature of client relationships. You can build good relationships and exchange Christmas cards but at the end of the day you are just a person providing them a service and they can get the same service elsewhere. That’s how this works.

            3. And Peggy*

              What does that mean, you’re owed a lot of money? The ONLY thing this job has to attract junior employees is the pay and you’re not even getting that?

              1. Gingerblue*

                Literally every detail OP gives about their own life is the sort of thing I’d be looking at as a junior employee and thinking, god, that’s not where I want to be in ten years.

              2. Not So NewReader*

                I find this very concerning. Why can’t you get your money, OP? What is going on here?

                I have watch a lot of people wither away and die, OP. I can tell you first hand there is not enough money in the world to fix the human body when it finally breaks down.

            4. Calamity Janine*

              “plus i’m owed a lot of money!”

              so… you’re telling me… you aren’t even getting your full pay here??

              and still burning out, and resenting others for burning out because you feel you’ve earned the right to no longer work this hellish schedule…

              and you feel like you have all the responsibility and none of the decision-making power, and also there’s no HR department? oh and you admit you’ve sacrificed a lot of your life to this company, too?

              listen – i have flipped a bit from my initial impression. i will admit, i was not very replete with sympathy for you as i started looking at the comments. now i am. because, if i’m being both kind and unkindly blunt, you sound like a battered housewife telling me about how your husband only beats you up sometimes and that’s how you know he’s a good man, he only gives you a black eye when you really deserve it.

              this… this is not okay! this is really not okay. i am genuinely worried about you as an individual person. if you were my friend i would be pressing you to take time off and lovingly shanghaing you into a weekend vacation so i could get you away from this environment and lay this all out when your head was clear. if it was a personal and romantic relationship and you called me to cry about this at 2am, i would not be telling you about how you need to give your partner another chance, i would be telling you to pack a go bag and that i’ll be over there as soon as possible because i’m hopping in the car to come get you this instant. i have done that before, i will do it again, and this is where you’re at right now. if you were before me in real life, i would absolutely reach out to gently place my hands upon your shoulders and give you a good shake before pulling you into a hug and encouraging you to cry it out.

              it is that sincerely worrying.

              but hey. listen. i know i am just a random yahoo from the interwebs. you probably aren’t going to listen to me, and quite frankly, it’s a good life rule to not fully trust life advice from strangers in comment sections.

              but here’s what i will gently advise you. listen to Alison, who is an expert about this. and also make a list – write it down – all the things that have come up here. no HR department. training for hires that you describe as worse than an albatross around one’s neck. you having all the responsibility (and blame), but no power to change anything. working these incredible hours when you had been assured that you had already completed that part of your career, showing that your company can’t fulfill its promise of “you only have to do this sort of thing for a little while then you move up on the ladder”. how much you have sacrificed of your personal time and personal life for this. how it has led you to want to lash out and punish people who find these working conditions unacceptable.

              write it all down, all the little details that are popping out in the comments and making people here gasp in shock and horror.

              then find a good therapist, and insist on needing to take time off to go to them, even if it’s on the weekend. (if your workplace objects and tries to guilt trip you, write that down on the list too and then do it anyway.) and go over that list with them.

              i’m just a random jerk on the internet, after all. i don’t expect you to take too much stock in my opinion, nor should you. but i can guarantee you that when you go over this list with your therapist, that therapist is going to make a face that will instantly tell you how not okay this situation is for you. even if that therapist is a poker champ and has had many years of keeping a straight face in all sorts of ludicrous situations. let them offer the official vibe check on this situation. worst case scenario, even if you think everyone here is full of hot air, you get the smug satisfaction of being right as you’re told this is totally fine and the internet is just full of histrionic strangers. but, well, the odds of that happening are… probably very low.

              go to that professional and let them illuminate how you’re in a really bad position right now, and let them guide you on how to get out of it so you can be happy, healthy, and most importantly *sane*.

              you deserve that. you deserve to have a job that does not throw you in the meat grinder like this. you deserve to have a job that does not set you up for failure in all these ways. you deserve to have a job where you are appreciated and valued for what you do. you deserve to have a job that supports you and is interested in your success.

              you deserve to have a job that doesn’t owe you money and actually pays you on time!!

              …i’m pretty sure that this exhibit of logorrhea is now longer than Alison’s answer, but, well, please take that as a sign of how sincerely worried i am for you.

              1. Aitch Arr*

                Calamity Janine,

                I am also an unknown rando on the interwebs and I think you are a good person.

                Thank you for your caring post.

              2. Thursdaysgeek*

                Yes, all of this. When you’re in an abusive relationship, it’s sometimes very hard to see the abuse. People outside can see it much more clearly than someone enmeshed in it. People here are seeing it. Please listen to them. Please find a different job – with your hard work and attitude, you should be excellent in a non-abusive type of work too. Don’t worry about sunk costs – the benefits of leaving both this company and IB altogether will become clear to you during your recovery.

              3. Not So NewReader*

                OP, here’s a great comment above.

                I, too, am actually worried for you. You’re telling us dinner got burned and we are trying to explain to you that actually your house is on fire.

                You want to convert your heathen boss into a human being. It’s not gonna happen. And now we see you are getting screwed out of pay. This is a machine and the machine is chewing you up and spitting you out.

              4. Dr Wizard, PhD*

                Thank you for saying this. LW has become what I can only call institutionalised and doesn’t seem to see how messed up everything they’re part of is.

              5. TurtlesAlltheWayDown*

                It’s most likely they are owed equity that vests over time or another form of scheduled bonus payment – not that they weren’t paid on time.

                1. Calamity Janine*

                  honestly, that almost makes it worse, given that the effect is not one being induced by someone who acknowledges it’s shady dealing… it’s working as intended, and the effect is to keep OP feeling trapped at a dysfunctional workplace. even if it’s not as out-and-out sketchy as playing games with the final check, it still totally makes me D:

                2. Rainy*

                  Jam if you stick it out long enough in a job that’s actively trying to kill you is not jam.

                  Even if OP makes it to the magical day when they get jam on their toast, they’re going to be too tired to enjoy it.

              6. Phoenix Wright*

                This is so compassionate, and I wanna thank you for writing it.

                OP, please please please read Calamity Janine’s post and take it to heart. This job is killing you, literally killing you, and you deserve much better. Everything you’ve said about it sounds like a horrific nightmare, I’m not exaggerating here. Don’t let it keep destroying you.

              7. DJ Abbott*

                This fits with what I was noticing above – The description of how the juniors are treated exactly fits the description in magazine articles of how abusers begin a relationship. They isolate their partner from friends and family and control their environment so they can eventually have their way.
                That’s how the juniors are treated. They’re isolated from friends and family by the unreasonable demands of the job and spending all their time at work in an environment they don’t control.
                OP, you are also being abused by this employer and environment, and you’re so enmeshed you’re having trouble seeing solutions. You need to get away from the office for at least a few days and clear your head, ideally with friends or family who can help you talk through some of this. Good luck!

            5. Violette*

              Loyalty to your clients is the worst reason I can imagine for staying in a crummy job. Your clients would drop you in a heartbeat if they thought someone else could make them more mone.

              Don’t be a sucker.

            6. Lily of the Meadow*

              So a main premise of your argument is that there is so much money to be made in your industry, but somehow, now, you are stating that you are owed a lot of money; therefore, these junior executives are not only putting themselves into servitude for insane schedules that no one can keep working for very long, but they are NOT going to be receiving the “great salary” you keep pushing. If YOU, as a senior executive, are owed a lot of money, then how much more are the JUNIOR executives owed? If you are not receiving your fairly earned wage, why do you think they would? It seems to me, reading through the comments, that you are not looking for actual help, because every comment you make is defensive and making an excuse for why you cannot change anything. You wrote in attempting to find someone who would show you a way to force your junior executives to submit to the indentured servitude of your industry. You are not going to get that here, and your company is going to continue to hemorrhage junior employees, because your industry and C-suite executives refuse to do what it would take to keep good employees. You are probably going to have to accept that, because you refuse to try.

            7. BabyElephantWalk*

              You’re owed a lot of money? Like, deals haven’t closed and you haven’t made your commission, you haven’t vested in some sort of stock plan yet, or your company is withholding your pay? If it’s the first two, you aren’t actually owed anything, even if walking away from future money hurts.

              If it’s the third, well why are you so worried about your company’s ability to retain juniors if they can’t be bothered to pay you?

        7. Wilbur*

          Do you have dedicated staff/analysts, or is it a big pool? If you have some dedicated staff on your team, maybe you can pitch a pilot program with a dedicated weekend analyst (Fri-Sun, Fri-Mon, whatever). Cut the hours or get set hours, cut the pay to match and show what works.

        8. Vermont Green*

          So are you saying that in your role you have responsibility but no authority? That is a terrible position. You have a problem to solve but are not allowed to take creative steps to solve it.

            1. Mel*

              So the reward for these new employees, if they manage to stick it out for a few years, is that they get to move “up” to a job with even more responsibilities but no authority? Maybe they can see that your job sucks too and it’s never going to get better.

              1. Starbuck*

                Ding ding! OP seems to think the reward of working for their firm is job security, or advancement, or something. Well, look at the example they have to look forward to! OP has a crappy work arrangement still, after many years at the firm! Why would the carrot of ‘we won’t lay you off when things get bad’ be at all appealing? Plus, these days, no one trusts declarations like that anymore anyway.

          2. Not So NewReader*

            Typically jobs structured with a bunch of responsibility and no authority woefully underpay that job holder.

        9. Nesprin*

          But…. we’re not suggesting that you change the industry, instead that you change how you staff your own company. You’ve made comments that you’re small and specialized- why not be costco-like (i.e. pay well/manage hours, minimize turnover) instead of wallmart (i.e. do the minimum and accept turnover)

        10. cyllan*

          Then it’s time for you to get out of the industry. Seriously. You’ve identified that it’s toxic, and that you can’t make a change in it to make it less toxic. You should quit.

          Or you should go talk to your CEO and have a really honest conversation with them about the problems you surfaced here and push them to change things. I think those are you two choices.

          I mean, there’s also option 3: do nothing, feel sorry for yourself, and continue to burn people out over the course of a year. But that’s a really terrible option.

        11. Alsafi*

          Is it not going to kill the firm to continue to lose recruits halfway or less through the training period? Because it sounds to me like you’re already going under. And if that’s the case, you really don’t have anything to lose by innovating. Or possibly, it’s time for you to gtfo & start your own firm where do have the power to make these decisions, & see if you can make a name for yourself with a “making a living, not a killing” approach. If your current bosses are determined to hold on to the anchor while the water rises, you don’t have to stay tied to them while they do it.

        12. Seeking Second Childhood*

          Even if I wanted to hire twice as many people and pay them half as much, it would likely kill the firm if we were the only ones trying it.
          OR your firm would walk over the competition by providing a higher quality of service.

        13. WindmillArms*

          The firm is going to die either way then. It’ll die if you’re right, but it’s also going to die because you can’t retain anyone junior and folks at your level are working triple time to cover for their absence.

          You’re killing yourself for a firm that’s in a final death spiral. Leap now.

    1. hamsterpants*

      That’s just enough time to pay off your student loans and make yourself a modest nest egg to tide you over as you find a new job.

  7. iceberry*

    There are a lot of well compensated jobs out there that actually allow you to enjoy your life too! Maybe it’s time to adjust to the current reality, especially in the context of the “Great Resignation”. 100 hr weeks are not it.

    1. OlympiasEpiriot*

      I knew already. This is why every investment banker I have know spends much of that money on cocaine.

      Their decision making is obviously influenced by this.

      2. Vaca*

        OP here – never tried cocaine, don’t know anybody at my firm who has. I’ll admit to the occasional weed gummy.

        1. Boof*

          I think the rumor is, and I can’t say if it’s true or not, that you basically have to resort to drugs in order to actually sustain the alertness due to sleep deprivation etc. Glad you haven’t had to do it; I guess the question is, it sounds like you went through this a while ago; are you sure conditions aren’t actually more brutal now than they used to be?

          1. Vaca*

            Boof – yeah, I’m sure. If anything, they’re probably a bit easier now; when I started out, you could barely even work from home. Working late meant staying at the office. Now you can bring your laptop home. Plus I work *very hard* to try and protect people as best I can. I mean it when I say that I work evenings and weekends to get the kids breaks. Certainly nobody did that for me when I was coming up!

            1. Gnome*

              Maybe an additional helpful thing you could do is not referring to your mid-twenties employees as “kids”

            2. Boof*

              OK, well I guess folks just don’t want to live like that anymore. I can’t help but see the parallels with medicine, which I think used to have people working insanely hard for ridiculous hours (I mean, my rule for myself is to try not to work more than 60 hrs a week, and I routinely fail it, and residency was 80+ hr weeks – and I still feel like a slacker compared with how I know some people run the show). But I think those folks either literally lived on site (old school “residents” were, literally, residents in the hospital) and/or have a team to sustain them; the old model of a [breadwinner] who just worked and made tons of money while someone else [housespouse] stayed at home and kept everything going – food, laundry, cleaning, +/- children. I think a lot of people just aren’t as interested in being a workhorse anymore, especially if the ideal of the program is to go on and… continue being a workhorse. Sure a few people still do it but a lot want to work “part time” (actually more like a normal full time job).
              I hear you that you don’t think you can change the system but I guess if someone’s asking you, you could propose some kind of pilot program – two for one, or shift work of some kind, etc.

              1. Academic Physician*

                Boof – I think I’m slightly older than you and I can confirm that the 100+ weeks were true prior to the work hour restrictions that were instituted in about 2005. Q2-Q3 call with no post-call early out was not unusual, particularly in surgical specialties.

                For the non-docs on the thread an example of Q2 with no post-call early out means: Monday: Work ~7am to 6 pm, expected to work through lunch (normal 11 hour shift); come back in to work at 7am on Tuesday and work WITHOUT ANY GUARUNTEED BREAKS until about 6pm Wednesday (an on-call shift), come back to work 7am to 6pm Thursday (again, likely no lunch break) and then work 6am Friday through 6pm Saturday WITHOUT ANY GUARUNTEED BREAKS (another on-call shift), maybe get Sunday off if they are lucky, go right back to a call shift on Monday and so forth like that for about a month. Then you hopefully get an outpatient rotation, which is more like 55-60 hours a week.

                By the way, my understanding is that neurosurgery trainees are exempt from work hour restrictions and are still allowed to do this.

                1. Boof*

                  Indeed, my residency was ~2015 – we did do q3 for ICU but it was the era where we weren’t allowed to have to work more than 28 hrs without a long break for sleep so the next 2 days were off – fellowship there was a bit of call but honestly the attending at this other (much more benign) institution were beauteous about telling us to take the am off if it was clear we’d been up all night, and the call got heavy enough I think they finally instituted a triage nurse (my senior fellows said they’d get called maybe 1x a night, when I was ending my fellowship we’d be lucky to go 2 hrs between calls at night, and if it was a holiday weekend the calls would be so frequent we often couldn’t answer them fast enough at times during the day albeit a lot of it silly stuff that a midlevel could do like med refills etc – they do have midlevels covering now)

        2. Palliser*

          I work in another area of financial services. I’ve heard that a major vendor that I used to work for (famous for back and orange screens) has been losing employees right and left because they want everyone to return to the office. I also hear my clients (IB and beyond) bemoaning how they need to remain competitive against the tech industry and I agree. They need to compete both on salary and lifestyle. It doesn’t help you personally, but what you’re feeling is evolutionary pressure and the industry is going to have to evolve. There’s no question they could hire twice as many people at 50% less salary, 50% less hours and 50% more humanity if they wanted to do it. And eventually if it becomes painful enough, they will.

        4. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

          I’ve worked in banking, and I’ve never known anyone who has used cocaine. As with any segment of the population, I’m sure there are drug abusers out there, but you’d do well not to get your ideas about how investment banks operate from Hollywood.

          1. OlympiasEpiriot*

            I have personally known many investment bankers, mostly in the 80s, but, also one with a high sense of self-preservation who bolted out of the south tower before it fell on 9/11/01, and all barring one person snorted coke regularly. I extrapolated, perhaps, but, I certainly didn’t get my ideas from movies.

            Note, this is only IB and only the big pressure cooker firms.

          2. Avril Ludgateau*

            Correction: You’ve never seen anybody do cocaine in front of you, or discuss their substance use with you. That doesn’t mean they don’t. It means they have discretion.

            It’s not always coke, either. You may also be shocked to learn that stimulant abuse is rampant in medicine (well, surgery, more so) and law. Again, just because you aren’t seeing it does not mean people aren’t abusing Adderall to get through their 14+ hour days.

    2. Junebug*

      So, I’ve got to ask- what’s the justification for working 100 hour workweeks? Investment banking sounds like the ultimate plug-and-play line of work.

      2. T. Boone Pickens*

        If you’re curious, there are a ton of YouTube videos out there where current or former investment banking folks describe how they spend their weeks. If I remember correctly from watching them, a lot of it was client driven last minute changes to different things.

        1. Junebug*

          It’s called communication. Assign multiple people to each client, available in shifts around the clock, with information centralized. Nobody is irreplaceable, or so special that nobody else can handle what they do. Coordinate. Like every other industry.

          1. Software Engineer*

            That’s what ‘follow the sun’ is for—have teams in Europe and/or Asia so your ‘evenings’ are somebody else’s work hours. If you’re working with clients all over it helps to have staff all over.

        2. DAMitsDevon*

          Yep, my younger sister used to be in investment banking before moving over to private equity (which only has a slightly better life-work balance tbh), and from our conversations it seemed like she spent a lot of time during business hours just kind of sitting around and waiting for instructions/communications from clients, and then suddenly would get time sensitive tasks to do on nights and weekends.

      3. AVP*

        So, I get it when the OP says that someone needs to be on call – sh*t happens in foreign markets all the time, your clients are working every day and they want a response, and if you’re playing with like .025%s then waiting three minutes to make a trade makes a huge difference. But it doesn’t track to me why they ALL need to be working those hours – just hire more people like every other company and spread them out.

        I suspect that they don’t want to hire too many junior staff because there’s not enough funnel to keep them happy and raising up the ranks, so they leave for competitors or go out on their own and take some clients with them if they can’t get promoted. But…that’s the cost of doing business and the current way is causing its own amount of agita.

      4. Richard Hershberger*

        There is no good reason for junior people. A senior person making important decisions might be another matter. The client wants that last-minute change, and Senior Guy figures out how to get it done. But Junior Drones are by definition interchangeable. Hire two of them at $100K each with a sustainable schedule and you will get better work out of them than the one guy making $200K suffering from chronic sleep deprivation.

        I really think that part of this is if Senior Guy has to suffer, he is damned well going to make sure Junior Guy does too! Plus Senior Guy did this when he was Junior Guy, proving he was tough enough to hack it. This is, of course, another way of saying “Because we have always done it this way.”

        2. Greige*

          Yes, there are diminishing returns when you pile too much work on one person. My work gets sloppy when I go too long, and I’m never near 100-hour weeks.

          Plus, if you have more people on staff, the turnover that does happen is less painful, because they probably won’t all leave at once.

      5. Claire*

        A friend just left an investment bank because every day she was expected to be online starting from 9am, but the crazy client requests would come in around 5pm. The she would work on it until midnight, give it to the MD or whoever for revisions, and he would give it back to be edited at 1am.
        That is definitely the type of schedule that could be fixed. If this is really going to be the deal, why not give her the mornings off or have a “night shift”? Just seems like no one is interested in fixing things.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          How about an on-call system? Heck! I worked a retail job where we had a variation on that. And it’s common in tech support.

    3. Tehanu*

      When I saw the description, I just knew it was investment banking or finance. That high pay and that level of work. Whew. Too much for me! Give me waaay less money, less hours, less stress.

      1. Anonym*

        Yep! And the reality is that investment banking as a career has lost a lot of its prestige since 2008. Recruiting used to be incredibly easy – who are the best among this plethora of candidates? – but you have to really work to sell IB positions now. My firm (and presumably others) are competing on benefits and work life balance in the field now.

        OP’s firm needs to compete on these other factors. There’s a ton of great talent out there that has a ton to offer but no interest in years of straight misery. They have options!

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          Good! What does work-life balance mean in your firm? How many hours a week does this translate to?

          1. Anonym*

            I don’t know in detail – I’m not a recruiter (just work with ’em), but I would spitball it in the range of 10-25% less hours, so still high but not as miserable as competitors, and presumably somewhat lower (but still quite high for new grads) salary. There’s also significant marketing at the campus level to spread the word about it.

        2. Alexander Graham Yell*

          Yep! Most of the finance new grads I know are looking at consulting – still terrible hours (especially the ones who go into accounting, but at least that’s only at peak times) and a few years of nose-to-the-grindstone analytical work and “pls fix” emails at all hours, but with the added benefit of miles and hotel points.

    4. The Original K.*

      This was my first guess. I think BigLaw starting salaries are a bit lower & you’re generally older than 23 since you need law school under your belt.

      1. Current Biglaw Lawyer*

        Biglaw starting salaries just jumped to $205k in major markets, with usually $15k bonuses for first years. Plus they’ve been recruiting like crazy, so giving multiple COVID bonuses of tens of thousands. Lateral hires are getting six figure signing bonuses. Some firms are giving out six figure retention bonuses if their current associates stay for a year. I think the same turnover is happening here and people are tired of being overworked.

    5. Moira Rose*

      “but others are making the jump into corporate jobs” — I-banking isn’t considered “corporate”?? Geez, my civil servant/nonprofit ass apparently doesn’t grasp these fine distinctions.

      2. Eldritch Office Worker*

        I think “banking” is it’s own distinct thing but I am from the same background so I’m grasping at straws there

      3. Slipping The Leash*

        Likely means working in finance department at a public company, instead of at that company’s bank.

      4. Pinecone*

        My sense is this uses “corporate” ==> “in-house”– moving from an outside banking firm with lots of clients to working directly for a company (i.e. single client) would typically lead to a much better work-life balance.

      5. Zennish*

        Same. On the up side, my civil servant/nonprofit ass, while admittedly making a third the money, can go home at 4-5 pm, has weekends off, and can wear my Birkenstocks to work. I’m good with that. Oh, and there’s the not further enriching the billionaire corporate oligarchy, which I also enjoy.

        1. Moira Rose*

          I don’t think there’s any amount of money someone could pay me to entice me to work >40-hour workweeks.

      1. College Career Counselor*

        Absolutely. I have had a number of former students contact me 6-9 months after graduation and say something like, “Please help me get out of here and find something else. I haven’t seen the sun in four months because I get to work before it’s up, and I don’t leave this place until midnight.” But they couldn’t/didn’t hear (or fully grasp) what I was telling them about the expectations of the industry on the front end.

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          In fairness to them, these expectations are incredible, in the literal sense of “impossible to believe.”

        2. SleepyKitten*

          It’s difficult to grasp what something will be like before you’ve experienced it. People think that night shifts are a bit annoying but mostly manageable, and that an ostomy will ruin their life completely, and anyone who’s actually gone through either of those will tell you it’s the other way around. Unfortunately they may literally not be able to understand.

          1. CrewellaCoupDeVille*

            Exactly. It’s one thing to conceptualize what two years of 100-hour weeks looks like. It’s another thing to live it. I am amazed people dropping out of the program has only become a problem recently. I am amazed that people living in today’s world don’t see that maybe, a new college grad in their early 20s may not have the cognitive or emotional maturity to fully understand the implications of a choice to work 100-hour weeks for two years. No offense, but what world are some of these I-banking managers and leaders living in? Because it’s not the world I’m living in.

    7. Spencer Hastings*

      Haha, that makes sense. My train of thought was going something like this:

      “I work in an industry that is well known for long, hard hours, especially at junior levels. It’s one that has been all over the newspaper the past couple years for difficulty retaining junior professional staff and attempts to roll out more work-life balance.”

      Me: Oh, that sounds familiar. Accounting?

      “That said, it’s also (a) very well paid at the junior level, think 23 years old and making $275k-$200k”

      Me: Oh, OK, not accounting then.

        1. Spencer Hastings*

          LOL, I wasn’t thinking about that — I just meant that the salaries aren’t nearly that high!

      2. Guacamole Bob*

        I was thinking it was BigLaw for a bit when I started reading the letter, but the details didn’t quite fit. But the overworked junior staff going to in house jobs part definitely holds.

      4. Sara without an H*

        Umm…actually this is true of academic teaching and research in general. But the salaries are much, much lower.

    8. Name Goes Here*

      This was my guess, along with Big Law or the Big Four accounting firms (where new accountants often feel they need to put in some years, to get a more interesting / better balanced job down the road).

      1. Name Goes Here*

        (Looking at other people’s responses, though, it’s *super clear* that I’m not in a field that pays anywhere close to these sums. Anything over 100K to me is just “wow way rich” lol)

        1. KateMS*

          I can’t even comprehend some of the salary amounts being thrown around here. 6 months at some of these amounts would literally change my life, even 2 or 3. It makes me want to cry. I never realize how little I make until people who make 100k+ start discussing money.

          2. Lily of the Meadow*

            It would change my life, too. It’s hard to think of making that kind of money. I have had some difficulties in my personal life that has affected my career, and I am not making near what I would like to make. This kind of money would be the biggest dream ever.

          3. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

            Add me to the list of people who are gobsmacked by talk of this kind of money.

            I can easily imagine a lot of 20something new college something being so bedazzled by those numbers that nothing else really registers. I know I would have been at that age and stage of life.

      2. ConsultingIsFun*

        The bizarre thing about accounting is it pays TERRIBLY. They work just as much as i-bankers but make in the 60-80k range starting out. It’s kind of tragic.

      2. Paris Geller*

        Yeah, I was going to say, even without the work/life balance issues, invest banking has a bad rap for a reason. I’m 30, my generation remembers the 2008 recession well, just before I started college. Even the most money-driven people I knew in college stayed away from investment banking. It’s not worth it.

        1. NACSACJACK*

          Try being in your 50s and watching all the mergers & acquisitions and bankruptcies in the 80s. People’s pensions went up in smoke to fund the merger and employees lost their retirements just so the C-Level could make their bonuses. There’s a reason we have a Federal Guaranteed Pension Fund. Unfortunately, it pays literally 10c on the dollar. Imagine having a $1million dollar pension reduced to $100,000 and having to live on that for the next 20-30 years. Also a reason why we have laws against age discrimination. Older workers (aka expensive workers) kept working, drawing down the bottom line and would get fired.

    10. Maggie*

      Yeah, checks out. My right-out-of-college roommate worked in investment banking (Bear Stearns!), and I would literally see her for a couple hours a week. And that was usually with all her absolutely wasted IB colleagues from 11pm-1am, before she left for work at 7am the next day. Brutal.

    12. Newbie*

      As a 22 year old with multiple friends working for Goldman and Morgan Stanley this surprises me not at all.

        1. CrewellaCoupDeVille*

          Honest question: other than money (which you admit in your letter really isn’t persuasive for people any more), why would anyone want to work for you? Would they look at your job, or your life, and think it’s enviable? What are you offering people other than misery and a paycheck?

          1. Phoenix Wright*

            Yeah, at this point she’s sounding like she wants others to suffer so she doesn’t have to anymore. I feel for you OP, you seem to be experiencing Stockholm syndrome towards your dreadful job, but you can’t demand that others go through the same crap you went through. This truly has to stop, both for your sake and your junior coworkers’. You shouldn’t be complicit in this horrible treatment of workers.

        2. Banker*

          Vaca, if you’re serious about recruiting people at the junior partner/new MD level, I’m interested. Can you post an anonymous e-mail address at which I could contact you?

    13. SleepyKitten*

      I was wracking my brains to think what industry has clients (not patients) and can’t enforce office hours. I was thinking law but I’m fairly sure contract lawyers clock off at 5 and trial lawyers don’t get paid that much.

      But now I have a different problem where I very much want to say “investment wanking” but that wouldn’t be very constructive of me…

    15. A Genuine Scientician*

      So I get that investment banking has been this way for a long time. When I was a science grad student at Stanford, there was a lot of discussion about IB from the quantitative undergrads. What I don’t understand is: why?

      If you’re putting in 100 hours / week, there is simply no way your 100th hour is going to be as effective/productive as the 50th hour from someone doing 50 hours / week. You’re not going to be as sharp, your analysis isn’t going to be as insightful, and you’re going to be more prone to making errors. Particularly at the junior levels, where it’s exceptionally unlikely that someone would need to be working exceptionally long hours to understand all the nuance in a particular thing.

      Not only is it going to be easier to retain people for 2+ years on a 50-60 hour / week commitment at ~50% of the pay, but the work itself is going to be of higher quality.

      1. London Lass*

        An an ex-Big Four accountant who never worked 100-hour weeks but definitely did more hours than was healthy – when you’re in that environment surrounded (and particularly led) by people who have never known anything different, there’s a whole culture preventing that sort of rationale, detatched analysis.

        Those in charge truly believe that their way of doing things is necessary, because if they didn’t it would undermine their whole reason for being there. Those who see through it leave. I did, but even so it took me quite a while after getting out to adjust my mindset in some respects.

      2. Academic Physician*

        I think I suddenly understand where the 2008 financial crisis came from. These people are hallucinating just like I did back in residency . . . .

        We have studies on medical residents that show that after a month of working like this, you lose your ability to judge your level of impairment.

    17. Just stoppin' by to chat*

      Oh okay. I was one of the people asking about the industry. Sounds like the industry needs to change!

    18. Blue*

      What baffles me about this is…I don’t think it’s even true that 100 hour work weeks are standard in this industry? My ex worked as an analyst at a prestigious investment bank in NYC right out of grad school and they were demanding, but it was 60-hour weeks. He worked 7-7 5 days a week usually and still got to have a life. I got the impression that was pretty standard for his job—and the “standard” pay was the same ($100,000 salary plus $100,000 bonus at the end of the first year).

      1. Vaca*

        100 isn’t a regular occurrence (well, maybe now since we are so short staffed). 70-80 is average, including Sunday afternoons. Lots of evening stuff can be done at home in front of the tv with a glass of wine once you earn the respect to allow that, usually 12 months in. Just don’t leave the office before the boss.

        1. Dr. Rebecca*

          Honestly not certain why you chose my comment to reply to with this particular bit of information, but a) I’m a professor, and no stranger to working long/unusual hours, b) no one should have to “earn respect” in order to be able to spend their evenings at home, and c) your industry is more exploitative than mine (a surprise for me!) and up its own ass about it to boot. At least in academia we know what we’re doing isn’t optimal and many people are extremely committed to changing it. To paraphrase another commenter, you wrote in for advice, but don’t seem to want to be advised.

        2. Calamity Janine*

          listen, i know the more relaxed approach is fine for a lot of work honestly. i’m not out to be the fun police for when there’s a single beer at a company luncheon on friday.

          but this combined with the hours/work-life balance concerns, and your complaints about not being able to find good employees that will stick around…

          …has it occurred to you that a bunch of sleep-deprived, stressed-out people are going to produce worse work, and that if the answer to that is “well you can drink while you work from home and it’s fine”, the work quality is likely going to suffer even more? that this might be an example of how the work-life balance is so skewed that you would genuinely get better results by hiring more people to divide up the work and work hours, even if it’s not what everyone else does? that it could in fact be the twist that makes your product stand out from the competition – having people who actually slept on a regular schedule and took time off to recharge their body and mind instead of people who are stretched so thin the closest they get to relaxation is working while tipsy late into the night?

          do you really think that employees are going to stick around and do their absolute best work in such conditions?

          and if somebody *is* prepared to do that and go in whole-hog… have you thought about how they might quickly become really frustrated as the management above them tells them they have to always be on top form, but then goes home and works with a glass of wine in hand? and maybe they’re one of the rare few that doesn’t need that mental and social recharge time and/or can perfectly shorten their sleep schedule with no ill effects. wouldn’t it be frustrating to them to be working with people who are so clearly not on the ball due to these insane hours? wouldn’t it be stressful for them to suddenly be made to run around and clean up mistakes? …while the only promise of “it gets better!” is one they see in you still having to work those ludicrous hours, but enjoying the perk of, uh, doing work while inebriated?

          the people who know they’re capable of high-flying top-tier work will get tired of working around all of these problems, and will go to greener pastures where they feel the better work-life balance means they don’t have to clean up after the mistakes of everyone around them, and can actually do good work. plus they’ll be very unlikely to want to take you up on any of these perks – if they take pride in their work and want to do it right, they’ll also know they can’t do it right while tipsy, so this promised future reward is meaningless to them. they’ll know what it feels like to work their best and be satisfied by doing that. they’ll not want to be clean-up crew forever, suffering through the disrespect of “well you simply have to work with everyone not at their best, but we’re going to expect top quality work from all of you”.

          i know you’re terrified to drive good candidates off – but you’re already doing that in innumerable ways.

          if “everyone does it”, you have a chance to *not* do it and therefore be a leader in the industry. silicon valley has been all over the concept of “disrupting the industry”, and here’s your chance to do it – and be on the side of the angels when you do. and again, you’ll end up with better work! because people have biological needs and trying to function without them doesn’t end up working so good.

          all of these changes are ones you can spin to clients as benefits. instead of one person, they get a team – better coverage and you know that you’re always getting an employee that is fresh and ready to work, plus it means that one bus accident can’t totally disrupt the client relationship and mean the client has to start building that up from zero. heck, you can even say that the work-life balance opens up the candidate pool, meaning better benefits from a diverse set of workers – can’t come up with new and exciting ideas very often if everyone has fairly homogenous life experiences. it gives you a way to sort out the workflow so that you can look to adding international people to client teams, giving you drastically increased coverage with sensitivity to local affairs instead of the world as it exists in Manhattan. a team can more easily go to visit clients for in-person meetings, bringing the personal touch into it that clients will be drawn to.

          you can even brand the entire thing as a commitment to ethics to boot – organic free-range junior associates lmao – and tell clients, “if we are willing to do such radical change in our industry, if we are willing to not be content with ‘everyone does it’ when we know it’s both inefficient and wrong – you know we’re bold, we’re innovative, and we’re unafraid to tell social convention that it’s not as important as doing a good job. just think bout what this bravery and intelligence could mean for YOU, dear client! tired of the same-old same-old? not getting the same results you used to? having trouble adapting to these constantly changing markets? hire us – we’re not afraid to do things differently, and we’re not afraid to do things RIGHT. and as we all know, the economy doesn’t stay the same forever, so why look to the fuddie-duddies acting like it’s still 1985 and nothing needs to be changed and then being surprised when those 1985 tactics no longer work? we are brave enough to be modern here! don’t be stuck with the old fogeys ready to go the way of the dodo – come hire us instead! ”

          if i can come up with an entire marketing campaign for you off the top of my head, just think about how much someone who actually has a degree in marketing and knows your industry could do lol

          yes it’s a big change, and that’s scary. but honestly, i’ve seen you talk about opening your own firm. it’s pretty clear this job does not value you as much as you value the job, and – to borrow an expression from tiktok which all the hip youths are saying or something – the way you job is right now? it’s clown stuff all the way down. absolute clownshoes. you deserve to not have to go put on your clown costume and jangle miserably across the floor in order to kill yourself for the sake of people who treat you like that.

          quite frankly, i’d seriously look at your finances and ask yourself, “can i coast on savings and freelancing gigs?”. because you’re so burned out you’re not noticing the obvious solutions, and the obvious signs that your job is out to mistreat you.

          you deserve to also do better work than what you’re doing right now in such a state!

          your firm won’t change with the times? okay. find somebody who will. because that change starts with simply treating you like a real person, instead of an expendable resource that can be strung along with unfulfilled promises.

          if you don’t do it for your own sake – think of the industry’s sake. think of the possibility you have here. this is an industry which is not able to operate like how it used to – you can’t get people to stick around and work this type of job. people simply aren’t interested. that has only two solutions. adapt, or die. so it is with much in the business world. you have a chance to not only work out how to adapt, but how to adapt so hard you become the new model of success. and, well.

          if not now, when things are in a death spiral of no longer working, then when?

          changing *after* the system all falls apart isn’t how to succeed in business. by then not only will it be a desperate race with the competition to see who can change to the new standard first, but the industry will be dominated by a powerful new competitor that introduced that innovation. and the bigger firms will always have that advantage of being able to toss money at the problem by virtue of having deeper pockets, if that’s what is needed to enact the change through brute force.

          will you wait to follow somebody who thinks of it first, or will you look at innovating and seizing this golden opportunity to do so? and which do you think will get you more money, more professional success, and more adulation for it? continuing to do a thing that doesn’t work when you know it doesn’t work, or looking to something new?

          this is a very long pep talk, but i’m really hoping as you’re sticking around in the comments section, some of this will sink in. all these words are worth my bum shoulder complaining at me if it is grist for the proverbial mill that will end up with not just you happier and healthier, but all the people you can bring with you, too. (or, heck, i’ll even settle for “a random passer-by in the audience sees this and is inspired, or even just more confident that they are choosing the right thing by their own initiatives to make their own job more humane and able to produce better quality teapots”.)

          as much as i and the other commenters are giving you grief, i think we’re all rooting for you on this one, too. your pain and distress is so apparent, as is the suffering you are going through to try and give to your job when your job is full of people who simply do not give a damn about you enough to return a fraction of that energy. you ain’t deserve to sink into the swamp of sadness, Artax, so we’re all Atreyu pulling the reins and begging you to fight.

          (does mean Alison is Falcor the luck dragon? …listen, let’s not assume my metaphors are quite that sensible)

          i sincerely hope that we’ll get an update from you in a year, and that update is that you quit your job, took at least two weeks of vacation, and realized that your job was so dysfunctional it had sucked all the color out of the world. i sincerely hope you’ll write in saying about how you got up early in the morning because you wanted to, then sat on the porch or by the open window with your cup of coffee and listened to the songbirds greeting the dawn, and then wept for the simple joy that you had been missing out on but now have finally found. i sincerely hope that you’ll tell us that you finally went to your child’s soccer practice and your kid told you that they were so happy you could make it, because they’d been missing you for the little things that you considered expendable for the job even if you’re good at coming for the big things. i sincerely hope that you’ll tell us about how you finally took time to learn that hobby you’d put off for maybe-somedays, and show a picture of the slightly lopsided scarf you crochet, or the delicious and intricate paella you made for dinner, or a dinky little duck that you whittled out of wood, or the first jar of honey from your beekeeping, or your intricately painted warhammer 40k army you just put the final touches on.

          (ok, maybe kidding on the last one. nobody wants you to go bankrupt.)

          maybe you’ll also tell us how you’ve started your own firm, or a thriving consultancy practice, or a booming etsy store because the lopsided scarf got purchased by a celebrity and thanks to the paparazzi your crochet is the smash hit that can fund your entire previous salary and more.

          but you’re coming from such a place of despair and unhappiness, and dismally resigned to how it can’t ever change.

          it can! it absolutely can. even if you’re just changing it for *you*.

          (right, last fuggin novella spouted at you, promise. and only kidding about the 40k figurines. i don’t actually play so i only know the memes secondhand. the little mans get to be kinda expensive from time to time, but for thems that like the speec maureens who are 90% shoulderpads, seems to be worth it. the memes about very expensive asian-style resin ball-jointed dolls, however, i can supply firsthand knowledge to verify, along with my dreams of one day being rich enough for a shopping spree at Iplehouse…)

  9. Selina Luna*

    100 hours per week is too many. That is, on average, over 14 hours per day, every single day. If they have any kind of commute, your employees aren’t even able to get adequate time for sleep, food, or general hygiene at that rate, much less any kind of personal life.
    If you can afford to hire one person for 100 hours at 200K per year, you can afford 2 people at 5o hours at 100k per year-and even 50 hours per week is too many, really. You’re effectively saying that you’ve hired 2 people for a 5 person job!
    Also, this is WHY it’s taking your employees 6-9 months to train-they’re getting no sleep and therefore no time for their brains to process their learning.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Your last sentence is important. This is such an ineffectual use of staff. They can’t retain the amount of information they must get in that time to begin with, they certainly can’t process and execute on it well without downtime.

    2. PolarVortex*

      I was completely coming here to say this. Granted I don’t know what the expectations are for salaries within the industry, but even then I think a lot of people would take a pay cut to work half the amount of hours.

      (And while 50 hours per week isn’t great, I’ve definitely done it in my twenties for a few years for experience/foot in the door. It’s not sustainable long term, but if their expectation is 2 years, you’ll probably get at least 75% to last that long.)

    4. AndersonDarling*

      It seems like simple math to me-> One gravely overworked employee for $250K vs Two healthy employees for $125K each.
      But…this is an industry that is built on abusing weaker staff. (I can’t believe I’m actually typing that.) “I survived the abuse, therefore I need to put you through the same abuse so you can prove you are good enough.” If that mentality can’t be broken then nothing will change. You can bring in two employees and it’s likely that they both will be demeaned to the same degree because it’s built into the culture.

      1. Nervous Rex*

        I cant remember what movie this is from, but the line itself has always stuck in my head. A woman, speaking of her former assistant to said former assistant’s current assistant: “I tortured her, now she tortures you. Some day, you’ll have someone of your own to torture.”

          1. Bette Davis Eyes*

            It’s not from The Devil Wears Prada; it’s from the movie “Sabrina” (the 1995 version.)

            Actually the quote is “ I tortured her, now she tortures you. Succeed – you get someone of your own to torture.”

      2. Domino*

        It’s also an industry based on the worship of capitalism, aka hoarding money among the smallest number of people, so hiring fewer people and paying them more makes sense.

        1. Underrated Comment*

          … who also have to feel that they deserve to have much more money than most. Some people feel that it is their birthright, others need to work 100h weeks to show themselves they are better than all those poor people.

    5. Green great dragon*

      Yes! I had a flatmate who did hours like that, and they’d get home completely non-functional. I’d have to repeat simple sentences. It terrified me they were making decisions affecting who knows how many people in that state.

    6. Krabby*

      Also, this is probably how a lot of them are being poached by competitors: they took the job with OP because $200k >$100k, but at the 6 month mark they realized they’d rather make $100k and have a life.

      Ppl just out of school often go for the highest pay cheque and ignore everything else (speaking as someone who works in tech and has seen similar situations play out with junior devs going to work for Amazon, hating their lives for 5 years, and then coming to us or other smaller startups and suddenly being fine with a smaller salary and more reasonable hours).

    7. Colette*

      Yeah, when I was a software developer, I learned that I could work a ridiculous number of hours, but I’d lose my ability to problem solve, which was … less than effective. You can’t work that amount of time and be a functional human at the same time.

      1. Worldwalker*

        I have looked at my code the next morning (or day-ish-thing) and wondered what I was thinking when I wrote that. Then I realize that I *wasn’t* thinking, because I’d been awake too long, and spent more time fixing the bad code than it would have taken to do it right if I’d had sleep.

      2. Filosofickle*

        I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an underlying belief that the hours weed out the weak — top performers believe they CAN be a functional human working 100 hours a week, and if someone “can’t hack it” they simply don’t have what it takes to be good in this field. And the junior folks will hold that belief too, that there is prestige in being the kind of top performer who can hack it. Anyone who complains is a loser.

        That theory is the only way I can wrap my head around OP’s statement that hiring more folks at fewer hours would hurt their business and leave them with the lower performing employees relative to competitors. That doesn’t make sense to me otherwise.

        1. Worldwalker*

          The problem is, it selects for people with a high tolerance for sleep deprivation.

          Are they the best at what they do? Who knows. There’s no selection for that. Just for being able to function on little sleep and no life.

      3. Tau*

        I’ve generally worked in places with very strict limits on the hours, but one time I was working over the weekend and into the evening to try to hit a deadline. I am fairly sure that a bunch of those overtime hours actually resulted in *negative* work output, because my bug : code ratio went waaaay up and I’d have to fix all the mistakes I’d made the next day.

        And this was *nowhere near* 100 hours/week.

    8. desdemona*

      Depending on how the math checks out, actual salary-wise, if they divide each $200-275k position into 2 $100k positions, they could probably piece together another $100k or $200k for 2 more employees, and reduce hours to 40 for everyone.

    9. Esmeralda*

      50 hours a week — eh, lots of people do that. I did that regularly when I was a faculty member — of course, most of those hours were flexible and much of my work was self-directed, high degree of autonomy and satisfaction. Except for grading…

  10. BenAdminGeek*

    Yeah, I would assume that a lot of folks would be willing to take less pay for the ability to have a real life. I mean, 40 hours at $110k is pretty awesome, versus 80-100 hours at $275k. Having that much money doesn’t help a ton when you only have 9 to 10 hours a day to sleep, eat, grocery shop, etc.

    2. Double A*

      The only way it makes sense is if you have someone who is committed to early retirement or something like that. Since you don’t really have time to spend money, to can live on whatever the cost of rent + food + incidentals is, and sock away like $150k/year.

      The thing is, not that many people, especially those who go into a status hungry field like investment banking, would probably be thinking this way.

      1. Angstrom*

        I did know someone who had that discipline. Worked killer hours right out of school for a couple of years and saved enough to support basic simple living expenses from then on.

        1. Eliza*

          I have to wonder, how do people who do that adjust to actually retiring? I’d think that after a few years of working yourself to the bone, you’d start to lose sight of a life without doing that.

      2. Your Local Password Resetter*

        You also won’t find a lot of 20-year olds who are already sprinting to their retirement plan.

    3. LilyP*

      Especially kids just out of college! $200k is likely more money than they can spend, so the differential on top of that isn’t really a huge motivator. Many likely don’t have big ticket expenses (mortgage, dependents to support, childcare/college tuition, etc) that make the huge salary look limited to you. And they don’t even have time to enjoy the money they’re making! Why would you want an extra $2k a month if you can’t ever get away from work to translate that into great dinners out or luxury vacations or designer shopping or whatever? Just so you can Scrooge McDuck it on a bed of gold coins?

  11. Toodie*

    I foresee a whole slew of letters where Alison gets to add another mantra to her quiver. In the past there was “Your boss sucks and isn’t going to change,” but I suspect more and more we’ll see “It sounds like labor conditions have changed and your company will need to adapt.”

    1. GreenDoor*

      Yes just like relatively recent complaint of “job candidates keep ghosting my company”, this is definitely another table that needs turning! About time!

    2. Batty Twerp*

      The most dangerous attitude for a company to take is “but we’ve always done it this way”

      (Sorry, I genuinely can’t remember who said it first)

    3. Riokmij*

      Exactly, and I would add that companies that will be able to adapt faster than others will have a significant advantage over their competitors: the ability to attract and retain good, motivated workers.

    4. Sometimes supervisor*

      Agreed. I’m in an industry which isn’t quite as demanding as investment banking but it’s not well-known for work-life balance, and definitely not as well paid. I’ve opted for a less demanding role these days for personal reasons but, for context, I previously held a role where I never clocked fewer than 55 hours a week and it was not unheard of me to start answering emails at 5am and still be fielding calls at 11pm.

      OP, I think it’s worth checking you’re not falling into the trap of ‘I paid my dues so you should have to as well’. I mean, I get it. I remember having to seriously bite my tongue when a new grad told me I was being too hard on her for pointing out the repeated mistakes she made in a private one-on-one and not snap at her, ‘Well, Jane, I think you should actually consider yourself lucky I didn’t yell at you from across the office and then insult you in front of your peers. Because THAT’S what used to happen to me!’

      Not everything will be fully within your gift to change. Not all of it will be reasonable to change. But there is often some middle ground that can be found. Like others have mentioned, there’s the option of hiring more people on lower pay. Or if it’s an issue of people sitting around waiting for last minute changes, perhaps having people on call rather than at work.

  12. Snarkus Aurelius*

    I’ve read this letter twice, and I still don’t understand it.

    Why don’t you hire more people at a lower rate of pay (which is still a lot) instead of paying a few people a lot of money to do a lot of work?

    Did I miss something?

    1. Merci Dee*

      No, you didn’t really miss anything. But investment banking is somewhat proud of its tradition of ridiculously stupid hours for the young people coming in, and from what I’ve seen in the local community, it’s very much an attitude of, “I had to do it when I graduated from college 40 years ago, so they should have to do it, too.” What they don’t realize they’re saying is, “I was abused and outrageously taken advantage of when I first graduated from college and didn’t know any better, and now I’m going to make sure I do the same thing to the next generation!”

      1. Threeve*

        There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance at work, I imagine–“I put up with it, and I identify as a person who wouldn’t tolerate being mistreated–therefore, it wasn’t mistreatment.”

        1. LizB*

          Even this OP, who sounds more sympathetic to their junior staffers than I’d imagine many senior people in this field are, still falls into the “well nobody covered weekends for me when I was junior!” pitfall.

          1. Kaiko*

            They’re also in the mindset that they need to change their whole entire industry, instead of their one department or company.

      3. A Wall*

        I haven’t worked in IB but I recognized it instantly from the letter because some folks I grew up with went into it. The overwhelming sense I got from them was that the hours thing is 1) hazing, as has been suggested, but also 2) a way to say “well I make this incredible amount of money but I EARNED IT because I’m a hard working person, and clearly I am highly skilled because I am needed at all hours, which makes me important,” and 3) a crucial way of gating out all other kinds of people.

        The entire value of the job to these folks is the money and prestige. If you hire more people for better work-life balance at lower wages, you’ve ruined both. That’s why they’re never going to consider that path, and I’m pretty sure a lot of them would rather ride the flaming remains of their bank straight into the ground than compromise on their shine to keep it running.

    2. Vaca*

      OP here – it’s a combination of factors:
      1. This work is really, really hard to do with a 40 hour week. Clients demand same day turnaround, and particularly during crunchtime you just can’t have the person who built the model not be available.
      2. There are huge benefits to doing it this way. You do four years’ worth of work in two. People who make it through the program jump forward a decade in their careers.
      3. Ultimately, the “best” hire is somebody who stays here for twenty years. If they don’t go through the full program, they will never be competitive, not at the highest level. There’s a discipline involved, which sounds crazy but is 100% true.

      1. Ask a Manager* Post author

        The thing about 1 and 2, though, is that it’s not working anymore. If you can’t find people willing to do it, then you have to come up with a different approach, don’t you? It just feels like … very limited thinking. Not just by you, I get that it’s industry-wide — but really, there have to be other ways to make it work. If all your potential hires were just like “nope, not doing that for any amount of money,” what would you do? Presumably you wouldn’t just close up shop; you’d find another way to make it work.

        1. College Career Counselor*

          I think also the “up or out” nature of i-banking is a badge of pride in the industry. There’s a culture of “only the fit survive” in that field, and cutting the workload by hiring more people doesn’t advance that narrative.

          1. goducks*

            right. OP says it’s not hazing, but it’s totally hazing. It’s the same thing the military does by putting people through boot camp. It’s designed to reprogram your thought and center this way of being as normal.

            1. Jules the 3rd*

              military, medical, phds… yes, it’s hazing. Any job built around a period of sleep deprivation has a hazing problem.

            2. gmg22*

              I wonder whether OP would sit up and think if we didn’t call it “hazing” (a word that has a clownish frat-boy association, and should be taken more seriously than it is) but rather “indoctrination” (which TBH is what military boot camp is: pushing you to your limits, breaking you down and building you back up again in the institution’s image, etc).

              1. Charlotte Lucas*

                I hate to say it, but it does track with everything I understand about how cults work. Including the fact that there seems to be resistance to doing things differently and getting the “right” people.

                1. Sloanico*

                  Yes, sorry, but some of the people I know who work like this – their thinking is – I don’t know how else to say it. They’ve bought into some things as True that are just … not true. Like my ex was obsessed with “the clients” – that was all he cared about, giving them good service, getting facetime with them, making them happy. Nothing else mattered to him. And his clients were like, big companies going through mergers! They didn’t have “feelings”! They did not deserve his empathy!

              2. Xenia*

                I would note that there’s an important difference here. Military, medical, and a few other fields sometimes will have scenarios where you will have to stay up and work past your expected endurance. A surgery might balloon from two to eight hours. In the military you might get unexpectedly pinned down. A fire might go from something small to something huge. You get some actual life and death situations where you need people to be functional in terrible conditions (not that I’m denying the stupid hours that training happens in, I’m just noting that there’s a legitimate need to have some solid instinctual reactions).

                I know of no reasons where investment banking needs to be like that. Millisecond things are done by computer. Human decisions can be handed off to another trained person.

                1. gmg22*

                  Well, I can think of times when investment banking would need to be like that — yes, even with the amount of automation involved. Technology can fail, the market does weird things sometimes and so do your clients, and you need to be prepared. I have a few grad-school classmates who got gigs at the New York Fed after we graduated in 2007, and the work-life balance wasn’t that bad — for the first year! It’s government, after all. But then the market crashed and they got the 100-hour weeks too, because somebody had to put in the time to keep us all from going over a cliff. But those demands had a shelf life. The problem with private-sector investment banking isn’t that you might occasionally need to pull an all-nighter in a crisis; it’s that the work culture demands that everyone work as if every minute of every day is a crisis, which is actually a smoke screen for “partners make more money in the short term if we do it this way.”

          2. TP*

            Yes. Part of i-bank’s pitch is that the employees are working 100+ hours to meet client needs. Once those hours (and salaries) come down, the clients begin to question the rigor put into the work and whether its worth the cost to them. The clients are paying too know that super A+ staff are pouring their all into it.

            1. Zweisatz*

              Which they aren’t. I know we know this, but the size of this smokescreen is unbelievable. You have people exhausted out of their minds and these are supposed to be the dedicated geniusses that offer only the most high-quality work? Yeah right. EVERYBODY in this scenario is kidding themselves.

              (Not contradicting you, just saying how ridiculous this attitude is.)

        2. Vaca*

          Honestly, I don’t know – I know that *I* am not personally in a position to change the industry. If I had to guess what would happen? We hire two people, $125k each, hard cap at 50 hour week. One works out great, thrives, and quickly takes a job at Goldman paying twice that but working the 100 hour weeks. The other doesn’t work out so well and becomes an albatross. Plus don’t forget that the juniors all work for hard-charging VPs who can just as easily move across the street if we don’t have analysts willing to work the hours the job demands.

          I’ll go on record as saying I think the industry treats everyone terribly and I’d love to change the structure. But I’m not Jamie Dimon, I’m just #2 or #3 at a small firm…

          1. Boof*

            Look at ICU coverage models; there’s a couple ways of doing it. One is q3 (which I think is actually not so great but it does give a certain level of continuity) – three people who rotate; each person there for 28 hrs then off for the next 2 (rounding up) days – plus there are more support staff in shifts throughout. The person there for the 28 hr shift are upper level – not boss level (they are on call) but also not the juniorest.

          2. MuseumChick*

            As frustrating as this is, I think this answers the question about what you do. Alison is right, many industries are going through a very tough growing pain right now because “the way things have always been done” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Since you don’t have the power to change things at your company all you can do is give advice if and when it is appropriate. Pointing out that things are changing and it would be better to be on the front lines of that change than the back of the pack.

          3. JimmyJab*

            Maybe if your firm gave people a livable situation you would attract new and better candidates, more well-rounded people with lives and more to contribute. Maybe have a new pool of candidates would work wonders.

          4. sagc*

            You know, you’re having to make the exact same choice as your junior level employees now. Is your obviously-well-compensated job, that you take pride in, worth working weekends to you? It appears that it isn’t, and you’re assuming for little apparent reason that the junior employees are going to go through worse, just to pay their dues.

            1. KWu*

              This is a good point, I think. It’s a little bit like this industry was built on a Ponzi scheme of work done by junior staffers but now that they’re making the rational choice for themselves because they have better options, OP is left holding the obligations when they went into the industry expecting that once they were senior, they would be free of those obligations.

            2. Vaca*

              OP here – it very much is. I have worked each of the past six weekends – and not just checking emails, like real working. I do it because I have an obligation to my clients. I signed up to represent them and they deserve the best possible representation. I could leave this job at any time and go do something else. It wouldn’t pay as well, but also, I’d be breaching the trust I have with my clients.

              1. Joielle*

                This seems like such a fundamentally outdated way of thinking about work – I’m not surprised that you can’t find junior associates who have the same view. I don’t know what the answer is for you personally, but it sounds like you’re seeing the beginning of your industry’s downward spiral.

                1. Tau*

                  Yeah, this is just… weird. We have people in emergency services and healthcare in the comments talking about how their industries aren’t *great* but still try to do shifts, but it’s, with all due respect, investment banking where your work for your clients is so incredibly important that you must be on-call for them all the time and a shift setup wouldn’t work? (And hell, an on-call rota would be better than this – at least there you can relax and do your own stuff when there isn’t an incident happening.)

              2. Calliope*

                As a lawyer, also a fiduciary for my clients, I can tell you, you would not be. Your clients have the right to your best possible service while you are working for them. They do not have the right to have you indefinitely and nor has that ever been part of your implicit obligations to them.

                More broadly, I suspect the problem you’re running into is that you’re a *small* firm. What are you giving juniors that they can’t get with more prestige and possibly more money at the big firms? If you can’t win them with money or prestige, you need to be competing on something. For a lot of small law firms (which is the world I know), that’s work/life balance. What is it for you?

                1. Vaca*

                  OP here – yeah, I think that’s a big piece of it. I mean, theoretically, the draw is security. When the reckoning hits, we’re not going to lay anybody off. Bodies will be falling from the rooftops like snow in midtown Manhattan. Right now, nobody cares.

                  The other piece is upward mobility. If you do want to stay in the industry, and you’re smart, you *will* move up a lot faster. You’ll never make eight figures, but you can be making mid-sixes in seven or eight years.

                  Plus, finally, there’s the client access. That matters a lot to me. Not sure if it does to them.

                2. Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell*

                  @vaca But does being at a small firm really offer that much more job security? If you don’t have enough people to have HR and you’re constantly bleeding employees, whats the long term plan?

                  Regardless, if the job pays enough that, if I was theoretically fired in a few years (and yes, this is a theoretical), I would still have enough money saved to last me for a while, I’d rather take the job that won’t burn me out physically and emotionally. They might be making a similar calcuation.

                3. rl09*

                  “I mean, theoretically, the draw is security. When the reckoning hits, we’re not going to lay anybody off.”

                  I mean…there’s no way you could possibly know this for certain? Lots of companies say this but when it hits the fan, layoffs still happen. Your junior staff probably is more skeptical about this claim than you realize.

                  Also, I want to point out, that if you are exclusively hiring from top universities (especially the ivies), those students often already have financial security and family connections. The possibility of being laid-off is not that bad when you have generational wealth to fall back on. So I am guessing the type of person who wants to go in to this industry, is probably not the type of person who will value “job security” over other benefits.

                4. aebhel*

                  @ rl09

                  T H I S.

                  I don’t know how old LW is, but speaking as an older Millennial (36), most people my age and younger are DEEPLY skeptical of any claims of long-term job security, and are less and less willing to utterly destroy our social lives and mental health through our twenties for a promise that’s turned out to be, at least on a society-wide scale, largely specious.

                5. Neptune*

                  @rlo9 Yes! This!

                  @vaca, I don’t know if this is a generational thing or if these are ideas already entrenched in your industry but everything you are saying about the supposed appeal of this job strikes me as completely, bizarrely old-fashioned. You’ve talked elsewhere about the ideal hire being one who stays for 20 years and your devotion to serving the every need of your clients and the promise of job security no layoffs pinky promise and I just… nobody believes this, nobody thinks like this. I’m in my late 20s and I don’t know a single person who plans on staying in their current job for longer than a few years. Nobody believes that their employer is going to protect them from layoffs. Very few people care the way you seem to about serving the whims of some giant corporate entity, and the people who do are going to go to the employers that offer them some semblance of a work-life balance and you guys are obviously not one of those because they keep quitting. I don’t understand how you believe that this stuff is supposed to be a big sell to young people in 2021. It’s like someone asking why all the kids are driving Hondas and Subarus when the ol’ Model T Ford out back still works okay when you give it a kick.

                6. Zillah*

                  Maybe it’s just me being a millennial talking, but I fundamentally don’t understand the job security argument. There’s an implicit assumption that people want job security with your organization, and I’m not sure why you’re sure enough of that that you’re looking at it as one of the biggest perks about working there.

                  Most people I know don’t take a job thinking, “I’m really going to put down roots here and settle in for years to come.” They take a job thinking, “this seems like a good option right now.” And if a job is just a good option right now, nobody’s going to be overly focused on what will happen when a theoretical reckoning hits – they’re not attached to the idea of still being there when that happens, anyway.

                  Like… if someone is paying me $200k/year, I’m probably going to be able to save enough to not spend too much time preoccupied about what happens if I’m laid off.

              3. Mockingjay*

                Is that trust reciprocated? Would those clients go to the same extremes to keep you as their investment advisor/manager (don’t know the correct title)? Presume these are very lucrative accounts and that’s why you jump through hoops. Would you be this dedicated to managing my modest 401K?

                I mean this very kindly. If you’re looking for validation of your industry and career choice, I can’t give you that. The work/life balance tradeoffs don’t make sense to me.

                1. Vaca*

                  The problem is that the deals are generally one-and-done. You run the deal and you get paid.

                  I get that the industry isn’t for everybody, believe me. There are lots of times I think it isn’t for me. It works for me for a lot of reasons:

                  1. I can provide for my family and give them a lot of flexibility we otherwise wouldn’t have.
                  2. There are aspects of the work I *love*.
                  3. Psychologically, if I’m not working I’m getting depressed and/or into trouble.
                  4. I want to be in position in a few years where nobody can tell me what to do. The old “F you” money.

                2. ThatLibTech*

                  @Vaca

                  I’m confused. How are the deals generally one-and-done, enough so that there wouldn’t be anyone who would follow you if you moved to another company, but you apparently owe them so much loyalty and trust as if they are long-standing contracts???

                  These people aren’t your family. You owe your company up to your best *before it begins negatively impacting your quality of life*. That’s why people are leaving.

                3. Snarkus Aurelius*

                  I’m a Gen Xer. I grew up, watching layoff after layoff make national news. No pensions in some cases because the company gambled them away. Boeing shut down factories with majority of employees getting close to retirement *on purpose* so they wouldn’t have to pay out those pensions.

                  You will never, ever convince me an employer will have my back for 40 years.

                  They won’t.

                4. Vaca*

                  @ThatLibTech I’m doing a bad job explaining this. Let me try harder:
                  1. I work for a bank. I run my own projects (generally selling companies) for clients. The typical client will be the founder and CEO of a smallish company who wants to find a buyer.
                  2. I pitch *my* abilities in order to get hired on the project. The bank helps, but not a ton.
                  3. The contract is signed with the *bank*. They get paid, and I get a bonus at the end of the year.
                  4. In return, in theory, the bank helps me win deals and provides me with staff.

                  In practice, the bank helps a fair bit in winning deals but doesn’t do a good job of providing me with the staff to run my deals.

                  The deals are typically six months. I do need to see them through.

                  I don’t feel any loyalty to this current bank. They provide me with some positives I couldn’t get at my last bank. Many of the same problems though, some new ones, a few gone.

                5. MCMonkeyBean*

                  @Vaca

                  This is honestly concerning: “Psychologically, if I’m not working I’m getting depressed and/or into trouble.”

                  You made this as a sort of off-hand comment but I think it’s the most important thing you’ve said in this thread. This should be your focus. Stop caring so much about your company and your clients. I’m sure the people you work with like working with you, but you do not owe them the kind of loyalty you show throughout this thread and they would certainly not extend the same loyalty to you. You cannot fix the attrition of the juniors but you can seek help for yourself. I doubt anything us randos on the internet will really mean that much to you but I really think that should be your priority. This is not a health way to live, working 110 hours in a week to distract yourself from depression.

                6. DJ Abbott*

                  @Vaca, it sounds like you would need to give a few months notice when you quit, however long your farthest deal timeline is.
                  Or you could make an arrangement where you’ll finish the deals you’re handling but do nothing else, and step back from the day-to-day operations.

              5. DrSalty*

                If you’re so happy to do it, then why have you written in to complain that your junior employees are making you do it?

                1. Vaca*

                  I’m happy to do it if it’s reciprocated. I literally gave a guy the weekend off, did all his work for him, and then he quit Sunday night. That sucks.

                2. sagc*

                  No, that’s a fundamentally smart behaviour on their part, and a failure to understand that the reciprocity you’re expecting is not part of work.

                3. Gerry Keay*

                  @Vaca do you hear yourself? You’re looking for gratitude providing ONE weekend off when in the vast, vast majority of industries, two consecutive days off is a given. Your industry is rife with abusive and exploitative work practices, and your sense of norms is waaay passed skewed. He probably took the weekend off so he had a moment to put his ducks in a row so that he could feasibly quit!!

                4. aebhel*

                  …..dude, he took the weekend off and probably quit because with even a little bit of breathing room, the prospect of going back to work was unbearable. THAT’S your problem.

              6. 2cents*

                Here’s the thing though-your clients don’t give a rip about you personally. They care about their money and the deals. If you die from a stress induced heart attack tomorrow they’ll walk over your corpse an hour later and forget you ever existed.

                The juniors understand this and are reacting appropriately by not letting themselves be burnt out in this insatiable unsustainable race to the bottom.

                You can insist (as you have multiple times in these comments) that the old way is the only way or you can actually listen to Allison and all the other comments here and try to make changes that will improve the outcome for the juniors and for yourself.

              8. QuinleyThorne*

                I’m amazed I have to say this given that Alison writes this sentence probably once a week at this point, but people leave jobs all the time. So you leave and “breach their trust”; that doesn’t mean you can’t gain more clients and foster those relationships elsewhere at a place that won’t run you into the ground. People leaving jobs is a completely normal thing that happens, and it’s not the breach of trust that you think it is; you only think that way because your industry has normalized it, among other toxic work environments and habits.

                OP, I’ma level with you: based on your comments and responses in this thread, I can tell that you’re very good at your job. Hell, the fact that you value your relationships with your clients this much and care enough to cover weekends for the juniors that haven’t yet left is indicative of that, and frankly, you sound a bit like you’re selling yourself short. The amount of covering you so, and the amount of extra work you say you put in sounds like you bring a tremendous amount of value as an employee; but it doesn’t sound like your employer truly values any of that work (based on what I’m seeing about your industry, it’s likely because they’ve never had to). OP the reason these juniors are jumping ship is because the amount of work you do and the hours you spend doing them is not sustainable long term. And I don’t just mean for them: it’s not sustainable for you either. You mentioned somewhere uptrhead that you’ve made sacrifices to get the work-life balance you currently have, but even with those sacrifices you’re still having to work weekends to pick up the slack resulting from high turnover. So consider, and I mean this seriously: aside from making less money, what would your life look like if you could have a work-life balance without sacrificing anything? What would your life look like if you followed your juniors out the door? And don’t consider what would happen to the clients or your employer; people leave, they’ll be fine (or if they won’t be fine, your employer’s problem is much bigger than the their turnover).

                1. Mavis Mae*

                  Industries like Big Law, IB and consulting hire “anxious overacheivers”. They pick people who are very smart, very driven, very competitive and secretly terrified that they’re not good enough. (I’m an ex Big Law lawyer.)
                  And the client demand things at the last minute and around the clock because they’re finalising a major M&A; because they want to arbitrage the market; because they’re about to go nuclear on a commercial dispute. Think lawyers and financial advisors being called to meetings at 3 am to provide advice to enable decisions before the stick market opens for trading. Believe me, the clients do not care what the personal cost is and they will leave for another firm that delivers what they want when they want it.

              9. Luna Lovegood*

                I don’t mean this in a snarky way; I’m genuinely curious. What gives you so much loyalty and sense of duty to your clients? Especially if they’d jump ship the second you tried to change the model? If it’s not about the money, what are you getting from this relationship?

              10. Prolix Prolix*

                Your clients will just find someone else… you know, just like you keep saying they will if you don’t work 100 hours a week.

              11. Fed-o*

                With all due respect, are you their heart surgeon mid-bypass? Are you evacuating civilians from a war zone? Tending to kids who tried to hurt themselves? Please remember that this truly isn’t life or death work and even if it were, there are limits to what our brains and bodies can do. Your clients do not have a right to your perpetual service and if they cared about you as a person they’d care about having reasonable expectations. It’s business. You know this. Your junior hires know this. Someone else will represent those clients.

                Move on or don’t move on, but I think it’s really important that we all have a realistic sense of the employee-employer-client relationship in which we find ourselves so we can make choices accordingly.

              12. Not So NewReader*

                OP, I am not in your industry so grain of salt and all that.

                The only thing that I can relate to is a tangent that I witnessed. So I had an investment advisor. He changed companies. He sent me a lovely letter saying he had moved to a new company. I went with him. Years later he changed companies again. And I got another lovely letter. And I moved with him.

                See here’s the thing, you have to work a bizillion hours a week or you will lose clients. (Clients are not loyal.) But you also say that you would be breaching the trust with your clients. Do you mean those fickle, unloyal people?

                What I see is you being super loyal to a company that does not PAY you (wth) and you being super loyal to clients who supposedly will leave you in a heartbeat.
                Got stress, OP???

              13. Katie*

                Re: your “obligation to your clients,” who “deserve the best possible representation” and you’d be “breaching their trust if you left”–what about the same sentiments, but as they apply to your family? Maybe your family is grown, or you don’t live with them, or you’re unpartnered–but unless the only responsibility you feel for your family is financial, and not emotional, you’re probably short changing them and looking like you value your clients over them. (At least that’s how it seems from here, if you spent 100 hours a week at work and get any sleep at all!)

              14. TeaKeepsMeGoing*

                I don’t think I quite understand how moving on to a different role with a different/better(?) work-life balance is breaching the trust of your clients. It looks to me like you’re putting their needs way above your own, which in the long term is going to affect your health — mentally, physically, emotionally. The term “martyr” comes to mind….
                So I totally get why folks are leaving so quickly from this position. It’s not sustainable. Sure, some can handle it and get through the two years, but at what cost?

              16. CrewellaCoupDeVille*

                Okay, but I hope you do realize that if you died tomorrow, your company would take over your files and keep going without missing a beat? End of the day, you aren’t that important.

          5. S*

            It astonishes me that both investment banking and BigLaw, both of which are theoretically hiring the brightest minds of the rising generation, can’t figure out how to break out of toxic business practices and antique incentive structures that hide incredible inefficiencies.

            But this is a good example of how it happens. You see a success/failure dichotomy. Instead, consider the ways you might leverage unique hiring practices to recruit the very best and most competent students who aren’t competitive under the traditional structure. One way to do it might be to split your program in two and recruit heavily for the second track in university affinity groups for, e.g., parents. If you end up with Janie Bright who wants to leave for Goldman, give her the opportunity to move to track one. But make sure your track one and track two hires have the same opportunities after their 24 or 30 month apprenticeships.

            1. NotAnotherManager!*

              I worked in BigLaw for years, and trying to change things in it is very difficult because of the power structure (those with the biggest books of business – i.e., lots of billable hours – make the rules; also, lots of wealth white guys with SAH partners to handle the home front and who do have
              a bit of a frat-hazing mentality), the competition for clients (if you can’t do it, there’s someone who will), the external deadlines (you cannot miss a court filing, period), and unpredictable workloads.

              Some are now offering two-track programs, as you suggest, and letting people chose… but the lower hours track is typically not regarded by the senior partners as being the ambitions, go-getters that the high hours track is. And many kinds of law involve being highly responsive to your client (like, if your business is being raided by a gov’t agency or you’re in jail or you have a shareholder meeting first thing in the AM, you don’t really want to wait overnight for your lawyer to get back with you).

              And, BigLaw is designed as a weed-out model. If you bring in 20 first-year associates, you can’t make all of them partner in 8 years. The attrition is built in. Tons of people stay until they pay off their loans and then go do what they really wanted to be when they grew up.

          6. Combinatorialist*

            But in that situation, the 1 that works out great isn’t going to want to get payed twice as much to work 100 hour weeks. Find the people who don’t want 100 hour weeks for ANY amount of money — they obviously exist, or you wouldn’t be in this situation. For the one that becomes an albatross, put them on a performance plan and fire them if they don’t improve.

            Give the hard-charging VPs twice as many analysts. They get the same amount of work.

            1. another Hero*

              heck, your hiring pool now includes people who burnt out on the 100-hour weeks just as they were getting productive

          7. It's not that hard*

            What about the people who are leaving after the 9 months?! If it’s an industry-wide problem, there must be scores of them looking to move on from the hell they are in at any given time. If your value proposition was a better work-life balance, your firm could attract those who have been put through 9 months of this torture already and are looking for a more normal life at the cost of giving up some of the salary. They would a) have experience and training already b) have a verifiable track record (i.e. not an albatross) and c) would not be looking to go back to the 100/hour per week set-up. Solved.

            1. Vaca*

              OP here – It is an ancient Mariner,
              And he stoppeth one of three.
              ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
              Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

              Long years of experience. I don’t know what else to say on that front.

              1. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

                But isn’t that happening anyway? You have folks leaving after 6-9 months of the training program. The folks that are staying are the ones who don’t have more prestigious/better options

              2. Spero*

                If they turn out to be an albatross, you fire them.

                Let’s say your scenario is correct, you are still coming out ahead. Right now you have a superstar who leaves at 6-9 mo. With option 2 you have a good one who makes it to 2 years, and one you have to fire. You still got much more work out of option 2!! 50hrs/wk x 104 weeks is 5200 hours of good work plus whatever albatross did manage to do before you fired them. In option 1 you only got 2600-3900 hours of work time before superstar burned out.

              3. Budgie Buddy*

                “Instead of the cross the albatross/about my neck was hung.”

                The first lines of the poem don’t really give the context.

                And I don’t think Claire was asking where the reference was from, she was asking why the employee would become a liability.

                1. Vaca*

                  I think she got the reference, the line I was quoting was where the Mariner first corners the groom and starts telling him about his long boring experience with slimy things. I’m the Mariner, she’s the bored bridegroom.

                2. Claire*

                  Vaca: Yes, I was asking why you seem so certain that an employe who values their own time and health will become a liability. If I had to hazard a guess, it’s because in your industry, *anyone* who values their own well-being over money/prestige is a liability.

                  But as long as we’re talking about the poem–for all of your clever quotes, I think you’ve missed the metaphor. Don’t be the one who kills the albatross. Then you’ll never have to wear it around your neck.

              4. Cthulhu's Librarian*

                “Way I hear albatross was a ship’s good luck till some idiot killed it” -Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly

                As I said above, I bet if you advertised a position at 50 hours a week and didn’t limit yourself to 23 year olds, you’d find plenty of skilled and experienced analysts who’d be willing to take it, and work odd hours/weekends. Might even poach some of the talent from those big firms across the street you’re worried about.

          9. Mockingjay*

            You can’t stop people from leaving, even under the best working conditions on the planet. Do what you can to improve things – hire more, set up a coverage schedule and provide some training, arrange a rota so the poor juniors can actually take leave and rest and recoup. Talk to the VPs about how to manage client expectations – do you have to jump at every single demand? Is there a dollar threshold for rapid response? Explore what ifs.

            Like I said above, the Great Resignation is continuing because people aren’t taking it anymore. Better to figure out a new recruitment and retention strategy ahead of your competitors.

          10. ecnaseener*

            I really don’t follow your logic on why one of every two imaginary 50-hr hires won’t “work out so well.” You are finding enough people to hire on what sounds like a near-constant basis. If you cut the hours, your pool will grow. Why do you think the success rate with hiring competent people will drop to 50%? Because people who don’t want to work 100-hr weeks are inherently less competent?

            1. TP*

              They’re not less competent but they don’t have the drive to continually work 100hr weeks no matter the cost to their social lives or mental health.

            2. STEM prof*

              I think you hit the nail on the head with your last question. It’s similar in a lot of PhD programs, postdocs, and pre-tenure TT faculty positions.

              Below I’ve paraphrased some of the things I’ve heard in academia:
              -If they aren’t willing to put in the hours when other people are means they’ll never cut it as a top-tier researcher/tenured professor. (Meaning: they are less competent than their peers who put in the hours)
              -Taking sick days/not being available when on vacation/taking FMLA leave means they aren’t dedicated enough to do what needs to be done. Life stuff shouldn’t prevent them from getting everything done, and if it does it means they’ll never cut it as a top-tier researcher/tenured professor. (Meaning: they are less competent than their peers who push through truly ridiculous situations in the name of dedication)

              Basically, the only reason that people wouldn’t want to do it is because they know they couldn’t.

            3. Sapphire (they/them)*

              “Because people who don’t want to work 100-hr weeks are inherently less competent?”

              I feel like that’s the quiet part they won’t say out loud, not that it’s true, but that’s what OP seems to think. After reading all of this, it really seems like OP’s choices are to try and pitch a more sustainable work week to The Powers That Be, or leave. I feel for them, but their first step should be unlearning the toxic mindset drilled into them by the industry.

          11. Turtles All The Way Down*

            So what are YOUR company differentiators if the good employees can move over to Goldman or go in-house and make the same amount of money? Obviously, GS offers benefits you don’t if they’re doing essentially the same job for similar pay to what you currently offer. We know moving in-house means better work-life balance.

            Why would someone take a job with you if they don’t plan on becoming successful and moving to a major firm, since it seems that your industry is similar to Big Law or even accounting where the top handful of firms are the cream of the crop and the goal for most people going into the industry?

            I think if you can answer that, you’ll solve your problem.

          12. Emilia Bedelia*

            > One works out great, thrives, and quickly takes a job at Goldman paying twice that but working the 100 hour weeks.

            But as you are finding out, people…. don’t want to work 100 hour weeks, even for double the pay. So, maybe you’d get more people to stay, because they actually have a balanced workload. Or, maybe you’ll get a bunch of people from Goldman who are sick of the 100 hour weeks and want a more reasonable life. It seems like there is no shortage of grueling 100hr/week positions for those who want them, and that the reason people are moving to other industries is that the schedules are better. Why not try giving people the schedules that they would get in those “industry” roles and see how that works out?
            Also, if you’re a few levels ahead, and YOU’RE working the same terrible hours…. why would someone want to stick around and get to that level? Why would they want to jump their career forward 10 years if it’s similar to what they are suffering through at the junior level? I suspect that the attrition you see is people truly changing their mind about their career because they see that it’s not worth it.

            Finally, if you have an “albatross” employee who isn’t working out well… why not fire them? It seems like the real albatross here is your hiring/training method. You don’t have to accept things just because that’s how it’s always been done. Perhaps you’d be surprised by how successful another way could be.

            1. Vaca*

              Believe me, our training method is more than an albatross. It’s like an ostrich on steroids. Another thing I’m trying to fix…

              1. Not So NewReader*

                I keep adding this up, OP.

                Not paid.
                Abusive hours.
                Bad training.
                No authority.

                This place is a hot mess.

          13. LizB*

            What are those hard-charging VPs going to do when you don’t have analysts period because the labor market has changed and nobody’s putting up with the industry’s horrendous conditions anymore?

          14. I Am Not a Lawyer*

            You’re assuming that the best employees are the ones who want to work 100+ hours. But are the employees who are walking away now for in house roles with fewer hours your worst employees? I don’t think you would be this upset if they were.

            I’m obviously not in your industry, but I’ve won awards for my work, I’m routinely recognized, and I know I’m very good at my job. And I have stayed with my organization when I could have parlayed that into something more precisely BECAUSE of their flexibility and reasonable hours. So cutting the junior employees hours could actually help you retain your best employees longer.

          15. green beans*

            ….I think you’re confusing “good at my job” with “will do anything for a high salary.” I assure you, there are brilliant, very promising young graduates out there who want a well-paying job with a reasonable work-life balance and aren’t going to defect to Goldman Sach’s when they get competent.

            Plenty of brilliant, competent people take jobs with work-life balances. Plenty of incompetent people who aren’t good at their jobs will put in insane hours for a high salary. Also. If someone is not performing up to your standards, you can just transition them out (with notice, a PIP, and clear expectations set and communicated.) You are not stuck with a hire.

            Finally, and this is going to be a hard one to hear but it’s important: Your firm doesn’t have the prestige or the money to hire and retain that very, very small group of people who are both in the top 5% for potential and want to put in 100 hr weeks in order to jump their career ahead by a decade. You can keep trying to hire those people and you will keep having the same problem.
            Or you can change your model and look for a *different* group of people: high potential people who want to work 50 or less hours, for instance. Or people who are mid-potential and are willing to work 100+ hrs for a career jumping opportunity they can’t get elsewhere.

            I guarantee you, you will be able to get just as much quality work done from either group as long as you screen, mentor, and manage them properly. It’s shocking how little elitism actually correlates to success.

          16. becc*

            Why? Why would that second analyst become an albatross?

            To me it seems equally likely that she works hard during her 50 hours per week, recharges by knitting for 10 hours/wk, enjoys cooking French dinners, and is a star performer.

            I’m genuinely puzzled — what seems like an article of faith for you is a logical leap that I simply can’t follow.

          17. Technicolor Dreamcat*

            Cut your base FTE hours to 50/wk, reduce salary to 60% of what is currently offered, and implement a bonus system for hours worked > 50 that tops out at the equivalent of the 100-hr salary. You widen your pool to potentially include highly qualified candidates who weren’t willing to kill themselves for the job, but also leave it open for the highly driven individuals to make the kind of money they expect to make in the industry.

          18. Hibiscus*

            DUDE, they don’t take the job at Goldman because they do not want to work 100 hr weeks. They go to work at your firm for $125k because it is decently managed and things get done well in 50 hrs and they get work life balance. Because they actually like their lives, they never go to Goldman.

            The problem is, your firm sucks. You have no HR, no training, shitty management and apparently you are the only one holding things together. Why should anyone put up with that and wasting all their time in meetings to do 4 hours of work late at night?

          19. animaniactoo*

            I think you may be taking cut the hours and pay in half and hire twice as many people too literally as a practical step.

            Start smaller. Hire one to two more people and cut the pay/hours by 10-20%.

            I think you will find in that range, the people who are going to be great but not so attracted by the now only slightly larger paycheck that the greater percentage of hours is going to feel like a worthwhile trade off to them to jump to one of the larger firms.

            And if you can make that work out, you may become the more attractive option until other companies are forced to do the same in order to be competitive with *you*.

            If a major shift is too much, and I take you at your word that it would go over like a box of rocks, then try a small step towards it rather than a penalty which would make the perception of your industry even more avaricious and insane than it already is.

            A lot of this idea of operating “lean” has its roots in the downsizing fad of the 90s where employers kept trimming past actual redundancies once they realized that they could save beyond salary, and into benefits and UI costs by reducing just one more employee and only slightly overworking the rest who were just happy to still have a job. And then one more employee, and so on until we ended up at this point where employees are literally rebelling and rejecting these kinds of working conditions.

            So… just as nobody would have gone for that if it was proposed and happened overnight, you are likely right that pulling back from this cliff edge is not going to be well received as an immediate full on adjustment. But that just means that you have to look for the little bit of a crag that you can stick your foot into, so that you can move in a direction that is where you want to be headed.

            Good luck.

          20. TM*

            You’re making the mistake of thinking that everyone is like you and shares your priorities. There may well be some people that would rather work essentially two full-time jobs for two full-time salaries, but there’s a vast number of people that wouldn’t. In my industry I work about 45 hours a week for a low six-figure salary, and if my boss asked if I would double my hours for double my pay I would laugh hysterically and answer a resounding ‘no’. And my industry – hospital IT – also needs very strong 24/7 support. We work in teams, we don’t expect one person to somehow do everything at all times. You’re declaring failure based on how you imagine people might react to change, but you already know the status quo is not attracting people who are willing to stay, so eventually your firm is going to have to adapt or die.

            You don’t have to change the industry, you just need to change your company. Having a hiring pool that attracts different people than the others in your industry is a key strength, not a key weakness. You can pick up all of the good people that burn out at all the other firms in your industry, because if you’re right that this is an industry-wide culture, then there’s going to be an industry-wide retention problem as well. Whoever is first to capitalize on that problem and come up with a new business model has the potential to be wildly successful.

          21. Velawciraptor*

            It seems to me you’re setting up a false dichotomy here: someone either does well under a 50 hour cap and leaves for a structure that is currently driving people away or they suck at the job and become a hindrance to the company. There are plenty of people in the world (likely, many of the promising juniors you’re losing) who could succeed under a capped time model and stay because they’d rather not be literally killed by their job.

            In other places on this post, you respond to people saying you don’t actually seem to want advice saying that you’re looking for something to tell those with power to get them to change. If that’s genuinely what you’re looking for, there is all sorts of neuroscience out there saying that people become markedly less productive after 40 hours a week. If your business model genuinely requires 24 hour availability, then you need to be on a 3 shift system with people working reasonable hours to provide around the clock coverage.

            The science says you’re working against yourselves. The societal moment says you’re working against yourselves. Right now, your industry seems to be Ned Flanders’ parents: we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas. Nothing’s going to get fixed with that mindset.

        3. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

          The thing about 1 and 2, though, is that it’s not working anymore.

          On an industry-wide level, I disagree. Investment banking jobs are extremely competitive and hard to get. Yes, there are some options, like startups/entrepreneurship/tech that might not have existed in, say, the 1980s, and the buy side firms may hire more junior analysts than they used to — but all of those options are intense, too, and two years as a banking analyst will still help you land jbos in those fields.

          Ultimately, OP’s firm needs to look at what Goldman and JP Morgan are offering analysts and ensuring that its compensation package (including working conditions) are competitive. But bear in mind that banks have *always* assumed junior analysts will move on. They don’t join and stay at one bank their whole career, and they never have.

      2. FionasHuman*

        Your clients don’t get to demand that kind of turnaround. No one is going to die if they have to wait 24-48 hours. Yes, they may lose some money. Boo-bloody-hoo; that’s nothing compared to the health effects of forcing people to work untenable schedules.

        2. Anonym*

          Ehh, being the first or only company to change that will pretty immediately lose them all their clients. The industry needs to change, but we can’t in good faith ask OP to tank their firm (which wouldn’t change the industry anyway). There’s got to be a way to do it, though I don’t know what it is.

          1. FionasHuman*

            If you can’t run your business in a way that sustains your employees, you have no right to be in business. Really, given this is the industry behind the 2008 recession, would it be that horrible if they all went out of business?

            1. FionasHuman*

              Full disclosure: I’m a socialist. I read this site because it contains lots of examples of organizations that prove not all capitalists are exploitive. This letter, though, just reaffirms much of what I have come to believe about the need for unions, strict labor protections enshrined in federal law, a universal guaranteed basic income, and government subsidized health care and education through university/trade school.

              …and, yes, I’m one of the people who would have to be taxed more to achieve all of the above. Bring it; I’ll take home less money happily to insure a better life for my fellow Americans.

              1. Richard Hershberger*

                I have had the discussion several times recently where I am lectured that if workers aren’t willing to work for the wages the owner’s business model can support, this means that the workers need to be pushed harder. My response is that if your business model doesn’t allow you to attract the workers you need, you have a really crappy business model and this isn’t anyone’s problem but yours. We need not even couch this as doing the right thing by your workers. It is simply a matter of finance.

                1. FionasHuman*

                  “I have had the discussion several times recently where I am lectured that if workers aren’t willing to work for the wages the owner’s business model can support, this means that the workers need to be pushed harder.” — The entire philosophy of political leaders who rushed to eliminate supplemental unemployment benefits. A.K.A.: “you will work whatever jobs we deign to give you, for what we deign to pay you, and you will be grateful for it!”

              2. Vaca*

                OP here – full disclosure, so am I! Well, strictly speaking I’m a Marxist, I guess. I ain’t implementing socialism for the same reason I’m not changing investment banking – “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them…” I’m not in charge!

                1. BabyElephantWalk*

                  If you truly believe in Marxism, I highly encourage you to go back through your own comments an examine them critically through a Marxist lens. You have been parroting a lot of the worst of capitalist mindsets and expectations, entitlement, and exploitation and now want to say “Hey, I’m a Marxist”.

                  Either your actions aren’t living up to your values, or your values aren’t what you think they are.

                  Marxism isn’t compatible with this sort of pay-their-dues, exploit the juniors mindset you’ve bought into.

                2. BabyElephantWalk*

                  Also – if your juniors are making 200k, that implies to me that you yourself are making much more of that. You may not be part of the 0.00001%, but you are part of the 1% and your responses seem to imply that you want to keep yourself there. You “aren’t in charge” but you are absolutely a major participant in this system.

                3. FionasHuman*

                  You, lady, are neither a socialist nor a Marxist. It’s one thing to decide for yourself whom you will allow to oppress you. But you are actively looking to find new ways to oppress those below you in the pecking order; not to mention working for an entire sector whose “values” are antithetical to socialism. No, you may not be able to change the place you work for. But you can choose to stop contributing your time and talents to it, and to live the values you claim to hold.

            2. Anonym*

              It hasn’t gotten it all the way there, but from what I understand from HR colleagues, the ’08 recession had a huge impact on the prestige of that field among new grads, and is likely a big driver of the issues OP is experiencing. Cold comfort, perhaps, but maybe comfort nonetheless?

              My own take is that it’s a nightmare career path full of ethical landmines that I couldn’t be paid enough to navigate. But I do work in finance and have my own complex feelings about what role finance can and does play in the world at large. My own firm does many high impact good things, but I’m sure there are countervailing negative effects. I’m not a socialist (perhaps a fan of much more heavily regulated capitalism) but agree with each of your points below and vote and campaign accordingly. I also happily pay taxes and would willingly pay more for each of those things you list. I’ve gotten off track… Bottom line = large scale change is needed, and I hope OP can be part of it. I suspect that more ethical and healthy treatment of employees in any field makes ethical decision making easier.

          2. Richard Hershberger*

            A classic collective action problem. We can see this in the later 19th century with the Saturday half-holiday, rather than a full six-day work week. Many employers saw the advantages of the half-holiday, and likely wanted the afternoon themselves, but feared being put at a competitive disadvantage. This was especially true for retail stores. If all the dry goods stores in town close at 1:00 Saturday, there is tremendous temptation for one of them to instead stay open and snag all the Saturday afternoon business. You can read reports of meetings where owners agree to all close at the same time. Sometimes this worked, sometimes not.

            Yes, you ask, this is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with early baseball? Baseball was part of the discussion favoring the half-holiday. If Sunday was the only day available for baseball, either to watch or to play, then they would be tempted to do this rather than sit in church like they were supposed to. Local clergy often supported the half-holiday so the young men would get it out of their system.

            I doubt that modern investment banks are capable of coming to this sort of agreement. I’m not even sure it is legal, not that I think this would be a real impediment if they didn’t want it to be. It will be fascinating to see if competitive advantage in hiring will be enough to reach the same effect. I am not optimistic.

            2. doreen*

              I’ve read that the above is also the reason that car dealers in states that prohibit car sales on Sundays are often against changing those laws – once the law allows cars to be sold on Sundays, all the dealers will have to open on Sundays lest they lose sales to the competition. But they aren’t likely to sell more cars if they are open seven days- they will sell roughly the same number of cars with higher operating costs for being open the additional day ( sure, the salespeople are probably on commission, but that doesn’t mean everyone is. And it would be an extra day every week of electricity being used)

              1. Old and Don't Care*

                Similarly, until a few years ago you couldn’t buy liquor in Indiana on Sundays, and efforts to change the relevant laws were aggressively lobbied against by liquor store owners. They did not want to be open on Sundays, for the reasons you describe, but they did not want grocery stores, which are open Sundays and also sell alcohol, to be able to do so either. Eventually the people got what they wanted and you can now buy Everclear at the grocery store on Sunday, as God intended. However, you can not buy cold beer.

                And thanks to Richard for making me laugh with “Yes, you ask, this is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with early baseball?”

                1. MCMonkeyBean*

                  This is honestly very interesting! I am strongly opposed to those kinds of laws because there is no basis for them other than religion and religion has no place in our laws–but I had never thought before that there were any non-religious reasons that some people might be lobbying for them.

                  I still think they should be overturned, but at least I understand that piece a little better now.

            3. Deanna Troi*

              Richard Hershberger, I very much enjoy your comments and am looking forward to purchasing and reading your book!

      3. Ground Control*

        So it sounds like bottom line this is an issue of clients expecting almost immediate attention, and if your company set some boundaries that made clients wait a bit longer to give employees better work life balance then you’d go out of business because clients would find a different company that provides immediate attention? This just really feels like it’s not a sustainable business model. #ItWasCapitalismAllAlong

      4. MidDayToker*

        I think you are equating the fact that you have always worked like this in the past with it’s the only way to do it. It might take work to update your current model but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t change.

      5. Pucci*

        If you need coverage for 14 hrs, why can’t teams of two people work on an account, one working the first 9 hrs, the other the second 9 hrs, with the overlap being used for the transition?

          1. Willis*

            Right – they can get four years of work out of someone in only two years. Woohoo!! (…other than the fact that they can’t seem to find anyone to stick with this deal…)

        2. Librarian of SHIELD*

          This is my thought, too. Assign each client a team instead of a single agent, have that team develop the model together, and stagger their shifts so someone is always available when the client needs to get in contact.

        3. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          My office is open 17 hours a day (we’re admin support for a medical system – think records and billing mostly) and we run more than one shift with about an hour of overlap so that the folks from morning can brief the evening crew on anything we need to know about to keep things running.

          I’ve also worked in hotels (almost 8 years total there), and every single hotel I’ve worked at had at least a 15 minute passdown/shift change briefing period.

          Tired or burned out employees will make mistakes – sounds like that industry as a whole needs to start training their customers to accept that the employees aren’t Superman and physically can’t be at their beck and call 24/7/365.

        4. gmg22*

          OP — along with his/her firm and industry more widely — clearly believes that only a narrow set of people can “handle” the specifications of any given client workload and if they make teams larger, try a shift coverage-type model or other innovations, the firm’s expertise will somehow be perceived as having been diluted.

          We have a little bit of this problem at my research/advisory nonprofit, where very, very specific “expertise” (that my colleagues believe only a few people, namely themselves, have) is vaunted … the belief that no one else can quite do what we do, so we have to work ourselves into the ground to do it. It’s a viral feature of the modern, intricately specialized knowledge economy.

        5. LilyP*

          We should acknowledge that doing this effectively will take a seismic change in how the team handles communication, documentation, and client relations though. It still is probably the only way through long-term, but it’s not a simple thing they can “just” do. High-complexity time-sensitive work just doesn’t scale easily across multiple people. It’s likely that the communication and scheduling and training overhead will mean the hours are not 1:1 — I’d guess you’ll probably will end up needing to hire 3 people working 40-50 hour weeks with some sort of shift rotation for evenings and weekends to replace one person currently working 100 hour weeks with constant availability, and you might need more admin support to ensure shift schedules are set correctly and there’s always coverage and backup. AND this may even cost more in total salary in the long run, since you probably can’t find competitive hires for a third what you’re currently offering (but it sounds like you’re willing to throw money at the problem already).

      6. cosmicgorilla*

        “you just can’t have the person who built the model not be available”

        If your colleague can’t step in and pick up the model you’ve created, there’s a problem. Either with how you’ve built it, the notes you’ve left, or how you’ve socialized it with your colleagues before stepping out. This is a cultural thing that can be solved.

        If said model builder were to be hit by a bus, colleague would HAVE to step in.

        1. Alsafi*

          Exactly this. What do you do when the model-maker isn’t available because they quit after 6 months? What do you do when they have an aneurysm from overwork & die at their desk? This isn’t life-saving work, to demand this level of 24-7-365 coverage seems like abusive capitalism run amok.

        2. Morticia*

          I’m guessing the thought is that you can’t be hit by a bus if you never leave the office. Of course, heart attacks can happen anywhere…

        3. Krabby*

          But if they never leave the office, when will they get hit by that metaphorical bus? See, they’ve thought it through. Lol

        5. Richard Hershberger*

          Also, did you entrust half-trained, sleep-deprived Junior Guy with building that model? I sure hope not! Surely it was Senior Guy who laid out how this is going to work. Junior Guy is just implementing it. The idea that you can’t insert a different Junior Guy, or better yet and two Junior Guys both working on it all along? You need to show your work how you got to that conclusion.

        6. nona*

          And if the model-builder is the only one that can explain it, are you opening yourself up for potential fraud or embezzlement? or for an investment scenario that crashes the global economy?

      7. COBOL*

        I would add to 1 and 2, getting the best people is more important (or seen as more important) than any cost. A top banker is worth a literal billion dollars. That part is the same for tech, so even twice as many people at half the cost wouldn’t be as valuable.

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          This is why sports stars are so highly paid. The number of positions on the field or on the roster is limited, and the drop off in quality from the best in the world to the tenth best in the world is dramatic.

          But a junior drone in an investment bank? Frankly, I don’t believe it.

          1. COBOL*

            But it’s funding the junior drone needle in a haystack. That’s the theory at least. I agree with you. Very few actually outperform index funds. But I know about as much about that as I do about why the balk role came into play.

            1. Richard Hershberger*

              Going back to the sports comparison, the drop off in compensation below the elite level is dramatic. Anyone who makes the top tier league of a major sport is well paid. The Major League Baseball minimum currently is, though the miracle of collective bargaining, about $500K. This is not too shabby. But below the top level the pay plummets. Minor league ball players work appalling hours for below-minimum wage pay. Do the various sports have trouble recruiting players in light of these conditions? Not at all! Potential recruits literally line up for a chance to get in.

              Admittedly this is different in that playing baseball is fun while investment banking, I am given to understand, is not. So a guy might decide to spend his gap year out of college playing professional ball just for the experience. But the two are similar in that the potential payoff is huge. A lot of guys are taking their shot hoping for that.

            2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

              Very few actually outperform index funds.

              Investment banks are on the sell-side, not the buy side. They’re not mutual funds, or hedge funds, or private equity funds. With due respect, if you’re going to proffer advice about how to run an investment bank, it would be helpful if you actually knew something about the industry.

          2. Hare under the moon with a silver spoon*

            +1 to this.

            Liars Poker laid bare the mentality around this – these aren’t “rockstars” solving the climate crisis, pandemics or creating world peace. Just bods in a highly dysfunctional offices.

      8. Tuesday*

        I have no experience with this, so I may be totally missing the mark, but couldn’t more people with fewer clients and more people intimately knowledgeable/experienced with the model help solve #1?

        For #2, I don’t think that’s proving attractive to people. I think people would rather do two years worth of work in two years. It really doesn’t seem like a benefit if people aren’t happy with it and don’t want to continue.

      9. Just Jess*

        About that 3rd factor – is it still true that the “best” hires stay for 20+ years? Average tenure varies by industry and field, but is what has been true in the past going to continue to be true? A lot of folks are pointing to the obvious solution of hiring more staff to lighten the workload. Is your organization considering hiring consultants to uncover issues and provide a variety of options to address the retention issue?

        Those hired consultants might also further investigate the claim that it’s 100% true that those who have the “discipline” to complete the two year program are the only ones who are competitive at the highest level (in your industry/field, not just perception at your specific organization).

      10. HerdingCatsWouldBeEasier*

        There are huge benefits to doing it this way. You do four years’ worth of work in two. People who make it through the program jump forward a decade in their careers.

        Please take this is as it is meant, Vaca- but it sounds like toughing it out 6-9 months jumps people forward 5 years in their career, and is long enough to realize that staying any longer is absolutely not worth it. It really sounds like you need to have fewer clients per staffer, so that they can provide the evening/weekend support without having to give up their lives. In my previous comment above, I noted that consistently doing these kind of hours gives one only four hours a day for eating, showering, commuting, and living their life- if they’re only getting 6 hours of sleep a night. This is physically unsustainable for many people long term even if they have a spouse or partner who is 100% responsible for managing everything in their life. This schedule would represent significant physical and mental harm for me due to sleep deprivation within a month even if my husband took over everything I do for the household. A lot fewer people have that kind of household support now than even 10 years ago. This model is exploitative, full stop. It sounds like the people you hire have other options and make the very rational decision to pursue them.

        1. AndersonDarling*

          I cannot imagine having coders working on such time sensitive, detailed projects with only 6 hours of sleep. And that’s if they can actually sleep.

          1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

            There’s a reason why when nursing went to 12 hour shifts as standard they also moved to at the most scheduling 3 days in a row.

            (I have several relatives who are retired nurses, this was what all of them experienced, and it was across multiple states and hospital systems.)

      11. Detective Amy Santiago*

        There are huge benefits to doing it this way. You do four years’ worth of work in two.

        This does not sound like a huge benefit.

        Times are changing. You and your industry need to adapt or you’re going to die out.

        2. Properlike*

          What is this “four years’ worth of work” that’s being done in half the time? Is it *work* or is it *learning?*
          As a teacher, I can tell you that you can’t speed up learning in any meaningful way, ESPECIALLY if you take away sleep, exercise, and downtime. Learning happens when the brain is NOT engaged.

          If it’s “experience” — maybe I’d rather it take four years to get up to speed instead of two. Maybe that’s okay.

          This “benefit” has so many flawed assumptions built in that it’s laughable. “Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD.”

        3. elizelizeliz*

          This is what I was coming here to say. Maybe that is a huge benefit for the company, but it truly does not seem like a huge benefit for the worker.

      12. Hex Libris*

        This is broken thinking. There’s a lot of daylight between 40 hours and 100, and I heartily doubt 100 is necessary for the business model. You’re losing out on great people because you’re demanding a work schedule that is unsustainable for most humans, and spectacularly unhealthy for those who push through. You will end up with people hallucinating from sleep deprivation and having car accidents. It’s not BUD/S; the machismo that demands this level of suffering is misplaced at best.

      13. Mental Lentil*

        That’s a weird way of saying “I had to suffer through this and so I think everybody else does, because I just don’t believe in making the world a better place for people.”

        1. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

          The hours improve considerably as you climb from analyst to associate to VP to managing director, etc., although it’s not a 9-to-5 industry at any level.

      15. Cat Lover*

        “Clients demand same day turnaround, and particularly during crunchtime you just can’t have the person who built the model not be available.”

        People make this excuse is EVERY industry. What happens if that person gets hit by a bus? Or gets cancer? Or has a baby? Or quits (as it seems people are doing)?

        1. Guacamole Bob*

          Many other industries handle this by finding ways to have work ebb and flow. Having a crunch week where you’re the person who has to work at 2 a.m. because you built the model and something is going on in financial markets halfway around the world is one thing, especially if people are well compensated and know going in that there will sometimes be crunch times. Having that happen every week, though, means you’re not staffing things in a sustainable way. Find a way to divvy up responsibilities and clients and structure things differently so that if you work a 100-hour week, you get slower times to compensate.

        2. Worldwalker*

          If you can’t have the person who built the model not be available, what happens when they can’t deal with 100-hour weeks and quit? That’s pretty unavailable! And it’s happening over and over again. Yet the company hasn’t failed yet, so apparently there is some way to handle having them not being available.

        3. EBStarr*

          Pretty sure part of the deal in investment banking is that they don’t hire many women so that there won’t be too many babies. For non-birth parents, give them a generous 2 weeks or so of leave and make sure they know that they’re actually expected to be online during the whole leave anyway. Problem solved!

      16. Momma Bear*

        Kind of what struck me here is:

        2. There are huge benefits to doing it this way. You do four years’ worth of work in two. People who make it through the program jump forward a decade in their careers.

        Maybe true, but these “benefits” are either not obvious to the juniors or they decide that this kind of truncated program isn’t worth the career bump to them. Could there be a slower track that doesn’t grind the juniors into the ground? Maybe they don’t jump ahead 10 years but maybe they don’t *want* to.

        1. Hibiscus*

          Or they are looking forward and thinking, “You know what? This global business model will not exist in 10-15 years. It will have eaten itself. I need to take the money and go while I am still flexible enough to learn new skills.”

          1. Not So NewReader*

            The employees will all be sick and dying or dead already.
            Corporate America will suddenly realize it’s probably not good to kill off the employees.
            I know of a place where entire departments got wiped out.

          2. US expat soon-to-return to Asia!*

            Investment banking has existed, in some form, since at least 17th century Amsterdam and the Dutch East India company. It’s not disappearing, not as long as companies that need capital need to be matched with people who have capital.

        3. Lily of the Meadow*

          Also, what benefit is there to the juniors? OP states that he is STILL working these insane hours, is owed money, and is treated dismissively by his superiors. I do not see one iota of benefit to this job, period. Ever. At all.

      17. AndersonDarling*

        Two people can pair on model building. It’s what happens in other industries. When one isn’t available, then the other steps in.
        As long as both are using best practices and making notes, then your data modelers can share the work. Create processes where one modeler signs off after 8 hours and leaves notes for the next shift. But this only works if you have a team environment. If you have a culture of backstabbing and cruel competitiveness, then you will never be able to share the workload.

        1. Momma Bear*

          Not having N+1 is building in areas of failure. I may not be great at my coworker’s job and vice versa but if I were hit by a bus, I know someone could pick up key bits of my job and together the company could keep going.

          1. CatWoman*

            That is one of the reasons I left my previous company – they had too many things that only 1 particular person could do, and trusted absolutely no one to cover those tasks. I repeatedly brought up that there should be a back up for every task – not one ‘Yoda” holding all of the knowledge. Repeatedly, I was shot down. Well, “Yoda” then experienced a health crisis that required frequent periods of unavailability. Sorry, everyone just has to wait until “Yoda” returns. Try explaining that to a client. I’ve moved on and it isn’t my problem anymore, but I’m told that nothing has changed. Sheesh.

        2. ten four*

          As a Director at a software company, pairing seems like the obvious answer to me! Also the goal for us is to get to *sustainably* high levels of productivity, so we are strict AF about our working hours. There are crunch days every once in a while, but overall people earn a lot of money to work 40 hour work weeks and our clients get excellent software.

      18. Ace in the Hole*

        Who dies if they don’t get same-day turnaround?

        I mean that in a literal sense. You say you “can’t” have the person who built the model not be available, but that is certainly not true in a literal sense. If the person who built the model passed out unconscious or got rushed to emergency surgery, they would be unavailable. So what would the consequences be for having them unavailable? Are the consequences really serious enough to justify the demand?

        If the consequences are that serious, there’s no excuse for not having redundancy. Hire more people and cross train on the various models so someone is available to fill in when the primary person is unavailable. We have some positions that must be filled during a certain set of hours to prevent literal explosions… so we cross train. We don’t just expect one person to be available 100% of the time and never need a day off. The skills are complex, difficult to master, and take years before someone is competent to work fully independently. Cross training is annoying, expensive, and takes a lot of time. But if it’s necessary, it’s necessary.

        I understand this is pervasive in the industry – not just something with you or your firm. But it’s important to realize you can’t have it both ways. If it’s so critical to have someone available at all times, then the only reasonable response is to hire enough people and do enough cross training to ensure redundancy. If it’s not important enough to warrant that, it’s not important enough to demand routine 100-hour workweeks.

        1. Escapee from Corporate Management*

          “Who dies if they don’t get same-day turnaround?”

          No one. And once I was on the client side, I learned that many people who demand same-day turnaround did it only because that was the way it had always been. No one from the bank every pushed back. And what’s worse? Some of them got same-day turnaround, then didn’t look at the information until the next day.

          As someone who has worked on dozens of deals, it really isn’t necessary to do this.

          1. Plant*

            Haha, I don’t deal with bankers but do deal with lawyers with similar expectations and similar behavior.

            It’s perfectly possible to reset their expectations and learn what the real deadlines are, but it requires not being afraid of clients (almost everyone is afraid of clients, especially sales aka the senior people in banking). It also helps having expertise that’s actually rare, which isn’t true for banking analysts.

      19. Me me me*

        I work in a slightly more sane field, but still building models for fast-changing multi-billion model forecasts (probably one of the corporate jobs that some of your burn-outs take).

        We work closely with vendors that have off-shore model support. This lets us send over changes at the end of the day that will be updated by the following morning. We have dedicated people who spend time onboarding so they can quickly make needed changes. There are ways around #1.

        #2 is….. basically saying that you think people should value what you do (quick getting ‘ahead’ in a career) but what Alison and others are saying is that fewer a d fewer people are actually valuing that. It sounds like most of them would value a slightly more normal trajectory in trade for a life that actually means something to them beyond the job.

      20. Escapee from Corporate Management*

        Hi Vaca. I did this job for two years back in the last century. I wish I could agree with your views, but I don’t. What I found was:
        1. Much of the work could have been divided among multiple people. You could have had two people working 60-hour weeks instead of one person working 100-105 weeks. Yes, that means a little bit more time, but it’s much easier to work a 60-hour week.
        2. Only a small number of people jumped a decade in their careers. Those were the ones who thrived on this. Many others burned out and left the industry. There’s a selection bias in your assessment.
        3. Which connects to your #3: very, very few people last 20 years. Those that do assume the system works because it worked for them.
        4. I also learned from the customer side (where I eventually moved) that most don’t need to have the report on their desk at 7:00am the next day. Sure, they say they want that. They also want a Mercedes for $10,000 and free lobster at lunch. If they’re told “we need two days to deliver this”, most will say “okay”.
        5. One last point: many customers dump work onto the financial sector because they can. No successful corporation can make employees work regular 100-hour work weeks. So they simply hand things to you that they could have done themselves. In other words, the industry has created a phenomenal negative feedback work with where awful working conditions lead to more work.

        I left that world for the corporate one, where these types of policies will get a manager fired. And you know what? My co-workers were happier and more productive. Alison is right. Time to change the way that industry works.

        1. LizM*

          The selection bias is a really good point.

          You’re only going to promote people who do well in this environment when this is what you have to survive to get promoted. That means that the people sitting around thinking about how to fix the “problem” of people not wanting to work 100 hours a week are all people who are willing to work 100 hours a week and feel like the pay makes it worth it. It’s a recipe for group-think (which I’m really seeing in OP’s comments – this is the way the industry is, there is no other way to address things).

        1. Caboose*

          “I work 100 hours a week for decades, he cannot afford (and drops dead from a heart attack). Great success!”

      22. Green great dragon*

        That’s an argument for people sometimes having to work long hours or be called in at unsocial hours. I don’t see why it prevents spreading the work over more people so they get some slow days in projects, and slow weeks in between. For, you know, a couple of years longer to career peak

      23. El l*

        Completely respect the discipline and competitiveness you speak of. That said…why do clients demand same day turnaround? When did that expectation begin? Who promised that? I imagine your worry would be that someone else would promise that and get the business and that’s a reasonable fear…but your competitors have got to be under the same pressures. And most professional services industries besides i-banking have longer horizons than same-day.

        If you’re wondering what’s changed in the last 10 years, I don’t think it’s a bunch of snowflakes, but rather the following pressures coming to a head:

        1. Working 100 hours from home is worse than living in the office, because you can’t escape work.
        2. Advances in life expectancy – and the cost of both retirement and education – have meant longer careers. The young generation now can expect to work not just 20-30 years before retirement, but more like 50. Burnout is less of an option.
        3. Automation – which I gather that investment banking has been exploring doing for this sort of grunt work – will render many skills (including the ones gained by these exercises) useless. It’s only a matter of time.
        4. There are more options for talented young people to go than what were available in the ’80s and ’90s. There are plenty of places that’ll develop and (at least moderately) reward their talents but require only more like 60 hours than 100.

      24. James*

        “1. This work is really, really hard to do with a 40 hour week.”

        Fair. I work in an industry with 50 hour weeks.

        “Clients demand same day turnaround…”

        There are a few ways to handle this. First, hire more people. Hire people in shifts. Second, work with your clients to reset expectations. That’s not impossible, especially with the pandemic (it’s a convenient excuse).

        “…you just can’t have the person who built the model not be available.”

        Another way to put this is that your model-makers are holding your accounts hostage. Why do you have everything relying on one person? This is like building a bridge where all the stress is concentrated on one bolt–it’s just bad engineering!

        “2. There are huge benefits to doing it this way.”

        Mostly to the company, though. Sure, a few do benefit from it. The problem is, you’re grinding through people. Have you done follow-up interviews with the people who left? How are THEY doing in their careers? What is this program’s body count? That’s a serious question–the sort of stress you’re describing can have real physiological and psychological consequences, including suicide, drug addiction, extreme risk-taking, and the like.

        “3. Ultimately, the “best” hire is somebody who stays here for twenty years.”

        Granted. But you’re grinding through a lot of people to find those few who are willing to work the way you demand they work.

        “If they don’t go through the full program, they will never be competitive, not at the highest level.”

        And that’s a problem why, exactly? Again, serious question here. Why is being competitive at the third-highest level inherently bad? Also, do you have any actual evidence that destroying people the way this program necessarily will has real benefits? Or is this a case of “Everyone who’s competitive at the highest level went through this”? If it’s the latter, it’s a pretty dismal metric by any rational standards.

        “There’s a discipline involved….”

        I know you think you’re explaining yourself here, but it comes off as you saying “But I’m SPECIAL!!!” The reality is your industry isn’t. You think it doesn’t take discipline to be a geologist? An engineer? A doctor of veterinary medicine? IT? Do you know what discipline it takes to be a janitor? It’s more than you imagine. What you’re talking about isn’t discipline, it’s breaking down the person and re-building them in the company’s image.

        1. Jackalope*

          Yeah, one of the drawbacks in this line of thinking is the idea that you have to have the most competitive employees that will do the very best. It’s nice to have rock stars that can manage to do more than other staff, and it’s nice to feel like you hired the very best person available. But if you have 1000 23 year old graduates and 5 of them are the very best, you’re still going to have a few hundred that are still pretty good (or depending on the program, maybe ALL of them are pretty good). Plus you could have people finish the apprenticeship in more time than 2 years and still get the information and training they need. And I know it’s been said over and over in this thread, but people that are in the top 80% or even 90% but not the 99.99% but who are working reasonable schedules and are well-rested are going to give you better work long-term than those who are technically more proficient but also exhausted beyond their functioning point and possibly also drugged.

          (I would also add that programs like this tend to focus on a handful of skills. While I’m sure those skills are useful for IB, or they wouldn’t have remained in demand, it’s common for employers to miss specific competencies that would greatly help them in other areas. What those would be for IB I couldn’t tell you, since that’s not my field, I’m guessing that going for employees that are not in the top .01% but can do excellent work on a reasonable schedule would help you find what they are.)

      25. Anonymous Koala*

        I get that’s it’s not a linear exchange – 2 people working together on a project are not the same as 1 person working really hard, even if the billable hours are the same. But can you experiment with a more team-based system, instead of relying on the person who built the model being available 24/7? It also builds in more reliability – what do you do now if the person who built the model is sick or injured and unavailable? As Alison said above, it seems like people aren’t willing to work these hours anymore. Maybe if your firm is the first to provides an option for fewer hours (even if the pay is lower) you’ll be more attractive to candidates in this new competitive market.

        1. Worldwalker*

          There are also advantages to having two people: More reliability, as you said. Better work because the one person isn’t sleep-deprived, stressed, and fried. It’s quite possible that two people will produce *more* than one person working really hard for the same number of hours because humans function best when we can get enough sleep.

          And time to recharge matters. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked away from a problem, gone and run errands or something, then came back and started writing code because the answer was obvious now.

      26. bschool grad*

        #2 is not necessarily true. So many of my classmates went into Investment banking right after graduation and then all can’t be 10 years ahead of . . . who? They all did this. Stop drinking the kool aid yourself

      27. Omnivalent*

        1) There’s a lot of room between 40-hour weeks and 100-hour weeks every week. And crunch time is much more productive when people aren’t starting from a place of exhaustion.

        2) You know that joke about how the prize for winning a pie-eating contest is more pie?

        3) Telling a 23-year old that they’ll need to keep up this pace for another 20 years is not a selling point.

      28. Apple of the day*

        OP you’ve asked for advice and been given it, and I agree with everything written here about workload. You say you can’t do anything about that (OK…..) But I’d also consider:

        1. What lifestyle are these kids reaching for? What does the lives of folks in their late 20’s look like at your firm? With the housing market and dual income families it’s incredible how much money people need to maintain a “luxurious” lifestyle in HCOL areas like NY and SF. I bet your 27-32 year old workers are still working insane hours, and aren’t living especially high on the hog. When you’re struggling to pay what you need to subsidize all the time your at work you start to ask questions.

        2. This is what kills diversity. People who want to see their families, men and women who want to be in a partnership with another full-time worker, folks who like spending their evenings/weekends at church, volunteering, or taking care of an ailing grandma… they’re all out. You’ll get one cookie-cutter type of person over and over and over. That’s what builds an echo chamber where you all think ‘no we can’t do things differently!’.

      29. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

        Sounds like you guys need more of a client “care team” model. 2-3 people (depends on client size and location – international in different time zones would require more folks) on each client account, rotating their coverage, and communicating very well. I know in the cut-throat, competitive world you are in, cooperation probably seems pretty foreign, but it has the advantage of giving the client the attention of 2-3 people who are not overworked and who, together, can often come up with way better solutions than just 1 person in a silo

        1. James*

          ” 2-3 people (depends on client size and location – international in different time zones would require more folks) on each client account, rotating their coverage, and communicating very well. ”

          This is exactly what happens with my group in my company. You get a small handful of people who share information nearly seamlessly, so that if one or even two get pulled away you can keep going. While there are sometimes issues (everyone’s got an ego), you’re absolutely right that we find more creative solutions together than we would solo. We’ve probably saved the company a million dollars in the past year, if not far more. Doesn’t sound like much for an investment banker, but that’s 10% of our operating budget.

          Let me say that another way: We could have paid for ourselves 4 times over just out of the money we saved. And that’s a minimum estimate; the reality is likely higher.

          This is not a losing proposition here. This is a way to make money, while making your company more robust, reducing turnover, and improving the quality of life of your junior staff.

      30. Pikachu*

        I don’t get this. Why are there no redundancies? Why is crunchtime entirely dependent on one person’s knowledge of a model? What if they died in their bed that morning?

      31. Nat*

        It’s really hard for me to believe that this is some kind of “truth” as opposed to embedded culture. Building a model is, frankly, not rocket science or brain surgery. People get trained to launch actual rockets while working less than 100 hours a week. Is it really not possible to have teams work on models (so that same-day turnaround isn’t as much of an issue) and distribute work differently? Are all investment bankers truly geniuses with such rarified skill sets? I think this is an ingrained work culture distorting people’s views of the actual skills involved.

      32. cyllan*

        So, I’m not in your industry, but I am in another industry where there can be highly toxic overtime requirements, and I’m going to disagree with 1 and 2.

        1) No one’s saying keep it to a 40 hour workweek. We’re saying maybe you should aim for 45-50. If my people have to work overtime more than 4-6 weeks out of the year, I have done something wrong as a manager. You can set your targets appropriately to hit something reasonable. Also, if two people work together to build a model, then during crunch-time, they can share the load. You’re locked into “This is how it’s done” and aren’t willing to consider ways to change things up.

        2) You’re not doing four years worth of work in two. At BEST you’re probably getting 50 hours of good, useful work out of folks who are working these hours. Someone who is putting in 100 hours each week for two years? I promise you that by year 2, they’re finding short-cuts. Either they’re using stimulants, or they’re watching you-tube videos in the mornings while they’re technically billable, or … something. Or they break down and quit. You will get better workers over the longer term (and actually GET to 3) if you look at changing the program to something sustainable instead of … this.

      33. Cheesecake2.0*

        Regarding your #1…. My husband works a completely different job in R&D but he works at a client laboratory site with very cutting edge, proprietary technology. There is a lot of sudden demand for changes and need to respond ASAP. The way his company handles this is that all shifts overlap and they have a very specific, careful handoff process so the next person knows exactly what’s going on and how to respond to the client appropriately because there are often middle-0f-the-night emergencies or technical procedures that take a few days (and thus, several people) to complete. Every person works 45 hour weeks, and also rotates weekends, so there’s 24/7 coverage. Same as how doctors have shifts and handoff procedures. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t possibly be able to come up with a handoff process that allows 2 people to be able to respond in the same way to the same client as needed depending on who’s available when the request comes in.

        1. Gru*

          Before my mother retired there was literally no-one else who could do what she did in the entire country (subspecialist doctor in a tiny developing country), but her average work week was still ~50 hrs. She was on call 24/7, yes, but on call doesn’t mean at the hospital. And she’s a workaholic.

          OP, do handoffs not exist? Do cell phones not exist? People don’t need to be at work 24/7 in case of emergency (and in investment banking in particular, which is the very opposite of a life-or-death situation).

      34. Thot Leader*

        @Vaca-
        I work in MBB consulting. Not as structured a path as IB yet has analogous tensions & tradeoffs for those who come in at the analyst level (& is also having massive attrition crisis, for largely the same reasons). Haven’t seen anyone remark on the “prestige” factor of IB yet. Unfortunately the reality is that IB (and MBB, and FAANG) on a resume does unlock doors and supercharge careers. College graduates (assuming likely you hire from top-tier schools) are often individuals who have optimized and box-checked a great deal of their lives and not spent a great deal of time realistically considering what they want to do for a career. For these individuals, opting-into IB seems like a very safe choice with little downside— even if the program is a meat-grinder. Their concerns are valid and I admire the steps you’ve taken to claw back control. I deeply sympathize as I’m in a similar position.

        A few thoughts—
        1. Project-based approach to work, each analyst only on 1-2 deals at a time, breaks between deals.
        2. Add another “off-cycle” class of analysts, not hired directly from internship or straight from ivy/top state schools (consider candidates who are later-career or “switchers” from PE/consulting who opt-in with more knowledge of what they’re opting into).
        3. After the program is complete, mandatory 3-6mo “sabbatical” time off.
        4. Senior partners (not associates or midlevels) evaluated by building relationships with, & directly mentoring, individual analysts. Thus “payoff” for staying, and the runway to success, becomes more real.
        5. Make it less of a “program” with a clear timeline. Understandably this is difficult, since most firms tacitly expect people to boomerang over to PE or tech before coming back as an associate. Could your firm disrupt this by promoting earlier or later, switching up the timeline, changing the metrics, making it less of a “two years and you’re done.” This would mean associates would have to restructure how they work, to do less slide/sheet-dumping on juniors, and spend more time coaching directly.

        I wish you the best, these are systemic forces you’re up against, and you’re asking the right questions.

      35. Texan In Exile*

        “particularly during crunchtime you just can’t have the person who built the model not be available.”

        Or – you could have good documentation on the model and make sure that more than one person understands it. Do you really want to be hostage to Key Person Risk? Nothing in your business should depend on what’s in the head of one person.

      37. chewingle*

        We ALL have clients who “demand” same-day turnaround. We’re just more practiced in setting realistic boundaries. I suggest trying it.

    3. too many too soon*

      My workplace understaffs because more employees at any schedule = more healthcare/benefits costs.

      1. Domino*

        Yeah, the “hire twice as many people, pay them half as much” logic makes sense until you think of benefits. You’re either paying for the same benefits to twice as many people regardless of salary, or trying to hire them while offering 50% of the coverage. Neither is ideal.

        1. Filosofickle*

          True. However, paying more for total compensation for more people might well be offset by reducing turnover and training costs.

        2. AdequateAdmin*

          Well, they’re already losing a ton of money. Paying 2x the benefits can’t be any worse than the time and money sink of constantly training, then losing people.

          1. Jackalope*

            Yes, this. I don’t know how much it costs to implement this training program, but my past experience at an office job was that it was more than more than half again as much as what I actually earned that first year to train me. And I believe that was just the cost for trainers’ salaries, supplies, etc. There’s also the cost to having someone working more slowly for the first while (however long it might be depending on the job) and so therefore getting less done. I can’t imagine that the apprenticeship here is cheap.

      2. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

        Luckily, if anyone can afford better benefits, it is investment banking. The markets have treated them well for a while

      3. Aitch Arr*

        Fringe is about 20% of base salary. I would bet that they are losing more than that due to turnover and retraining.

    4. Sasha*

      I don’t work in investment banking, but I would assume that new grads expect the $275k salary, and are willing to take on the hours to get that salary in theory.

      Yes, they then discover that in practice they can’t deal with the hours and leave. But I wouldn’t assume there would be the same clamour for posts working 50 hours a week for $100k. People go into investment banking to make a tonne of money, if they aren’t making a tonne of money it’s going to be hard to attract people.

      2. Yep*

        What is interesting here, and related to the question, is why the current applicants don’t realize that ahead of time. The older generation of applicants self-selected, with the vast majority finding the arrangement entirely unappealing! And those who took the job tended to stay. Now, in contrast to before, applicants are thinking they want to do the work, and then later realizing they don’t. Or, perhaps they don’t think they’ll stay, but take the job anyway–whereas previously, applicants would not claim they wanted to stay the 2yr term when they knew that wasn’t the case.

        2. MCMonkeyBean*

          I think it’s completely understandable that so many read “100 hour workweeks” and look at the salary and think “yeah, I can totally do that.” Until they have to actually do it and then they understand how truly horrible 100 hour work weeks are. It’s really difficult for them to anticipate how much it affects you mentally and physically and how truly unsustainable it is until they’ve actually lived it.

          1. MCMonkeyBean*

            To add: it’s kind of a more extreme version of a topic we’ve seen come up a few times over long commutes. I think it’s not uncommon that someone thinks “oh, driving for an hour or two isn’t bad” until they have to actually do it every day and eventually they realize how much of their life they are losing to their commute and they switch to a job with a better one.

          2. Zillah*

            Yes, this. I doubt anyone’s going into it thinking, “this will be great,” but I’d bet a lot of people look at it and think, “this will suck, but I can deal with it, it’s just two years” and then realize that it goes so much further than something you just don’t like.

        3. Zillah*

          I want to flip this around on you.

          What’s interesting here, and related to the question, is why the older generation of applicants were unable to recognize a fundamentally abusive work environment even when their personal relationships and health suffered as a result. Now, in contrast to before, applicants think that they can make the situation work, but when they experience it firsthand, they’re able to recognize the problem and remove themselves from the situation by finding a new position where either the work environment is healthier or they’re getting the most they possibly can in exchange for working in such abusive conditions.

          The older generation putting up with something doesn’t necessarily make it right.

    5. JimmyJab*

      Think about the people who do not want to cancel student debt because “I paid my loans, no fair!”

    7. MissDisplaced*

      I’m suspecting here that the high pay was long used as an incentive in this industry. They’re afraid if they hire more but pay less, the junior associates will go to the competition.
      Plus, this job is the cumulation of an expensive education.

      When I was young, 80 hour weeks of 12 hour swing shifts was the norm. It was exhausting and I have no idea how I did that except for youth and cocaine.

  13. Junebug*

    Hmmmmm 100 hour workweeks frequently described as life-consuming… Whatever could we do to get people to stay? I know, we’ll delay the high pay we promised and claw most of it back if they’re ungrateful enough to leave. That’ll definitely work.

    1. Alsafi*

      For real. Of all the bright red flags snapping in the breeze of this letter, this is the biggest & brightest. It’s like, “oh, we teach these kids to sew, but then these ingrates leave for other sweatshops or set up on their own because they don’t like working 16 hour days every day of the week! I know, we should lock them in! – signed, a Triangle Shirtwaist Manager”

      2. Yep*

        But this hardly a sweatshop situation, where the “best job” available is still an exploitative one. The people taking the OP’s job are no doubt well-qualified for plenty of decent-paying jobs with regular hours. They are electing to work for the OP’s company over other perfectly good options, whereas a sweatshop worker hardly has that choice.

    2. Enlyghten*

      You took the words right out of my mouth. How dare these ingrates think that their mental and physical health is more important than the company’s bottom line. Fine, they can quit, but they’ll have to pay for the privilege!

      I wonder if the OP cares if this work model has been the principal contributor to suicides. That would haunt me more than the annoyance of people quitting.

  14. Essentially Cheesy*

    I wouldn’t care what the pay is, I would not accept a job under those expected working conditions. However I am someone who highly, highly values time time away from work after my 40 hours. I am not opposed to overtime but 100+ hours? Nope nope nope.

    1. Essentially Cheesy*

      Seriously, 100 hours a week is a bit more than 17 hours every single day. That’s an unsustainable amount of work for literally everyone. That leaves less than 7 hours every day for sleeping and eating and bare minimum self care, let alone other actual things like washing clothes, cooking, or cleaning your living space.

      I would probably collapse in a week.

  16. House Tyrell*

    I genuinely cannot imagine a single job other than leader of a nation that would require this many hours and even presidents and prime ministers get vacations and other perks. I used to work on campaigns for 84 hours a week or more with only one day off each week and none off the last few weeks before ED, but at least I knew that was going to end after a few months. I would never work that way- or more- for two years no matter how much money you paid me.

    Lower the salaries, hire more staff, give them better hours and weekends.

    1. Domino*

      Yeah, seriously.
      “Well, here I am on my deathbed at 58. I spent the vast majority of my adult life working. I had no hobbies, no close friendships, no functional relationships, my kids hate me, and I never got to relax without feeling guilty. But it was all worth it, because I helped the world’s wealthiest people become slightly wealthier.”

      1. Worldwalker*

        It’s been said that no one on their deathbed ever said “I should have spent more time at the office.”

      2. Texan In Exile*

        A 58 year old friend actually is on his deathbed – he was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few months ago. He didn’t have the kind of life you describe, but I do have friends who do have that life. Yes, they make (and already have saved) a ton of money, but they are always always working. They’ll travel when they retire, they say.

        I hope they make it. I sincerely hope they make it to retirement.

    2. Ally McBeal*

      Couldn’t agree more.

      I worked in the finance industry (my company had an investment banking arm, like OP) and one of the main reasons I left was the absolutely ridiculous hours. And by ridiculous I don’t necessarily mean excessive, because I only worked 50ish hours a week except during our busy periods (when it might go up to 60-70) – I mean that *what we were doing is unimportant in the grand scheme of things.* Staying until 8pm in case the trust-fund-kid client (who got handed a $10M portfolio because of who his daddy was) needed to know – and apparently couldn’t google – how many seats were on a particular kind of airplane is not important. OP is helping insanely rich people get even more insanely rich, none of it is a damn emergency.

  17. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

    Pay them $175 for 50- to 60-hour weeks, and as Alison suggests, hire more of them. This sort of hazing ritual does not produce good work or effective learning even for people who are motivated to pursue your field as a career. Since you are paying well beyond what most young people can earn, you’re getting people who are there for the money, and no wonder they jump ship when their mental and physical health start failing!

  18. De Minimis*

    I’m in the medical field, but we have a similar issue as far as having trouble retaining people in remote, high-need regions. What we do is pay a recruitment bonus up front which has to be repaid if the new hire leaves before the service agreement [usually a year] has ended. It’s prorated based on how long they stay. However, I don’t know if it helps retention since we still have people leave even after a few months who are willing to write a check on the spot for the outstanding amount.

    1. JohannaCabal*

      Your last sentence is a good point. If OP adds a clause that training costs must be reimbursed during a certain time frame, for example, two years, then it will end up being an issue of employees staying for that period, then once the clawback is over, leaving. This means they’ll be looking for someone every two years.

      1. Pennilyn Lot*

        Plus, training costs should fall squarely on the employer. That is their cost of doing business. Recruitment bonuses are something different.

    2. Not So NewReader*

      Wow. So people are willing to PAY in order to leave their jobs. “Somethin’s” wrong here.

  20. GreenDoor*

    So in other words, “I can’t understand how all the money in the world can’t convince young people who finally finished college and are looking forward to starting families, buying homes, enjoying time off with friends, don’t want to give up their entire life to work 14-hour days, including weekends, in a job that probably discourages them from using their vacation time and staying home when ill.”

    OP you sound like it’s a badge of honor that you work within this crappy system even though you have a family. It’s sad to me that it doesn’t occur to you how broken your system is. Be the change an fix it! Money isn’t everything. It sounds like you know that the insane hours and lack of time off are the problem. Start there! Respect the concept of work/life balance. “Balance” being the operative word – right now, you offer none.

      1. Cubicle_queen*

        My partner went through a major career change and had a few options on the table. The most attractive one involved lots of travel and overnights, but more than enough money to make up for it. I told them, “I didn’t marry a paycheck. I married YOU. I married the kind of future and adventures I wanted to have with YOU and our at-the-time-unborn children.” (Those kids are now emotional fireballs of toddler proportions, which is why I was loath to lose another pair of heads and rational thinking.)

        I never understand the allure of failing your own body and neglecting people you love for the sake of a high bank account, when there are other opportunities where you don’t have to make such a drastic sacrifice to meet your financial needs.

        1. Cubicle_queen*

          * pair of HANDS, but I would also welcome more heads to think straight when mine is utterly distracted by whining & storytelling.

        2. Lalala*

          The toddler years are NOT the time to start a job with crazy hours and travel. Every time my husband suggests something along those lines for his next career move, I’m pretty sure I burst into flames.

  21. Vaca*

    OP here – I really appreciate the feedback and I do (mostly) agree. Two challenges I will spell out from the get go:

    1. We would *love* to hire more staff. They just aren’t available. We’ve been turning over every rock we can to find people. We’ve been hiring people with non-traditional backgrounds, bringing in interns who quickly get hired full time, going through old resumes, etc. This work is demanding and precise and mistakes can cost us clients. Plus, every hire we make is at least 500 hours of training time. At some point somebody has to bring in business!

    2. I’ve been through variations of this cycle before. The competition will inevitably pay a bunch of lip service to “doing it a different way” and “changing with the times.” Then, when the next recession hits, all the people who took advantage of this newly liberal policy get canned. And then the policy gets rolled back, de facto if not de jure. As a smaller firm, we don’t really have the ability to take away newly offered incentives (and I wouldn’t want to!).

    Just some context!

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Isn’t it possible, though, that the reason you can’t find people is because of the hours? And that you might have more luck if you make the job’s hours more appealing?

      2. Vaca*

        That’s certainly a piece of it. I think we could get more candidates if we reduced the hours. But it introduces some significant issues:

        1. There needs to be continuity. The reality is that most of the day (8-6 or so) is taken up in calls and meetings. 6-8 is when the first draft of work can get done. I (or somebody else senior) can then review it at 8 or 8:30pm, ideally while the juniors are having dinner. Then comments come back at 9, it gets turned until 11, then back to my inbox for me to review when I get up at 6am. I finalize, it goes to the client, etc. If one person isn’t there for the whole song and dance, they miss out on significant context.

        2. There’s a standard expectation that the role is two years, with an optional third year if they do well. It takes six months of working these kind of hours to get to the point of utility. By 18 months, most people in this role have accepted their next job. So we really get 12 months of quality work. If you assume that the average junior is working a 100 hour week (they aren’t, that’s just to make the math simple) it takes 2,600 hours, roughly, to get to the point of being really competent and we’ll get another 5,200 out of you. If we take that down to, say, 50 hours, now we’re talking only *six months* of quality work, during which we only get 1,300 hours. Oof.

        3. Quite frankly, I’m nobody… I don’t have the ability to change the way this whole industry works or the way it’s perceived. The people who look for these jobs have these expectations. I don’t have the time or wherewithal to encourage people outside the traditional funnel to come apply. I don’t even know where I’d start!

        1. Vaca*

          Ooh, also, perhaps most important, all the mid-level people would quit! They would go work at the larger firm next door!

          1. Maybe I'm Just A Millennial*

            sounds like the business isn’t actually viable in the current climate, if everyone is desperate to jump ship.

              1. CBB*

                Sounds like it’s taken you 20 years to approach the same conclusion that many of your former coworkers reached in less than 2.

                Surely by now you must be in a position to comfortably?

                2. Worldwalker*

                  If you’re still working these 100 hour weeks …

                  Do you remember things from the days before? Lying on the beach with a trashy novel and nowhere to be, nothing to do? Browsing through flea markets just to see what you might find? Hiking in the mountains, going nowhere but back to where you started, soaking up greenforestgood? Looking at the little green nubs on your tomato plants and imagining the food they will become? Spending a weekend working on your book that you’re going to write one of these days? Binge-watching some TV series?

                  Imagine a world in which you can do those things.

                  Other people live in that world. And they think those things are worth more than money. Maybe they’re right. I think they are.

                3. Neptune*

                  @vaca – so, looking at you as an example, these kids can see that if they get through this program of 100 hour weeks for two or three years and then keep on doing that for another twenty years while taking on more and more responsibility and sacrificing everything else in their lives then the best they can hope for at the time of leaving, as epitomised by you, is doing so “reasonably comfortably”. And it is still unclear to your company why they are leaving?

          2. KateM*

            Why would mid-level people quit? Because they’d be mad if the younger staff gets to have better life than they at that age? Because they are afraid they won’t be allowed to work 100-hour weeks themselves?

            But, well, if you are not getting any junior level staff anymore, that just moves the day when you are out of all mid-level people a bit further into future.

          3. Cruciatus*

            Why are they leaving for the places with bigger names? Is there any perk there, or is it same hours, more money?

            1. Vaca*

              OP here – so the word from the big banks is that they are offering up protected weekends and flexibility. Honestly, I think it’s a fraud. They said the same thing back in 2008. Then they fired half their team. The other piece of it is that, to the extent you can offer that kind of flexibility, it’s because you *are* a drone that doesn’t interact with clients. We want our juniors working with clients from the beginning.

              1. Lester*

                It is not a fraud. It’s a perk that they are offering their employees in order to prevent the problem that your company is having now. If the labor market changes in a few years, they may have to adjust the perks they provide and they may have to lay off some people. That’s not fraud. You keep bringing up the 2008 recession, but your company should be focusing on the current economic climate, not the one from 13 years ago and not some hypothetical future recession.

                1. Calliope*

                  I mean, to be fair, it probably is a fraud. I don’t trust those places to do right by their junior employees either.

                2. Vaca*

                  @Calliope exactly. I’m a hard-driving asshole (an hard-driving asshole?) but I’m open and honest about it. Those guys will sell their moms if they can get the right price. And they’ll be kissing them goodbye right before they do.

              2. Nesprin*

                This might be the greatest end-stage-capitalism-facepalm I’ve ever seen:
                “I can’t hold onto my people because they go to big banks, and I can’t reduce their hours because then the work wouldn’t get done”
                “I’m going to a big bank because they reduce hours”

                1. WindmillArms*

                  It’s terrifying that people this sleep-deprived, logic-allergic and change-averse are in charge of the pensions for the few who still hope to one day have a pension.

              3. Anonymous Koala*

                But…recessions don’t happen every 2 years, and most millennial/gen Z employees aren’t necessarily looking for decades of long term stable employment from their employers. Your juniors likely aren’t planning to work 100+ hours for the next few decades, and they may actively be planning to leave in a few years for an industry with better work/life balance. Your company needs to think about what to offer employees now rather trying to warn them away from a company that will let them go when the next recession hits.

              4. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

                2008 recession was 12 years ago. Could another one happen? Of course and it probably will. Will big banks layoff people and cut perks? You betcha, but until then their staff gets a better work-life balance than yours. Also, with your firm’s inability to retain new staff over the next, say, 5-10 years until the recession, your firm might not exist anymore, or not exist too long after, due to not being able to hire now. Match the big firms perks now and you might survive until the next recession.

                1. Willis*

                  Yeah, this. Trying to sell junior employees on the idea that they should stick it out with you for more hours at the same pay because whenever the next recession happens you won’t lay them off like the competition will is a pretty hollow promise. Because it’s about a hypothetical event in an undetermined future, but also because of course your company would lay people off if the shit really hit the fan (hell, it might fold completely). Just because it didn’t in ’08 doesn’t mean it might not in the future.

              5. Worldwalker*

                So … companies that dangle carrots in front of prospective hires get those people … you look at the situation … and write to AAM for advice on how to get a bigger stick.

                I think you’re missing an important element here.

                And I think people are looking at it like “well, sure, they might fire me in a year if I go *there*, but I’ll definitely be burned out in a year if I stay *here*” and they take the “maybe I won’t get fired” over “I’ll definitely get burned out.”

              6. JSPA*

                Your career trajectory happened to coincide with the great recession, just as my parents (and your grandparents or great-grands?) childhoods were marked by the great depression and WWII. People entering the workforce a couple of years ago are going to be marked by living through a once in a 100 years pandemic (followed by the current hiring surge). Nobody saying that exceptional events don’t happen. Almost everyone’s life will have some statistically unusual events in it. But you cannot extrapolate from something rare that occurred “while you were watching,” as if it were going to occur more frequently than other such rare events.

                Furthermore, if firings did happen primarily on the basis of who had degraded and abased themselves adequately, while swearing fealty and loyalty… that makes the pattern more obsolete, not less. It emphasizes the internal rot that created the financial crisis, for Pete’s sake! The banking industry were not hapless bystanders.

                For that matter, an awful lot of sexual and racial harassment were endemic to investment banking. Me Too has happened. BLM and other awareness movements have happened. And now, we have growing awareness that once you sacrifice work- life balance, you end up too slammed, moment by moment, to get out. They’re getting out early, when they realize they’re being treated as feedstock for the institutional abuse machine. Why wouldn’t they???

              7. FFS*

                OP, if you can quit your job now I would 100% say you should do it on the spot, because it seems to have eaten your brain. Please re-read what you typed. Other banks are offering people a better work-life balance, and that’s why they’re leaving, and yet you keep saying that if you reduce hours the better analysts will leave. What’s the truth? What’s actually going on?

              8. Avril Ludgateau*

                OP here – so the word from the big banks is that they are offering up protected weekends and flexibility. Honestly, I think it’s a fraud

                This is, like, the single most revelatory thing you’ve said in this comment section, and it directly addresses your retention issue, but you outright dismiss it as “fraud”? Even if it is fraud, even if the big firms are lying to get the junior analysts into the door, those junior analysts have already demonstrated they are willing to leave over it.

                If it is fraud, then by offering it in earnest, you gain the upper hand.

                I’m only sorry this comment is so buried among others because this is your solution.

          4. Toss a Coin to Your Witchers*

            If you’re a small firm competing with large firms for clients, employees, etc. You simply have to do something differently than the larger firms, full stop. Is your small shop able to deliver a white glove experience? Deeper relationships? Better modeling? This is something your top level will need to decide and then prioritize accordingly. Yup, you’ll lose some clients and gain others.

            But if you’re offering the exact same product at the exact same price as your big fish competitors, then it’s no wonder you’re drowning.

          5. Turanga Leela*

            I notice you have a lot of concerns about people jumping ship for larger firms. It’s worth thinking (for the higher-ups; I realize this isn’t up to you) about what your firm can offer that the big firms can’t. It sounds like offering this kind of intensive training isn’t working. Can you offer lifestyle benefits that Goldman etc. can’t?

            FWIW, I’m a lawyer and I *gasped* at 100-hour weeks for two years. Even in BigLaw, that would be a unusually busy week. I can’t imagine doing that consistently, regardless of the pay.

            1. Xenia*

              I’m in public accounting. The big firms will do something like this to their new hires during busy season, except it’s for a few months, not a few years, 100 hour weeks are rare nightmares, and they still have a huge turnover rate at the 3-4 year mark

          6. Kella*

            Vaca, I’m seeing so many contradictions in your comments about benefits and obstacles. Here’s what I see:

            You say that a benefit to working this position is it jumps you forward 10 years in your career, and that staying in it affords you a lot of upward mobility… toward what? Toward more years working a job that makes you miserable? Why is moving forward in a career that’s killing you a benefit?

            You say that the money is very good and also that your work owes you a great deal of money. Are you receiving the money you’re staying for?

            You say that the long-term stability of the job is one of the draws, but also a. you can’t hire enough people to sustain the necessary work and b. you can’t make changes or you risk your mid-level people quitting or your clients leaving. That sounds like a VERY unstable situation to me and like if changes aren’t made, the business will eventually fail, if for no other reason but all of the employees have died and there was no one to replace them.

            You say you are unimportant, replaceable, and that not keeping up with the demand will lose you clients. And you also say *you* cannot leave because it is so important that *you* stay with these clients. Are you deeply valuable to them or are you disposable?

            And on a personal note, you mention that you have a family, but do they have you? Do they ever get to spend time with you? Do *they* value the high level of financial support over having you in their life?

            It sounds like you need to do a lot of personal reflection on why you believe what you do, and just generally looking at your assumptions of how your life is supposed to go.

        3. Nia*

          For number 1 why does the turnaround time need to look like that? No one is going to die if the work isn’t done in 24 hours so tell your clients to wait.

            1. Just Another Zebra*

              Until you run out of junior staff to pick up the mantel of mid-level staff, who then can’t pick up the reins of senior staff when they (inevitably) leave the company, through one means or another.

              No, it’s not going anywhere… but IB will likely have to adapt in the next year or so.

            2. Willis*

              Maybe OP’s company is though. Not being competitive enough to attract staff to do the work is a pretty big issue.

            3. A Wall*

              Lots of the individual companies and employees therein are, in fact, going somewhere when the market changes. Happened before and will happen again.

        5. Xavier Desmond*

          It sounds to me like you have very, very specific working practices that you (and I appreciate it’s not just you, it’s your industry as a whole) see as set in stone and completely unchangeable. It’s these working practices that are causing the long hours and giving you recruitment and retention problems. Saying “it’s the way we’ve always done it” is never a good justification for anything.

        6. Detective Amy Santiago*

          There needs to be continuity. The reality is that most of the day (8-6 or so) is taken up in calls and meetings. 6-8 is when the first draft of work can get done. I (or somebody else senior) can then review it at 8 or 8:30pm, ideally while the juniors are having dinner. Then comments come back at 9, it gets turned until 11, then back to my inbox for me to review when I get up at 6am. I finalize, it goes to the client, etc. If one person isn’t there for the whole song and dance, they miss out on significant context.

          This is clearly an unsustainable business model. It’s unhealthy and frankly ridiculous.

          1. JSPA*

            If your continuity is handled through endless calls and meetings, you’ve already lost. It’s like keeping a diary that documents every mouthful of food, every step taken, every breath, every gastric rumble…and even the writing itself. If I were being given 500 hours of training on how to operate as if we were still in 1980, I’d cut and run, too.

        7. Pants*

          I was in tax in a former life. We did 80 to 100 hour weeks 6 to 9 months a year. In order to even consider those hours again, I’d need a base minimum of $500k + incredible health insurance. I’d most likely be considered the junior range, if not lower, by today’s standards. 100 hour weeks just aren’t tenable anymore, especially after everyone has decided to reevaluate quality of life.

          tl;dr: When I was working 100 hour weeks, I found myself wishing for a cancer relapse so I could get a break. Think about that.

        8. Phoenix*

          Is there something I’m missing that would make it unworkable to have 2 junior employees, one who takes the meetings from 8 to 1 and one who takes the meetings from 1 to 6? The non-meeting-taking employee can use that time to do the drafting, review the notes from their colleague’s meetings, and also potentially incorporate edits to past work. There may still be a need for an hour or two of work at night, but if you allow employees to leave at 6 on the condition that they work from home for an hour or two between 9 and 11, I can pretty much guarantee they’d prefer that… and you can make it clear that employees are expected to keep their phones on them and be reachable for “emergencies” (although really, can I-Banking situations truly become emergencies??)

          PS, I’m a 20-something in a finance-related job who would NEVER consider I-banking as it is today. I love my work-life balance!

        9. Jean Pargetter Hardcastle*

          Even if you’re “nobody,” you’re somebody who either cares enough or has enough standing to change things that you brought the question here, so now it seems you’re in the uncomfortable position of learning that the only solutions you think your company would consider viable are widely viewed by the internet hive mind as unworkable. Is there someone above you who asked you to try to get some advice that you can share all this with? It just seems that if you can’t implement any of these suggestions, you’re stuck…but if you were happy being stuck you probably would not have written in.

        10. High Score!*

          Why do YOU want to work these hours? Aren’t your free time, your friends and you family important??? 100 hours a week is insane. Find out where others are going for a better deal and FOLLOW them to lovely 40 hour work weeks instead of criticizing then for wanting a work life balance!

        11. Angstrom*

          Honestly trying to understand point 1:

          Are all the calls and meetings during the 8-6 period related to the same project? If not, why can’t the work start earlier?
          If the calls and meetings 8-6 cover different projects, it seems those could be spread over more people, and again, the work could start earlier.
          It sounds like you’re saying that a day is 10 hours of data collection and 4 hours of data processing, every day. Is that correct?
          Based on my experience of conference calls and meetings, i find it hard to beleive that you’re getting 10 hours of good data out of 10 hours of meetings.

          1. Joielle*

            Yeah I am honestly confused by the explanation. Why can’t two or three people be on each project, each one works half or a third of the hours and keeps the others in the loop so they can answer questions in the other hours?

            I used to draft bills for my state legislature, which has VERY long hours towards the end of session – they basically work 24 hours a day in the last few weeks trying to hit deadlines. We’d be subject to these kinds of crazy deadlines too, like less than 24 hours to produce a 1000 page bill. So we would put at least two people on each of the big bills, each would work 12 hours on and 12 hours off, and we’d hand over in between with detailed notes. It still sucked, but it sucked a lot less than one person trying to do it all.

        12. CaviaPorcellus*

          Factory work had these hours for a very long time, with young children seen as a very important part of the process (able to climb through narrow openings to fetch dropped items, for example).

          In the United States, that’s no longer how factory work is done. You could talk about the exporting of these jobs overseas, but even with that, we’re still the third largest manufacturer in the world. Without child labor and with protections in place that would have been unthinkable 100 years ago.

          No field is above reform. Yours is overdue.

          1. Properlike*

            ^^This^^. Every rationalization OP has given so far boils down to “because we already do it this way” and “the client wants it.” None of this is a dealbreaker that couldn’t be solved by extending turnaround times or distributing work.

          2. Jean (just Jean)*

            STANDING OVATION. I was waiting to say the same thing. We used to have child labor. Hell, society also used to run single-crop farms (cotton, tobacco, sugar) with enslaved labor or almost-enslaved labor (“sharecroppers). And religions used to run on child sacrifice. And some societies mourned the dead by burning the widows. Yanno, it’s possible to make some progress over a few millenia.

            To paraphrase a bumper sticker: “The labor movement. We gave you the weekend.”

        13. CCC*

          (1) is kind of insane– like you basically just wrote that none of them can get to the core parts of their jobs until 6 pm. What is going on that you just run your mouths for 10 hours and then do actual work?

            1. CaviaPorcellus*

              You know that’s not actually an answer, right?

              -Are these 10 hours all with the same client? (Why????)
              -Are these 10 hours with different clients? (Why can’t you spread the work?????)
              -What on earth are you all discussing for these 10 hours?

              1. Vaca*

                It’s generally a bunch of different clients and a few internal meetings. 8:30AM, call with a buyer that goes 30 minutes. Then, 9AM, meet with the client to discuss the presentation that got put together for Project A. That meeting goes 60 minutes. 10AM, go over the buyers’ list on project B for an hour. 11AM, quickly try to knock out a few emails that are pending from the beginning of the day. 11:30, run to lunch with a potential client. 12:30, back in office to go over the model on Project C. 1pm, dry run of presentation for Project D, 3 hour meeting, done at 4pm. 4pm, meet internally with the deal team on A to make sure we’re all synced up before we start to lose the CEO / client. 4:30, buyer calls until 5:30. 5:30, try and knock out a few calls that I meant to make earlier in the day. 6pm, start working on stuff. Eat dinner at the office at 8pm.

                1. Anonynonynon*

                  Ok, you’re meeting with a bunch of different people.. so hire more junior people and divide the clients among them so each supports half as many clients as they used to.

                  PS–that’s a crazy schedule. You said you have kids? As the somewhat effed-up kid of two emotionally absent workaholics, I’d like to put in a plug for “explaining to my family why I’m looking for a new job,” which you mentioned above, as a solid option. Genuinely. I think your family is not as attached to your job as you believe them to be.

        14. Ginger Baker*

          “It takes six months of working these kind of hours to get to the point of utility. By 18 months, most people in this role have accepted their next job. So we really get 12 months of quality work. If you assume that the average junior is working a 100 hour week (they aren’t, that’s just to make the math simple) it takes 2,600 hours, roughly, to get to the point of being really competent and we’ll get another 5,200 out of you. If we take that down to, say, 50 hours, now we’re talking only *six months* of quality work, during which we only get 1,300 hours. Oof.”

          Your math is flat out wrong. It takes six months of work to get to the point of utility. You are presuming that is the same as “it takes 2600 hours of work to reach utility”, however you are missing two major pieces of this. First, you are missing is the major component of Effective Time vs. Exhausted Burnt Out Brain Only Partially Functioning Time. It takes 2600 hours of EBOBOPF Time to reach utility. It very probably takes approx. 1800 hours of Effective Time to reach utility (please google for the many many studies on how the brain needs sleep to learn, and the diminishing returns of long work hours). The exact number of ET hours to reach utility may be a bit different, but it absolutely will take fewer hours period.

          Second, you are counting 5,200 hours of “quality work” as the time you would get out of 100-hour-workers against the much lower metric of 1300 “quality work” hours out of 50-hour-workers (this, again, based on your faulty presumption that it would take 2600 ET hours to reach “quality work”). Setting aside our dispute on how to calculate hours-to-utility, if you have, for example, 10 people in your department, you are working off a pre-supposed 52,000 hours of “quality work”. However, that is factually incorrect, because instead, you only have 6 workers sticking around longer than 6-9 months, leaving you with 31,200 hours of “quality work” – but please don’t forget to subtract out the *additional time* that recruiting, interviewing, and training the 4 replacement positions takes from your senior team members, an amount I am certain is not negligible and has major disruptive impact on your work day(s). Meanwhile, you could otherwise have had 1300 (*contested number) hours x 20 people (hiring two instead of one for each role) for a much-more-likely-to-stay total of 26,000 hours PLUS no impact on senior members having to recruit, interview, and train so many replacements, and additional longevity past the two years more probable.

          Tl;dr: your math is totally wrong because it is based on fault assumptions and a fair amount of sunk-cost fallacy.

        15. Elbe*

          I really think that you could handle this by having two people work shifts of different hours. Young people are more likely to be okay working non-standard hours, so I imagine that for a decent salary you’d have people who would be interested.

          For example, Person A takes the meetings and does a detailed hand-off with Person B. Person B does the rough draft and hands it off to someone senior. Person B makes the edits and sends it back to management and Person A to take up the next morning.

          I just have a really hard time with the idea that a chronically burned out, tired person has the capacity to absorb all of these details, but not the capacity to hand them off to a second person.

        16. dealing with dragons*

          do you actually have the data to back up your claims? Specifically in point 2? Or is that just what it seems like.

        17. Anony vas Normandy*

          OP, I want to say this gently: you’ve said several times that you have no real power and can’t implement any of the changes that people have suggested. But your letter suggests several changes you’ve been contemplating – it’s just that all of those changes are punishments. Do you have the power to change your company’s policies, but only if those changes negatively impact your junior staff? Or do you not have the power to implement any changes at all?

        18. Combinatorialist*

          If you really need people working 14 hour days (so you can get client turnarounds overnight), hire twice as many people for less money and have them work 3 days a week.

          1. Very few people want to work 100 hour weeks for any amount of money, let alone $200K (what is the point of having all that money if you have literally no free time to spend it in?)
          2. Many, many more people will work a 50 hour week for $100K.
          3. Many people will work a 14 hour day, 3 days a week for around $100K. The operators at chemical plants often have a 3 days on, 4 days off schedule. It can even be a bonus. Yes those three days are grueling of 12-14 hour days. But this works out to 40 hour weeks (ish). And you can take weekend trips without using vacation time.

          The projects either need sustained work, or fast turnaround, but presumably not both (on the same project). If your client wants 24/7 work from the same person for months… that’s unreasonable. So have some people working 8-5 on the long projects, and some working 3 on, 4 off for the fast turnaround (staggered so there are always some). Pay well (like $120K). I bet it would solve a lot of your problems.

          2. Delta*

            Bingo. Many people are happy to work longer hours for less days. Hell I’ve done 12 hour days (full time at 3 shifts a week) and struggled to go back to a five day work week because I loved it so much.

        20. Claire*

          I dated a few finance bros in my early 20s, and I heard a lot of weird stories about what goes on in the office while the juniors are waiting for notes to come back – contests to see who can eat a stick of butter the fastest, for example. They also all complained that they didn’t get their marching orders until 6pm, but still needed to be in the office all day looking busy. I honestly just do not believe that you can’t take time during the day to start assigning work earlier, or that they can’t come in later. I understand that you need the junior analysts to listen in on the client calls, but can’t they do that from home or as needed and have some daytime hours free to run errands, work out, have a life? Will that look bad to people who survived the hazing (bc that’s exactly what this is)? Who cares, you need a culture change. You aren’t going to change the culture of your industry by yourself, but the labor market will change it for you.

        22. LilyP*

          For the training time to productive time ratio, is it possible to make your program (with reasonable hours guaranteed) three years instead of two? Or hire more of the highly productive juniors into high-salary reasonable-hours full-time jobs instead of switching them out?

        23. cyllan*

          This legitimately boggles my mind. Why is your entire day taken up with calls and meetings? Does everyone have to be in those meetings? Why is there not time carved out during the workday for actually doing drafts of the work? Have you tried giving clients actual reasonable turn-around times? Do they threaten to quit? Do they follow up and really quit?

        24. LilyP*

          I believe you that you can’t make these changes singlehandedly or overnight — it actually isn’t simple to divide complex work between multiple people and it will take radical changes to your work processes to implement this kind of staffing change, and the context you’re working in is a real obstacle. I think what you CAN do is (1) think about this, talk to your current juniors, and make a proposal to your leadership. Could they agree to a time-limited experiment with cross-training between juniors on different accounts so they can switch weekends off? Can you advertise the position highlighting limited hours and see what kind of response you get? Do you have data from exit interviews with people who left early or “stay interviews” with your best current juniors? Can you quantity the time & money that early leavers are costing you? (2) Set boundaries on your own hours and how much you personally take on in order to spackle this over. It sounds like you are senior and valuable? Will you really get fired if you lay it out for your boss that you can’t work every single weekend and you’ll have to find another plan for covering everyone’s time off? If you don’t have the authority to implement the actual solution here, kick it up to whoever does have that authority.

          1. LilyP*

            It probably will take sustained effort over multiple years and meaningful executive buy-in to really change entrenched work processes, client expectations, and company culture. You might even be right that it isn’t possible for you to make this happen at your current company! But I do think it is the only long-term solution to your staffing problem, and I agree with others that it would make your company more robust and effective in the long run.

        25. LizM*

          I think I know the answer to this, but if you are trying to meet client expectations and your firm sees their expectations as set in stone, could you accept fewer clients? I mean, I know I’m just a government employee who will never make close to what these 23 year olds are making, but at the end of the day, it seems like you have people killing themselves (possibly literally, understanding the physiological impacts of chronic stress and fatigue) for what?

          You say that if you don’t offer this level of service, clients will leave.

          Have your industry run the analysis of what it costs to have one client leave, vs. what it costs to lose, say 50% of your new hires less than half way through the 2 year program?

          I mean, I’ll be honest. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the kinds of profits you’re talking about in this industry. You have firms making more in profit in a year than my entire agency’s budget, by an order of magnitude. But, for what? Is maximizing profit really the ultimate goal?

          I understand that may be heresy, but I think you’ll find a lot of newer grads asking that question. And if you keep only hiring and promoting people who do want to maximize profit above all else, you’re going to get further and further of some real documented trends happening in younger Millennials and Gen Z.

          As to your #3, frankly, it sounds like you may not be able to solve this issue. So on a personal note, if you’re being held accountable for managing a program that is suffering from societal trends, and not feeling empowered to change the program to reflect those trends, it may be worth thinking about whether you want your livelihood tied to that program, or if it’s worth looking for a life raft before the tide your firm is fighting gets too strong.

        26. Kevin Sours*

          You’re current approach isn’t working and your are unwilling or unable to make changes. Sounds like you are SOL really.

          But even if I knew effective ways to punish people to keep them in a terrible work environment, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. The fact that you are completely resistant to any suggestions along the lines of “make it a job people don’t want to quit” says quite a lot about the situation.

        27. TiffIf*

          1. There needs to be continuity. The reality is that most of the day (8-6 or so) is taken up in calls and meetings. 6-8 is when the first draft of work can get done. I (or somebody else senior) can then review it at 8 or 8:30pm, ideally while the juniors are having dinner. Then comments come back at 9, it gets turned until 11, then back to my inbox for me to review when I get up at 6am. I finalize, it goes to the client, etc. If one person isn’t there for the whole song and dance, they miss out on significant context.

          Ok I am going to pick this apart a bit. Are these meetings that take most of the day for different clients? Are all junior employees involved in multiple client meetings all day? If so, this isn’t so much about halving the hours and halving the pay–to maintain continuity–you need to halve the client load for each junior employee. Now this would still involve hiring more people but with a lessened client load that would (hopefully) translate into fewer hours. So it would end up being fewer hours for less pay, but it would maintain the continuity and allow the super short deadlines to be maintained.

          If 8-6 is no longer back to back meetings but maybe meeting 1 is 8-9, 9-10 work on first draft for meeting 1, 10-11 meeting 2, work on first draft for meeting 2 11-noon, etc. So you have rolling first draft production throughout the day. You might even find your turnaround time is better or your first drafts have fewer errors because the work for the client is still fresh in their minds rather than getting to 6pm and thinking “what did Client ABC say at 9 o’clock this morning?”

          Obviously some of my assumptions are going to be off base here, but if you reduce the client or account load it may help reduce the hours to something more sane and manageable and still allow your quick turnaround times to be met.

          And on your second point–it takes 2600 hours to get to the point of being really competent–I would be interested to see comparison between how quickly someone becomes really competent while working sane hours. At some point the human brain just stops processing efficiently. This is why some studies have found that shorter work weeks result in the same or better productivity; you can only be productive for so long before your brain starts making mistakes or you start missing things or making bad decisions. And it sounds like you (as an industry) haven’t actually TRIED doing sane hours so you have no idea how many hours it would take someone to become really competent under those circumstances.

        28. Not So NewReader*

          1) I have done a lot of trouble shooting on work flow issues. I know first hand that the people doing the work are the ones who know exactly how to fix it. So I can’t touch a workflow issue that I am not involved in.

          2) You sound like you own the company, OP. You don’t. Matter of fact, it sounds like this place owns you, sadly. You have no pay, no authority, omg , the story gets worse as I read on.

          3) You are a nobody but in a previous post you are number 2 or 3???? So basically, your boss- the owner?- thinks his lead people are Nobodies. wow.

          You can’t fix this. And you seem so determined to fix this. You can’t. Leave. Do as everyone else is doing and LEAVE.

        29. PlainJane*

          Vaca, it sounds like you have a work flow problem. Your work day should NOT be extended until 11, not for you, the juniors, the mid-level staff, or anyone else. Is there a way to apportion the “calls and meetings” so that not everyone is doing them, and some can be working on first drafts? Are all the meetings 100% necessary, or could some of the communication be done electronically, which takes up a lot less time than setting aside an hour to sit in a conference room? If calls need to be made all day, could some staff be absolutely dedicated to taking those calls, while other staff are writing reports? Continuity doesn’t mean that everyone needs to do everything. There’s a reason that people specialize in different areas, and that specialization is what has made urban centers thrive since roughly ancient Mesopotamia.

          I’d recommend having a meeting with these juniors who can’t wait to get out, and with the bosses. Settle on exactly which work needs to be done, then brainstorm and see if there’s a more efficient way to do it, because if people are working 100 weeks, then there is a lack of efficiency in the procedures. This is not an emergency room; no one needs to be in at all hours.

      3. Anonym*

        I mentioned this above, but the prestige of investment banking among new grads has plummeted since 2008. (I work closely with recruiters and talent specialists in finance, for reference.)

        OP is in a tight spot – the talent pool for the industry has contracted severely. It will have to change in the coming years, but I’m not sure what one lone smaller firm or hiring manager can or should do to buck the trend. I work for a very large international finance firm with a significant IB arm, and we’re competing heavily on benefits and work-life balance. Now, that’s extremely relative – I don’t think we’re talking about 35 hour weeks and bringing your dog to the office. But as I understand it’s been helping. Not sure if OP’s firm is in a position to do that, but it’s clear that a major rethink is necessary.

      4. Worldwalker*

        Exactly.

        Vaca, the reason those people are not available is that you’re looking for the wrong people. You’re looking for people who will work 100 hours a week for $200k, when what you need is people who will work 50 hours a week for $100k.

        There are a LOT more of the latter.

    2. Nikki*

      I’m highly qualified for a job like this, and when I was job searching 6 months ago I specifically filtered out anything that mentioned 60+ hour work weeks.

      I don’t care how high the pay is… I’m not willing to sacrifice my physical and mental health.

      You might only be able to attract more workers after you reduce the hours. I realize that this requires a leap of faith and for current employees to fill the gaps, but I think it’s the reality.

    3. MissGirl*

      You’re in a bad cycle. You overwork your employees so they leave, then you have to hire more. Your churning out employees instead of retaining.

      Your pool might open up more if these asinine hours weren’t part of the deal. Also, no one’s productivity is 100% at those hours. If you cut back hours, you might not see as much of a loss in work as you think.

    4. House Tyrell*

      I think my sister’s ex worked for this company- they did not stay for two years and they and their coworkers experienced near-deadly mental health problems. You could probably have a better time finding more staff if the job sounded more appealing- like not being life consuming. You will continue spending 500 hours on training over and over again on new hires since people keep leaving, hiring more people who stay longer will cut down on that. Then they will bring in business!

    5. JSPA*

      They’re not there, at the current hours and corporate attitudes. No incentives needed. Call it a 3/4 time position with benefits, drop the salary to what you can afford, remind people that and the calculus changes.

      Alternatively, you may have a “missing stair” problem. short of hiring a mole to go through the process and see who or what is skeeving out the new hires, I don’t know how to tell.

    6. Middle Name Danger*

      They aren’t available because this is an insane work expectation and anyone with that level of attention to detail has better options.

      You seem very dismissive of any attempt to make things better. You are sneering at the thought that employees you obviously see as weaker are walking away instead of accepting the answer to the question you asked.

    7. Ellis*

      I’m confused by your first point. You say you can’t find more staff to hire, but it sounds like you have only tried hiring staff under the current job conditions. Do you have any evidence that lowering the required number of hours (and pay commensurately) would NOT result in a larger labor pool?

      1. Detective Amy Santiago*

        But then rich white men might have to *gasp* WAIT for things and we can’t have that.

      2. AndersonDarling*

        They could double the pay and hire experienced professionals. Then they won’t have to train. The professional will stick it out for 6 months, maybe a year, and then leave. No one, no human, can survive that pace long term. If the operational model is set in stone, then look for people who can jump into the cycle without training and leave with grace at a scheduled time. This could become a very lucrative profession for experienced analysts. Work for 6 months, travel Europe in style for 6 months. Come back and take the heat for another 6 months and make another pile of money.
        It could change the industry!

        1. AndersonDarling*

          Actually, I’m now interested in my imaginary scenario! I would put my life on hold for a few months to make huge cash. And if I got greedy, I may run another round.

          1. Persephone Mulberry*

            Isn’t this basically what the TV fishing guys (Deadliest Catch? I don’t have cable) do? On the water for 3 months or 6 months, make bank, kick back at home for 6 months? I could see the appeal of a white collar version of that.

    8. Lester*

      If you can’t hire more people, maybe your company should take on fewer clients? I know your leadership is not going to want to hear that, but it definitely sounds like the business model needs to be adjusted in some way.

      Don’t assume that things are going to go back to the way they were when the next recession hits. This pandemic is creating permanent changes and it’s impossible to predict what things are going to look like in a few years. Focus on adapting the business model to the current context instead of trying to predict the future.

    9. Hadespuppy*

      Have you considered that you might be able to find more people if you offered a better work:life balance? Many excellent people will be self-selecting out of your pool simply because of the expectations you listed. And as was mentioned above, they will learn faster and be better able to keep up the required level of focus and detail if they actually have time to sleep, eat, and decompress.

    10. DameB*

      There’s no way you’re getting decent work out of anyone who is working 100+ hours a week AND weekends. It’s just not how humans work. Esp since there’s such high turnover. I bet you’ll be a lot more productive if you say “We have 40 hour weeks and you have to work one weekend a month.” Look into the studies out of Germany that say that workers got more done in 4-day weeks than they did in 5-day weeks. Not more done per day, just MORE DONE.

      1. AndersonDarling*

        I’ve had to work at that pace and I produce garbage that no one can detect. Yep, it looks good, but I know there are pieces that went unchecked and are likely wrong. If my leaders care more about deadlines than quality, then they get flashy work that is rotten underneath. There is no magic wand that can deliver both instantaneous speed and accuracy. It’s a myth.

    11. Lizy*

      When you try to hire staff, are you promoting it as “100+ hours” still? Because that will … turn people away. What if you flat out said “in the past this position has been 100+ hours for $250k. We realize work/life balance is important, so we’re hiring 2 positions to split the hours at $150k each.” (I know – 150+150=300, but it sounds like you’d save money in the long run if they stayed, so…)

    12. Junebug*

      Just think of how many people you could poach from the competition if you were the only IB firm that offers humane working conditions.

      1. WindmillArms*

        Right? How can you see this as a problem? It’s a major advantage! You know exactly what people are leaving for, so…offer that.

      4. Elbe*

        A lot of banking firms use the long work hours to attract a specific type of person – someone who cares a lot about money and not very much about people. They WANT someone who will give up their social life and their community ties for 200k / year.

      5. hbc*

        And I think there are a lot of clients who would actually like this model. Yes, some people and businesses just want to see how much they can wring out of you, but if you advertised your non-exploitative employment model as a differentiator, I’d bet you get some loyal clients.

        Plus, I feel more comfortable knowing that the guy who crunched my numbers wasn’t riding the edge of a nervous breakdown.

        1. Oodles of Noodles*

          Nervous breakdown/taking copious amounts of coke to stay functional, either way, not what I’d want from a vendor.

    13. Meghanbyte*

      There are many capable people who would want to get into your field but not at the cost of their life. Target people from similar/related industries that are willing to learn and earn. Up to this point, it seems that you were attracting young and hungry 20-year olds because of the demands of the job. Adjust the demands and see what happens.
      Another idea: Explore doing informational interviews with people from financial backgrounds that could potentially fit your work (locate via LinkedIn) and ask them what would make them switch to your industry. Of course, pay them a gift card for their time. I suspect you will uncover something new.

      1. Anon-today*

        This is me! I’d love to work in investment banking. I work in client services at a financial technology company. But I’ve read the horror stories about IB and two of the guys in my MBA program are IB dropouts. They’ve warned me multiple times that it’s just not worth it and they are some of the hardest working guys I know.

        If the industry could adjust to 55-60 hour weeks I would make the jump in a heartbeat.

      2. S*

        Yup. Most of the people who leave my current team are leaving for boutique trading desk jobs. But I’ve got a couple kids, and I’m very happy with my six-figure salary in exchange for 40 hours a week and generous vacation time. If an IB wanted my 40 hours a week, I’d consider it, but my every waking hour isn’t for sale.

    14. ellex42*

      If the company is only paying lip service to “doing it a different way” and “changing with the times”, they aren’t doing so in good faith or with an eye to actual, permanent change.

      Also, you’re all too tired and overworked to come up with an actual, viably different way of doing things.

    15. Thursdaysgeek*

      For most humans, after working 9-10 hours, they start making mistakes. You’re asking people to work without mistakes and without rest. You are right – there just aren’t that many people available that can do that. More money won’t change the fact that you are dealing with human bodies. And now they are bodies that have choices.

      For me, after about 8-9 hours, I start making mistakes, and the longer the hours, the more mistakes. So the next morning, I have to spend time fixing the mistakes. Only to make more when I get tired. I can work 8 hours or I can work 10 hours, but the amount of work that gets done will be the same, since at 10 hours, 2 hours a day are fixing mistakes made the previous day. Take away weekends, and my body would probably be able to get about 6 hours of productive work. Until I get sick, because that would break me.

    16. Thomas*

      1) If there’s not enough applicants to fill the position with reasonable hours, as a long-term solution is it possible you could create applicants? With the wages you’re paying your company could easily offer multiple full ride college scholarships which come coupled with summer internships. If you offer reasonable hours during the internships and for any job thereafter, even with a very reduced pay taking those scholarship funds into account, I think of a lot of the students you’d sponsor might join your company.

      2) So don’t pay lip service. You say your competition has successfully acquired workers before by offering the very better work environment people in the comments are telling you is necessary. However those promises are never kept in the long term so the industry hasn’t changed as a whole. And your company has never done this, made false promises to bring in young blood, because you’re not strong enough to get away with lying.

      Well, have you considered not lying? Write the promises in an enforceable contract with steep penalties and then commit. Your firm may be small, but with those wages you clearly have the funds to subdivide positions. Also, consider that if you get a reputation as a good employer which keeps promises about reasonable work hours, that reputation may see more applicants in the future.

      3) Whenever approaching any problem it is always important to remember that there may not be a solution. It’s entirely possible that the modern job market does not permit your industry’s practices anymore, and that there are insufficient qualified candidates to hire at reasonable hours.

      So acknowledge that. If you hired only the candidates you are currently getting, but put them on a reasonable full-time work schedule which can retain them, how much would you have to cut back your operations? Some junior employees is better than no junior employees. So evaluate what you could do if you keep what you can bring in at reduced hours, and plan around that.

    17. Kittykuddler*

      As Allison said, you’ll have a much bigger applicant pool if you aren’t starting out with this ridiculous expectation of 100 hrs a week and all weekends. In my industry, we are noticing a trend with younger workers requesting 30 hrs a week or less. I don’t know how you convince anyone to do 100. Times are changing in every industry. Employers who adapt will thrive, those who can’t, will eventually fold due to lack of support staff.

    18. Anyfizz*

      Based on my assumption of the industry and my experience hearing from friends who started this (IB at big firms) and then quit due to work-life balance problems, I’m a little skeptical that this is still not just a cultural problem. It’s clear that you’re still coming at this at a place of pride, in that you still don’t know why someone wouldn’t take this job. I don’t know what your seniority is, but it would do some good to make sure the partners/higher-ups at your firm are aware that almost no young person will want to do this job as it has always been or even with minor adjustments. Considering the culture of the field, I think the best chance to get people in would be to hire more people on contract at a reasonable number of hours with benefits and no overtime. People already have the expectation that this job will be terrible, so the only way you can “promise” that it will be bearable is by putting it in a contract. If this isn’t feasible, then your current business model (burn out young labor to buy more time at the senior level) is just not going to work with the times. Call it a temporary change, whatever, but a terrible tradition is not a hill you want to die on regardless if prospective employees who believed in more liberal policies “get canned.” We are the culture might be a trite saying, but it’s true.
      TL;DR You are asking how to make an untenable situation work, but you should be really looking hard at how to change the entire situation at its roots. Competitors may pay lipservice and then reverse, but you shouldn’t be comparing your company to the worse option, you should be comparing your company culture to the cultures found in the adjacent industries that the new grads are jumping ship for.

    19. CBB*

      It is a rare 20-something who is both A) Smart enough to be an investment banker, and B) Foolish enough not to realize that working 100 hours/week would be squandering one’s youth and health.

      It doesn’t surprise me at all you have trouble finding people with that rare combination of qualities.

    20. WindmillArms*

      You have the cause and effect backwards here. You’re saying “we have to work people to death because there are so few of them” instead of “we can only find a few people willing to live in hell for two years, so let’s make it less hellish.”

      If you cut the hours AND pay in half, I’d come work for you myself.

    21. Elbe*

      “This work is demanding and precise”

      Honest question: if this level precision is required, why do you want over-worked, sleep deprived 23-year-olds doing it? Don’t you think that having time to sleep would help their job performance? From a business standpoint, I don’t see how this can make sense.

      100 hours/week is way too much, in general. And it is WAY too much time to be maintaining an exceptional amount of focus. Very few people can maintain that level of attention to detail without abusing drugs.

    22. Missy*

      I have a job with similar hours but only for about 4 months of the year. The rest of the year is regular 9-5, but with generous leave policies (I have over 400 hours of leave this year) so you aren’t in the office very much. It is still difficult for those 4 months but when you know that things have a clear ending date it is easier to stick in there until the end. Is there anyway you can divide up your year so that not everyone is working 100 hour weeks 52 weeks a year? Shift responsibilities so that more minor stuff can be handled by the people working 9-5 vs the people working 100 hours.

      The field I’m in also can’t reduce the hours during the bust time of year, but a lot of people end up sticking with the job even with the not great pay we get just because of the freedom to take longer vacations during the off times.

      1. Nia*

        Did you see what their ideas to fix this were? They wrote in to get permission to treat their junior staff even worse than they already do.

        1. Lily of the Meadow*

          ABSOLUTELY!! The OP does not want help; they want someone to come up with a method to force this crappy industry down people’s throats, so that they will not leave, but will stay under these Hellmouth conditions. This is not only an insane work schedule, it is life threatening, humans CANNOT function at that level without doing extreme, permanent damage to themselves, and quite possibly dying from it, but the OP just wants someone to say that all this is okay, and these employees are utterly wrong for leaving, how dare they want to not die from overwork, and somebody tell me how to make them stay! Now, they are being a little nicer than that, but that is what they want when you strip all the excuses away.

          1. I WORKED on a Hellmouth*

            Can confirm, 10/10, those definitely sound like Hellmouth conditions. And I do not say that lightly.

    24. T. Boone Pickens*

      I’d be curious to see if OP opened up their search parameters more to more non-target schools if that would have any measurable increase in candidate flow? I-banking is usually pretty limited to the Ivies and other top-tier universities (Duke, Michigan, Stanford, Cal, etc).

      1. Vaca*

        OP here – we definitely do. We’ve been going hard after mid-tier state schools and even community colleges. The challenge, frankly, is time and reach! The hit rate is lower and my ability to know who to call at, say, Illinois State University is nil.

        1. House Tyrell*

          Can you elaborate on not knowing who to call? Who are you calling at the big schools now? State schools and community colleges have career centers, business schools usually have the highest paid academic staff within the university and staff dedicated to connecting students to jobs. Whoever handles recruitment should be contacting these offices. If you’re implying that your outreach is just to call your friend’s contact at Yale then that is already a terrible recruitment practice as it is.

          Regardless, this is not an appealing or achievable business model and I cannot imagine exhausted 23yos isolated from their support network, probably on excessive amounts of caffeine or other drugs are turning in precise work anyway. Even if they did go to Harvard.

          1. Vaca*

            OP here – sure. The best schools to recruit at have an extensive IB training program. Ohio State comes to mind, as does Wisconsin. They have dedicated people on staff who run the program and know who is interested in banking.

            Most of the career centers, in my experience, are worthless. Happy to be proven wrong if you know any tricks.

          2. College Career Counselor*

            Agreed. I work at a small, small university that does well by its grads. The smartest students here are on par with any ivy league type (I’ve worked there, too), and there are plenty of them who want the IB career. But we’re not on anybody’s “preferred schools” list (which is the same 15-25 schools you think it is, with some regional variation depending on where the firm is located).

            It’s TRIVIALLY easy to have your HR department (I’m assuming you’re not too small to have HR) post what you’re looking for very broadly through one of the 3rd party vendors that contracts with the career services to put your firm’s jobs in front of students. Nacelink/Symplicity, Handshake are probably the two biggest right now. If you want College X to give you a list of “qualified” applicants, they’re probably not going to do it for reasons of equity of access to ALL students. Doesn’t matter though, you can still set the parameters (academic major, gpa threshold, certain experiences/internships, leadership, etc.) for what you’re looking for. I’m in agreement with other folks that you’ve got a tradition/culture issue that is causing you to resist looking at more systemic solutions instead of working through perverse incentives. (I do get and empathize that this is not necessarily a quick fix or an easy culture change, especially if you’re doing it unilaterally–that said, what you’re doing now is apparently not working, so doubling down on salary or clawbacks isn’t likely to get you where you want to be).

            1. Vaca*

              Thanks for the advice – we are in fact too small to have HR. Somebody puts up postings, I don’t know how. I get to review some of the resumes and occasionally interview.

              1. Cthulhu's Librarian*

                Please don’t say you’re too small to have HR. Given the pay scale you’re talking about for your entry level workers, you aren’t too small to have HR – your company has chosen not to invest in it (presumably because it feels like HR wouldn’t be able to have chargeable time, so they’re just overhead, not actually profit producing).

                Businesses exist that are legitimately too small to have HR, but those are the small shops that support a single family, and things of that nature.

                A modestly staffed HR department would run you, maybe, the cost of one of these entry level employees. If they reduced hours spent hunting, hiring, interviewing, and training/onboarding new employees by everyone else in the firm by, oh, 5-10%, you’d rapidly find them to be worth the while, when the rest of the firm is able to bill clients for those hours.

                The problem is that having HR means the company loses a lot of plausible deniability, and there’s someone who isn’t an investment banker around with some modicum of say about things, who is going to rapidly say “This is bloody bonkers!” about a lot of things that are (almost certainly) happening at your firm.

                1. Vaca*

                  Exactly right. The senior partners see no need for HR because of that very reason. I am *not* going to change this.

                2. sagc*

                  You’re going to change nothing. You need to make your peace with that, since you’re not willing to spend any of your personal capital on this. Again, there is no answer here that will solve the problem as you’ve stated it, and you seem unable to see literally any other problems?

                  Like, if you’re suffering, maybe there is, in fact, a problem with the way the job is set up now, and you should consider going to a different, less-absurd firm?

                  With HR?

                3. Calamity Janine*

                  let me get this straight.

                  you know that the partners will never have HR, in part because they don’t want an official HR department to catch them when they do something out of line?

                  …and this is the company that you are giving your all for, with the expectation that they will care about you in the rest of your career?!

                  let’s just put hiring completely to one side. let’s just look at you and your career and your health, your safety, your sanity in this moment. you know HR will never happen because the higher-ups don’t want anyone who is going to catch them acting badly! that is the writing on the wall! that is you knowing with an absolute certainty that this company is NOT interested in treating you fairly, NOT interested in doing right by you, and does NOT think that it is worth mild inconvenience to invest in you as a resource! you are worth less to them than “occasionally being told they have to not treat employees so badly”!

                  think about how other companies expressing this attitude in other fields come up. think about how in other industries, this management idea is countered by regulations. and think about how many of those regulations are written in blood! if you were working as a lumberjack, this attitude would be something your company would be getting OSHA violations for as they exhibited behavior stemming from said attitude. the fact that you’re in an office handling financial documents instead of in a hard hat and holding a chainsaw doesn’t really make this attitude any more ethical.

                  the partners of your firm are so against valuing you and other employees that a human resources department is soundly rejected with contempt!

                  i don’t think they can make it much clearer just how much they value you. and you know exactly how much you’re going to be able to cash in that promise of “it’ll get better if you stick with the company” later – just look at how hard that check has bounced *now*.

                  consider how hard everyone is freaking out about this. this is really your cue to stop and think. i realize that this is not going to be a happy thinking. it feels absolutely awful to realize that someone has played you like that – and that you’ve given so much of yourself, and defined yourself for so long by this, only to have that earnest good faith returned not with what you deserve, but with selfishness and you being fundamentally un-personed by them for daring to be slightly inconvenient. this is going to be a rough one. it is something that is clearly really important to you, and that you’ve spent a lot of time on, and you’ve defined yourself by this for so long. but…

                  please don’t ignore that writing on the wall. please don’t ignore how they’re treating the other employees, how they’re treating *you*, and how laughable they find it to budge on this issue and start valuing you as an employee.

                  it’s hard. it’s rough. it’s going to be something that will make you feel awful. it’s going to be something that i am sure you will need to have a good sob about. it’s something you might need to speak to a counselor about, and uncork some heavy thoughts about how this connects to your self-esteem, and perhaps consider how long you have been valuing yourself only based on your utility to other people instead of considering your own needs (and valuing yourself as an individual even if you weren’t there for someone else’s utility). this is heavy stuff! it will be a lot! it’s not going to be super pleasant to have to wade through, i’ll be up-front with you!

                  but please, *please*, value yourself more than they value you.

                  it is what you need, it is what you deserve, and it is worth it. YOU are worth it.

                4. Not So NewReader*

                  Agreeing with Calamity Jane.
                  The more you write OP the worse this gets.

                  The owners don’t believe in HR, paying you, giving you authority, proper training methods, and the absolute killer here- they base the bulk of their decisions on FEAR.
                  They are afraid of the competition getting your employees. They are afraid of the competition making more money, they are afraid of… well the list goes on.

                  People who are this loaded up with fear should not be owning or running a business.

                  OP, I do not know how to be more clear: Their plan is to run you until you are laying on a gurney in the ER. And then they will find someone else and do the same thing to them.

          3. Charlotte Lucas*

            And let’s face it, students at community colleges & mid-tier universities have probably already been working to pay their way. They can see a crappy work schedule from a mile away.

            1. Texan In Exile*

              Exactly! The young woman at Illinois who is waiting tables full time and going to school full time isn’t doing it so she can work the 24/7 schedule that her parents are forced into with their dairy farm. She’s doing this so she can have an *easier* life than her parents have.

              (Well – maybe the student at Wisconsin – Illinois would be corn, I guess, but you get the point.)

                1. Texan In Exile*

                  Yeah, I am not happy with the way the WI leg is handling tuition and the WI university system.

            2. CCC*

              I work in career services at a community college. Our students have often already had jobs where they were expected to work long hours, decided they don’t like it, and are here to move on. Many of them have to take pay cuts to do so (lots of people in manufacturing around here with mandatory OT). I would be very surprised if we could get applicants for a job like this.

        2. Anonym*

          It’s tough as a mid-level manager working a schedule like yours, but if your HR is willing to work with you to select a big state school or two with a strong finance program, you might be able to establish a talent pipeline of sorts. There are also non-profits and gov’t agencies that may be able to assist, especially if you’re open to a diversity-focused approach (which is sorely needed in many areas of the industry, not sure about your company). There can be a lot of support out there! And there are a lot of talented students out there who might be willing and interested, but just aren’t that aware going into undergrad that this lucrative career option is out there. I understand this is a problem in the VC world as well, and probably many other areas.

            2. Calamity Janine*

              oh.

              n…no HR whatsoever.

              i feel like this explains so much about the problem presented and the general level of dysfunction junction that this company is.

              but also, this halloween story is too spoopy, i’m scared. it’s scary. i’m going to go turn the lights on now and i will look at manager alison and make pathetic faces until she comes to bring us all some warm milk and tells me that once again there are no monsters under the bed, she’s checked, especially because if there were any monsters there would be tax ramifications and managerial concerns as to whether they are employees or independent contractors

              2. Anonynonynon*

                Ahahahaha yes, this, so much this. @Vaca, please. You need to get out. Don’t let the monsters under the bed get you.

            3. Elizabeth West*

              NO HR??? 100+ hour weeks, no HR, you can’t keep anyone?

              Your ship is sunk and the rats are leaving. It’s time to GTFO.

              2. Get Out!!!*

                Yes! You are trying to bail out the Titanic with a bucket, it ain’t gonna work!!!! The 23yr. olds are able to see the ship is sinking and they rightly got off! Let the bosses drown and save yourself while you still can! Your clients don’t give a **** about you and neither does your firm, you owe them nothing. Internet strangers are trying to help you see what you unfortunately are not. (The 23yr. olds are seeing!) And listen to Alison, she is a genius.

            4. Cthulhu’s Librarian*

              Well, I can’t say as I’m shocked – you’d have to recognize your workers as human to bother with HR, and it is pretty clear your employer doesn’t.

            5. Ally McBeal*

              100+ hours a week AND NO RECOURSE? I sincerely hope you only hire white men for this awful job, because I don’t know a single woman who would work in IB at a company with no HR. And I worked at a women’s college with great connections to Goldman/etc.

            6. Apple of the day*

              Just here to third this… you want an “immediate” solution: spend 350K on a HR team of 3 to help recurite, hire, schedule, and do things like exit interviews and compare your firm to the competition.

            7. Guin*

              Is this some boiler-room scam company being run by Gordon Gecko and Charlie Sheen? No HR for an outfit that spends millions of dollars a year on salaries? You mentioned they’re withholding your money? You need to leave the sinking ship, pronto.

              1. PayRaven*

                This. I’ve been reading through the comments, @Vaca, and I believe your heart’s mostly in the right place in an entirely warped scenario, but you need to BAIL. This will only get worse until someone dies and/or sues and then the entire company will get CRATERED under the wave of (justly deserved!) scrutiny and rancid PR.

                Get out. Get the HECK out.

        3. StellaBella*

          see AndersonDarling’s comment above. Hire senior professionals, no need to train, for 6 months and rotate them out.

    25. FrivYeti*

      The problem here is that you’re trapped in a cycle that can only end with the implosion of your entire industry, and it’s hard to have a suggestion for how to deal with that on an individual manager level.

      You can’t find more staff because no one wants to work the hours that investment banking requires (and those starting salaries sound nice, but it works out to about $40/hr in exchange for your entire life being your job.) Because you can’t find staff but want more contracts, your company won’t scale back requirements for existing employees, which means that they burn out and you can’t find replacements, which means more work for existing employees, which means…

      Well, which means that there is no solution. The number of people entering your field is dropping year to year, and the number of people exiting the field is rising. The only way to fix this is for everyone involved to pass laws to force all of your competitors to play by the same rules, rules that outlaw the kinds of hours you’re talking about, and investment bankers don’t want to do that because it will restrict how much money their clients are able to make.

      I can definitely say that “restrict your potential employees further” is absolutely not going to work out, because they have all the power in this relationship. You need a way to attract new employees, not to trap the ones you’ve got.

      1. Sara without an H*

        This. I just retired from Higher Education, which has been imploding for decades. No one knows how the industry will eventually shake out but, when anybody proposes significant changes, the responses come back as: “No! What would happen to rigor?! What about academic excellence?!!! You’re a barbarian who doesn’t respect The Life of The Mind!!!!!”

        (Don’t believe me? Check any issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.)

        But I have a lot of sympathy for the OP here — it’s hard to be caught in a period of rapid change with tools that clearly don’t work any more. Investment banking has lost a lot of prestige since the giddy days of the 1990s and the Crash of 2008/09 and, as previous commenters have pointed out, fewer people nowadays are willing to work that hard even for lavish salaries. There may be no good solution.

        1. datamuse*

          Currently working in higher ed, can confirm. And as it is I work somewhere that’s more flexible than most, or so I discern.

    26. Corporate Lawyer*

      OP, as someone who started her career in a Big Law Firm during the IPO boom of the mid-1990s (then went in-house as a 4th year associate and never looked back), I get it. With apologies for being defeatist, I don’t think there’s anything you or your firm can realistically do because this is an Industry Problem, not a You/Your Firm Problem. You note that you’re a smaller firm, which really doesn’t give you leverage to change the industry norms or client expectations, which are unrealistic and just brutal.

      No advice, just commiseration.

    28. Mx Burnout*

      I am not sure I understand where you fall on the ability-to-solve-this-problem scale, OP! On the one hand, you proposed some initial legal solutions in the original letter — forcing people to pay back training time, etc., making significant changes to contracts that require 24-month retention — to get Alison’s read on that seem like you have some level of sway over how your company hires and treats its employees. But you’ve also said a number of times that you’re just a grunt who can’t change anything in response to Alison’s and other commenters’ suggestions that are less punitive/exploitative, and that making substantial changes is beyond your purview.

      Which is it?

      1. Vaca*

        I answered above – I don’t set any policy at all. I can try and influence things to a certain extent. I can, as I’ve been asked to do, look at ways to retain the people we hire. If I propose a wholesale reorganization of the way we hire and staff, I will immediately lose my influence.

        Now, if I leave and start my own firm, well, maybe things will be different.

        1. Mx Burnout*

          If you’re only authorized to report back with punitive/exploitative means by which you’re allowed to *attempt to* improve retainment that you originally described, and reporting back with ideas other than punitive/exploitative means will mean you lose the goodwill of the higher-ups, then you haven’t genuinely been asked to report back on “ways to retain the people we hire” in a manner that addresses the root of your problem. Which means you’ve been set up to fail, and that’s an extraordinarily crappy situation to be in. It sounds a lot like the folks above you are treating you the way folks at the mid-level treat the most junior folks, which sounds like a real cascade of toxic trouble, bordering on abuse. (Even if it’s abuse that’s “always been done this way.”)

          Sounds like you *and* the junior folks in your industry might all be happier if you turned that “if I leave” into a “when I leave” and use your instincts here to create a more positive work environment. You’re allowed to quit your job and be happy and be treated with respect and kindness and enjoy your turns around the sun with the people you love and care about, instead of being at work.

        2. Not So NewReader*

          At the rate this story is unfolding, I would not be surprised to find out that there are very few if any policies written anywhere and the existing policies change dependent on wind direction.

    29. hbc*

      Vaca, I appreciate you responding, but I still see no justification for this: “This isn’t a hazing process, it’s just what the job is like.”

      This is what the job has been, and it’s not working. What would you do if a law was passed that no one could work over 60 hours a week? Would the investment banking industry disappear, or would you all find better ways of doing things that didn’t involve throwing massive amounts of money at naive people to put themselves through a meat grinder?

      1. JSPA*

        Mining asbestos without lung protection was also “a job as it was.” Roasts on spits were turned by caged dogs. Something can be a holdover norm, yet also check all the boxes that would get it labeled abusive, cultic or hazing, if there were no veneer of historicity.

        1. Lily of the Meadow*

          This is like saying that we should go back to using child labor in factories; just because something has been done a certain way for many years does NOT mean it is the correct way, and wanting to torture the next generation because you were tortured is not a very pretty attitude. I am not saying that OP themselves feels that way, but it seems that most of his senior management absolutely does.

          2. JSPA*

            Yep, there are thousands of examples.

            The definition of progress is, “we no longer do it that way, because now we have better ways, or because the old ways were so unsustainable that the industry destroyed its own model.”

            Flenser: no longer a job, with only the rarest of exceptions. Lamplighter, something from Dickens. With abolition, a subset of “specialist” auction houses went out of business (for which, no tears, ever). Ice harvesting and the shipping and storing of slab ice, and ice delivery for your ice-box; no longer a thing. These were all legit jobs, legit industries. Some strike us as horrific, some as quaint, but they all ended.

            Same for specific practices. Shanghaiing is no longer a broadly-tolerated method of maritime recruitment. Locking people in, in factories went out with the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. The casting couch. Using the secretarial pool as the executive harem. Lines of coke at office parties. Do they happen in some places? Sure. But they’re no longer “no big deal.”

      2. Not So NewReader*

        “This isn’t discrimination, it’s just what the job is like.”
        “This isn’t an OSHA violation, it’s just what the job is like.”
        “This isn’t abusive, it’s just what the job is like.”
        “This isn’t inhumane, it’s just what the job is like.”

        How many different forms have we heard this excuse?

    30. Chopsington*

      All the reasons and etc boil to the this:

      * no one likes to work 100h weeks
      * and right now, they DONT HAVE TO

      As if this moment, this is a sellers market. Employers are looking for more employees then employees for employers. Sure that might change in the future. But the future isn’t the present. And as of this moment, all the junior people that sucked it up in the past aren’t sucking it up because THEY DONT NEED YOU.

      The quicker your company internalizes that and starts thinking of what they can offer to attract employees (instead of punishing them for leaving) the faster things will get fixed. And that might require change. Arguing “things are this way because they have always been this way” is the #1 guaranteed way to failure.

      The past 18mo has forced everyone to get flexible and creative to survive. Get with the times and stop complaining about kids these days.

    31. Yoda*

      Hey OP,

      I used to be one of those junior investment banking employees (your description of the workplace sounds a lot like my first job after graduation!) and I’m offering my thoughts on your work-place. Take it or leave it.

      I graduated in 2018 with good grades and a solid plan to work with investment banking, fully intending to put in my “dog years” and emerging on the other side as a cool, professional IB partner. I started out working crazy hours for a dreamy salary and was super excited for the “amazing opportunity” I was given. After a few months of never-ending work and basically giving up my entire life for my job I started to look at my surroundings. What I saw was a bunch of sad, over-worked people whose lives I did not want.

      The senior senior partners were all male. They all looked unhealthy and a lot older than they were, with grey flaky skin and bags under their eyes. They all had gone through at least one divorce and had a couple of kids they didn’t ever spend time with. They had cool, expensive town houses and or/vacation homes they never got to be in. Many of them seemed to have either drinking or substance abuse.

      So, basically that was what I had to look forward to if I continued to work for the firm. I quickly realised that’s not what I want from life and left for a government position where my skills were appreciated but not abused. I’m making a good salary even though it’s nothing compared to what I was making at the IB firm. But hey, I have a life again and I can still afford a decent place to live (and I actually get to spend time there, yay!).

      What I am saying is that you need to look at your workplace from the junior staff’s perspective. I’m obviously in no position to make a reasonable analysis of the entire job market, but it seems to me that you have a serious problem with hiring and retaining competent staff, and it’s not going to change unless your company changes it’s habits. Times are changing and what you are offering is no longer competetive. I imagine the pandemic and subsequent shift in what people consider to be a decent work-life balance will speed up the change even more. Even though you say you are a “no-body” you seem to be senior enough to be in a position where your opinions matter. Why don’t you try suggesting a change in hiring practices? Lower the salaries and hire more people to help share the burden?

  22. Chauncy Gardener*

    It really is time for investment banking, public accounting and all the rest of these crazy industries to come to grips with the reality that people do not want to work 100+ hours per week. We can throw medical school into the mix too, frankly. Just hire more junior folks and stop eating your young, as an industry.

    2. JohannaCabal*

      I never understood that about medical school…if I’m in an emergency, I don’t want a sleep-deprived resident involved in my care!

      2. FrivYeti*

        I do actually understand that, but it’s not good.

        The medical field is overworked. There are more people in need of medical care than people who want and are able to get medical degrees (for a variety of reasons, including temperament and finances). Because of this, if you are going to be a medical professional, you are 100% guaranteed to eventually end up in situations in which you are sleep-deprived and burned out and still needing to make critical decisions. Which means that the programs want to train people to be able to do that.

        And once that happens, it becomes a point of pride, and things spiral out of control a bit until the ability to perform in terrible situations is something that everyone clings to to prove that they’re capable instead of trying to mitigate to the best of their ability.

        1. Moira Rose*

          Also the AMA intentionally limits how many credentialed med schools can exist in America to keep doctor salaries artificially inflated…

          1. Software Dev*

            This this this! They artificially restrict residency slots. It isn’t the only reason but it is a thing I wish more people were aware of.

      3. CoveredinBees*

        Thank the AMA for being super protectionist in refusing to accredit any new medical schools and making it incredibly difficult for foreign-trained doctors to practice in the US. I have a friend who is an accomplished surgeon in the Netherlands and wants to move to the US for personal reasons, but the process is so expensive and uncertain (as well as requiring them to redo medical residency) that she’s staying put.

        Also, hospitals are just fine with hiring fewer doctors. Even when there are limits to the amount of hours a resident can work, at least some hospitals tell their residents to keep two sets of timesheets. One set are their real hours and the other is in case they get audited.

      4. InsufficientlySubordinate*

        I heard once that it was because doctor training is based on a military model where a doctor must be prepared to function on conditions like a war zone with little sleep so they can do things without thinking too much about it/automatically. I have no idea if that is true.

      5. cactus lady*

        Residents are capped at 80 hours a week by the ACGME (though programs don’t always adhere).

        1. PayRaven*

          The only thing that’s changed since that cap was set is that it’s now entirely standard practice to lie about your hours.

    3. WindmillArms*

      Can we chuck education in there too?
      Signed,
      One of the 50% of teachers who left the field within their first five years

      1. Properlike*

        Teachers who are already significantly undepaid for their education levels.
        Add in movie and TV crew. This is the entire basis on which IATSE was ready to strike. Because people do die when they’re sleep-deprived, even in theoretically “low-risk” professions. Film crew only looks like “fun” until you’ve worked it.

    5. Avril Ludgateau*

      The worst part about medicine is that they will complain about physician shortages left and right, but then they put a completely arbitrary cap on available residencies AND the pay that residents earn. There are more med students than there are residencies to place them, but instead of seeing this as an illogical bulwark, we’re meant to accept that some people simply won’t match. All because of a decision.

      (Some of it is related to Medicare funding, of course – and we all know we aren’t allowed to scrutinize, recalculate, and rewrite tax code to compensate for silly things like inflation and population growth.)

  23. Shiba Dad*

    it’s ALWAYS been that way

    Why does it HAVE to be that way? What is the advantage of doing it this way? OP doesn’t give us reasons for this, just that this is the way. I’m interested in seeing the reasoning behind 100+ hour weeks for two years.

    1. Mental Lentil*

      I said it up above, but it’s basically the belief that since OP had to suffer through this, everybody else should have to suffer through it as well. Why bother to make the world better?

      This attitude sucks.

      1. WindmillArms*

        I saw a great quote once that some people who live through hell say “I never want anyone else to go through that” and some say “I suffered, so so should you.”

        I’d rather be the former, personally.

        1. Vaca*

          OP here – believe me, I don’t *want* anybody to suffer. If it were up to me, I’d love to hire twice as many people and pay them less. I’d love to tell the clients that they aren’t getting their stuff back overnight. I’d love to go back in time and get back the many all-nighters I pulled, especially the ones where the work product I came up with didn’t even get used. I agree with Alison! I’d love for it to work! But I don’t control the industry around me. Frankly I don’t even control my own firm!

          Let me give an example here – actually, what prompted the letter. Two weeks ago, we were getting close to closing a deal. Coming into crunch time, the analyst quit on me. I ended up pulling TWO all nighters that week to get the deal done. I’m in my mid-40s, I brought *in* the deal, and had spent the previous three months teaching the new hire the ropes. The kicker? He went to a competitor! One who promised “free weekends” once a month – the same competitor, by the way, who *fired* half their class back in 2008. They’re just going to do it again! It’s a fraud!

          In response, now we’re offering “free weekends”, ok, great, I agree with that – who’s going to explain to the client when the work isn’t done? Oh, that’s right – it’s me! I don’t want to do that! So the next time my junior staff gets rotated through the free weekend, guess who’s adding their work to my already substantial pile of weekend work? Me again! Oh, maybe they’re going to hire more people to make up for the free weekends? No, actually, they’re going to *slow down* hiring because we’re all too busy to even look at it.

          So what am I supposed to do in this situation? Go tell the brass that the industry is screwed up? And then explain to my family why *I’m* looking for a new job?

          1. Holy Moly Workhours Batman*

            So what am I supposed to do in this situation? Go tell the brass that the industry is screwed up? And then explain to my family why *I’m* looking for a new job?

            Umm……yes all of that actually.

            1. WindmillArms*

              Yup! There’s your answer. Hand the issues further up the company until it impacts the person who CAN make these changes.

            2. MCMonkeyBean*

              Yeah, why is explaining to your family why you are looking for a new job a bad thing? Wouldn’t they be pleased if you were able to go somewhere with better hours?

          2. iceberry*

            It may in fact be time for a new job. You don’t have to carry this all on your own. Save yourself, since no else will.

          3. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

            I’m sorry, OP, you’re in your 40s and you worked TWO all-nighters in one week? How… how is your health still in one piece? I consider myself pretty healthy, but if my work schedule was like what you describe, at my age, no high pay in the world would begin to cover the medical bills I’d rack up. I apologize for asking, what is the life expectancy in your field? This is so not normal.

            1. Zona the Great*

              Just thinking about the way my face would look that week and how much I would feel that I aged makes me tired.

              1. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

                I worked one all-nighter in my 40s, it was several years ago and I’m still recovering. And there was (prescription, in my name, all legitimate) Adderall involved.

          4. Anonym*

            That’s a sucky position to be in. And you may be the living example of how this talent crunch is going to play out! It’s happening at the entry level, and if the firm fails to compete on entry-level talent, mid-level jobs like yours become harder, and unless the company can figure out what to do about it, the attrition wave will keeping going up the ladder. Apologies for having no actionable advice, other than “you might not be able to solve this, consider how you want your career to play out in that case”.

          5. wut*

            You’ve been making (WELL) over $275k for at least 20 years. You have more money than God. Maybe these 23-year-olds are showing you something important about what matters.

            1. Vaca*

              That’s not true. First, I’m not 20 years in. Second, this is a boom and bust industry. Remember that we had a lot of busted years. Not much money to be made at the junior level in 2008-2010. But I have enough that I could step off the merry-go-round, yes. Not enough never to work again.

              1. Gerry Keay*

                So then why are you still working this job? If the hours are terrible, you can’t retain anyone, you don’t even necessarily agree with the industry norms, and you can afford to step off the merry-go-round, why are you still there? I genuinely am asking because it’s such a different mentality than my own, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

                1. Vaca*

                  1. I love aspects of the work.
                  2. It pays really, really well.
                  3. I have obligations to my clients.

                2. Ask a Manager* Post author

                  You’ve said #3 a few times and I wonder if you realize how odd a statement that is! You have obligations to them while you are employed there, yes. But people get to leave jobs; that’s a normal thing in every industry. It’s in no way a betrayal of a client to leave your job.

                  It’s clear that you’re in an industry that’s very sick, but I wonder if there’s a way for you to step back and see how it’s infecting you as well … because this is not a normal thing to say.

                3. Vaca*

                  @alison I’m not sure I agree. Ultimately, I am the face to the client. They hired me to do this work for them. They didn’t have to do that. They promised to pay us for the work and I promised to see it through. The best bankers, in my experience, all feel high degrees of obligation to their clients. It’s not that different from, say, a defense attorney. You might work at a firm, but the client still hired you. So what happens if the firm is falling apart? The attorney can’t just leave mid-trial. And unfortunately I’m not in a position where I can take the client with me. This might be an area where we agree to disagree as our experience is different (and in any case I feel ethically bound in a Kantian sense to my promise, even if implicit).

                4. sagc*

                  Well, no wonder you’re having these problems – you’re framing this in a wildly different way that the average person, much less the average 23 year old.

                  Like, if you gave up on your theory that the client basically owns your time forever, maybe that would go some way to allowing you to be more flexible? Because with that attitude, an inability to change anything, and the current labour market, I don’t see how you’re going to get anything but more miserable.

                5. Anonynonynon*

                  Hey Vaca. You said above that you don’t know what to do when you’re not working, other than get in trouble. Here, you say you feel ethically bound to your clients and have a “high degree of obligation” to the work. I have some advice to you that’s rooted in years of being someone who likewise made work the center of her life.

                  Quit your job. Now. With nothing lined up. Then, take at least 6 months off. Spend some of that time doing intensive therapy–not to “fix” yourself, not to gratify some stranger on the internet, but to explore with curiosity where you got the idea that your work is your worth, and to think through what your life could look like if it wasn’t centered around paid work. Who could you be if you weren’t a worker?

                  Seriously. Quit your job. It will hurt like heck at first, mentally and emotionally. But it’s very clear that you’re a strong person–you can handle re-imagining your life.

                6. Gerry Keay*

                  Oh gosh, Vaca, there are so so many better moral philosophers out there other than Kant. No wonder you’re in this bind — Kantian ethics are a dumpster fire!!

                7. Jean (just Jean)*

                  Vaca, if you don’t need to work for money then the world becomes your oyster. Want intesnsity? It can be everywhere. Start to advocate for people who are at present disadvantaged: kids in special education, parents without adequate child care, adults with disabilities… Become a lobbyist for one of these causes and shmooze until the elected officials vote for constructive change. You won’t be bored. Or, go to law school and divide your time between paid and pro bono (unpaid/volunteer work); or go to medical school and take a job in an underserved area domestic or foreign. Start tutoring kids so they can get through middle school, high school, and college or professional training. Start a youth mentoring program to help young people stuck in hard circumstances (family illness, dysfunction, addiction; foster care) find their way to a more stable life without numbing the pain by (insert unhelpful response here). Work your way up to CEO of the food bank and create a slam-bang perfect program that feeds people, nourishes souls, and helps kids stay in school instead of falling into trouble. Or work with the kids of the wealthy workaholics — let them see that they are worth loving and maybe get a few of their parents off the workaholic track. Etc.

                  I’ll sit down now.

                8. Ask a Manager* Post author

                  So … do you feel are you obligated to stay at this firm forever? You can never leave? This is not a normal way of thinking. Please talk to others about this; you will find that this is a very unusual way to think of work. I can guarantee you your clients don’t think you’re obligated to stay with one firm forever; switching jobs is a normal thing. People switch jobs, switch fields, retire, take sabbaticals, have health crises, move, change roles…

                  I must stay out of loyalty to the clients because they hired” me is not actually a thing and it’s a sign that your thinking has been very warped somewhere along the line.

                10. Vaca*

                  @alison no, very much not. But I have to finish out the projects I have. They are time-limited, generally six month projects.
                  @others, well, I’m married, making good money, kids in school, blah blah. I don’t have flexibility to take six months off. At least not until bonus time.
                  @gerry I know. I’m putting this in a Kantian framework because of the implied obligation. I am not necessarily ready/willing to debate which moral philosophy I should subscribe to, just noting the obligation I feel.

                11. Not So NewReader*

                  @ Vaca. Until you get yourself UNSTUCK from these clients, you will keep having problems.

                  Let me ask you this. When you are laying in the ER, facing an indefinite amount of leave time from work, who will take care of these clients?

                  Going the other way, who took care of these people before you got there?

                  Your sense of loyalty is so high that it is almost self-destructive. I would suggest therapy might be a consideration for you. This is not loyalty OP it’s bondage.

                12. Ask a Manager* Post author

                  Ah, okay — that’s different than what it sounded like you were saying.

                  No one is saying quit tomorrow. But if you’re saying you could leave in six months, you really really should consider planning for that.

                13. Ginger Baker*

                  What? Attorneys leave firms while in the middle of defense cases ALL THE TIME [source: works in BigLaw, has seen this many multiple times over]. These aren’t your pro bono client on death row who like LEGIT NEEDS YOU. These are very wealthy companies and people who either are SO invested in you that they will follow you as a client (which, does not apply to you) or they simply transition their work to the next IB Cog slotted in place to replace you.

                  You are holding yourself to a higher standard than attorneys bound by ethical guidelines under law. Just…maybe sit with that.

                14. Vaca*

                  @alison let’s do a followup in Q1 I guess. In the meantime I need to figure out how to start my own firm.

              2. Starbuck*

                Why not follow your junior people to these orgs that are better, then? Maybe they’re making a smart choice and you should too. If you can’t change anything about where you work (as you’ve said repeatedly, you can’t make the kind of substantive changes outlined by people here that would be necessary to retain people), and can’t stand the working conditions…. the only options are to somehow suck it up and carry on, or leave.

                1. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

                  ^ This is a good point. If these junior staff are leaving for more work-life balance, going to competitors, and staying there, then (as I’ve already seen others comment on this thread) those competitors must be doing something right.

          7. Lester*

            You’re right that this is not a problem that you can solve, but you keep blaming the employees for not wanting the job rather than blaming the company for not adjusting to the job market. You having to pull two all nighters in a week is your employer’s fault, not the person who quit for a better job.

            As far as what to do next, yes, it does sounds like looking for a new job is probably a good idea if your employer isn’t willing to change and you are no longer willing to put up with this situation.

          8. Ex-Teacher*

            >So what am I supposed to do in this situation? Go tell the brass that the industry is screwed up? And then explain to my family why *I’m* looking for a new job?

            Yes. You absolutely should be telling the top brass why you can’t keep staff.

            Besides, if they’re as desperate as you claim they are for staff, why would they fire you? You portray losing staff to be a huge problem with clients, so losing you would likely burn business with several clients. Why would they do that? And besides, it sounds like there are enough jobs around considering that people are jumping ship as often as you claim, so with 20 years of experience you should be able to find something relatively quickly.

          9. sagc*

            You’re basically making the complaint that you’re now being treated like your own employees. I mean, sucks for you, but they’ve all figured out a way to leave the job…

          10. Mouse*

            Just a thought–why *can’t* you tell clients that they can’t get things overnight? Your answer is that they’ll go to a bigger competitor who can do it. But there must be a reason they chose a small boutique firm in the first place. Can you make slower responses part of your business model? Can you maybe charge clients less, pay your employees less, and all have more reasonable lives?

          11. ThatGirl*

            Yes. You are supposed to set limits and boundaries, tell TPTB that your work and industry is broken, and go find a new job if needed.

          12. Foila*

            So what am I supposed to do in this situation? Go tell the brass that the industry is screwed up? And then explain to my family why *I’m* looking for a new job?
            I dunno, that’s all starting to sound better and better the more you tell us.

            Plus, if those skills in acquired in the first two years of your career are as valuable as you say, I’d expect you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting hired elsewhere. They are that valuable, aren’t they?

          13. rl09*

            Ok so I’m saying this with total sincerity – but maybe you *should* be looking for a new job? This situation also sounds incredibly draining on you, not just your staff. It sounds like the kind of toxic stress that just seeps into your entire life. If you can get a job in corporate finance where a “busy” week is 60 hours…why not do that?

            (I say this as someone who literally works in corporate finance, so maybe I’m biased lol. But I literally just can’t understand why *anyone* would choose to work 100 hour weeks when there are other options out there?)

          14. Eldritch Office Worker*

            Having to cut back on staff during a recession isn’t fraud. It sucks, and it’s great if you don’t have to do it, but operating at unsustainable levels during a good economy just so you don’t lose staff when the market turns isn’t actually the moral high ground you seem to think it is.

            1. Eldritch Office Worker*

              (There are better ways to handle these situations I’m not necessarily advocating for the competitor but you seem WEIRDLY hung up on this point that is sometimes just the reality of doing business. Especially in a market-sensitive industry)

              1. Vaca*

                OP here – I say it’s fraud because right now they’re spinning a bunch of lies. My analyst who just left to get “free weekends” is going to get one or two free weekends. The other ones will, regrettably, be stomped on. They’ll apologize profusely and promise that he’ll get another extra weekend on top. We promise! Really! And then the crash will happen, and they’ll immediately can everybody who complained about their weekends getting stomped on. I may be a workaholic SOB but I’m honest about what we can offer and what the job entails. Bulge bracket, not so much. They will 100% say that you are “protected” in a downturn and then conveniently forget that as soon as the recession hits. It happened to me. Maybe that’s why I’m focused on it?

                1. Slightly Burned*

                  OP I think the difference here is that if your former analysts expectations are stomped on at this new job….then it’s likely they’re going to leave that job too. Rinse and repeat. I understand the process of job hunting is more nuanced than that, but the mindset of employees is changing drastically. People aren’t willing to put up with the type of sub-par treatment employers are used to giving.

                2. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

                  Sure the crash will happen someday, but in the interim, those folks get time off to enjoy their high salaries. Maybe in a year or 5 or 10 or 12 they will lose it and their jobs, but until then they get to enjoy something at a prestige named company that your company isn’t offering. And who says any of them plan to stay in the industry until the next crash? Maybe they are planning on 2-3 years and doing something new or going in-house

                3. Cheesecake2.0*

                  Honestly OP I say this with great kindness and good intentions but your thought process is entirely screwed up and full of cognitive distortions – especially catastrophizing. You are making decisions based entirely on your imagination which does not match current reality. You have no proof your former analyst will get his weekends taken away. You have no proof your company will retain everyone if another recession happens. You have no proof that other firms are lying about offering better work-life balances. You have no proof your own people will jump ship if you attempt to offer a better work-life balance. You have no proof that clients will immediately fire you if you have somewhat limited responses on weekends (you said “I don’t want to tell them” not… “I tried telling them and they threatened to leave”) Not much of what you have shared is based in reality or facts, just your own imaginings and assumptions. The FACT is that people are leaving and you can’t keep them past the training stage. If you want to actually help your company make changes and weather the reckoning in jobs in America right now, you will have to learn to look at things with clear, realistic thoughts, and some analysis and investigation into your options.

                4. Eldritch Office Worker*

                  In addition to what Cheesecake says, which is absolutely true, you also have the current facts wrong. It’s not very competitive if you’re not getting or keeping staff. It’s not well compensated when I’m making more per hour working in non-profits. It’s none of the things you’re selling it as and that’s why you’re not seeing the return you expect. Your whole scope of understanding is wrong.

                5. Not So NewReader*

                  OP, you are trying to save the world, but we here at AAM are just trying to save YOU.

                  People get screwed over all the time. They learn. Just like you learned. Why are you so concerned about other people’s learning experiences, when you yourself have a hot mess on your hands?
                  When I do this it’s avoidance behavior on my part. If I can get myself focused on someone else’s problems/folly then I can successfully avoid looking at my own.

          15. Librarian of SHIELD*

            Honestly? If you were a member of my family and I knew these were the conditions you were working under, I would be absolutely THRILLED if you told me you were looking for a new job in an industry that would allow you adequate time in your week to rest and just be a person. I would throw you a party and buy you a present and invite you on an awesome family vacation like the ones I’m sure you’ve had to miss for the last who knows how many years because you were working these ridiculous, unsustainable hours.

          16. Sara without an H*

            Yes. By all means, look for a new job. If you’ve saved enough to provide yourself with a reasonable cash cushion, try following some of your junior staff out the door into a new job.

          17. Spero*

            Well, you could prevent the slowdown in hiring by getting a dedicated recruiting and training coordinator so you weren’t working on both production and recruitment.
            You could make it so that not ALL of your junior staff had the same free weekend so the available ones could still cover the incoming needs.
            You could have crosstrained another junior on the same deal so that when your one analyst quit suddenly, the other analyst was able to pick up the slack instead of you covering it yourself.

            Honestly, what we’re saying here is not making sense to you because you seem just as overworked and sleep deprived as your juniors. So you aren’t at your best in giving due consideration to our suggestions any more than you’re at your best in working after 2 all nighters. When you’re that exhausted, your brain isn’t working. Our brains work. We’re not ALL crazy, these suggestions make sense to us because most of us got 8 hours last night! And some of us even stopped for coffee with a friend or got to leave the building for lunch earlier today!

          18. BY*

            “So what am I supposed to do in this situation? Go tell the brass that the industry is screwed up? And then explain to my family why *I’m* looking for a new job?”

            Yep. Honestly if you were my friend and said that, I’d be like “Yes. That would be a move toward your own integrity.”

            I realize that the fall out from that would be pretty difficult. I also think that this is what more and more employees are asking of from those who said they’ve earned positions like yours. And that’s why commenters here have also asked it of you.

          19. Arabella Flynn*

            The solution is for you to tell the client they can’t have the unreasonable thing they want. By your logic, this work then gets escalated to your boss, who will either back you up or do it themselves. And so on and so forth until the work gets to someone with enough power to make the client listen, or the client quits asking, thus solving the problem.

            You can try the thing you suggested instead, but it wouldn’t work, and you have no legal way to compel anyone to cooperate with it.

            If you had a friend who was abusing their spouse, and expressed that they had no intention of stopping, would you help them work out ways to trap their spouse into staying? Or commiserate with them when their spouse did leave, and help them figure out how to do better at tying down the next one?

            1. NotAnotherManager!*

              I work in a similar industry to vaca, and telling the client they can’t have something isn’t really done. The boss is unlikely to back you up or do it themselves, they’re going to tell the client they’ll get it taken care of and tell you to find some sort of solution – either getting it done or coming up with an alternative that satisfies the client’s need. If the client does not get what they need, they leave and will share with others that your org can’t “get things done”. This is what makes it hard to change the toxic culture of these sorts of industries – even if you say no, someone else will say yes, you lose the client(s), and there’s no incentive to change.

              I know this sort of thing is really difficult to understand coming from a “normal” work environment, but I know where vaca’s coming from and the challenges addressing a whole-industry cultural problem. My employer does way better than vaca’s, but it’s still tough and, after you’ve been in the soup for a while, it becomes your normal.

          20. Storm in a teacup*

            I don’t agree about the other company promises being ‘a fraud’.
            They’re not promising jobs for life and clearly neither are you.
            So if it was me, I would take my chance at the larger company giving me guaranteed time off then suck up the crazy ass hours on the promise I’ll be looked after if things go bad, as that’s not a cast iron guarantee.
            We’re in a pandemic. People have experienced how bad things can get and what is important is changing now and fairly rapidly.
            The way your company has implemented the improvement to junior contracts by making your level take the hit on hours is not fair but you have more leverage than the juniors. If others in your firm at your level are in the same position can you make a case as a group?

          21. Project Problem Solver*

            Vaca, it’s not a fraud though. Your competitors are saying “one guaranteed weekend off a month,” not “and you can stay until you retire.” The people who are going to your competitors, I guarantee they know the lay of the land. They KNOW they’ll be laid off when times get tough in banking again. Heck, I work in a corporate bank and I’ve been laid off and rehired at the same bank. Banking is hard. They’re willing to take that chance because the “guaranteed” free weekend is worth that much to them. They’re telling you what would make it worth it; your firm just isn’t listening.

            It doesn’t have to be the same value you’d place on things, but you clearly do care about having your weekends free, or you wouldn’t be complaining that you had to cover for them. The fact is, their values are different than yours are – and the benefits of the 2 year program that *you* see are not the benefits *they* see. And until you give them something worth the terms your firm is providing, you’ll keep losing them.

            I know it’s frustrating because you don’t have authority to do anything, based on what you said. (And no HR, good gods and little fishes…) But none of us commenting can change the fact that what you’re offering is…not an offer they want to take. And yeah, that means the work they “should” be doing is going to fall on you.

            Without the authority to change anything outside yourself…all you can change is how you respond to that knowledge. Do you stay, knowing this may well continue to be the case? Do you leave? Do you speak truth to your CEO and deal with the fallout? Those are your choices if you truly don’t have the authority to change anything else.

          22. Siege (The other one)*

            As the child of a workaholic, yes. Tell your family you are looking for a new job! If you’re anything like my dad, I’d much rather have my father be happy than miserable in a job where all the blame but none of the power belongs to him. Not only for himself, but because his unhappiness affected us negatively for years! He was always angry, some times straight up abusive. If he quit tomorrow, I would bake him a cake and ask how I can help make ends meet.

          23. Aneurin*

            “So what am I supposed to do in this situation? Go tell the brass that the industry is screwed up? And then explain to my family why *I’m* looking for a new job?”

            Yes. YES. A thousand times yes!

            In your comments on this post, you’ve said repeatedly that:

            1) the industry you’re in isn’t going to change
            2) the company you work for isn’t going to change
            3) you don’t have enough/aren’t willing to risk your social capital at work to make changes happen,

            and have responded to most-if-not-all suggestions from Alison and commenters with variations on “that isn’t ever going to work”. And you know what? Sometimes, there just isn’t a (good) solution to a problem. In the words of The Wire: you cannot lose if you do not play. So… maybe just don’t play (ha.) for a bit?

            From your comments it sounds like quitting wouldn’t put you and your family at immediate risk of financial hardship, so please, for the love of God: quit! Take some time off, actually spend some time with your family – you say you know them “extremely well”, but when have you ever had the time to get to know them that well?

            If you find you need the intellectual/mental stimulation that your work offers you, the odds are that there will be other places you can find that – other commenters have already suggested these. But you clearly sound unhappy and frustrated with you job and your company and your industry, so at the very least taking an extended break (months, not days!) from working sounds like a good idea.

          24. Carlie*

            I totally get that. But if you were able to hire twice as many (at half the price), then they could be covering all shifts at all times – you’d still have the same X number working on a project at any time, but Steve would be working Monday-Friday, Joanne would be working Wednesday- Sunday, and so on. That wouldn’t add to the budget or cost, and most significantly it wouldn’t add to your workload. And then you’d be offering two days off a week plus no 100 hour weeks ever, which would be quite attractive specifically for the people who have already gotten trained and burned out at other companies – that would be a win-win for you, because you wouldn’t have to do so much training on them, either!

            I know you aren’t the one in charge of all of this, and can’t effect change all on your own. I’m just trying to find ideas that you might be able to seed higher up that might gain traction.

          25. Lily of the Meadow*

            You can tell the client that their preferences are just that, preferences, and that immediate turnaround is just not possible. Your company is going to go under, and soon, if someone does not get some kind of hold of the insanity that is being flung around like a monkey throwing its own waste. This is not sustainable. The only advice I can give YOU, personally, is get out. Now.

          26. Shifty*

            Taking everything you say at face value. You cannot change the systems, ok. People are leaving to go to a place that offers comparable pay, but also a promise of a free weekend per month. You offer job security in a recession in lieu of the free weekend per month. Clearly the junior analysts have decided that they value what the competitors offer (the weekend) more than what you offer (job security in a recession).

            You also say that their promise of weekends is ultimately hollow, so that shouldn’t be enticing. But to what degree do the junior analysts know that, and also to what degree to they believe your promise of job security isn’t hollow (to the extent they care about it, which I still suspect is low)?

            I suspect, the main thing you offer your junior analysts is a foot in the door when they couldn’t get hired by your competition right out of school, but they are all happy to jump ship to go to the competition once they can. You could try screening for this in hiring, but I think that just encourages people to lie to you and you to feel even more betrayed. It’s a job–loyalty doesn’t exist. We’re all living in capitalism; they want to sell their labor to whomever will compensate them best. Which brings us to the big question: what can you offer them that makes you better to work for than your competition? And if your only answers are job security and honesty about weekend work, then you’re boned because they’ve already shown you that that doesn’t matter to them.

          27. MCMonkeyBean*

            You’re really *really* hung up on the layoffs thing. A lot of companies laid people off in 2008 and that really doesn’t have any impact on the people deciding to apply there today. People have to weigh the pros and cons and 99% of the time, better working conditions *now* is going to be weighted WAY more heavily then possibly hypothetical future layoffs.

            And you cannot guarantee your company would not do the same in another recession because it is impossible to know for sure. Honestly it sounds like you can’t guarantee your company will survive the current environment if you can’t keep your employees around anyway.

            Also… you have made it sound elsewhere in the thread like you were covering some weekends for the junior employees out of the goodness of your heart, but now apparently it’s because you *have* to due to the company at least trying to match competitor’s working conditions…

          28. Sally*

            I am sorry about the state you are in but I do want to address one thing which seems so obvious but may not be when you are in a bubble. You keep bringing up the 2008 recession. The 23-year-olds you are hiring now were 10 at the time. They don’t care. They want to live in the world which exists today. They want to be able to meet a friend after work or go to a movie on a Saturday or binge-watch a show till midnight on a Friday or any number of things that give them JOY. They don’t feel grateful that you gave them ONE weekend off. There are a vast variety of jobs in this world that give financial security and career accomplishments without sacrificing their mental, physical and emotional well being. There is a reason the people who are in your industry are either naive college students who didn’t know better at the time of hiring or they are people like who have never experienced something different.
            Context: I am 27.

        2. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

          Right, I’m in the first group and hope to stay in it going forward.

          As new immigrants in the US, we met a *lot* of people from the 2nd group. Expecting everyone to suffer as they did, being resentful if others do not perform enough suffering to their liking, etc. That’s no way to live.

      2. Lizzo*

        There are a lot of university faculty who advise PhD students who have this same attitude–“my dissertation took six years to complete, so yours should take at least seven…”

        It’s dumb.

  24. Kramerica Industries*

    You could literally pay 2 junior staff members with that kind of salary. People aren’t wearing being overworked like a badge of honour anymore. The tide has changed and there is a realization that you can make buckets of money, but if you have no time to enjoy it and are at the brink of tears daily, it’s not worth it. I’d also look at the overall picture of your company – do your junior members feel valued for all the work they’re doing? Do they feel like this struggle will be worth staying to move up in their career? I’m guessing no if they’re leaving for other companies.

  25. Thomas*

    This is such an obvious solution too. My very first thought when I saw that they bumped the pay, and how much the pay is, was “don’t pay more, just divide the labor!”. If you can pay six figure salaries to junior members, you can pay five figures salaries to enough people to get the same work done in fairly casual hours.

    1. introverted af*

      And also, per the OP’s point above that it puts a bind on things if the person who made the model isn’t available, then like, it’s a lot easier for one person who’s working 50 hours to take on extra email on a Saturday. Even if every new person you hire does this, that’s a lot more workable than 100 hours a week.

    2. Mannheim Steamroller*

      And, if they’re worried about additional space requirements for the extra people, the employer can have them sharing cubicles on split or offset shifts.

  26. fiona the baby hippo*

    I have never been in THIS kind of position but I relate to the young employees jumping ship just as things might start to plateau and they leave the status of ‘true beginner.’ In the first few months, you can probably convince yourself that things will get better/easier. Then when you level up a bit and see how much things don’t change, that’s when you leave. I had a job that paid me crap and my first year I really bought into the hustle culture mentality of ‘proving’ myself. When things got slightly better (title bump and small raise) but became clear it would never ACTUALLY be tenable, that’s when I scrammed.

  27. MissGirl*

    Guess what! We as employees have choices now. I interviewed at a company that offered me a 50% pay bump with a 100% hour bump. I turned it down as it would functionally be a cut in pay. I went with the job that offered a 25% pay increase with no change in hours and a fully WFH policy.

    The way it’s always been isn’t the way it’s always going to be. And just do you know, you’re not doing yourself and your family a service by working these hours either. Maybe it’s time to learn something from these junior employees.

  28. Anonymous Hippo*

    I don’t think anyone is capable of understanding exactly how working 100 hours a week feels until they do it, so it makes perfect sense to me that people could be perfectly “aware” upfront and still bail on you after 9 months. I’m really confused how it isn’t just obvious to simply hire more people. Even double you will are working 50 hours a week…is there some reason the headcount has to stay low? The kind of stress that this sort of work/life imbalances causes can be extremely detrimental to health. I think like Allison said, you have to consider the hours expected…there are some things you can’t buy, and I don’t think you are going to be able to fix this with higher salaries.

    1. OlympiasEpiriot*

      Yup. You don’t know what it is like unless you’ve done it.

      I once, a long time ago, worked on a boat in often rough conditions. There were effectively 100 hour weeks sometimes. But, we had berths, we had no commute and we never were doing that for more than 2 weeks at a time w/o entering a port and having light duty and shore time.

      1. The Rural Juror*

        During a time when we were short-staffed at restaurant where I worked, I picked up a lot extra shifts so I could put away some savings. Man…I was so glad for that week to be over after having to work a lot of long days with opening and closing shifts (plus, going to my college classes in between). I did not sign up to do it again! I remember that my feet wouldn’t stop hurting, I had circles under my eyes, and I ended up with a sinus infection the next week (probably from lack of sleep and low immune system). Yes, I was able to pay off some debt and put away some extra money, but it took me a couple of weeks to really recover (since I was still working the normal 25-35 hours and going to school full-time). NOT WORTH IT!!!

    2. Threeve*

      This is a really good point. And if you’re hiring folks right out of college, many of them don’t really know what an ordinary 9-5 full-time schedule feels like, so they don’t even have any basis for comparison.

    3. Detective Amy Santiago*

      Honestly, I’m shocked people are making it six to nine *months*. I think this would do me in after six to nine *weeks*, even in my early 20s.

    4. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

      Yep. I can see 100 being an abstract number to a 22-year-old with an enticing job offer.

      Only person in my life I’ve even *heard* of working 100-hr weeks was an ex who was starting a new business. And it was an odd week here and there, not every week for two years in a row. And the ex was exhausted.

    5. Yep*

      I think that’s true, but the interesting thing here is that for some reason the older generation of applicants (equally clueless as the current applicants, presumably) took the job and tended to stay, whereas the current applicants take the job and then leave. I definitely can imagine that changing times would reduce the number of interested people, but that’s not what’s happening here. Here, applicants are taking the job saying they want to do the work, and then later saying otherwise–that’s new, and what accounts for the change?

      1. datamuse*

        One thing I’ve discerned from the discussion so far are that the industry in question no longer has the prestige that it used to. Another is that a lot of these people are leaving for “name” firms. This is very similar to something I’ve seen in higher ed–we’ve had faculty on the tenure track get a few years under their belt at my current institution, then leave for somewhere else with more name recognition, better pay, better benefits, or some combination of the same.

        It’s inconvenient for us, sure, but I don’t fault them for doing that, especially when tenure-track positions are very hard to come by these days. So my thought would be that something about those other places is more appealing to these workers, and maybe they have a better chance of getting hired there once they have a bit of experience.

    6. Em*

      My husband is in the military. He has in the past been on a duty that required 70-80 hour weeks, 14 days in a row, and it was awful. Which is to say, even in the military, most people do not work 100 hrs a week except possibly on deployments.

  29. louvella*

    Yeah, there is no amount of money that I would do that for. When I was 22 I worked around 60 hours a week (for way less money) and I don’t know if there is any amount of money I would do that again for, for more than a year anyway. I was absolutely miserable the whole time.

  30. Viette*

    Maybe the social supports* that got people through 100-hour weeks, in the office every weekend for two years are no longer in place and they just can’t tolerate it anymore! “I’m sympathetic to the pleas that this job is life-consuming, but it’s ALWAYS been that way” — but the world has changed a lot and even people with much less savage jobs, that they actually love, are struggling to make it happen.

    It’s not necessarily that junior staff are suddenly realizing this isn’t what they want anymore. They might well be saying, “sweet, three hundred grand a year, I can do this,” and then in the end they cannot in fact do it.

    *even for a 23yo! even if it’s just a company culture of hardcore partying that motivates them!

  31. Middle Name Danger*

    I’m struggling to come up with any job where 100 hour weeks are actually necessary for a single individual. Any specific account knowledge these employees have, you’re having to replace when they leave, so…why not have more people per account? Have a dedicated after hours team that handles routine things and escalates to the 100-hours person if needed via cell phone?

    2. Elbe*

      Agreed. I can’t think of any legitimate reason why such long work weeks would be required.

      Anyone who is working 100 hours weeks is not functioning at their best most of the time. In Finance, it seems specifically designed to a) weed out anyone who doesn’t prioritize money over everyone and everything in their lives and b) get employees to sacrifice so much of their lives that they’re too invested in the job to blow the whistle on any of the shady things that they see.

    3. James*

      “…so…why not have more people per account?”

      I’ve run into this before. People are working insane hours, because they refuse to share the load. A lot of times this is due to extremely toxic work environments where hoarding information was the only way to make yourself valuable.

      I hate working with people like that, and strive to never be like that. They’re never pleasant people, usually boarder line paranoid. And it’s crappy for the business. You’ve got multi-million dollar projects and programs rest on–or, more accurately, being held hostage by–one person. What if that person gets sick? Or leaves the company? Or just changes roles? You’ve got zero elasticity, and your only hope is that you can clean up the mess before the company gets shut down (doesn’t always work).

    4. Been There (but not actually, this time)*

      I’m also struggling to understand why the turnaround time for any one account is so fast – why can’t it be an every other day scenario, where one day is devoted to meetings, and the second day is devoted to getting the actual work done?

  32. JSPA*

    Colleges had to decide that the so-called cameraderie instilled by hazing was not worth the deaths and other damage.

    Medicine had to decide that the “extreme hazing” version of training was counterproductive in terms of patient outcomes and learning, and that it disproportionately attracted and rewarded people for less-than-ideal bedside and patient-focused traits. It’s still grim at times–or grim because there’s a freaking epidemic–but it’s no longer quite so gratuitously grinding.

    Despite being able to dangle big paychecks, your industry is now at the same crossroads. Do you make a priority of hazing, or of getting AND KEEPING excellent people? Your choice.

    I went through it, so it must have been helpful is crap logic. Let it go.

  33. OlympiasEpiriot*

    100 hours at work per week mean 9.7 hours per day for sleep, laundry, commuting, bathing, paying bills, decompression, going to the dentist, etc.

    I can and have worked extraordinary hours on occasion. I couldn’t do it for 2 years. I have trouble doing 70 hour weeks for more than 2 weeks.

    Also, every person barring one amazing individual who I have known in these programs spent much of that crazy salary on cocaine.

    1. Sherm*

      And since literally only 1% of us can get away with reduced sleep hours, that leaves 1.7 hours in the time budget. Factor in an hour commute per day, and you’re left with 0.7 hours. That’s about 42 minutes to make breakfast, eat breakfast, shower, brush teeth, make dinner, eat dinner, talk with a loved one, etc.

      What gets cut of course is sleep. But again, literally only 1% of us can do this without an impact on health, despite many people fooling themselves otherwise. This way of life is just not healthy.

  34. CBB*

    Dumb question, but: Instead of hiring one person to work 100 hours/week for $200k, why not hire two people to work 50 hours/week for $100k each?

  35. Giving*

    I was wondering if maybe incentivizing people might work better. Like if you stay the 24 months you will automatically get X amount of dollars at the end or X raise. I think making people pay money back or any of the other suggestions is just going to get you miserable employees.

  36. MissFinance*

    OP, I can firmly say as someone a little bit older than your junior employees (I’m 26) that I would absolutely not work those hours and I really don’t care how much you paid me. Alison is spot on here, pay them less (heck, $100k in your 20s is excellent), hire more people, and expect them to work a reasonable 40 hour workweek.

  37. Beth*

    I think 23 year olds are naive and imagine that the a high salary is the be all and end all for happiness, and I’m sure bragging rights are great. But once they get started they realize there is more to life. I have not worked in finance, but I’m in an industry where people talk a lot about how we need to raise salaries. And yet I’ve NEVER left a job over pay. It was over lack of control over my schedule, or poor management.

    1. une autre Cassandra*

      Also, the grindy stuff I sincerely *believed* I was capable of at 23 did not necessarily reflect the reality of what I could mentally and physically endure.

    2. fueled by coffee*

      Also, I think the perception of work-life balance is very different in college vs the workforce in ways new grads might not anticipate.

      In college, it can *feel* like you’re working all the time, studying hard, maybe working a job in addition to class, pulling all-nighters to finish assignments… but then after the semester ends, you have several weeks (if not a full summer) to decompress with absolutely no work. A lot of your socializing can also happen while studying, since all your friends are in college with you.

      I can totally understand a 22 year old college student saying “well, I stay up past midnight finishing my work every day anyway, so a 100+ hour work week should be manageable.” But then it turns out that you can’t run a load of wash while sitting through work meetings and you can’t take a break to go to the gym in the middle of your work day, and also all of your friends in normal jobs are hanging out without you for happy hour at 5:30pm while you still have hours of work to go. So then you start job searching 6-9 months in and take your incredibly lucrative Econ/business/finance degree elsewhere.

  39. Olivia Mansfield*

    One, I don’t see how the LW manages to keep close to a family with those hours, and Two, I think Alison is spot-on about shifting work/life priorities for many people. If there are that many hours and that much money available, just spread the work and the wealth around and hire more people.

    1. LDN Layabout*

      They 100% don’t. My parent didn’t work close to those hours and salary and it still affected me badly as a child. In their case, it was unavoidable as immigrants fleeing…bad stuff.

      I know a fair few people with parents in high powered/prestige careers (lawyers taking on the cases everyone’s heard of, the highest level of politics etc.). EVEN WHEN they have a good current relationship? It came with a lot of work/letting go of huge amounts of childhood resentment. And the hours worked by those parents still didn’t come close to the ones mentioned here.

    2. Green Beans*

      My dad worked 70-80 hour weeks most of my life and did manage to be a present and involved parent to 4 kids – partially because he was self-employed and could bring his children on the job and partially because he has an insane amount of energy and time with the kids was active, quality parenting time. I have never had my dad refuse to engage with me or try to half-@$$ parenting, no matter how tired he was.

      Even so, I think my youngest brother had a different experience with him because Dad’s energy levels had dropped a bit by the time the youngest came about. And youngest brother has Dad’s energy levels, which made it harder.

  40. TheFunctionalWeirdo*

    I once worked 90-hr weeks for 3 months and got incredibly sick. No way in hell would I try to pull that for 2 years, regardless of the pay. How can anyone be expected to retain training info or even make good decisions under those conditions?

  41. Bluebonnet*

    I agree as well. I am perplexed as to why so many companies choose to hire a small amount of people for large loads of work. This is not healthy for the company nor the staff. That said, night/weekend jobs can be do-able if management takes steps to consider their night staff, such as giving them a consistent schedule and only expecting a reasonable amount of hours per week to avoid burnout.

    At my former job, I worked night/weekends (swing shift) for 3.5 years. The job became much more pleasant when I got a new manager who allowed my team and I to work four 10 hour days per week. My manager also did her best to arrange the schedule so that everyone would have either a Friday, Saturday or Sunday off within their days-off window. I know that this is not always possible in some jobs but could be worth a try.

    The one thing rough about my former job is that there were certain times a year where I had to abruptly switch from swing shift to day shift for a week. I felt nasty and tired all week and was always relieved to switch back to my normal swing shift hours. This was the main issue that led me to pursue a day shift job elsewhere.

  42. Lioness*

    I’m assuming that it’s meant to be 175k-200k instead of 275k-200k. If they’re working 100 hours a week that’s $33-$38 an hour. I could find a job with maybe a little less per hour but with way more free time and less likely for burnout.

      2. Paris Geller*

        I don’t want to get too office topic but you made $30/hr as a public librarian in 2011? WHERE? I don’t make that much now as I’m much better compensated than a lot of my peers!

    2. T. Boone Pickens*

      The allure with investment banking is if (and that’s a big ‘ol IF) you can survive the grind you can pretty much write your own ticket career-wise and your earnings get turbocharged (like $500k/$1mm/yr+) turbocharged by the time you hit your late 20s/early 30s so you can essentially throw up the deuces to the world if you’ve saved effectively by the time you hit 40-45.

    3. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

      Excellent point. The per hour compensation isn’t really all that, so I can see folks who are qualified for investment banking thinking, “Huh, I have one job offering $30-$35 per hour at about 70 hrs a week and OP’s job offering $33-$38 per hour at 100 hrs a week. 30 hrs of extra free time are worth $3/hr to me”

  43. So long and thanks for all the fish*

    Sorry for stating the obvious, but 100-hour work weeks are 2.5 full time jobs’ worth of hours. Why would you have an industry set up where that was always the norm? If you reduced the pay so that it’s one full time job’s worth of hours, it’s like $75K, which is still very good money for a 23-year-old. You don’t get time back when it’s gone, and the last 18-ish months have made that clearer than it ever was before.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      One of my big take-aways from the pandemic is that you don’t always have the option of doing something later–sometimes that opportunity closes forever.

      Personally, a number of fall decisions have been made with that truth strongly in mind.

      1. UKDancer*

        Definitely I think the pandemic has brought it home to a lot of people that this is all the time we have and life can be perilously short. I’m not surprised people are coming to the conclusion that they don’t want to spend so much time working that they’ve no time to enjoy life and would prefer a job which pays less but which offers better work life balance.

  44. Eco-Logical*

    The thing is, the *idea* of this probably seems fine to a lot of them, and they likely intend to stay. But the reality of it turns out to not be worth it for them. So I don’t think penalising people will work either from a retention point of view, because it’s just the fact that the reality is they’re finding out that for them, it isn’t worth it. It’s the same for everyone straight out of university really – the idea of what a job is and what you can tolerate rarely matches the reality of those things. People expect to have a life these days, and rightly so.

    1. The Original K.*

      Yes – that’s more money than most people make at all, let alone right out of the gate coming out of school. And I could see someone with no work experience saying to themselves, “this is great money, I can tolerate the long hours,” and then realizing that 100 hour weeks are insane, or hearing from a doctor that their blood pressure is stroke-level high and being like “Nope, not worth it.”

      Penalizing people definitely won’t work from a retention or recruitment point of view. You’re not going to entice people by threatening to punish them.

    2. NotAnotherManager!*

      This. I have a group that works more-than-full-time hours, though nothing near what OP describes by a long shot, and, despite our being very specific and transparent in interviews, we still find that the idea and reality are not the same for a number of people. In that group, we probably hire 6 people per year and nearly always lose one who can’t do the schedule/unpredictability of schedule.

  45. generic_username*

    This may sound crazy, but maybe hire two people for $100-120k each and then it’s only 50 hours weeks??? Like, why does all of this work need to be on one person?

    1. generic_username*

      You’re getting people signing up thinking they can do the hours, but then realizing that 100-hour weeks are soul-crushing and seeing opportunities out there that they like better.

      This is also a great point. It’s hard to conceptualize 100 hour weeks. I know I wouldn’t want it now because I’ve spent years working 40 hour weeks and kind of hate it. I KNOW I’d be miserable if it doubled. When you’re just graduating you have no idea what that even means. I took a job with only a few days leave per year when I first started working – I thought it was fine and that I didn’t need time off. It was miserable and I left fairly quickly.

  46. ellex42*

    I was literally just reading an article the other day about Dr. William Halstead, who is the source of the current standard for doctor residency programs (in the US…I don’t know what it’s like in other countries), which works young doctors to exhaustion.

    The man worked 100+ hour weeks himself, and was a cocaine addict (and later morphine – neither were illegal at the time).

    There’s talk in the health field about changing this standard, as it’s harmful to both doctors and their patients. Why would anyone think it was good idea for any profession? The total number of hours in a week is 168 – working 100 of those leaves just under 10 hours a day for everything else. Assuming these junior staff actually get a decent 8 hours of sleep (ha!), that leaves less than 2 hours for everything else in their lives. So basically, they work, eat (hopefully) and sleep (also hopefully), and that’s it. What kind of life is that?

    And the LW is saying that they’re still doing this in their mid-40s? Do they ever get to see their kids?

    Sure, the pay is great, but it’s not like they get any time to enjoy it.

    So the junior staff is looking at LW and seeing their own future…which looks like no future at all.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      Yes! I was thinking of the trainee-doctors-should-be-sleep-deprived-during-surgery model, but had forgotten that it’s biggest advocate was a cocaine addict.

      Umm, make of that what you will, OP.

  47. Clementine*

    I don’t think paying less for supposedly less hours is going to work, given the competitive nature of the investment banking industry. You are going to have to rethink the whole model.

    The reason just saying less hours won’t work is because people get promoted based on results that are only achievable by superhuman effort. People are opting out of that treadmill, but they won’t find half-pay and half-work appealing either.

  49. Mannheim Steamroller*

    What is the BUSINESS purpose of requiring 100-hour weeks with zero days off? Making people work from stupid-o’clock in the morning to stupid-o’clock in the morning every day for years on end is just not sustainable.

    Instead of paying $275K and demanding a 100-hour week, would it be possible to simply hire twice as many juniors at $100-$125K for a 50-hour week? If you need people on hand late at night to handle transactions in other time zones, then split the shifts and have them share desks.

    1. misspiggy*

      Knowledge management between people is tough in any specialised field. But OP’s field will have to develop it. Investment bankers in the EU have had to, to fit in with limits on working time. Companies have to invest in fostering information exchange between colleagues, and that is surprisingly difficult to achieve. But when it is achieved, the results are almost always better, because two heads are better than one.

  50. Clementine*

    A 23-year-old in NYC who is an investment banking candidate is not going to be happy with a $75K or even $100K job.

    1. E*

      +1. People take these jobs, knowing all well that the quality of life is horrendous, because they are a stepping stone to even fancier/more lucrative positions after the two years are up. It sounds like the current economic situation has those employers more willing to hire people before the usual two year stint in banking is up.

    3. Ashley*

      It’s possible there are people out there who would LOVE $75k-$100k for more reasonable hours, though. When I was in school I had an interest in pursuing investment banking but the hours required were a hard pass.

    4. WindmillArms*

      This letter is specifically about how 23-year-olds who are investment banking candidates don’t want these $275k jobs. It sounds like the candidates actually DO want shorter workweeks more than they want money.

      1. Calliope*

        Reading between the lines, it sounds like they can get more money AND lower hours elsewhere right now.

    5. JimmyJab*

      Well, they’re not happy with $200,000 or more sooooo . . .what do you suggest? Maybe investment banking needs a new candidate pool of folks who are smart and capable enough to NOT take a 100 hr/week job.

    6. Soup of the Day*

      Yeah, this was my thought too. The problem is the industry as a whole is setting these expectations, so it might be tough to actually implement changes that drastic. Especially because it sounds like the employees are either leaving for competitors, who would offer similar hours and pay, or leaving the industry entirely.

      I feel like the only way is to focus on the people who are staying in the industry and try to retain them. You may need to get more competitive on your benefits. How can you make the lack of work/life balance easier on people?

      Also – how is your management? The saying is that people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. Obviously part of the problem could be people not realizing what they were signing up for, but if your competitors are stealing your talent, why is that? Why do people want to leave your company but not your competition’s?

    7. Jackalope*

      I mean, some of them won’t. But there are also a lot of people who would avoid the job for the insane schedule but might try it if it was more reasonable. So you’d get different candidates but that doesn’t mean they’d be worse.

    8. CatLadyLawyer*

      I feel like more qualified 23 year olds in NYC would be interested in investment banking if it was 100K out of school for 40 hours a week, with the possibility of paid overtime as needed.

      1. Clementine*

        The whole industry would have to change. Getting ahead and being kept on is based on being perceived as the best, which requires 100-hour weeks. They will be cut anyway if they don’t scale right on the curve.

        1. Green Beans*

          Or they could change the paradigm. You’d be surprised at how many better ideas and work product people have when they’re not sleep-deprived.

        2. CatLadyLawyer*

          yeah lol the whole industry has to change, that’s my exact point. But let’s start with OP.

        3. CatLadyLawyer*

          Also, like, “getting ahead and being kept on” by being the best should be based on quality and quantity of work produced within a 40-max60 hour week (actually BEING THE BEST). Not on essentially 24/7 availability.

  51. Gentle Screamer*

    Yes, yes, yes to Alison’s advice! My department is going through a similar issue right now, where several of the more senior employees have left, leaving relatively junior team members to pick up the slack. The problem is, management is only okaying us to hire two or three new people at a time, when what we really need is ideally about eight new people. You then have employees who have only been around for eight months being assigned work that is meant for those with at least two years of experience (because everyone else has only been here for four months); these employees get burnt out and leave, and the work gets passed on to even greener team members while we rehire and retrain!

    A healthy work-life balance and mental health are big priorities in this day and age; there will be many people who would rather only make 80k and work 60 hours a week than 200k for 100 hours a week. Like many others have said, working at 100 hours a week leaves no time for anything except work and sleep and that doesn’t seem to be very optimal for your company!

  52. Falling Diphthong*

    I hit the third paragraph–where the solution to improving retention is to make things more punitive–and laughed out loud, alarming my cat.

    OP, the old way of doing business isn’t working now. Whether you make buggy whips or ion drives, you need to adapt to that or you’ll go under.

    (For example, can you find 23 year olds who want to make $125K/year for 50 hour work weeks and every other weekend? Cause I have kids in their 20s, and they aren’t kidding about valuing work-life balance.)

  53. Omnivalent*

    What the OP means is that it used to be that the junior staff didn’t tend to burn out for a couple of years, after the company had been able to wring a certain amount of value out of them, and because the possibility of a promotion and more money was enticing. Now they’re quitting at a point where the cost of turnover is affecting the cost-benefit analysis.

    Sorry, OP, but it isn’t true that this is just the way the job is. The terms of this job were not handed down by God to Moses on stone tables. The job “is” this way because your company chooses to have those hours and working conditions. Your company could change that, if it wanted to, and have lower salaries commensurate with fewer hours and a better work-life balance.

    By the way, you aren’t going to solve this problem by threatening people with sticks (like bonus repayment) if the carrots are no longer enticing enough.

  54. AVP*

    The fact that they can see it’s not a hazing process, and that you, a family-haver in your 40s, are still working these hours – that’s not the plus you think it is.

    You’re telling them that if they can’t do these hours for life, they have no place in your firm or industry. If they want to be involved with their kids on the weekends, if they want to have a spouse with a similarly high-status job and see them occasionally, if they want to go to their siblings’ weddings…they cannot do this job. And many young people today want those things. I think you’d actually have it better if they could see a light at the end of the tunnel (like Big Law), but there actually is no light. And then you’re annoyed that they’re leaving.

    Based on your description I would guess fancy financial services, so you should know that the market has spoken.

    The only real suggestion I have beyond Allison’s is that they need to try out the “100-hour-weeks” and make sure they can do it before you commit to the two-year program. It seems like it’s tolerable in theory (and the money and brand names make it attractive enough) until they find out what the day to day is really like – how can you mimic that in the hiring process? Can you have a 5-month program that’s more like the last semester of MBA school? Are your interns working these hours? I would find any and all possible way to let them actually experience the fallout of this before committing.

  55. Emma*

    This is just nuts. Why would anyone continue working under those conditions once they’ve earned enough to buy a house outright and give themselves lifelong financial stability? I’d quit after 6 months too and take a 12 hour a week job at an ice cream shop on the beach.

  56. LostintheMountains*

    I had to work 12-16 hour days straight for a month, and it was absolutely brutal. I got really sick. And it was for pandemic response!!! Not ‘finance’, we were saving peoples lives and it was still soul crushing and completely unacceptable.

  57. Zona the Great*

    Who are all these young people? Clearly smart and hardworking. Even smarter knowing their value and boundaries. I wish to shake their hands. Who run the world? Young people.

    1. E*

      This is investment baking, so graduates of top colleges who take the job, suffer for two years, and make even more money in private equity (and work marginally fewer hours).

  58. Teekanne aus Schokolade*

    I’m super curious as to OPs relationship with his family and what they really think. We have investment banker in our family and have almost no relationship with him anymore because.. work. I mean we still text but he’s missed so so much.

    1. Gerry Keay*

      Seems they’re leaning more towards “the floggings will continue until morale improves.”

  60. CK*

    > I’m sympathetic to the pleas that this job is life-consuming, but it’s ALWAYS been that way

    I’ve been reading this blog for over two years now and this is the first line that has got me to reply.
    No, sorry, that’s not a good reason. It has always been awful justification, but ESPECIALLY now after 18 months of Coronavirus has repeatedly shown us that many jobs–including those in finance–can still thrive if things change.

    1. UKDancer*

      Yes. It used to “always be that way” that we sent children up chimneys and down mines. Now we don’t. It used to be the way that people didn’t wear safety harnesses when climbing up gasometers (and one of my grandfather’s colleagues died when he fell off one). Now there are rules requiring people to take safety precautions.

      Things have “always been that way” until they change and are not that way any more.

  61. Chilipepper attitude*

    The OP says they are doing similar hours in their 40s with kids.
    I’m a tail end boomer who skews more GenX – and one of the things I admire most about younger folks is that they are basically saying, “the emperor has no clothes” and are pointing out all the flaws in our current systems.

    I hope the OP can get out of working such long hours too!

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      I’m an mid-elder millenial who drank a lot of koolaid clawing my way out of poverty and I agree with you. I GREATLY appreciate the younger people who are doing this, and would never dream of saying “I suffered so you should suffer too”. No, I have a lot of issues to show for my suffering. No one else should have to do that.

      1. Chilipepper attitude*

        My son, a millennial, has decided that living is more important than income and he has enough income to support what he wants to do and so he is not chasing the money.

        Its a really good attitude!

    2. Sara without an H*

      Ditto. I suspect that many of them saw their parents overworking themselves and being miserable. And they decided they did NOT want to do likewise.

      1. LDN Layabout*

        Yup. And it doesn’t mean those children are just bumming around in life. Those people I know with parents who had a similar lifestyle? Still work hard, but have jobs with much better work-life balance.

  62. Prefer my pets*

    Absolutely no one is efficient working those kinds of hours for long. It’s been proven over & over& over that that it leads to more mistakes, less efficiency, and on net you actually are LESS productive than working a more normal set of hours. There is no amount of money that will change that for the vast majority of humans.

    I dare you to run a test…advertise for a few of the positions making it absolutely clear they will never work more than 50 hrs a week at $100k. See how many applicants you get and just how much they get done when they aren’t constantly exhausted.

  63. nikki*

    100 hours a week! Sorry to tell you this, but the culture has been switching to people actually wanting to take care of themselves and enjoy their private time versus dying early with money in the bank. just hire more people and don’t emotionally and physically destroy them while you train them, lol.

  64. Elbe*

    While the salary is high, it’s not throw-your-life-away high. If they’re working 100 hours a week, that’s the equivalent of two and a half normal jobs. Most people who make $80k working 40 hours a week aren’t rushing to get another full time job, and then a part time job on top of that.

    I think that the people who leave likely started the job in good faith. Most people don’t truly understand the impact of working hours that long until they’re in the thick of things. We’re coming out of a pandemic that has taken a huge toll on people’s mental health already, and it’s not surprising that so many are coming to the conclusion that they can’t or won’t work like that.

    I get that it’s frustrating to have people back out of something they signed up for, but this is a huge indicator that the ask wasn’t reasonable in the first place. If adding money doesn’t help, then the only logical thing to do is to find a way to reduce the hours.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      I think a lot of people are starting to assert there’s no such thing as a “throw your life away” salary and it’s scaring the crap out of industries like this.

      And good. You adapt or die. Your ball.

      (Said to the industry not the OP as an individual of course)

    2. H.Regalis*

      Re: good faith – Agreed. You don’t always know how you’re going to react to things and what you can/’t handle, especially if it’s something you’ve never done before.

      I get that this isn’t just your company, OP, but is industry-wide; but it really doesn’t sound like there is anything else you can do. People are walking away from it, and you can’t make them stay; putting in a bunch of stipulations to penalize people who leave the program early is more than likely going to have a negative effect: people will see that and take it as a red flag, or won’t want to take the risk of potentially having to pay back huge amounts of money. It would be better if you look at this as, “how can we change to have better staff retention” vs. “how can we force people to do things” because with the latter, the answer is simply, “You can’t.”

      1. Elbe*

        Agreed.

        I imagine that a lot of people are leaving simply because they CAN’T keep working at that pace. If they pile on harsh consequences to make people feel like they can’t walk away, they’re just going to be running those people into the ground for the benefit of the company. It’s extremely unethical.

        And – in part due to blogs like this one – people are better at recognizing red flags these days. They’re smart enough to ask about turnover. “We’ve set up an unhealthy and damaging system within our industry and, now that they have other options, we’re taking great lengths to prevent people from leaving” isn’t something you can really hide anymore.

  65. ItsAMe,*

    The math doesn’t shake out – 275k for 100 hour weeks is approximately the same as someone earning 110k for 40 hour weeks. There are 100% better-paying jobs out there that offer work-life balance.

  66. College Career Counselor*

    Only read a few of the comments so far, but if your company can pay a person $275k to work 100 hours, can’t they pay TWO people $135k to work 50 hours? If you’re burning people out with the corporate “lifestyle” (ugh), maybe the answer is to hire more people rather than throw money at people who can’t sustain the (inhumane) pace?

    Also, I would posit that no matter what you tell a 22 year old just out of school about the lifestyle and working 100 hours/week, they aren’t likely to have the perspective or personal experience to know what that actually feels like. They literally DON’T KNOW what that will feel like and/or think “I can handle it” before finding out the reality.

    1. quill*

      Also while you’re in school you’re usually doing next to none of your own work of living. And you have large blocks of breaks from the specific type of work that you’re doing between semesters. AND you have weekends / a cap on how many credit hours you can take. Someone who at 23 thinks “yeah, I could pull three all nighters in a week” is probably not accurately calculating how cumulative the exhaustion will be.

  67. Alex Beamish*

    ‘Don’t get too attached to “it’s always been this way.”’
    That’s the money quote right there. “Heavier than air flight is impossible.” “You can’t break the sound barrier.” “No one will want a computer in their home.” “There’s no market for a machine that makes photocopies.” And the list goes on.
    Someone decided those absolute declarations were wrong. Be that person.

  68. e271828*

    This is abusive, cult-like hazing. The long hours function to cut the employee off from everyone in their life outside the immediate work colleagues and the exhaustion disorients them and undermines their ability to think clearly, in order to bond the workers together in a tribal culture: just like boot camp. The reason investment banking companies indoctrinate staff this way is questionable: is it to ensure that their loyalty to coworkers and the primacy of company culture in their judgements and decisions trumps any prior social bond or ethical training? This kind of social programming is never done to good ends or for good reasons, but only to override inhibition. Older workers who have endured the system become part of it without questioning its rationale and effects (as LW shows: “I’m doing similar hours in my mid-40s, with a family”) and perpetrate it.

    Run, young workers! There are jobs that may reasonably require long hours, though even emergency medicine should not routinely do so (do you want an exhausted medical staff assessing you? No one would say yes). Investment banking is not one of them. Investment banking requires long hours because it is cheaper to flog employees through 100 hours a week than to hire three times as many employees and treat them all well.

    I’ve heard that AI systems are doing really well at stock picking, and if it shuts this kind of nonsense down, I’m good with automation unemploying huge swathes of investment bankers.

  69. Me (I think)*

    Most people don’t want to do this, for any amount of money (see all the answers above.)

    Investment Banking attracts the super achiever go-getter business school grads. Top of their class from high ranking schools. They’ve *always* been able to accomplish whatever they want, and they are completely motivated by the money involved. Nobody goes into investment banking unless they are focused on the money, both short and long term. They are going into this eyes wide open, fully expecting to be able to knock out the hours no problem. It’s not like any of this is a surprise.

    In the past, they’ve been right. They could work the hours, bank the money for later, make partner, keep working slightly-less-insane hours, and have the complete investment banker lifestyle (houses, cars, jets, etc.)

    I truly wonder what has changed?

    1. louvella*

      I think a lot of people have discussed this–the culture is shifting. There are more conversations happening around work not being your number one priority, about valuing other things in life. And it sounds like they’re being offered other opportunities that work better for their lives.

    2. louvella*

      I’ll add that my first job out of college ended up usually be around 60 hours a week and while it was an incredibly different field, I always thought of myself as a high achiever, worked quite a bit in college, and had no clue how detrimental it would end up being to my mental health.

    3. Scintillating water*

      I also wonder what has changed! I mean, it seems like an unbearable inhumane system to me, but clearly it’s been working for some people. More alternate career options for people with these skills, fewer people pursuing these careers (post-2008 stigma? fear of crushing MBA debt?), cocaine and stimulants being harder to get (no idea about cocaine but there were severe shortages of my ADHD meds for a while). Or maybe it’s that $200k doesn’t go as far in NYC as it used to?

      1. cookie monster*

        I think these are all parts of it! Also, investment banking used to be the most prestigious career, and now it isn’t. Both because tech is becoming more appealing, and there are lots of tech-adjacent finance roles, and because of post-2008 reactions

      1. James*

        It’s not capitalism’s fault. It’s the fault of specific business models–typically ones which arose prior to capitalism as a socioeconomic structure. I mean, read “A Christmas Carol” sometime; this sort of exploitation is older than dirt.

        “But profit, ma’am, depends on what you’re after”, to paraphrase the arch-capitalist herself (via a character in her most famous novel). There is deep truth to this, as an advocate of free enterprise. People are allowed to pursue goals other than making as much money as possible. People today are realizing it, and making the conscious choice to pursue other values than money. After all, as others have pointed out what’s the use of money if you never get to spend it? Money is a tool of exchange–if all you do is pile it up, it’s just grubby paper (or worse, ones and zeros in some computer database somewhere). Under a free enterprise system, that’s a perfectly legitimate option. You own your labor, so no one can force you to work hours you don’t want.

        The LW’s industry is used to saying “These are my terms, take them or leave.” What the LW is currently seeing is the necessary corollary–the workers get to say “These are MY terms, take them or I leave.” Capitalism can’t exist if one exists but the other doesn’t.

        It’s not capitalism that’s the issue here. It’s a culture of putting monetary gain ahead of any other consideration that’s been grafted onto capitalism in our culture. Free enterprise presupposes a free marketplace of ideas, and what we’re seeing is a disruption of that market–an expected feature, one that the LW is no doubt aware of in other contexts and likely has exploited numerous times.

    5. LilyP*

      Someone else pointed out that if these people are now working from home (or even just working some days from home, or nights/weekends, or if some of them are working from home) that’s a wildly different experience than being in this kind of office, working through all hours together with a tight-knit group of people. They might not be getting the same kind of social bonding that can transform a really shitty experience into that kind of shared-trauma-in-group-stockholm-syndrome-status-symbol ~bond~

    6. Detective Amy Santiago*

      Kids coming out of college now grew up primarily in a post 9/11 world, one that’s rife with mass shootings, and were old enough to feel the effects of the 2008 crash on their family’s lives. Between the possibility of dying young and seeing their parents struggle to make ends meet, they have chosen another path and are more focused on enjoying their lives and making do with less. That’s why you’re seeing a rise in things like minimalism, tiny houses, van life, etc.

    7. Golden Handcuffs*

      I do think our culture is changing. As a youngish millennial who considered I Banking but is now a disaffected Big Law attorney, I think I have some insight into this. I am obviously really driven by money (because money is equal parts security and freedom), but money is not everything. Money helps you live your life, but it is not life itself.

      The problem here is that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. You could kill yourself for two years, or four, or whatever, if you see a future where you’re making a lot of money AND you no longer have to work crazy hard all the time. But Vaca/OP, your hires aren’t seeing that because you yourself are still working yourself into the ground. That’s what I see with my bosses too – they bill almost as much as I do AND they have to bring in clients AND they have to answer to demanding clients AND they have to collect our bills AND they’re also still on call for last minute work that always falls on a weekend you had plans you were really looking forward to. Sure, they make good money, but it’s not enough that they can do it for five years and make enough to be set for life.

      There’s no quality of life at the end of the tunnel, there’s no freedom, there’s no reason to break your back. And I think that’s what people are seeing and deciding is not worth it. That’s where I am – I am putting everything away so that I can get out of here while I still have some semblance of youth and health and beauty and joy. If I knew in ten years I would be making enough so that my kids and there kids would never have to worry about money, my choice might be different.

      The Gen Z kids are really cool because they know so much about mental health and really consider quality of life when making decisions. They are bringing a different culture to the work force and industries are going to have to adapt. I think we’ll all be better for it.

  70. Precious Wentletrap*

    We’ve established this is I-banking and not medicine. Did you, OP, ever consider nobody will die if you and your coworkers got together as a unit and said “nah, we’re goin’ home at 5, see you tomorrow at 8?”

    1. OlympiasEpiriot*

      Also, I personally blame the investment banking industry for messing with our economy; so, frankly, they need to change.

      2. Mental Lentil*

        They need to be regulated out of existence, quite frankly. All they do is concentrate wealth in the hands of those who already have it, tank the economy periodically, and then expect the government to bail them out.

  71. James*

    “(100-hour weeks, in the office every weekend, two year program)”

    Simply put, there is no amount of money you could have paid me at 23 to stay in that program. This is simply insane, is beyond what humans are capable of handling in all but the most dire circumstances, and almost certainly runs afoul of fatigue management rules from OSHA and NIOSH. There is no possibility of you getting the best output from your staff under these conditions–even the best workers see their error rates increase dramatically after 70 or 80 hours a week.

    Don’t picture people in their early 20s as carefree people with no responsibilities. At that age I was married and a home owner, both of which would have been impossible with the lifestyle you’re demanding of your people. You are quite literally demanding that people choose between their families and their jobs–and they’re choosing families.

    I get that paying two people to work 50 hours a week costs more than getting 1 person to work 100 hours a week in the short term. But once you factor turnover, quality control, and the other issues you’re facing into the equation, I think you’ll find that having more people work less hours is the right business decision.

    I work in an industry that’s notorious for working people to the bone. We’re field geologists; long hours and long shifts are part of what we signed up for. And emergency response to spilled toxic chemicals is part of the job. But even in my industry an 70 hour work week sends up so many red flags that it’s just not worth it. My best is 78 hours (haven’t been able to break the 80 hour week yet), and I was told that after 70 we’re not just not good at our jobs, we are actually a liability to the company due to the dramatic cognitive decline. I’ve also been on projects where people have died, and in two such cases the root cause was fatigue from over-work. Both were vehicle accidents, something that’s not unique to my line of work.

  72. fifteen minutes of indiscriminate screeching*

    yeah, i worked a job with hours like this (for much less money though…) that just ended this august. the hours coupled with my commute that meant i’d be getting home at 12.30 or 1.30 and then have to wake up at 6.30 just to do it all over again. i burnt out so badly that i’m honestly still recovering. what everyone is saying about workers barely having time to function is correct – by my last month there i was barely a person.

    1. fifteen minutes of indiscriminate screeching*

      oh, what i forgot to add is that – i pulled more than my fair share of all-nighters in college. i used to be able to run on 4 hours of sleep when i was in my early 20s; i’m 28 now and my body just literally cannot handle it anymore. i can’t remember when i started hitting this wall but i wouldn’t be surprised if 23 is when it starts coming up for some people.

      1. Moira Rose*

        I think for a lot of people their twenties are a long slow slide from “I’m invincible” to “OMG my body needs things.” Certainly was true for me.

        1. Sara without an H*

          Yep. In college I could study until 2:00 a.m. and be up in time for an 8:00 a.m. class.

          If I try to do that now, I babble and walk into the furniture.

        3. Rectilinear Propagation*

          I’d imagine that the pandemic sped that process up a lot for many people, even if they didn’t actually get sick.

      2. quill*

        Oh I’d hit that wall by 21.

        I tried to take an extra lab class one semester, which was billed as 4 credit hours up from the 16 that was average… except 16 credit hours in the sciences with two lab classes was 24 actual in class hours, because lab isn’t credit hours, with up to 2 hours of outside work per class hour, and adding a lab class made that 32 class hours, and anyway I did bad work and retained next to nothing from any of those classes.

        You simply can’t be getting quality work from your hires at this point.

    2. Lily of the Meadow*

      I was very lucky, and was blessed with very good genetics, and a really crappy situation (abusive relationship where I worked multiple jobs from about 5 am to anywhere from 12 am to 2 am, then commuted about half an hour home, slept a couple of hours, got up and did it all again) that made it to where I honestly could only sleep for about 5 hours, at the most, and usually 3 or 4 until I was in my early 50s. I can still do that more than I cannot. Except for right now; I have some type of infection that antibiotics do not seem to be helping much and I am probably sleeping 12-14 hours a day, and sometimes more. I do not know what to do with this.

  73. Gerry Keay*

    The only people I know who’ve stuck around in investment banking are people who participate in quite a bit of nose candy, if you catch my drift. I genuinely don’t know how you’d do that workload without stimulants, it’s simply not how our bodies are wired.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      “Cocaine, and lots of it” is emerging as the one career choice that makes this sort of schedule work, in finance or medicine.

      1. JohannaCabal*

        Or abuse of legal meds. I live in an area where the high-schools have cutthroat academics and, until recently, overscheduled students. My co-workers who had teens told me that it was an open secret students were abusing ADHD meds to stay on top of everything.

        2. LC*

          This (the situation, not you specifically JohannaCabal) makes me equal parts heartbroken and enraged. For anyone with a genuine need for stimulant meds, it is already somewhere between difficult and impossible to get a diagnosis (particularly as anything other than a male child), then to get a prescription (which is not a given, even with a diagnosis) that you can regularly fill (which is already hard enough for a myriad of reasons).

          The laws and regulations designed to prevent abuse make it so much harder for people with a genuine need to access medication that can be quite literally life saving, and misguided/judgey doctors and pharmacists just pile on top of that.

          Please please please, anyone reading this, do not abuse meds like this. And what’s more, if you’re in any position of authority for something that fosters the kind of environment that could lead to this kind of abuse, knock it the eff off and get your shit together.

          Do whatever you want to your body, but don’t mess with other people’s lives.

      2. Gerry Keay*

        Hey, if it was good enough for Freud, it’s gotta be good enough for the rest of us! Right? Right???

    2. OyHiOh*

      I have a friend who was a commodities broker back in the day when it was physically people in a ring shouting at each other. He was talking about currency trading one night, explaining moving an account through various global markets over the course of a day or two – and finished up by observing “when you know you’re going to be up for 30 hours straight, you do what you gotta do [to be awake and alert and make good decisions].” But he also worked his way up the ladder to where he didn’t need to pull those kinds of hours any more, and then retired from the industry relatively young, to do work with more sane hours and ability to give back to the community.

  74. Chris*

    I am reminded of a lawyer I know talking about his first job search out of law school. He interviewed with a bunch of firms and asked all of them some variant of, “If I end up in this job, what would you expect of me?” All the biglaw type firms answered in terms of billable hours. The small litigation firm where he interviewed replied, “We expect you to win.” Guess where he ended up?

  75. Falling Diphthong*

    Math minute:
    • This work schedule would be, say, 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week.
    • If you try to take one day off per week, you would need to work more than 16 hours/day.

  76. CatPerson*

    You are not going to get a 23 year old to sign a contract requiring them to pay back salary or bonus, and I doubt that such a contract would be enforceable.

    1. Emily*

      You can’t get someone below minimum wage, and you have to be upfront about how your compensation is structured. But beyond that — yes, this is a legal practice, and it’s normal in some industries. I have had to pay back a bonus upon leaving.

      1. CatPerson*

        I am pretty sure that you would have to give some consideration in return. Like if we fire you, you get x times salary. Even so, a 23 year old in a technical industry would not be wise to sign such a contract.

        1. Emily*

          Doing it as a signing bonus is a common way of structuring it. This is done in tech as well. Generally you don’t have to repay it if they fire you, but no, they don’t pay you extra if that happens.

  77. Boadicea*

    I don’t get that sort of pay, and I don’t with those sort of hours – any more. I’d like to think my colleagues and I are intelligent people and many, leaders in our field.

    I won’t stay anywhere where “but we’ve always done it this way” is a mantra for anything. If you hire intelligent people you must allow them to make change or they will leave for somewhere they perceive they can.

    1. Boadicea*

      Having said that, paying back sign-on bonuses or a % of sign-on bonuses if you leave within x years is normal where I live. I’ve done it once and I’m about to do it again. It may change my strategy slightly but it will NOT prevent my leaving an archaic company that doesn’t support my long-term growth.

  78. Exhausted Trope*

    As a former 23 year old, there’s no way in heck I’d have survived in that kind of environment. I don’t care what it paid or what training was provided. I’d have been a basket case in 4 months.

    1. quill*

      These are the kind of hours that can give you ongoing health problems long after you aren’t doing them anymore.

  79. ElizabethJane*

    I’m in my mid 30s, making $115K ish (variable bonus) per year, and I work about 30 hours a week. Maybe.

    I don’t care if you offered me $500K, I’m not doing 100 weeks. The reality is people are realizing that while competitive pay is important there is more to life than work. I’ve done the grueling hours for an insane salary and I can firmly say it was not worth it.

  80. Bookworm*

    It’s ALWAYS been that way?

    Wrong. Sorry, but the pandemic has finally forced employers to look at this head-on. You cannot ask people to do this type of work anymore. You should have never asked that of them in the first place, ever. This is why your industry has a bad rep, whatever it is.

    Pay isn’t enough anymore. Prestige is not enough anymore. Your organization need to stop seeing your employee as cattle to be trained to fill in gaps that have been completely unsustainable, pandemic or not. The power has shifted, at least temporarily. If you don’t adapt, it will be permanent.

  81. Cari Renae*

    Double the staff working 50 hour weeks for 100k-150k seems much more doable and like it would be attractive to way more applicants.

  82. it's just the frame of mind*

    “That’s equated to me working each of the past six weekends to try and get junior staff more time off than I ever got when I was coming up”
    If people are supposed to work every weekend, I don’t see the problem with this.

    1. KateM*

      I noticed it, too – only 6 weekends and OP is already whining, while expecting juniors doing that for 104 weekends.

        1. Vaca*

          Just to be clear, I work almost every weekend. It’s been six in a row. And, also to be clear, I’ve worked weekends for years and years. The general expectation in this gig is that you have Saturday off unless things are blowing up and that Sunday afternoon is work time. I don’t think it’s unfair to be frustrated when:

          1. It was made clear, up front, that Sunday is a work day and that sometimes $*** happens on Saturday. It’s a major focus of our interviews and frankly in all the literature about our industry.
          2. I’m not asking anybody to do things I haven’t done for years. This isn’t some new innovation.
          3. It’s *necessary*. This isn’t make-work. In this most recent instance, there was $100mm on the line.
          4. I *still* do it. I hopefully do it less, but I clearly still do it. I prefer to get up early on Saturday and Sunday and get my stuff done before my kids are up (so getting up at 5AM) rather than sleeping in and working all Sunday afternoon as the analysts do, but I’m still working incredibly hard. If the average analyst is working 70-80 hours in a given week, I’m working 60-70. Plus, I’ve travelling. I’m writing this from the airport.

          I get that the job sucks. But these folks showed up at the interview, were told it sucks, and they still clamored for the position. They took the role – meaning that they took an offer that would have gone to someone else – showed up, got *two* raises in six months, took up a ton of my time in training (time that could have been spent with my family) and then quit just as they were getting good.

          I get all the comments up above about the industry needing to change with the times, about how there are some very dysfunctional aspects to this role, and I’m pretty well determined to find my exit. But I am going to counter criticism that says I’m asking anyone to do anything I can’t, won’t or haven’t done myself. This is not the Charge of the Light Brigade.

          What all this discussion has helped me clarify is that the breach of trust is on the part of the firm, not the analysts. They have a right to quit and look for better employment. Hell, they have a right to quit and go sit on a beach. I’m angry because I brought my not-insubstantial abilities to this firm in exchange for a few promises, one of which is that I’d have the staff to execute my deals. That promise has clearly been broken. I don’t have any real ability to fix the way the company is run, so I’m left looking around me at the detritus and blaming the monster rather than the government (here, my company) that failed in its basic duty to provide for its stakeholders. Why? Because the monster is new and the government is the same old creaky machine it’s always been.

          That’s not as clean as telling me I’m a jerk, a real kneebiter, and I get that. I definitely work too hard, I definitely care about stuff I shouldn’t care about, and my reactions aren’t always measured when I’ve felt burned. As I noted above, the fallout from this particular person leaving included two all-nighters in one week. I worked well over 110 hours that week up until the deal closed, and I crashed into my bed at 8pm on Friday. About 50 of those were essentially consecutive (I did nap for about 2 hours as I waited for a legal document to get turned, so you can deduct those, I guess). Anyway, I doubt that changes your opinion of me. Just know that I get my own hands plenty dirty.

          1. Kathryn*

            You can’t fix the company or the industry you’re in. So why not follow your analysts’ lead and go elsewhere? Even if the work is a little less compelling? Even if you are feeling like you’re breaking a promise to your clients (you’re not, they’ll be fine without you)?
            You sound incredibly burnt out. I want to read a follow up letter from you in two years where you read this original letter with fresh eyes and see how warped your sense of work was.
            There’s always a recession around the corner, but that’s life in investment banking. Don’t let the fear of getting laid off in a possible recession keep you in a job that’s ruining your life.

          2. NotAnotherManager!*

            I think you need to round up some of your peers and talk to management about the fact that their current strategy for hiring/retaining analysts is not working and describe the impact it’s having on your deals. Clearly, the old way is not working to the detriment of the paying work, and someone needs to figure out why and what alternatives are before they start losing dealmakers who can’t get the support they need. Continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results is just a recipe for more disappointment and, ultimately, failure. I always tell people that shit happens because a person made a mistake (which can be fixed with feedback or training) or the process is broken, and, if it’s the latter, the problem will recur until we fix the process. Your hiring process is broken.

            I will say that I think the instinct to punish the people that leave early is wrong and will not have the result you want. These people are being paid well and bonused and are hitting a point that their life/sanity is worth more than the money. Someone who wants a couple weekends back after that intense a workload is going to be fine with giving you back $10K for the privilege.

            I’m not going to give you a lecture about how toxic your industry is. I work in a similar one (though the hours aren’t nearly as insane), and I identify with your comments – after you’ve been in it a while, it is your normal and not something you have the power to change by yourself, only leave. And leaving is hard – the pay, the relationships with clients/coworkers, figuring out what to do next – people underestimate how hard that is, especially if you’re the primary financial support for your family and have existing obligations like a mortgage or regular medical treatment.

          3. MCMonkeyBean*

            It’s *not* necessary. $100M is still not life-or-death. That is not a good reason for *anyone* to be working that much. You company has convinced you it’s necessary but it just isn’t.

          4. BabyElephantWalk*

            Pushing back here on the idea that it’s necessary just because there is money on the line. Sure, a lot of money. But what exactly is necessary, other than a transaction occurring? What damage happens, just because that transaction doesn’t occur?

          5. Budgie Buddy*

            The most quoted lines from Charge of the Light Brigade are:

            “Ours is not to reason why
            “Ours is not to make reply
            “Ours is but to do and die.”

            The person leading the people to their deaths is also riding to his own death, while explaining “Yeah, it sucks but this is the way it’s done.”

          6. cheeky*

            I think it’s more than fair, and your firm (and others, I’m sure) are getting their just desserts for treating people badly.

        2. Dr. Rebecca*

          I didn’t take this as a complaint about working weekends, but rather about the *type* of work they were doing during those weekends.

  83. goducks*

    $200k for 100 hours a week is the hourly equivalent of $80k for 40 hours a week. It’s not crap money starting out, but it definitely changes the picture when presented as the hourly equivalent.

  84. Blinded By the Gaslight*

    I worked 60 hour weeks, with only 1 day off (or sometimes none), and I was a shell of a person after only a couple of years. 100-hour weeks would literally kill me. I wouldn’t have known that in my twenties, when I probably would have eagerly applied to a job like this, and then would have promptly burned out and left just as you described. In my forties, I wouldn’t even consider such a job, despite being highly experienced and desiring a high-paid, professional job because I’ve realized I don’t want to have a heart attack at work.

    Quality of life, adequate rest periods, family/friends, etc. is critical to good mental and physical health, and you’re losing people and eliminating qualified candidates from your pool because they value those things more than a $275K salary. It’s not the 80s anymore. I don’t know how anyone could possibly do 100-hour weeks without copious amounts of drugs to either stay “up” for work, or come down to try to sleep. Your business model is a really a burnout model.

  85. MuseumChick*

    OP, many industries, not just individual companies, are having to go through a very painful process of changing “the way things have always been”. From restaurants up to yes, investment banking, everyone is having to re-think and readjust to the “new normal”. While you may not have the power at your company the only thing I can recommend is that your company should try to be one of the first in your industry to make the needed changes.

  86. Sick of Workplace Bullshit*

    I have to say, I get the feeling there’s a fair bit of a condescending and bad attitude on the part of the LW.

    *You* don’t want to work weekends, but you’re surprised the entry-level people don’t want to, either? You make a lot of money (as it sounds like they do, too), but it’s still not worth it to you. Hmm…

    Things can and in many cases *should* change. Just because long hours and no life outside of work has been the norm up to now, doesn’t me it should continue to be. It’s clearly not working, but you still don’t want to change it.

    Just because people are young doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to do outside of work.

    Just because they don’t have a traditional family, doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to do outside of work.

    The employees have shown you what they value and what would work for them. It’s up to your organization to make that happen if you want things to change.

  87. SparklingBlue*

    When someone says “But it’s always been like this, I say “Just because it has always been doesn’t mean it has to always be.”

  88. StressedButOkay*

    14+ hour days and no weekend breaks? That leaves, what, around 9 hours a day to the individual for commuting, eating, any downtime, and sleep?

    Workers are realizing that they don’t need to break themselves – if a company, or industry, won’t change, they’ll find another place to make a living. Work/life balance isn’t a catchy phrase to a lot of people these days, it means something – and they’ll give up $275K to be able to recharge.

    (Also, when on earth would they be able to spend that money, besides paying necessary items, during that brutal slog?)

    1. quill*

      You might need nearly that amount of money to cover the work of living (especially in a very large city) during that time, given that you definitely don’t have any time to cook or clean for yourself.

  89. Sea Anemone*

    I’m curious–you say the industry has always had these hours. Has your company always had this turn over, or is this a recent thing?

    1. Vaca*

      It’s started pretty recently. The last two years, really. I joined this firm partly because they had great tenure from the junior staff.

      1. sometimeswhy*

        Huh. Was there something else that changed about two years ago? Did your baseline headcount go down? Projects go up? Hours increase? Perquisites quietly disappear? Partnering and sharing of responsibilities fall by the wayside? (Was there, uh, a pandemic that inspired people to really reconsider their life choices?)

        I’m seeing in other comments that you’re seriously considering a controlled exit to maybe apply some of what you don’t have the authority to do at your current place and that’s great! But if you’re still running problem solving mode in tandem to escape planning, is there a way to track the sudden uptick in attrition and tie it back to whatever changed?

    2. NotAnotherManager!*

      Not OP, but I work in an industry known for poor work/life balance, and it’s really in the past few years that turnover has sped up significantly. I run a similar two-year program (though my folks get most weekends off and aren’t regularly doing 100-hour weeks), and I’m lucky if I get 12-18 months out of most participants now, even though my company is well known to be better on the work/life and to have slightly higher pay than others in the industry. It’s frustrating to train them and then lose that investment, despite a significant salary bump or two-year completion bonus, but it’s just they way it is now. Job hopping is much more common/frequent.

  90. Cass*

    Ok, I have two thoughts here as someone who’s had COVID:

    1) I think it’s also important to remember that we’re in the middle of a pandemic for a disease that, even if it doesn’t kill you, can leave you permanently disabled. I know a lot of people—myself included—who got COVID and now deal with things like chronic pain, persistent fatigue, and significantly lower energy than before we got sick. For me, COVID severely worsened a joint condition I’ve had for several years. I got on medication for it that’s definitely helping a lot, but prior to the medication, COVID took my levels of pain from “mildly annoying” to “I am sitting on the couch sobbing and unable to move because my entire body feels like it’s on fire”. And I’m lucky in that I found a medication that makes my symptoms manageable; a lot of people don’t.

    Prior to getting COVID, could I have worked 100 hour weeks for a 200k salary? Yeah, maybe! But could I do that now? Absolutely not—it would completely wreck my body. And, you know what? If I tried to get a job with that schedule anyway… if I really forced myself, I could probably last 6 or so months before I had to leave for my own health.

    2) This disease has caused millions of deaths over the course of a little under two years. There’s a good chance that you personally know someone who died from it, and you definitely know somebody who’s lost a friend/family member to the disease. That means that millions of people in their early 20s (and younger) are probably having their first personal experience with death. Now that they have an appreciation for how short life can be and how important it is to live life to the fullest while you still have it, is it any wonder that they’ve decided they don’t want to spend their life working exploitative hours just for a higher paycheck? Is it any wonder that, upon realizing they could die any day, they’d rather take a lower paycheck that allows them to do the things they’re passionate about and spend time with their loved ones than a higher paycheck that means they can’t do anything but focus on work? And sure, you tell them in the interviews what the schedule is like, but there’s a big difference between hearing someone talk about a schedule vs working that schedule yourself and realizing “Oh, I do not have any time at all for anything besides work. And I’m not okay with that, because if I die tomorrow—which I could—I don’t want my last months on Earth to have been spent neglecting the things that bring me joy because I only had time for work”.

    Just some food for thought.

  91. RJ*

    I’m in accounting and a few people who I graduated with focused on finance and went into investment banking. Most of them stayed a year or less and then moved on to either VCs or hedge funds. Others went on to start-ups.

    Pay isn’t going to cut it anymore and there have been a plethora of articles in the WSJ on the retention issues et al faced currently by certain firms. One firm in NYC raised pay for all associates by 50K a year (retroactive to last July) and the starting salary for most junior bankers is anywhere from 100-150K per year. And they still can’t keep the talent they attract because of the heavy workflow inflicted on them. Bankers are taking the money and running towards other investment entities and they aren’t looking back.

  92. The Smiling Pug*

    Hi there, OP. I’m going to second everyone who basically said that your statement, “it’s always been this way” is complete BS. People and industries change all the time, and especially now during this pandemic, it’s imperative that some businesses change. No way is someone going to take 100+ hours of work plus weekends for more than 2 years, because it’s just not sustainable long-term. Also, people are waking up and realizing that work-life balance ranks higher than we’ve been taught to believe.

  93. benny*

    I mean in the first place, this pay isn’t really that great actually. It’s good, but not great.

    $200,000 / year
    48 weeks/year
    100 hours/week = 40 + 60*1.5 = 130 hours/week wage basis
    200,000 / (48 * 130) = $32/hour

    Like $32/hour is pretty good, but in NYC or Chicago, it’s… not really all that much on a COL-adjusted basis?
    Or to put it another way,
    $32/hour * 4o hours/week * 48 weeks/year = $61,500

    So maybe 200k/year sounds like a lot, but on an hour-adjusted basis, this job is directly competing against positions that offer 61k on a 40 hour week, just strictly looking at what it pays. Like if your prospective employees went into boring retail banking instead of exciting investment banking, like doing mortgage accounting or whatever.

    So I mean, the pay is good, but just on the math, it doesn’t seem to be as good as OP thinks it is?

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Yeah that’s less than I make in non-profit work. And I’m definitely not working past 5oclock terribly often to do it.

      1. benny*

        LOL:
        200,000 / (52 *130) = $29.59/hr
        you’re gonna push these poor bastards under the 30/hr threshold

        And that’s just at the top, maybe more realistic numbers for that first year is:
        185,000 / (51 * 130) = $27.90/hr
        That would compete with $56,900/year on a 40-hour basis, same 51 weeks/year.

        Seems like this job doesn’t really offer enough money to write home about.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        The only way I see them taking any vacation at all is if they are legally required to take 2 straight weeks so that any financial shenanigans requiring their presence unravel.

        1. Vaca*

          They generally get two weeks. But everyone works on vacation to some extent. I worked through mine (literally. Eight to ten hour days). In part because of this issue.

          1. sagc*

            The fact that you’re blind to there being any other way to take a vacation than working 8-10 hour days, and it’s somehow because of the junior staff…

          2. MCMonkeyBean*

            Just to be clear, if you worked 8-10 hour days *you were not on vacation.* You were just working remotely. Which is something a lot of people are already doing anyway.

          3. cyllan*

            That’s…not a vacation.

            I get that you really do seem to love your job, but everything you say here makes it sound worse and worse. Hours that are deadly, no vacation, owed money, management that doesn’t support or care about you, high turnover.

            Quit. Please quit.

          4. Run, OP, Run*

            …that is not vacation. that’s most normal people’s idea of a work day. you’re in a cult.

    3. kevcat*

      That’s a great point. Jealous that I didn’t think of it.

      And the OP’s insistence that ‘this is how it’s always been done’ sounds like the death knell of an archaic business model, verging on obsolete. With events of the last several years, 20-somethings have begun to rethink…well…just about everything. Adapt or perish, OP.

  94. PTC*

    I worked for a boutique investment bank for a couple of years when I was in my late 30s. Not on the banker side, but I saw the expectations in terms of work life versus personal life. Also, what I heard from more than one person was that the options for the 20-something junior, by the time they turned 40, were three — (1) they would jump to one of the big Manhattan firms; (2) they would retire from the business, because they had a dollar figure in mind to have by age 40, and they hit, and were ready to move on; or (3) they were dead, from some combination of overwork and substance abuse.

  95. CatCat*

    I don’t know if there’s any threshold I’d be willing to work those hours, but it it exists, it is definitely for a lot more than $33-$38/hour. And definitely not for 2 years.

    These young folks are realizing that what you’re offering is not worth the hours of life they are spending.

  96. Hiring Mgr*

    Your only chance is to zag when everyone else is zigging. INCREASE the hours per week – this way the fence sitters will get serious and you’ll know you’ve right the people on the bus. /s

  97. Liz T*

    It drives me crazy how many employers start from the premise of, “Obviously my business should exist, in the exact way it exists. Now, how do I make employees support that?”

    What if…literally no one wants to do this job anymore? What if you are The Last Of Your Kind? The Investment Banker Store is out of stock of Junior Staff, and they’re not getting any more in because of issues with the supply chain?

    Retool the job for the employees you CAN get.

    1. louvella*

      I keep thinking this.

      You need start by asking, what are people willing to do and for how much?

      THEN comes the business model.

      And if the first question changes, the business model changes.

      1. Liz T*

        Especially since investment banking is…BS, frankly. Pushing other people’s money around while the world burns maybe just isn’t meaningful enough for young people to throw away their lives for it anymore.

  98. Accountress*

    I’m going to give you the advice that a business consultant would charge you $100k for and take 3 months to write up, and I’ll even give you 2 years to save it up.

    Halve the hours, double the workers.

    When 80% of your next class of junior staffers make it to the 2 year mark, let Allison know and we’ll work out payment.

  99. Monty & Millie's Mom*

    I haven’t read all the comments so maybe someone else has said something like this – if anyone even reads this far! Anyway, I just wanted to say that it’s common to want things to be better than they were for you, but also to kind of resent it when they ARE better for others! But as Alison says, things will need to change, and for the better for those junior employees, and since it will actively benefit you as well, LW, I hope that you will find a way to make the changes – if not industry-wide, at least within your organization. Just because that’s the way it’s always been and you survived it doesn’t mean that it’s always going to stay the same – and I’d argue that an organization that doesn’t change won’t survive. Good luck!

  100. nonprofiteer*

    So, investment banking? People I know in that industry tell me the pay is great but junior staff are too miserable to enjoy it.

    The NYT had an article about this exact topic back in July, including a bank exec who told his son not to do these programs.

    This seems like the time to try offering a job people want/can manage, not just throwing money at them. Especially if you aren’t an elite company that will open lots of doors if they stay for two years.

  101. Me*

    The job hassssss to be this way.

    No. It. Doesn’t. The work force is telling you loud and clear they won’t do it.

    So fix it. I don’t know the industry but I’ve never bought that it’s actually necessary for anyone to work insane hours. If that’s required its the employers fault. I’ve also never bought that there’s industry’s that have to treat their junior employees like s$&t until they are a real employee. If that’s required it’s the employers fault. Hire more people to help cover hours so individuals aren’t working 100 (!) hours a week. And every weekend. Distribute work better so you’re not dumping a frankly unmanageable burden on junior staff.

    If that won’t fix it then you better figure out what will.

    Because what you’re offering no one is buying any more.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      “I’m doing similar hours in my mid-40s, with a family.”
      And at this point, OP, you are doing similar work, but you are not doing similar living.
      You have a family. That may mean kids, at least it means a partner to share the responsibilities of life with. Someone in your marriage is getting dinner on the table, laundry done, bills paid. Someone to show up to friend and family events, make your apologies but keep connections open.
      Now remove all that from your life.
      Then remove the twenty years’ experience of living as an adult.
      Now begin again. But not like when you were 23. Like 23 year olds now.
      In this world with 24/7 communication.
      No break ever. Texting AND emailing AND Zooming AND in office.
      Your industry has made way for the best without culling the worst.

      1. Me*

        I’d also argue they aren’t doing anything with a family. Because if they are working similar hours of 11 a week and most weekends then they may have reproduced and created humans, but they aren’t doing anything to be a meaningful part of raising them.

        So imagine if these young kids look at their managers and other staff and see that all they are working for is literally money. Because there’s no time left for anything else. A life full of nothing but work and money sounds pretty sad and pathetic to me. I’d run like hell too.

      2. Liz T*

        “I’m doing similar hours in my mid-40s, with a family” is actually a great argument for quitting now. How is “stick around, it never gets better” their advertisement slogan?

  102. SleepyKitten*

    You’re hiring one person to do 3x the hours at 3x a good office salary, and they’re leaving 1/3 of the way into the program…

    Really does sound like you can just hire 3 people concurrently instead of sequentially. Even if the 100 hours of work can’t all happen in 9-5, you can do things like rotating on call duty, or staggered shifts. Clearly the clients can cope with someone different dealing with them on weekends, so why not make that a rotating roster of trainees rather than just you? You might even find that having more and better rested eyes on things leads to better performance.

    It sounds like you’re thinking that the new trainees should make sacrifices because you made those sacrifices as a trainee. But really, they’re just making a different TRADE. You traded 100 hours of labor for a salary that I literally would not know what to do with, these trainees are going to trade 30-40 hours of labour for a comfortable but not luxurious salary.

    I get that the higher level jobs currently require 100 hour weeks, but if this goes well you have lots of ammunition to get higher level roles split up as well, and then you can reap the rewards of training them through a big chunk of their career. Your company could honestly be on the ground floor of this sea change and hoover up a bunch of high performing employees who want shorter hours.

    If you just can’t split the role, I would reconsider backending the compensation. Part of the point of the salary is to outsource all the life stuff you don’t have time for. If they’re struggling through the first few months still having to make their own dinners, or even just not being able to afford the fun stuff they want the big paycheck for, I can see why they think it’s not worth doing that for 3-4x as long just to get a big lump sum at the end. Obviously you might risk more people jumping ship to competitors, but given that your biggest problem is people leaving the industry you might gain a lot by making their first few months as attractive as possible.

  103. CCC*

    US companies have no choice but to stop relying on a steady pipeline of college degreed American 20somethings to chew up and spit out. Fertility has been falling for years, especially among those who are college educated (most people who are highly educated have parents who are, too). During the Great Recession we went from a steady rate to one that has fallen every year. We’ve been talking about it in higher education for years.

    Now seems like as good a time as ever to start trying different ways of doing business– if you usually hire 23 year olds, you’ve got about 10 years to figure out how you can cope with there being less of them.

  104. learnedthehardway*

    It sounds like you’re in capital markets or something similar. I know you’re hiring absolutely top talent from top MBA schools.

    It would make a lot of sense to hire MORE people and spread the work out. Yes, I know it’s traditional for the junior team members to work 100 hours per week, but it’s really not ideal in terms of work quality, not to mention work/life balance. Heck, there have been stories in the news of some associates in capital markets dropping dead from overwork – it’s really NOT all that well paid when you think someone is going to sacrifice their health or when you do the calculation of having no time for a life.

    So, it’s time to change the paradigm – look more broadly, hire a number of people so that your associates aren’t doing more than 70 hours a week. Make the partners / senior management commit to the change. Maybe you won’t pay as highly, but it will become a differentiating factor for your company: once it gets out there that your firm pays well, doesn’t overwork their employees, and values them, you’ll get good people, and they’re more likely to stay. People join firms like yours KNOWING they will likely only stay for 2 years – they KNOW that the pace is not sustainable for 99% of the population.

    With this strategy, you may not get the 1% who really can handle that kind of workload and who thrive on it. But you will get the 95-99th percentile – and when you get right down to it – is there really THAT much of a difference between the performance of the people at the 95th percentile and the 99th?

    1. Hibiscus*

      And not just that–put in more people who can push back on the client and say, “Why do you want to pay that much for bad work? Those changes are a minimum of 20 hours of work–if you want turnaround by 8am, you are not getting our best work, which is what you are paying for.”

  105. Wicked Stitch*

    endlessly amused by companies making Pikachu face when they can’t get people to tolerate insane demands anymore.

    like, those working conditions sound utterly intolerable. please please take Alison’s advice to heart.

  106. I've Escaped Cubicle Land*

    I’ve had a full time job with multiple side jobs and still worked less then 100 hours a week!! That’s 14-20 hour days depending on how many days a week they work. I’d nope on out of that no matter how much $ they offered.

  107. Engineer*

    I’ve said this before to coworkers. I worked my butt off (long study hours, lots of stress) in school to get good grades, and get what I believe is a good job. My job is in an interesting field, decent pay, not a lot of overtime. I am no longer interested in busting my ass with stress and long hours for the sake of a well paying job. I don’t live to work, I work to fund my lifestyle outside of work.

  108. architect*

    I know someone high up in a public accounting firm dealing with a similar issue. If you really can’t change the demands of the job (which I find to be a cop-out but I understand how entrenched it is) then you need to raise pay dramatically or cut clients. Simple as that. If you could find staff before, then there should be some price that finds them again. It’s probably just a lot higher than what you even offer now. But really, the level of work your team has is unsustainable – you may need to offload whatever client is the worst offender in terms of asking for tight turnarounds and see what happens. Covid has been psychologically demanding on all of us, and 100 hour work weeks may not be sustainable for any recent grad in this situation. I know I feel less productive on a fundamental level than I was before.

  109. CM*

    I can definitely see an entry-level person going in thinking they can handle it, but concluding after a while that it’s not worth it.

    I was in a somewhat similar but more humane setting (Biglaw) which tends to burn out people after 3-5 years. You’re just doing it faster. The tradeoff is the same; eventually the money isn’t worth the crappy lifestyle.

    You can add monetary remedies like the ones you mentioned, e.g., requiring repayment of costs. But it sounds like the issue is not expense, it’s that you need people. Changing the way compensation works or adding penalties won’t help with that.

    I do think this is a systemic problem, but short of solving that, is this happening to your competitors too? If not, are they doing something you’re not? Have you asked anybody who’s leaving if there’s anything that would have made them stay? If there’s a consistent pipeline to a certain type of job, could you openly acknowledge that and actually provide training or connections that would help with that job, which might make new staff stay longer to get the benefit of that?

  110. MP*

    I’m half-joking but start giving people with restaurant/hospitality backgrounds those amazing big-money opportunities. We’re already used to those hours.

    2. OyHiOh*

      In another comment, I referenced a friend of mine who was a commodities broker back in the day. He’s someone without formal business education, gifted with phenomenal short term memory and ability to mentally track dozens of sells and buys at a time, who was in the right place at the right time and able to work his way up. When he got into a position to hire people, he regularly hired people out of restaurant background because the transferable skills were so similar. Now, the work he did, doesn’t exist in the same way anymore – computers have massively changed how stock and commodities are traded – but your point (and my friend’s) remains: Restaurant/hospitality workers have many transferable skills. The “trick” is getting hiring managers to understand the value that someone like you, MP, brings to the table.

    3. Salsa Verde*

      Honestly? You are completely right about that, all jokes aside. Many/most restaurant people I know already have this hard-charging work mentality. Although they might do the math on the hourly rate and realize they can make more money per hour waiting tables :)

      Anyone who works for tips understands working more and getting more money for it. They honestly already know how to talk to people with money so they could be client-facing quickly. Great idea, MP!!

    4. Cthulhu's Librarian*

      And you have the soft skills that makes you awesome at dealing with clients, as well.

      1. Vaca*

        The math and the writing are harder. Great client skills. Not so adept in Excel. Which I can train, but man, it would SUCK to lose somebody I trained from zero on finance and accounting!

        1. Warrant Officer Georgiana Breakspear-Goldfinch*

          You have got to lose this attitude that you own your staff. People are going to leave. People are going to leave. You can train them, pay them, buy them dinner: they will leave. They will leave for better jobs, they will leave because they get in a car accident, they will leave because they are burned out. You do not own your staff, they do not owe you fealty. And your clients do not own you, and you do not have to pour out blood to water a garden that is dying.

        2. MCMonkeyBean*

          I know this is just a little sidebar, but it’s really a continuation of the main point you seem to have trouble grasping: people WILL leave. People leave jobs. There are things you can do to keep people around for longer, but at some point this person you’ve trained IS going to leave. That’s just how it works. You can’t feel personally betrayed on that, or like it means she was never worth it. You provide employees training for the job they are doing now and that’s what makes it worth your time. At some point, yeah, they probably are going to use the knowledge they’ve gained with you in a position at another company. That’s how it works.

          Many years ago, people got a job and stayed in it until they retired on a generous pension. People don’t generally get pensions anymore, and most companies seem to cap internal raises. This means it is usually in someone’s best interest financially to eventually move to a different company. This is how the business world works now and you cannot expect anything different from your employees. All you can do is try to encourage them to stay with good pay and a good work environment. Right now you’re only offering them the former and it’s just not enough.

        3. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

          Not sure if you are still following comments, but if you are training college grads on math, writing, and Excel that is a huge waste of time for you. Make proficiency testing in all 3 areas part of your application process. You may end up with a smaller cohort, but it will be one that has less of a learning curve. Writing, math, and Excel are all skills that can be learned during school or independently. In your recruitment materials outline exactly what Excel and math skills you need (and be explicit – no “proficient in Excel” – you need to say VLOOKUP, Pivot Tables, etc). In the application you can either request a writing sample or do a proficiency test for that. Generally this is giving the person some fake data/information and have them construct a memo, pitch, study proposal, presentation, or whatever can reasonably be done in 30-60 minutes.

          My profession requires writing and SAS programming and it is pretty standard that we submit code and a writing sample. Software proficiency testing is really common in recruitment from engineers, to admins, to data entry.

  112. J*

    If you break that down to an hourly salary, their 200k is the same as an 80k salary at 40 hours a week. When you look at it like that it’s definitely not worth it.

  113. Tawny.*

    I’ve done 100+ hour weeks before (I used to work in the Wine industry) but even then, it was for 2-3 weeks at a time, maybe twice a year (with 70-80 hour weeks on either side of them).

    It’s a LOT. It’s not a life. It’s not a way to retain staff, ESPECIALLY when it’s everpresent.

    It shows that you think of your juniors as resources, rather than as humans.

    1. Three Flowers*

      Same—used to word 100-hour weeks for a stretch of about 10-11 weeks every year. Unlike OP’s reports, I actually got one day off a week. Still, you can’t maintain your home, keep friendships, talk to family, date, etc.—normal human stuff. I could barely get my laundry done.

      You could not pay me enough to do that 52 weeks a year. Literally there is not enough money. And that was a fun job, not one that had me at the beck and call of clients 24/7.

  114. Scintillating water*

    OP, I see two possibilities here:
    1. The entire field is experiencing this problem and as a smaller firm you’re getting hit early. If that’s the case, there’s likely to be a broader cultural shift over the next few years, so you might as well figure out how to adapt to it now and get a head start on the other firms.

    2. There’s something uniquely or unusually bad about your own work place. Toxic coworkers, lower compensation or benefits, infamously bad clients, longer hours or worse pay than other firms. If that’s the case, you’ll need to take a cold hard look at your own environment and figure out what is going on and do what you can to fix it. (I work in a nonprofit field where we are generally happy to compare notes, but I can imagine it’s harder for you.)

    I don’t think punishing your employees for leaving will work out, especially if you get a reputation as “that place so awful people keep repaying their salaries just to escape from.”

    One other thing to consider when comparing to your own experience: have salaries actually kept pace with the cost of living in NYC? $200k seems like a lot, but if I had to live in Manhattan, take cabs everywhere, and only eat takeout, plus pay off my massive student loans from college and an MBA, I could easily understand why someone would look at their bank account and decide this wasn’t worth it.

    1. Soup of the Day*

      I totally agree. The hours immediately catch our attention as we’re presumably not in that industry, but if the hours are supposedly standard across the board, it’s time to look at the other denominators. What is the competition doing that your firm is not? It can’t just be the fact that their names are bigger.

  115. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

    So let me ask y’all something completely different. What’s being described in this post and this comment thread is the industry that our 401Ks depend on, correct? where everyone is by design overworked and one step away from a burnout, stating that this is the only way things can be done and that they cannot be changed; and where a mistake could cost *us* our retirement savings?

    What could possibly go wrong?

      1. Mental Lentil*

        This. I have no retirement savings because these people tanked the economy. I will work until the day I die.

        Feed them to the lions, I say.

    3. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      What could possibly go wrong?

      I get what you’re asking. If you brought that system to me for analysis, my question would be “what could go right?”

    4. Calamity Janine*

      add in that even if it is full of functioning people, you’ll still end up in situations like economic recessions where that money can just up and float off. sure, it’s the cost of the thing – there is no investment without risk – but…

      well, you have millennials who grew up in those recessions, seeing how it can all turn on a dime. couple that with the trend of companies promising they’ll take care of employees and then dropping those employees like hot rocks…

      is it any wonder a whole lot of us (and those younger than millennials!) aren’t willing to accept the promise of “the company will make it right someday”, after seeing all this happen? (and then we get blamed as being too lazy for all this?)

      no wonder a whole lot of us have the retirement plan of “die young”!

      and no wonder a whole lot of the young folk aren’t wanting to stick around for abusive treatment, when it’s been shown how ephemeral that “we’ll take care of you after this” promise really is. (and how little of that promised treatment OP has ended up getting despite being dedicated to career.) it’s no surprise that a lot of the applicants are looking at this work-life balance for an extended period of time, and deciding to quit it in favor of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die”. can’t take it with you, and it might not even be there when you’re supposed to be around to enjoy it, so why waste your youth?

  116. Save the Hellbender*

    Sure, sex is nice, but have you tried telling an investment banker “it sounds like labor conditions have changed and your company will need to adapt”?

  117. Mayor of Llamatown*

    One thing that stood out to me was this: “That’s equated to me working each of the past six weekends to try and get junior staff more time off than I ever got when I was coming up, only to have the fourth team member this year quit.”

    This is called “eating your young” – the idea that other people should have to work just as hard/as long/in the same conditions that you did because it’s convenient for your business, it earns you money, and/or it’s how they pay their dues in the industry. It’s how you burn people out quickly, and people leaving after 6-8 months looks exactly like burnout.

    1. Hippo-nony-potomus*

      This is fantasy. If someone needs to respond to the email at 3 am, it is the low man on the totem pole.

      1. Piecemeal Communist Raven*

        Not everywhere! At my org the only people on call overnight are people who have all the relevant information and permissions to fix the issue–the senior people who are trained and compensated for it. But also, we only have one issue of that priority every 2-3 months.

        1. Me*

          I’ll also chime in. If it has to be answered at 3 am it is an emergency. And if it’s an emergency than the last thing we want is entry level joe blow handling it. 3 am’s response go to senior level employees with the authority to do things and escalate as appropriate.

          This is how it is in my specific industry and in the entire broader organization (government so many different individual industries).

          (Also, please lets not use terms like low man on the totem pole any longer, its disrespectful to native/indigenous populations, thanks)

          1. Cthulhu's Librarian*

            I am reminded of a piece of wisdom that was shared by my grandfather, who was in the military. I’ll paraphrase slightly to tone down on the salty language.

            “No one calls a private at 0 dark 30 – they call a general. Because if there is something that needs doing, the general will decide there is, and he can get everyone else up to make it happen. The private sure as heck can’t decide if anything needs doing, and he better not go waking anyone else up if it don’t.”

        2. Hippo-nony-potomus*

          If a 23-year-old is being paid $250,000 a year, I can assure you, they are being compensated for answering emails at 3 am.

          1. PayRaven*

            Yes, but do they have the expertise, permissions, and resources to actually solve the problem? At 23? In most places, probably not.

      2. MCMonkeyBean*

        Not anywhere I’ve worked. My bosses are available pretty much all the time. They’re paid at a level where they are willing to be. I’m not.

        I have busy seasons a few months per year, but outside of that I would not expect to work weekends or after 6pm. I have refused to put Teams on my phone and didn’t get any pushback.

  118. Speaks to Dragonflies*

    I don’t give a damn how much you pay me,it isn’t worth 100 hour weeks…I think that’s your problem right there.

  119. KWu*

    Perhaps a new class of workplace problems: “Your industry sucks and if it’s true that it’s not going to change/you can’t make it change, you should get out.”

    There’s not much you can (or perhaps even should) do about the fact that there’s been a cultural shift that money isn’t everything in life and that skilled learners with attention to detail have better options for work. If you can’t exploit people’s inherent desire to do the work for any amount of pay and you have declining prestige (what most glamorous industries seem to rely on, or academia, or arts, etc), your leverage has declined and you will only have smaller segments of the population to target as employees.

    Sure, maybe the junior staffers leaving for the bigger competitors will end up being screwed by them in the next recession. They can reassess their options then and maybe would find a small firm more appealing then. If your small firm is this much in danger of surviving year to year though, staying at the small firm also seems risky for any individual contributor. Including you!

  120. anonymous73*

    There is nothing, I repeat NOTHING that would convince me to work 100 hours a week.

    You need to get out of the “this is the way we’ve always done it, so this is the way it has to continue” mindset because clearly your current methods aren’t working.

    1. Sans Serif*

      Give me $5 million and I might do it for a year. And then retire. That’s the only way I could see doing it.

  121. SleepyKitten*

    Actually now I think about it this is exactly like that one company that advertises constantly for new staff at more and more ridiculous starting salaries, no training required, because their turnover is ludicrous. They don’t require more than full-time hours, BUT they want you to live next to the office and be on call 24/7 365. Literally, if you go to the cinema and are unreachable for two hours, that’s a black mark.

    It’s medtech, so they really do need SOMEONE on call for repairs, but they seem to forget that they’re not just three guys in a shed anymore and there’s a reason other companies have rotating on call weeks. I would absolutely apply there the minute they say they’re switching to a sensible on-call system, but for now? No amount of money is enough to keep me on high alert indefinitely, sorry.

  122. Fiction Reader*

    My friend’s son is in business school. He is smart, ambitious, and very focused on a career in which he can make a lot of money. He told us that he has already ruled out investment banking due to the crazy hours – and he is a sophomore!
    I think today’s workers have a different (probably better!) attitude about crazy hours and businesses will have to adapt to this change.

  123. Anon for this*

    OP – throwing out a different suggestion – you could hire juniors under contract, European-style, rather than work-for-hire. They can’t quit… but you also can’t fire them. However, similar to your idea of penalizing them for leaving early, Alison’s point about “demoralized and resentful staff” holds extra true if the employees aren’t able to quit (and even more so that you’re not able to fire them!).

    I do think a lot of the comments here about ‘we all have better options now’ are rather surface-level (google the contrarian articles about the “great resignation” – it’s not affecting all industries equally and eventually most everyone, in any line of work, who has left their job will again need to find employment). You mentioned in one of your replies above how you’ve seen other companies in your industry claim ‘we do things differently’ and it never lasts – I think your instincts there are correct. Your industry is notorious for exactly what you describe – long hours, lots of pressure, and the enormous paycheck – I-banking is not a place for people who are looking for work/life balance (as another commenter above said “A 23-year-old in NYC who is an investment banking candidate is not going to be happy with a $75K or even $100K job” ) and realistically I don’t think it ever will be (cue the gif of Don Draper, “That’s what the money’s for!”)

      1. UKDancer*

        Yes. Even in the European countries I’ve worked in people can quit. Contracts of employment don’t stop you from quitting they just usually govern how it works when you do. They usually provide for periods of notice, set out what constitutes sackable misconduct etc. There may be penalties if you quit but you usually know what they are (e.g. if the company funds an MBA and you quit you have to refund some of it).

        Having a contract of employment isn’t some ironclad handcuff to stop people from quitting. It’s just a set of rules which applies to both parties.

  124. Ariadne Oliver*

    Cutting the workload and compensating accordingly was the first thing that came to my mind. It seems like such a no -brainer. I think you would still get high quality people for half or two thirds of the pay if they had reasonable hours.

  125. Team Work life Balance*

    I think OP’s junior staff want more work life balance. I like this is a thing more employees want now after the past 2 years. Maybe OP’ company can offer them better paid time off or automation for some of their processes. !00+ hour weeks seems unsustainable to me for anyone’s mental health in the longterm. Are there ways that they can have a reduced workload.

  126. Three Flowers*

    It’s wild that OP thinks it would be appropriate or acceptable on any planet to make people pay back *sixty percent of their salary* because they decide after six months that they can’t work an *obscene* schedule. Announce that and every junior employee will leave before it goes into effect, because no one will want to work for this apparently bonkers company. $200k is worth a lot, but not this much.

    1. quill*

      It also reeks of being possibly illegal, if I’m reading it right: you pay for the hours worked, period. (If there’s a finish line bonus for completing the two years, that’s different, but “pay it back” puts you squarely in the camp of retroactively trying to pull wages back out of your workers’ pockets after they’ve been paid for time worked.)

      1. Three Flowers*

        I’m not a lawyer, but depending on where OP is, taking back 60% of salary might even put people retroactively under the minimum wage. Other people have figured out that the salary OP describes ($175k) at about 100 hours a week is in the neighborhood of $30/hr or maybe even a little less if people are working more than that. Demand 60% of that back and you’ve now paid your workers about $12/hr or, if they tried really hard, less.

        Sounds like a fun time for a lawyer to me. And a good way to get the firm blacklisted by every career counselor in the country.

  127. Hippo-nony-potomus*

    Look beyond 23 year olds. There are plenty of very, very smart and very, very driven people out there who would trade two years of their lives for a half million dollars. Think new attorneys who have the finance chops, people with masters in math, econ, or physics, and the like. (Yes, some – some!! – attorneys make that. Most do not.)

    1. Me*

      They don’t want people to stay two years. The training is two years. They’re problem is then can’t retain people to stay past the training.

      2 years and half a mill maybe. Desire to continue working in those conditions past that? Doubtful.

      1. Hippo-nony-potomus*

        “So, obviously we can’t *force* anyone to keep working, but what else can we be doing to keep people for the full two-year program?”

        They want people to stay for two years. Perhaps longer, ideally, but the issue is that they cannot get people to two years.

        1. Me*

          Yes that’s what she says but taken our of context from the rest of the letter. The problem is they are not staying and becoming good little employees. The lw is not asking for ways to keep people for two years and its fine that they leave after.

  128. ConsultingIsFun*

    My degree is engineering so investment banking was a ‘path’ that I certainly considered. I ended up working in a corporate function to see if I liked it (HATED IT), moved onto management consulting and now I’m a manager at a tech company.

    Investment banking management is so dramatic about ‘finding talent’. It’s a glorified sales job. You can hire more people and have them work less.

  129. Rae*

    When people leave for competitors, what makes them stay there? More money or some kind of better conditions? How many people are leaving for competitors with similar working conditions vs. getting out of the industry and is that # changing?

    If you have a claw back for comp – if they’re just going to another competitor sounds like they can pay it back fairly quickly. Could you suggest that you try 1 or 2 teams on a more reasonable work schedule/lower pay? See if there is a difference?

    Do you have industry conferences/groups that you can freely talk about what is happening and how others are addressing it?

  130. flabbergasted*

    I worked hours like this for a few months at a time. On a political campaign. For a cause and a candidate I really believed in. That was worth it, but it was also a psychology case study. Every single person I worked with needed a nap and a meal that didn’t involve caffeine. There was definitely the risk of people making mistakes or not catching things because of sleep deprivation, and we had to be really vigilant about that. It didn’t even always reach 100 hours then – definitely more than 70, but as you can see with the calculations every one has done, I don’t think it always reached 100.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      There was definitely the risk of people making mistakes or not catching things because of sleep deprivation, and we had to be really vigilant about that.

      After 60 hours in a week, I also start worrying about judgment going sideways–losing track of the big picture, losing track of the details, or just getting fixated on things that people on a sane schedule can process. I’ve also seen (and felt) it induce temporary OCD.

      1. flabbergasted*

        I felt like that was necessary – there was no way I was going to remember anything so it just all had to be written down in an organized way!

      2. Worldwalker*

        I know for a fact what sleep deprivation does to me: I write bad code. I’m more productive if I get sufficient sleep.

    2. gmg22*

      One of my best friends from college majored in poli comm and her first job after graduation was on a campaign. Same deal, 70+ hours a week for five months, the last three months more like 12/12/7. And her candidate lost — after a campaign in which his veteran opponent (you’d know his name immediately, and that ain’t a compliment) “went low” in a way that if you had a crystal ball, could have predicted everything about where politics would eventually go over the last five years.

      Her first campaign was also her last. The combo of the hours, the nature of the stuff that was being thrown at them by the opponent, and the eventual heartbreak was too much.

  131. Cruciatus*

    I’m sure I’m not thinking of anything you haven’t already, but like Alison says, have more people, and maybe have first, second, third shift? So someone is ALWAYS there but only for a reasonable amount of hours. I know you said you’re “nobody” and I get that, but maybe you’d be able to implement something new, even on a temporary basis to see how it goes. It’s not going well now so what harm could trying something new do? Good luck!

  132. Lenora Rose*

    Really? One 100-hour job equals TWO 50-hour jobs (maybe 55-60 early on due to training time), and 50 hours is already well into overtime. Is there any reason besides “it’s how it was always done/I suffered for it so you should too” why the job *can’t* be done by two people? I can think of very few places where it can’t, and most of those are, shall we say, not typical fields a 23-year-old could interview into.

    Hire two people for the same per-hour pay. 100K-140K is more than enough to tempt many 23 year olds.

  133. My Brain Is Exploding*

    Several commenters have stated that people looking for these great-paying IB jobs will bypass a half-salary/half-hours job listing. Why not list both? Have two tracks! List BOTH possibilities for hiring; also offer those who choose the higher salary/hours a chance to review their choice every six months, with an opportunity to change to the lower salary/hours option if they would like to do so. (Somewhat analogous to a law firm hiring someone on the partner track v as an individual contributor.) Make the salary offer for the higher hours a bit lower than you have been, with a stated bonus for every quarter they remain at that level. Look for older people seeking to leave their current fields (not IB but Mutual of Omaha apparently loves to hire people who were teachers) to hire for the shorter-hours jobs.

  134. Lizard Breath*

    I worked pretty regular 80 hour weeks as a medical resident, which kind of sucked but was manageable for a defined period with the occasional day off, and my husband did the same as a junior associate at a BigLaw firm, but 100 hours a week just strikes me as nigh-unmanageable for any sustained period. Plus when you’re that tired, you are NOT efficient.

    These jobs are pretty coveted. Hire some additional folks, make ’em work 60 hours a week and advertise your wonderful work-life balance.

    1. JustEm*

      Agree 100%. And even sustained 80 hour weeks as a resident were not ideal … I feel like it took me at least a year out of residency to feel relatively human, and 3 years out (in a subspecialty with good work-life balance — only working about 40-50 hours per week), I STILL am dealing with some ramifications to my mental and physical health

  135. Rachel*

    I think OP only wants the best of the best and these positions need to remain ultra competitive, hence the very high salary. I totally agree hiring 2 employees for the same total pay and hours, but you will not get the top tier university candidates for half the pay. Especially in NYC (where I am assuming these positions are located).

    1. rl09*

      “but you will not get the top tier university candidates for half the pay”

      Right, but they’re not getting them at the rate they pay now, either. They might get them for 6-9 months but ultimately, the money is not enough to keep them.

    2. CatLadyLawyer*

      Also, top tier graduates are not exempt from having chronic medical issues, family commitments, or resources to support this kind of life for two years. Think of how many smart, qualified people who could produce top quality work they are just leaving on the table.

  136. Piecemeal Communist Raven*

    Well, OP, it seems like you have a really good dataset that indicates that the amount of time people can sustain those conditions is…6 to 9 months. I don’t think that’s going to change unless the parameters of the pace do.

  137. Calamity Janine*

    i have to say that this is what has finally moved me to actually comment on something.

    i’m sympathetic to the OP in the comments pointing out this is a systemic issue. however, that sympathy evaporates when coupled with the actual question of the letter.

    if you don’t have enough pull to radically change the structure into making it manageable, you do at least have the power to re-frame how the work is presented. to not ask that someone keep up this pace forever, or even for the full 2 years, but to instead look at it as a short sprint that will pay very well and might be worth doing as a temporary measure, almost akin to seasonal work. to actively plan around the costs of training and bringing people on board, and thinking of this not as people betraying you by leaving, but as them getting exhausted after being asked to do the impossible for too long, and looking for solutions that will pull people out before they hit full burnout.

    punishing the people leaving – on top of *not* framing this as “this is something we can’t ask people to do forever, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they leave” – also means you get those bridges burned twice over. not only does it mean waiting for people to well and truly burn out to the point where they quit and are highly unlikely to ever want to come back, it means that if someone ever thinks they could swing another ‘sprint’ and work for you for a short time once more, they’re not going to be interested in coming back just to be punished more.

    working with the idea of this being more temporary will ultimately lead to better solutions. especially if there’s no looking to punishing people for this. it could end up with a system like training many people and then inviting them to periodically come back for short sprints, meaning you have a pool full of trained folks who you’ve worked with before and can pull on as a resource. again, a bit more like seasonal work – “oh we know Bob has been trained to be a lifeguard and he’s worked the past three summers with us, of course we can hire him on again for this summer.”

    right now, instead of having a stable of horses that you ride for a moderate amount and then return to rest, you’re taking out one horse, riding it until it falls over dead frothing at the mouth after bucking you off, and then having to scramble and offer a stranger enough money that the stranger will want to sell you their horse immediately, then riding it until it falls over dead, and repeat. the solution isn’t to blame the horses for their poor breeding. it’s to take a hint from the pony express and switch to a fresh horse at each stop. and as a bonus, you will end up with much fewer cracked ribs from your exhausted horse dumping you on the ground after bucking you and/or falling down dead.

    at some point if you keep doing the above, people will notice you keep killing horses, and you also likely shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t want to sell you horses for reasonable rates. or when people call what you’re doing unethical. on account of so many dead horses you could make a metric ton of tesco lasagna. you can say that dead horses are par for the course for the industry, but you then can’t really be surprised when people say it’s unethical.

    because, well. the dead horses.

    it’s up to you to consider if you find the dead horses worth it or not, but it also should not be surprised when people look at all the dead horses and go “how horrible!”… or even judge you for participating in this, because you have decided the dead horses are acceptable losses and you surely can’t do anything about all the dead horses. or especially judge you for asking how you can beat the horses that just died on you.

    1. Calamity Janine*

      also, i really hope i am misreading or not understanding this:

      “We already defer most of the comp to year-end, with some smallish amount withheld for 12-24 months.”

      does… does this mean what i think it is? that a lot of the compensation for these hellish work hours and work-life balance is not paid out immediately, in order to grease the wheels of making such a thing survivable (like being able to order in meals, hiring a nanny, etc)? it’s something that the employees are expected to fund from their savings with the promise of getting a lump sum within 1 to 2 years, and the employees are expected to pay those opportunity costs of immediate needs instead of getting their full pay in their regular paycheck?

      and then there’s confusion as for why people burn out, and find they can’t do that for more than 6-9 months?! when hiring new graduates, who don’t exactly have many years under their belts to build up their savings that then can be used to simply be able to wait for the big payday in 1-2 years?!

      someone please tell me that’s not actually what that quote implies, for i am not exactly good with business stuff. because if it does mean what i think it means, i am absolutely gobsmacked that someone is out there really treating employees so badly and being so surprised when it doesn’t work.

      1. LilyP*

        My guess/interpretation is that they’re paid a relatively generous base salary (say, $100k annual) with a very large year-end bonus (say $75k) in December, plus a smaller bonus after they’ve been with the company for a total of 12 and/or 24 months. But it’s a good point that people with student debt trying to live well on $100k in Manhattan could be on a budget — maybe in the short-term shifting more money to the salary, or doing things like expensing dinners and cab fares and cleaning services to improve day-to-day quality of life, would help retention more?

        1. LilyP*

          After all, if young people are signing up to work crazy hours in exchange for a chance at the high life, they need to get the high life part going pretty quickly. If you’re working long hours for the money but don’t day-to-day have enough money to buy whatever you want it’s going to seem like a shit deal very quickly.

      2. Vaca*

        Just being clear on the deferred comp – that’s how it works everywhere. Remember in 2008 when everyone said “it creates bad incentives when you pay people for short-term outcomes that have long-term consequences”? They were right, but the outcome was that a *big* chunk of income gets deferred at most places. Even places like mine that don’t take ongoing risk, the senior bankers have jumped on the deferral train for obvious reasons.

        1. Calamity Janine*

          …have you considered that treating employees like this may be one of the ways in which the industry is toxic, and a factor in driving away your new recruits from the industry altogether?

          because that bad incentives definitely cuts both ways – this has ended up with the bad consequence of the company relying on that almost cult-like atmosphere, because in absence of actually paying people promptly, you have to find some other way to get them to stick around. it’s affected your hiring candidate pool by favoring those who can essentially work for half pay and take the financial hit of being able to hold out for that lump sum at the end.

          it’s even affecting you now because you admit you can’t leave because you haven’t been fully paid! you’re admitting that this pay schedule has clipped your wings here, meaning you are effectively trapped in a dysfunctional workplace that is treating you badly and not interested in solving its dysfunction. why would they? they know this tactic forces employees to stick around on that promise of “you will be fully compensated later”, leaving employees at an economic disadvantage that is a major obstacle to overcome. (especially when coupled with that work-life balance – so you get partial pay for full time, and that full time doesn’t leave you with hours in the day to job hunt.)

          at some point it’s going to tilt the scales from “a company is protecting its interests” into “a company is holding employee salaries for ransom”, and it’s probably no wonder that potential employees aren’t enthused about that.

        2. PayRaven*

          So, “it happens everywhere” isn’t going to help you in your current situation. You don’t work everywhere. You’re hiring for your company.

          Your situation is: the way you have done things is not working. What you do about it depends on your desired end state. The desired end state of “we do everything exactly the same, except that instead of quitting these people stay forever” is not on the table.

          There are a few different goals you could have here, and that’s fine! I agree with Calamity Janine’s reading that if your goal is to be a more humane and attractive employer, then deferring compensation is counter to that goal.

          You’ve identified that there’s a problem (promising people quit before they can become long-term assets), but you keep resisting any kind of solution. You need to reset the parameters of what’s “acceptable” and “possible” in your brain, or nothing can change.

          1. PayRaven*

            Also: People leave jobs all the time for all kinds of reasons. There’s no good time to do it, it always sucks for the people left behind (unless they were a net negative to the job anyway), and there is absolutely nothing you can do about that fact.

            But you’ve identified a PATTERN. THAT’S something you can address, and you don’t address it by punishing new hires for the sins of the old.

        3. gmg22*

          “it creates bad incentives when you pay people for short-term outcomes that have long-term consequences”
          ———-
          Regardless of the timing, the only thing you have to do to collect the deferred comp is … stick around long enough, right? Are you sure this does as a good a job of addressing the problem of bad incentives as the industry seems to think it does? Since 2008 it has bugged the crap out of me that i-banking defines a “bonus” as “just another part of your compensation that you are absolutely entitled to no matter how poor your performance is.” I get that the market is a weird and unpredictable thing, but … surely by this time, partners can compare and assess prudent risk-taking that fell short in a tough market vs a wild bet that lost you your shirt, right? Can’t they? (Oh boy.)

          1. Calamity Janine*

            right! that’s not an incentive for good work – that’s an incentive for sticking around, with work of whatever quality. and given the demands for sticking around, the quality is probably going to tank, because only the decidedly mediocre will decide “i get paid the same no matter how i do, i just have to have my butt in a chair” is a good deal.

            there’s certainly a lot of evidence now that the future employees are considering this simply not worth it. whatever security could be gained from this scheme is immediately and severely undercut by people leaving the job at that 6 to 9 month mark. the constant churn of employees has got to have a far worse affect on quality than “well they’d come with wrong priorities if we paid them all promptly”.

            they come in with wrong priorities if you *don’t* pay them, too!

            i think it definitely shows a very strange disconnect between how the company values employees and how employees value the company. working 100 hours in one work week isn’t a long-term consequence for the employee. it’s a weekly, daily, hourly consequence. and that’s ended up giving the impression that the company is not interested in things like… acknowledging their employees doing the work week to week. it’s really no wonder that future employees are looking at this and going “nope, that’s unacceptable and i’m not interested”!

            1. Vaca*

              This is a really long conversation and one I am happy to engage with at a certain level. But it’s not exactly pertinent; the point I’m making is just that the upheaval of 2008 was used to justify these structures and I can’t “fix” them.

              1. Calamity Janine*

                honestly, i think it is pretty pertinent – if you’re finding a pattern of when people burn out, that could very well be the point at which recent college grads run out of money to fund their going to work for you with such a bonkers yonkers schedule. and that point is when they look at their mounting credit card bills, the token amount they’re getting paid, and the promise of “don’t worry, you’ll get paid the full amount eventually!”… and then jump ship because if they’re in another job or doing something like consulting, they at least get less stress for the same perils in money management.

                as is, well, the pertinence of it being indicative of a toxic and immoral way to treat employees (and that includes you!).

                i realize you can’t change it… but please think about if you really want to be treated this way, too.

        4. Lily of the Meadow*

          It’s NOT like that everywhere; MOST industries work by paying their employees promptly, and, in fact, it is federally illegal to not pay your employees for time worked within a pay period on the pay day of that pay period. Not sure why your industry thinks it is okay to NOT pay their employees, or why, exactly, people at your firm (including you) are all surprised Pikachu face at the fact that employees do not just clamor to work for a company that not only requires ever living second of their time, but then does not pay them for that time.

        5. FridayFriyay*

          You have noted in your comments a number of ways your company can’t compete with larger competitors because “it’s always been done this way” but this suggestion around eliminating the deferred compensation structure to make the cost of hours lost to work less burdensome on e every day life strikes me as something that could be defining for you in the process of attracting applicants if you (not you individually, but your company) could change it.

        6. Claire*

          Isn’t the “short-term incentives are bad” argument about compensating CEOs based on quarterly earnings without regard for long-term company performance?

  138. Paper Librarian*

    Op, you’ve said in multiple comments that you don’t have the ability to change the industry. And I feel like what the commenters have been trying to get across is that it’s going to be changing regardless because of what younger workers will accept.

    I also think you probably have more influence than you think. I’m a very small player in my library, and I still make sure I stand up for what’s important to me. You mentioned that you wrote, like, a manifesto to those who had power to make big changes. That’s amazing, even if it wasn’t immediately effective. And, I think if you aren’t being treated the way you want to be, then you should find a better job. Easier said then done, sure. But it’s important for you to protect your own work/life balance in the same way you try to protect your junior employees.

    In the library career you get used to hearing “this is how it’s always been done,” and it irks me. Especially because this career has had to change a lot to continue thriving. The public always think that the internet will be the demise of libraries, but every librarian knows that is bunk. Because we’ve been working decades on changing the profession. So, I donno…I don’t think you should react so defeated.

  139. Lurking Tom*

    I’m honestly flabbergasted that anyone wants to go into whatever field this is. I make more per hour working a 40 hour week for a nonprofit that pays well below for-profit market rates for my job function.

    Seriously, there are 168 hours in a week. You work 100 of those, that leaves 68. If you sleep 6 hours per night, that leaves 26 hours to do literally everything else involved in being alive. I’d have been in the ground years ago if that was ever an every week pace at any job!

    1. Lurking Tom*

      Oh man, and also:

      HIRING MANAGER: You have to work 100 hours per week for 2 years . . .
      YOUNG APPLICANT: (thinking) Sounds like a lot, but I think I can push through and I know it’s standard for this field
      HIRING MANAGER: . . . and if you leave sooner, you have to return 60% of what you were paid.
      YOUNG APPLICANT: Thanks, I withdraw.

      1. Me*

        Oh what’s fascinating is the OP was posting above and really really insisting they just can’t change anything for the employees for the better. Yet they propose punishing them for deciding the industry norms are crap?

        1. Vaca*

          OP here – I’ll cop to feeling pretty punitive when I wrote the letter. It does suck, though, to invest tons of time into somebody only to have them leave *just* when they are getting useful. That’s a lot of late nights reviewing materials for somebody! Learning how to format Excel while getting to the right answer, learning how to write without using the word “client” six times in one sentence, I have a big box of red pens on my desk for a reason. Right now I feel like I’m coaching AA. Only the Yankees don’t send me a bottle of champagne when they make the playoffs.

          1. Kella*

            Vaca, the problem is you are investing in them a lot but they are not receiving a lot. Adding more work to you compounds on itself. Giving them a tiny bit of time off does almost nothing to improve their quality of life. You’ve decided you’re obligated to invest in them in a way that no one is investing in you. That’s not the fault of your junior employees.

            1. Kella*

              Also your anger is misdirected. You are focusing your resentment and frustration on the people who have LESS power than you do rather than on the people who have all the power to make your life less miserable. And those people likely neglect you because they are passing down *their* bitterness and resentment from the way that they were neglected. It sounds like you don’t want to be the kind of person to keep passing that down.

          2. Me*

            You have to change your mindset. It’s toxic.

            They’re not “useful” until a magical point in time? That’s an awful thing to say. These are people. They have value to your company the instant you hire them. If they didn’t then you wouldn’t need to hire them. Everyone starts not knowing things and needs to grow in a position. That doesn’t make them useless. And whether you think so or not, if that’s your mindset I guarantee they pick up on it.

            My point stands. If you can propose to penalize them you CAN propose to improve their work life. Will your company do it? Maybe maybe not. But you insisting the status quo is just how it has to be is, frankly bs.

        2. Worldwalker*

          They can’t change anything for the better, but they can change things for the worse. That’s odd.

          1. Vaca*

            OK, real talk, I could put up a big stink and try and make changes. It would cost me a huge amount of social capital that I don’t know that I want to burn on this. I’m thinking pretty seriously about leaving this place and starting my own, one where I can actually implement some things.

            1. Just had to say something (lurker who never comments :)*

              Hooray! You starting your own firm could be the best of all possible worlds (well, best of what’s possible given this industry at this moment in time). Your dedication to your clients would finally truly benefit you personally. (You sound too good for your kinda-shady-sounding firm, frankly.) And you’re on the cusp of seeing a way to be a truly good employer. You can do this. You can make your life better – and help your future employees build good careers that let them have good lives too.

  140. Millennial Marketer*

    I work in a role where I’m asked to work 100-hour weeks for 4-5 weeks a year, and it’s absolutely exhausting. My job is rewarding in other ways, so I tolerate that negative. That being the norm? No. Not for the highest of pay. Companies need to think about work-life balance as something young workers prioritize over money. Because that’s where society is. Millennial

    1. Norm*

      Reminds of everyone who ever worked in accounting during tax season. I knew someone who did and there were no vacations January through April, limited time off. They brought in lunch every day, massage therapists for upper body massages for twice a day, everything and anything they could to keep people going. They also closed at year end for two weeks and paid everyone knowing that come January it would begin again.

      1. MyGoingConcern*

        I’m a CPA in tax at a public accounting firm. We definitely work crazy hours at certain times a year, but the seasonality of it makes it feel very different. I have 4 months of busy season a year and probably 8 weeks total of crazy 65+ hour weeks. We’re provided with all our meals and a lot of perks to keep us going through those painful grinds. BUT we know exactly what day it ends each spring & fall, 5-6 weeks of PTO plus holidays is industry standard, we work 4 day weeks all summer, and December is for online shopping & leaving at 3:30pm.

  141. TheUnappreciatedMinion*

    TL; DR. Umm… WHAT kind of junior position makes that much money? Where? What industry?

  142. I don’t post often*

    I think what you are seeing, OP, is that the next generation realizes they may have to work a job to pay the bills, but that job doesn’t need to be their entire life. If we are lucky, our job may compliment or even be what we want to accomplish with the rest of our life, but if you don’t have an opportunity to make a real difference or actually live the rest of your life, why would you work?
    You’ve said this is for two years and then said you, in your 40s are still working similar hours. Do you plan on retiring at 45 to actually live your life? I guessing I’m wondering what the draw is besides money. Money is a huge draw. What’s the point in having a yacht if you can’t actually take it on the water though? (Or whatever it is you use that money on. )

  143. CAS*

    OP, the first clue that this is akin to hazing is your comment that this is how it has always been, as if it is unfair that the young ‘uns should have better conditions than you or those who came before you. Your argument appears to be that the young ‘uns should be just as willing as you were to pay for their careers by giving up their lives for it just like you did 20 years ago. It’s hazing — or perhaps more palatably, it’s a rite of passage — they must do this to “earn their stripes” as you did. This is an attitude problem: You’re implying that the young ‘uns don’t want to work as hard as you believe you did to get where you are.

    In truth, the horrible work-life balance was a reaction to competition across your industry. When every firm in your industry amped up the work hours for the sake of being more competitive, it became a norm over time. This should not have been the model that any worker labored under, and it is a shame that it was in place when you were young. Now your industry is boxed into this business model, which is proving unsustainable. Instead of a willingness to adapt, you, as a contributor to the model, cling to “this is how we’ve always done it” and advocate punishing the young ‘uns for their unwillingness to submit their lives to this model. You can continue down that path, but you won’t solve your problem. The unsustainability of this model is not a worker problem; it’s a design flaw.

  144. Daydream Believer*

    I know there’s some people who may find this appealing but obviously not in the short term.

    You need people working in teams. What happens if one person gets in an accident, drops dead with a heart attack – surely this would land you right in the *.

    A team can cover this. There is nothing on earth that would make me consider 100 hours a week, even for this money.

    I used to work 70 hours a week. It is not sustainable. I became severely ill and the repercussions of this are going to stay with me long term. Our work place has been a happier place since my employer has placed great emphasis on healthy work-life balance. No one functions effectively on so little rest and recuperation. And it’s not to be admired that some people do.

    COVID has been an eye opener for many people. If we were facing an apocalypse, I wouldn’t regret the money I didn’t make – I would regret the people I didn’t see and the time spent creating memories with families and friends.

    And the reason you can’t find the people you want? They no longer want this lifestyle and their values have changed.

    So you, your expectations and your industry have to change too.

    1. Three Flowers*

      Yes! Yes! Have two juniors working with a group of clients in shifts so there’s always coverage! Pay each like $125k for 50 hours a week! More money in the short term, but it saves productivity and hiring/training!

  145. work/life*

    Taking the lower end of payrate and working a 30 hour week would be $60,000/year. I would happily stay on long term for both the pay and hours, barring any serious workplace dysfunction.

  147. Adereterial*

    How does this work in other countries in this industry? Europe in particular has pretty stringent working time laws, some more form than others, but all with a basic understanding that an employer cannot force an employee to work over a certain number of hours over a period of time – here it’s 48 hours on average over 17 weeks for most. In the UK you can opt out, but you can also opt back in and an employer who attempts to penalise an employee for asserting a statutory right would find themselves on the sharp end of an employment tribunal PDQ.

    There are a few exceptions – but my guess is here that we’re not talking about seafarers or fishermen, the armed forces, private domestic service, security roles or executive level managers. The only thing that might fit is a requirement for 24 hour coverage but even then…

    Hire more junior staff. It’s really that simple.

    1. cora*

      Well a junior banker in London died some years ago. He has some type of seizure disorder and hadn’t been sleeping, drinking a lot of redbull, had come home just to shower and go back to the office (they had a name for that!)

      1. Adereterial*

        That doesn’t mean what was happening was legal – investment bankers aren’t exempt from the working time directive.

  148. BlueBelle*

    I don’t think I have ever been less sympathetic towards a LW. Times have changed, people do not want to work 100 hours a week nor should they be asked to. If the work can’t be done in a normal work schedule then it is too much work.

    1. Windchime*

      No kidding. People are EXHAUSTED. Covid has worn us all out and it has made some of us really realize what is important. (Hint: For me, it’s time with my family and time to be creative. Not sitting and staring at a screen and being bored.) I can work small amounts of overtime occasionally, but honestly, I’ve pretty much always been a 40 hour per week kind of gal. Any more than that and I feel like I have no time to actually live my life.

      I just retired a couple of weeks ago and it is so awesome. No way would I work 100 hours a week. Never.

  149. Rory*

    This sounds like a part of my industry. Was looking at theses kinds of offers when I graduated college and honestly cried when I had to turn them down. Because I know myself, and no amount of money would have been enough to work a job that would have killed me. And sadly – I know several people it did kill. And double sadly – there was absolutely no need for this kind of overwork, aside from “oh we’ve always done it like this”.

    And echoing everyone else – you’re mostly going to get men with no other requirements outside of work and no prior health issues or concerns.

    This needed to change when I was young, and it’s finally changing now. Hire more people, and if you can’t? Then follow your juniors out the door. Plenty of companies pay well and don’t work you to death.

  150. PooBells*

    LW, why don’t you hire older people? People with masters will want the money and probably be more committed, and people with work experience (maybe those who want a career change) will know what a 100 hour work week means. But AG’s response is spot on. Your solution to make the job less rewarding is not going to get you where you want.

    1. DG*

      Because older people are more likely to have any combination of spouses, children, aging parents, commutes, hobbies/social commitments, or the perspective of prior life experiences that make the 100 hour work week even less desirable. One of the only reasons the exploitative investment banking model historically worked was that it depended on hiring people who were more likely to lack those things, i.e. recent college graduates living in a brand new city in a studio apartment a few blocks from the office.

    2. Detective Amy Santiago*

      Older people are too smart to get themselves be exploited like this. Gotta hook’em young so they think this is normal (like OP does) and they also buy into sunk cost fallacy.

  151. quill*

    Another thing to think of: you’ve got retention problems with these hours and conditions in the last two-ish years? People are much, much less likely to put up with long hours and endless uncertainty in a pandemic. People who three years ago would have thought “hey, I can put up with this for 2 years, there’s going to be a payout later” are more aware that those two years might be the last ones that they, or some of their loved ones, get.

  152. Marzipan Shepherdess*

    OP, Google the Japanese term “karoshi”. Then ask yourself if that’s what you want your company to become famous for – because it WILL if you keep working these people to death. They’re smart enough to realize that they do NOT want to sacrifice their lives, health and families (or any chance of finding partners/spouses and starting families) for any amount of money.

    Now, are you and your company smart enough to realize that if you keep on doing what you’ve always done (working people into the ground) then you’ll keep on getting what you’ve been getting (people quitting their jobs)? If you are, then you’ll take Alison’s advice and hire more people, divide those jobs into manageable portions and give everyone more livable working hours.

    1. Momma Bear*

      I couldn’t come up with the term but that’s what I thought of as well. That and people sleeping in pods or at their desks and basically not being treated like humans anymore. While I don’t think OP can necessarily change the entire industry, they wrote in because they see a problem and need ideas because the Old Ways aren’t working.

  153. Spaceball One*

    This equation seems pretty simple. The Industry can change to be more competitive, or The Workplace can change and try to be the successful exception to the rule, or it can all stay exactly the same and people will keep jumping ship. That’s it.

    You can stay and try to push either your workplace or your industry toward changing to be more competitive, or you can stay knowing this is how it will be, or you can leave. Again – that’s it.

    This thread reminds me A LOT of a conversation I had many years ago with a toxic manager who, thankfully, wasn’t MY manager. He told me it is OK to yell at the people below you; that it’s one of the perks of reaching a position where there are people below you; that everyone gets yelled at and that’s just part of it. This doesn’t read any differently to me, unfortunately. “We chew people up; I got chewed up; it’s just the way it is; these ingrates these days keep bailing out so they don’t get chewed up!” You can judge them until the cows come home, just don’t expect a different outcome.

    To keep them, you have to offer them more of what they want – whether it’s work-life balance, or money, or benefits, or whatever. If you can’t offer that, just accept that they will keep leaving. It’s a crummy bunch of options, but those are still the options.

  154. I-banking escapee*

    OP (aka Vaca), I have more sympathy for you than some of the other commenters do because I spent a summer interning in I-banking (and I knew *exactly* which industry you were discussing immediately). If you’re at a small firm, even if you’re running the place (and it sounds as though you’re not), you have limited ability to go against the ethos of the industry, which is: Work everyone as hard as possible and pay them to compensate in order to be able to meet every client demand around the clock. People at your stage of your career are still expected to work hours that most of the rest of us would find untenable — it’s just that there are fewer all-nighters included than there are for analysts. I doubt you were working a 50-hour week even in “normal” times — I’m guessing it was typically longer. Clients have been trained to expect I-bankers to drop everything to respond to them, up to and including, say, canceling/postponing second honeymoons and the like. Your bank is competing against bigger banks who do much more to set the standard and have more control and influence.

    But…this unstoppable force is hitting an immovable object — a generation that *is not willing to work these hours* no matter how much they’re paid. That’s not going away. What you’re seeing is the leading edge — eventually, the bigger firms are going to see this, too. There’s going to be a transformation, and it’s going to be painful for no few people while it occurs. Other industries have gone through similar transformations — I-banking is not inherently immune to such forces

    In the short run, I don’t think trying to use the stick of making your compensation structure more punitive to those who leave is going to get the results you want. What would work? Hrm….maybe structure compensation more like those for athletes and pay extra for each all-nighter over set base pay? Maybe identify hours in which analysts really aren’t doing all that much and have them spend those hours at home “on call” (during which they could nap as long as the phone would wake them up with a call) and look to hire night owls (like the one whose wife recently wrote into Carolyn Hax sad that she rarely sees her night owl husband any more) ? Is there a way to standardize models more effectively, so having the one exact analyst around at that second is less important? Look for more carrots.

    Ultimately, though…I would make an assumption that this isn’t a temporary problem that will pass. If that’s the case, do you really want to work this way *indefinitely*? If not, then what are your other options? It’s a fairly hot job market right now and I-bankers are usually fairly desirable for all sorts of non-I-banking roles — what else could you do, realistically?

  155. AdequateAdmin*

    I’m sure I’m somewhat repeating other commenters, but…

    I’m confused as to why you’re so resistant to splitting the positions and hiring more people. You can’t possibly lose more money and people than you already are, and there’s a chance you might actually come out better. There’s a quote along the lines of “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results” and that’s what I’m seeing here. What you’re doing isn’t working, so why not try something else?

    Along that same vein, just because no one else does it doesn’t mean it’s not a sustainable or good idea. You could be the first company to have good pay and good work hours, which I’m sure will draw in more candidates. Word gets around when a company treats their employees well and in turn makes more people want to work for that company. There may be people who want to work 100hrs a week, but I would be willing to guess they’re a minority.

  156. Phony Genius*

    Alison,

    I think it would be fascinating if you could do a formal interview with this writer, and add your commentary, for one of your outside columns on another site. If the article were to go viral, it might get the attention of the whole Investment Banking industry.

      1. Mental Lentil*

        It is already starting on the antiwork subreddit. This needs to happen in more places.

        Workers of the world, unite!

    2. gmg22*

      Co-sign this!! If the OP is willing, Alison should consider doing this as a column for Inc. This story makes clear that this industry needs a major, major wake-up call in the context of what’s happening in the current job market.

      1. Liz T*

        Do we care if they get a wake-up call, though? It’s not like they’re doing work that’s valuable to society.

        1. gmg22*

          It’s a little less black and white than that, is it not? We’re talking about an industry that runs the gamut from hedge funds that buy up all the newspapers I used to work for and sell them for real estate and spare parts … to the people who make sure that my mom’s teacher retirement fund doesn’t vanish. I would never try to argue that any of these people are moral paragons, but I actually do care if they get a wake-up call, because a healthier industry run by healthier people will make healthier decisions about stuff that’s pretty important, like (just to name one example that is or should be front of minds at the moment) climate-friendly energy investments.

          And working kids to the bone until they bail out like this — as opposed to thinking of innovative ways to invest in people to make them want to stick around — is an example of exactly the kind of short-term ostrich thinking that brought us the financial crisis. It should be rooted out of the business, one firm at a time if necessary. (I vividly remember a debate from my consulting firm days when we pitched a two-year outlook analysis to our head of global markets and he LOST. HIS. MIND. at us, saying it’d be a waste of resources and his clients only cared about the next quarter. Which made shockingly clear that these people had learned exactly nothing from what had just happened to their industry.)

      1. Phony Genius*

        Oh, I know they’re aware. But if the PR problem becomes hot enough, they may feel the need to act on their own to prevent the one thing they fear from happening: Regulation.

        1. Liz T*

          According to OP, the big banks are already pretending to make changes, and then firing people once the heat is off.

          1. gmg22*

            My understanding from those comments was that the cycle OP described happened in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, when jobs vanished and the new grads were desperate to get hired. The big banks could get away with pretending to make changes and then firing people once the heat was off.

            The shape of the labor market in our current recovery could not be more different. Three million baby boomers retired earlier than planned after covid whacked us all in the face. Further millions of working parents, mostly moms, similarly opted or were forced out of the workforce. Some of them may come back, but they aren’t there yet.

            Also, OP does not work for a big bank; he/she works for a small firm that is trying to act like a big bank and finding out that (because of the aforementioned labor supply crunch) it can’t get away with it.

          2. Calamity Janine*

            being as mercenary as possible: sounds like OP is in the perfect situation to poach that talent, then, by offering the changes and actually making them stick. easy way to grab the best from the big banks once it gets around that the big banks don’t keep that promise, but OP’s firm does!

          3. Vaca*

            Exactly. It’s a fraud. All pretend to make sure they get gristle for the mill. I’ve seen that movie.

          4. MCMonkeyBean*

            Those comments are a lot of supposition based on something that happened 13 years ago and does not seem to be based in any facts of what those businesses are actually doing now.

    5. Software Dev*

      Big thanks to Vaca for being so active in these comments, also, especially given that they’re facing harsh feedback. I really feel like I learned a lot about the investment banking industry (most of it negative, but I knew nothing about it before and knowledge is fascinating).

      1. Vaca*

        Thanks! Nothing like interminable plane rides for overlong rejoinders to people who think I’m feeding cats to ATMs.

      2. Salsa Verde*

        Agree – this is extremely interesting, and OP/Vaca is taking all the comments in stride – not getting defensive. I think that’s the reason this conversation in the comments has been able to go so far.

  157. Fiona*

    I don’t work in finance, but have worked in high-pressure environments in the past and the insanity was always because people were terrified to say “no” to a client. A client would ask an innocent question – “could we get this document?” and then we’d be anxiously working until midnight to get it to them. At my next job, my colleague said, “Oh, just tell them we’ll get it to them the next day.” Impossible, I thought! But it was…fine. I rarely encountered any pushback. If you turn out good work and you protect your staff (who will stay and grow and excel) you WILL retain good clients. The problem was the outsized terror of pushing back on the client to the detriment of the work itself, your staff, and the overall health of the company. The hours are NOT sustainable. In this environment, no amount of money will entice people to sacrifice their entire lives.

  158. CatLadyLawyer*

    To Alison’s point re: 100-hour weeks resulting in a smaller applicant pool – even if there are some people who can physically do it and do it well, it seems to effectively completely remove the possibility of hiring anyone with even the most mild of disabilities or chronic medical issues, or family commitments. Making youth, health, and lack of family functionally a condition of employment seems incredibly problematic.

    For example, I have mild narcolepsy and even though my grades supported it, I was heavily discouraged in law school from applying to any “big law” firms because of my narcolepsy – and it’s true, there is no way I could physically do a 100 hour week without heavily abusing stimulants. Industries requiring 100 hour weeks as a condition of employment are effectively guaranteeing an applicant pool of only young, 100% healthy, child-free associates (or with a spouse who can take on 100% of caregiving). That seems like discrimination to me. (Full disclosure, this is not my area of law so happy to hear why I might be wrong on this).

    1. Worldwalker*

      Furthermore, people who *stay* young, 100% healthy, and childless.

      People get older, one day every day. They get sick (especially with that schedule). While it’s unlikely given the absence of free time to even talk to another human being, let alone get married and have children, it’s not impossible they might even have children. And other responsibilities happen, like becoming a caregiver to a parent or sibling.

      So even someone who starts out as a member of that applicant pool is eventually going to drop out of it, for reasons of age if nothing else. All else aside, that’s seriously limiting.

  159. Elizabeth West*

    It’s one that has been all over the newspaper the past couple years for difficulty retaining junior professional staff and attempts to roll out more work-life balance.

    It’s not Theranos, is it? #BaDumTsss

    I’m KIDDING. But seriously, if your staff is overworked, you need more staff. Even if people were on board with working that many hours, it’s just not physically or mentally sustainable. They wouldn’t be leaving if it were. Times are a’changing. I hope you can get your company to move forward with them, OP.

    1. WellRed*

      I realize you’re kidding about Theranos but I wonder at some similarities. According to OP this is a small company trying to compete against the big guys on their turf. Holmes wanted to be the next Jobs with a technology that wasn’t ever going to work, no matter how much money and staff she burned through. Might be time for this firm to think about it’s strengths and what it can realistically achieve. Beyond the OPs purview, of course.

  160. BlueBelle*

    “We already defer most of the comp to year-end, with some smallish amount withheld for 12-24 months.”
    This is the most shocking part of the letter. Doing this guarantees that you are not getting a diverse group of employees. Between this and the hours, you are mostly going to get young, single, men, from a wealthy background.

    1. Calamity Janine*

      i still live in hope that we’ve misread that part. no wonder people are walking out after a few months after being hired straight out of college! it’s hiring people who have to coast on built-up savings, when they don’t have the savings built up yet, in order to work for a “trust me homie you’ll get paid eventually :)”. and no wonder that the people who CAN swing that might be not ideal candidates – they can be there because they’re coasting on family wealth, and if they’re in the habit of doing that, well… their college experience may also have been “coasting on family wealth”, lol.

      i’m a bio major, not a business major, but all i can think of with such a tactic is “if this was about a bunch of wolves, it would be a really bad evolutionary pressure here that isn’t setting anyone up for success. no wonder that flock of exotic finches isn’t thriving or whatever.” it’s akin to a ‘false signal’ presented by lady birds being really into dudes with bright orange beaks, which started out as an indicator of a bird getting his beta carotenes in, but has become a sign that the finches live next to an orange paint factory and stick their beaks in it. the pressures introduced are selecting for things that aren’t going to be true reflections of skill or future success. you won’t end up with hearty babies with those good-beta-carotene-processing genes, you’ll end up with baby finches that don’t do so hot on account of dipping their beaks in lead paint.

      it’s pressure that favors a false signal! of course that’s going to go wrong! it’s about as surprising as finding out finches don’t live on lead paint, lol

  161. GarlicMicrowaver*

    This is all kinds of messed up on every level. I believe this setup is a form of abuse.

  162. Minerva*

    Oh my word…

    May I suggest that you become an industry leader by lowering pay, increasing staff, and having the company figure out a true work/life balance. I know that this goes against “the way it has always been” in the I-banking industry, but this is the way the workforce is moving.

    Adopting the idea that the Millennial and Gen Z works to live rather than lives to work will help in the long run, because there will come a point where no amount of money will retain staff when they are miserable and see their peers in lesser paying jobs that still allow them a comfortable life at 40 hrs a week (with occasional 60 hr crunch times) the ability to use their vacation time, and the ability to see their families.

  163. Colette*

    One thing I haven’t seen addressed is the OP’s suggestion that they require the people who leave to “pay back” the value of their training. I suspect that might make people leave faster. If you start to realize you don’t want to do this for 2 years and there’s a financial cost to staying longer, why not quit 3 months in, or 4?

    1. Kevin Sours*

      Probably because it’s not worth dignifying with a response. I don’t care if it works or not. It’s evil.

  164. Now Retired*

    I once worked in the restaurant and hotel business. As GM of a very large restaurant, I worked about 60 hours per week.
    I resigned and was hired as a department manager at a major prestigious hotel chain. I figured a few more hours on top of 60 would be doable. Wrong. After weeks and months of 80-90 hours without a six figure incentive, I finally left. Best thing I ever did for myself.

  165. Calamity Janine*

    reading the comments and seeing the additional details – people crunching the numbers about how it only really comes out to around $30/hr, how there is resistance to not changing the system because of an idea that it’s almost like hazing and the company will eventually make it good for you, the insane demands on work-life balance, and A FIRM SMALL ENOUGH THERE IS NO HR DEPARTMENT WHATSOEVER… (oh, and run by people who are quick to blame employees for burning out and blame the youth for being too fickle these days, and seek to punish them for it… did i mention the no HR department? so if you have any issue with the above or even more, good luck chump you ain’t getting no backup?)

    this is something that i’m pretty sure i could talk to my fellow millennials about over a campfire as a spooky scary story that is more terrifying than ghosts.

    convene the midnight society and toss a handful of sand into the fire, y’all. hand me that flashlight so i can stick it under my chin. cue up the sound of rolling thunder for dramatic effect.

    this halloween, we’ve got…

    the tale of the terrible no-good very bad job!

  166. Barb*

    This sounds very much like medical resident training in the past. I was a resident in the late 80’s and even then only the first years had 100 hour weeks (24-36 hours in a row sometimes). 2nd and 3rd years worked about 80 hours/wk. And we didn’t make much money during those training years. (This was a nonsurgical field)
    The argument against change was similar to yours above: trainees need the continuity of seeing a case through the night, and the number of hours were necessary to be fully trained.
    The argument for change as you may know was patient safety. One death led to investigations showing the high rate of serious and dangerous errors made by young exhausted physicians.
    Now there are legal limits to hours physicians can work in residency. Max 80 hours per week and max 24 hours in a row. (Yes, really).
    And the result is better trained and healthier doctors and safer patients.

    Medicine made the change by adding nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants to do a lot of the work that was previously done by residents. Is there something comparable that would work in your industry?

    1. aebhel*

      Yep. That’s about twice what I make for more than 3 times the hours. No sane person would take that job, or stay in it.

  168. Enna*

    Right before the pandemic I cut my salary by 60% to go from 60+ hours a week with a commute and always on call to 40 hrs with NO overtime or on call and zero commute. It is heaven.

    Also right before the pandemic my husband had a work crisis that had him doing 100+ hours per week for 2 months. His blood pressure went from very low to high, his blood sugar went from low normal to pre diabetic. This was in 2 months that his health took a drastic turn. The pandemic was a blessing for us because it halted that work schedule cold.

    OP there is literally nothing you can to do incentivize this insane schedule. People are waking up. This era is not as material as the 80’s were. Quality of life is more important now. You will always find a few who want money more than anything else, but not the quantity as before. And quite frankly, not the quality either. The BEST are not putting up with that nonsense the way they used to. The data is speaking.

  169. FACS*

    I’m a surgeon and routinely worked 90-100 hours a week in training. I do not any more. The miserable hours made me miserable and less able to engage in complex decision making. The money is not a bribe for surrendering your life. Alison is right in that you need to update your practice model. Good people are not willing to be treated that way. We have a lovely financial advisor for our portfolio and we know that “Nate the money guy” is not available on weekends.

  170. Ebarr*

    We keep doing the same thing and getting the same result. Well your commitment to verifiable results is commendable but there comes a point where you have to ask what is the important thing. The process or the outcome? The 100+ hrs is not a policy, it sounds like a it’s become a sacred cow. One that needs sacrificing on the altar of realism.

  171. SweetPotatoontheCouch*

    Hi, I’m sorry, but I’m kind of struggling to understand what you were hoping to achieve by writing to Allison. You’re getting consistent feedback that the hours are unsustainable. However, instead of listening to the feedback, you’ve responded with, well, strawmen and excuses.

    You keeps saying that you can’t change the industry. I haven’t seen anyone suggest that that is your burden to bear. Why do you feel it was necessary to say that you can’t change a whole industry?

    You say that you can’t control even your own firm, but you came here with a proposal to require people who leave early to return more than half their salary already earned. I can only assume that you were planning to share that with your bosses. Why is punatively punishing people for leaving after being burned out the only solution? Why do you feel comfortable backing that change to your company and not reducing the hours worked? Why can you change your company for the worse but not better?

    You say that you don’t want to be the bearer of bad news to clients. I get that; that sucks. But you want something to change and have a positive result (I.e., juniors staying at least the full two years) without changing client expectation. That indicates a change has to come from within your company. Do you think that using ONLY sticks will garner desire to stay for two years, let alone 20? If so, why? I’m sure that there are people who can tough out the long hours and that kind of punitive environment. On the other hand, there will probably be people who think that the fees/fine or whatever might be worth paying if it means not working at your company anymore.

    I don’t expect you to answer these questions. I hope that you will ask yourself and answer them earnestly.

  172. awesome3*

    OP, I think the issue is that the answer is “the system is broken.” That’s always a frustrating answer to hear, especially if fixing the system isn’t within your power.

  173. Elm*

    Assuming the low end of the pay scale (assuming the second number was a typo) and two weeks of vacation, that’s about 5,000 working hours per year or about $55 per hour.

    I make more than that freelancing, for which I set my own hours. I probably couldn’t hit $275k, but I could do over $100k if I freelanced full time. I like having a 9-5, though.

    And I do mean 9-5. I’ve done the 100 hour workweeks.

    I had what was almost definitely a stroke at my desk at the age of 32. No blood pressure or other issues. I sought medical treatment…after work. I literally could not leave work *when I had all symptoms of a stroke* without risking my job.

    Another person I loved dearly literally died at work, in no small part because of these working hours. It was not the result of an injury or pre-existing condition. His body just gave up. He was 39.

    Hire more people and treat all of them like humans of value. Otherwise you may have young blood (and lawsuits) on your hands.

  174. Just stoppin' by to chat*

    Maybe someone spoke to earlier in the comments, but anyone have a guess for what industry this is? Maybe public accounting? Or working for a big 4 of big 8 consulting company? I work for one of the largest technology companies in the world, and people definitely work a lot, but not in this kind of 2-year, 100+ hour week stints. So flummoxed as to which industry this is!

    2. WellRed*

      You’d think it would at least be something a bit noble but nah. Just greedy companies and greedy people for whom too much is never enough. (Not directed to OP).

    3. MCMonkeyBean*

      Public accounting is bad, but it’s not that bad. And they generally expect a lot of people to jump ship to industry after a couple years anyway, definitely none of this “but the clients need me specifically so I can never leave” mentality.

  175. lolibrarian*

    I just came here to say I find the OP’s workplace conditions to be to terrible as to be hilarious. Just, how absurd.!?!? People are not robots. Even robots need “time off” for mechanical repairs.

  176. Dezzi*

    With 900+ comments, I’m sure this has already been addressed, but….OP, have you considered how much WIDER your applicant pool would be if the hours were less insane?

    You already have SO FEW candidates to choose from (even before you hit the “no one wants to do this” problem), because you’re automatically filtering out anyone with a disability/chronic medical condition, anyone with caregiving responsibilities, anyone with other life commitments, etc. In the middle of a pandemic that has killed three quarters of a million people in this country alone, left thousands upon thousands of people permanently disabled, and completely destroyed the concept of reliable childcare.

    There are so, SO few people who both want to work ridiculous hours and have the ability to do so right now, and that number is shrinking by the day. You can compete harder to attract/retain them, you can change the job structure in a way that will massively expand your candidate pool, or you can go out of business. That’s the choice.

    Also, keep in mind, people who are currently in their early 20s right now? 2008-2010 was a formative experience for them. It was probably the first major world/economic catastrophe they were old enough to be aware of. And you’re wondering why they don’t want to throw away their life and health for an industry they saw tank the world when they were kids?

  177. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

    100 hours a week is not sustainable or humane. Your employees would need to work 7 days a week, all the time, with no days off. If they sleep for 8 hours that leaves 1.7 hours a day for eating, showering, cooking, grocery shopping, paying bills, cooking meals, commuting and leaves no time at all to interact with people outside of work.
    Your new hires may commit to this, but if they’ve never experienced it, they don’t know what it’s really like. Alison’s advice to create humane hours and pay less is the only thing that makes sense. I get the sense that you’re not open to this, though. Your tone in the piece was how dare they not be willing to give up their entire life and risk their health for the money you pay.

    1. Meep*

      I did the math to boot. OP is paying them $39 to $52 an hour and wants to reduce it to $15 to $21 an hour if they leave early. It really puts into perspective that these are slave wages for slave hours.

  178. Soup of the Day*

    There may be ways to cut hours while guaranteeing the same results, but there also might not. If two employees working 7-hour shifts will not accomplish the same work to the same degree and receive the same experience as one employee working 14-hour shifts, then this is not super helpful advice to the OP. Clients will leave and go somewhere else, employees will prefer to work where they’ll best be prepared for their future careers, and competitors will not change because they’re not being impacted. Now maybe it is possible! But it also might not be.

    We can all be outraged at the idea of 100-hour weeks, but as far as I can tell, investment bankers are well aware of these requirements before even studying the field in school. I personally don’t think any human should have to work that much, but it’s not like there’s any kind of bait-and-switch happening here. There are going to be people who realize that this is not the industry for them, but if that’s the case they were likely to find that out no matter what company they work for. All OP can do is try to retain the ones who want to stay in the industry.

    1. Kevin Sours*

      Sure. But that doesn’t make me anymore sympathetic that people demanding 100 hour weeks can’t retain people. Or particularly supportive of the idea of finding ways to punish people for deciding that its bullshit and moving on. Which is what OP is asking for. Two years of 100 hour weeks looks a lot different six months in than it did when it was a requirement listed on a job ad.

    2. Adereterial*

      In that case, you have two employees each working 14 hour days for 3-4 days a week. That won’t work for some but it’s a far more sustainable.

      There’s no excuse. They need to hire more people and learn what work-life balance means.

    3. LilyP*

      This begs the question for me: is OP sure that the hours are what’s driving the early leavers? What did they say in exit interviews? Did they leave for in-house corporate jobs for less hour/less pay or for competing firms for same hours/more pay (or more prestige, networking, etc)? Did they leave for “cooler” industries? The hours *are* insane, and many people would never consider them, but people did sign up for them originally, and this company hasn’t had these problems with retention in this program in the past (and I don’t think these people were ever poor desperate urchins who absolutely had no other options besides investment banking before the labor market tightened up)

      1. Kevin Sours*

        It’s hard to say. But if you read the letter closely it sounds like people are walking away from a substantial year end bonus. Which leads me to think that working conditions in general is a pretty significant factor.

      2. gmg22*

        Good questions. Tech, in particular, is competing for these kids and often winning. Gotta say that OP’s firm sounds pretty stodgy, and not just in terms of the culture surrounding work hours. Alison put it very simply, and the senior partners need to face facts: They can’t compete for talent in this market the way they used to, full stop. Then figure out how to address it with that reality always in front of their minds.

        Really, this entire letter is just the economic one-percenter version of, say, the fast-food franchise owner indignant that he can’t staff up because people “don’t want to work” anymore. Nah guy, they just don’t want to work FOR YOU, getting paid peanuts to take abuse and not know day to day what their schedule will look like, so they are exploring the other options that have appeared in this quickly changing labor market.

        1. WindmillArms*

          >Nah guy, they just don’t want to work FOR YOU, getting paid peanuts to take abuse

          This right here. You’re finding out that there is no amount of money that people are willing to be abused for anymore. Your victim pool is shrinking, and you might want to reflect on why you want to stay in it.

    4. Macedon*

      Employees sign up for the gig knowing that’s the toll in theory — but I assure you, no one knows how 100h / week will (fail to) work for their mental and biological health on the long run, until they try a stint. It’s a slow and soulless grind. There’s no bait-and-switch on behalf of the staff, and many enter the arrangement thinking the professional progression or the pay will offset the potential physical erosion. For some, by the way, it works — the adrenaline rush, the tunnel vision of ‘winning’ at the job, the comradery of your colleagues who are also sticking it out, the hubris of “We’re survivors, those other guys are quitters” can push you for another day, and another day, and another day more. You could just very well love the job that much.

      But that’s not a majority of people anymore.

    5. Worldwalker*

      The OP’s problem is that people *don’t* want to work those hours, and therefore they can’t retain enough of the employees.

      Whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent, the one thing it definitely is, is *not working anymore*. That’s why the letter in the first place.

    6. Lenora Rose*

      Here’s what i don’t get: why the hell would a client being handled by a junior analyst in her first 6 months in the job pull their money and go elsewhere just because if they call in on a different day, they get a slightly different junior analyst in his first six months on the job? Especially if it’s consistently those same two analysts, who are clearly working together on one file, and not a random rotation? This idea “The client will leave if they don’t hear the exact same voice on the phone every time at any hour or day” strikes me as nonsensical behaviour by any client that perpetrates it.

  179. Meep*

    It really ought to be illegal to force workers to pay back income if they leave early. They did the work required up to that point. Taking away 60% of what they earned is absolutely ridiculous. Especially considering they are still being paid $39/hour. It is more than I am making but I am paid $37/hour and only have to work roughly 40 hours a week. That two whole extra dollar is not appealing in the slightest. Add on the fact I would reduce my wage down to a paltry $15/hour if I leave early?

    OP can eat a bag of nails for all I care.

    1. Elm*

      I thought it WAS illegal! I feel like this has come up before (though Alison could probably clarify, and maybe it varies by state). It’s basically telling people they can’t spend the money they earned just in case they can’t or won’t finish the entire contract.

      That’s another thing that bothered me–what if they literally can’t complete it? There are so many reasons to leave a job beyond “I don’t want to work here,” like family emergencies, health issues, or having to move away. Do they have to repay then?

  180. WellRed*

    What’s that story about the guy who worked all the time for his company and was so dedicated etc? He dropped dead at an early age. At the company meeting they gave him a moment of silence and then… moved on.

  181. Kazu*

    OP, just to flag for you regarding work hours — tech companies (which may be the only industry that can competitively keep up with your talent pool without additional schooling) are not only working their staff, on average, half the amount your job requires, but many are talking about reducing hours. 32 hour/4 day work weeks are starting to roll out, many without salary changes.

  182. Alice Watson*

    As I read the letter it came off more and more as very tone deaf to the current environment, employee expectations and old school vs current thinking. Allison’s reply didn’t disappoint and was well done. I did it doesn’t cut it anymore even if you add that you still work that way. Not that LW said this but nobody should mistake employees in their 20’s refusing to work extended day hours plus weekends and nights as lazy. It’s good that we’re waking up to the need for life balance and burn out avoidance but obviously more needs to be done to get certain older companies and institutions on board.

  183. Tendi*

    OP, the fundamental problem is that you actually have no desire to change the system. You are rich from it – and please don’t argue that you’re not wealthy; take a look at the average US salary – and you may kick and scream now and then about the hours you put in, but inside you really think that you work harder than anyone else and that makes you a better person than the rest of us. Why else would you not leave this situation?

  184. soanonrn*

    So this is how we overthrow the grip of the Global One Percent – eventually no one will manage their money for them! :rofl:

  185. sofar*

    I’m just rooting for these employees who are quitting in droves. I hope they’re doing it across all firms in this industry. Because that’s the only way things will change. If leadership truly doesn’t care (based on what LW has said in the comments), it’s up to the employees who will force change by literally removing themselves from the workforce.

    My company is super reasonable by comparison — we have a busy season, about six weeks, where we need to work nights/weekends (12 to 14 hours a day seven days a week). This is disclosed at hiring. But so many people have been quitting that our leadership is taking note and making things better during the non-busy season (long weekends during the summer, 5-day weekends during 3-day-weekend holidays, Uber Eats gift cards, all kinds of nice stuff). This year, for the first time, people started putting “Our offices are closed…” wording on our OOO messages. We build extra lead time into our contracts with clients. Do they like it? Not always. Do we lose some? Sure. But not the reasonable ones.

    My husband is from the restaurant industry, and wouldn’t you know, the worker shortage is causing that industry to rethink all sorts the things that “are just part of the job.”

  186. Fed-o*

    Vaca, do you do exit interviews? Have you asked them directly what would have made them stay and where they are going? It’s a bit of a logic trap to say they are burnt out and leaving, and also that if you don’t burn them out…they’ll leave. Is it safe to assume you aren’t in an industry with slim margins and there would be room to pay more people a healthy salary? I’m about to bury my young mother, who got terminally ill just as she retired. She buried her mother the same way. I make a comfortable low 6 figures, and there is nothing–nothing–a 7th figure could buy me that would be worth giving all my time and health to my employer. People are coming to that conclusion a lot earlier, and thank goodness.

    1. College Career Counselor*

      There is NO WAY this company is doing exit interviews. They are in meetings 10 hours a day, plus 4 hours more of data analysis/report generation. They don’t have HR. “Somebody” posts positions and Vaca/OP gets to do interviews sometimes (on top of the rest of this schedule). This company and its leadership are operating the way they do because it “works” for them. Or has historically, anyway. I agree with others that Management Gets What It Wants (even if it’s not happy with it) and that until it doesn’t work for the CEO, nothing will change. (It may not change anyway, but until the CEO, who from what OP says is evidently a threatening bully and a vindictive myopic asshole, even recognizes that the situation is untenable, there is not even a glimmer of hope.)

      The best thing the OP could do is create their own boutique firm with several employees and a few clients they think they can provide value to.

  187. Macedon*

    The best thing that ever happened to my industry was fresh graduates coming in with expectations of being paid above the peanut rate for less than 12-14h daily shifts, shutting their phones off for the weekend and imposing work-life boundaries. It’s happening to your line of work too — thank God! Celebrate it. Will it mean the death of companies that refuse to adapt? Absolutely. Yes. It should.

    In the end, there is nothing you can practically do to change the fact that your firm is offering a low rate ($200k is frankly a joke, do you at least do a bonus?) for corporate slavery. Good on the young people who are not afraid to walk away from the first-take glamour of the headline pay figure and preserve their sanity.

    Genuine apologies: I have no practical advice here. You’re stuck, relatively hands-bound, trying to… troubleshoot a corporate solution for the dark side. I have sympathy, but equally, your industry needs this change, just like some Big Law firms need to get rid of the office sleeping pods.

    (And, by the way, please stop vehemently excusing the weekend work: you know fully well physical markets are closed at least until Sun night.)

    1. Macedon*

      Re: bonus – asking if you do one at present, or if you’re only considering introducing one as part of your overhaul. Or is the bonus the end-year comp?

  188. Kevin Sours*

    I also find it interesting in the comments the extent to which OP *defines* high achievers as people willing to work 100 hour weeks. It doesn’t seem like the idea that somebody who turns out high quality work at a high rate/hour but will only work 50 hours could ever be an employee worth keeping.

    That and the main complaint is that he has to work weekends because the junior people aren’t happy literally never having a day off for two years.

  189. Jennifer*

    Wow, I don’t know the background of the people you are hiring, but for me to walk away from a job making that kind of money at only 23, it would mean that conditions were truly terrible. I’m not familiar with this field or the city you’re in so maybe that salary is standard where you are, but it’s a lot of money where I am. Nowadays people are easily finding jobs with competitive pay and a good work/life balance, so you’re going to have to adapt.

  190. CommanderBanana*

    This may shock you, OP, but money isn’t the be-all, end-all for a lot of people. I wouldn’t work 100 hours weeks for 2 years for 200K. It’s not worth it.

    1. aebhel*

      ^^
      I mean, I wouldn’t work 100 hours a week for 2 years for literally any amount of money, but the point stands.

      1. Kevin Sours*

        If I were back in my twenties and had the endurance for it, I’ll admit there is a figure where I’d at least have thought really hard about it. But were talking “when it’s done I never have to work again” type money.

  191. zebra*

    OP, you are stuck in an impossible position. Your industry and your company are fundamentally old-fashioned nowadays. Gen Z does not want to work 100 hours a week, even for $200k. Current graduates aren’t expecting to stay *anywhere* for 20 years. That’s just not how people think about work anymore. It is impossible for you in your current level of responsibility to fundamentally change your industry’s practices, which is what would be required for you to get the outcome you want. Until you have the power to change things from the top, you will be stuck in this exact same paradigm as long as you work there.

    You’re all over the comments insisting that you have a duty to your clients. *Nobody* owes their clients their entire lives and it’s not a very healthy attitude to think that what’s being expected of you is acceptable. I’m not surprised at all that today’s 23 year olds get a taste of this, think about the prospect of working these ludicrous hours for the next thirty years, and nope out immediately. You can head out to Silicon Valley and make that salary working 35 hours a week in tech pretty easily; of course nobody wants to put themselves through abusive work hours and no breaks forever!

  192. The Dogman*

    LW perhaps try offering 2 to 3 times the number of roles, so 40 hour weeks max, no overtime, for say, $80,000 base rate.

    Just because you and your peers/seniors in the corporation were foolish enough to do that sort of insanity for the pockets of the Shareholder class it doesn’t mean everyone else needs to behave that way!

    Most humans will read your post and raise eyebrows about the conditions, those hours are not worth it for the pay you offer… which should be obvious since you are losing so many talented and self-aware young go getters…

  193. Admin 4 life*

    It also sounds like LW is also telling them they can’t have a life event for two years. No bereavement leave, needing time to care for someone, if they get seriously ill themselves…I’m completely guessing here but if LW is feeling putout after working 6 weekends, then why would she expect the staff to feel any different?

    This would totally push me into corporate office work just for pto and more balance in my life.

  194. EDnurseJ*

    My hubs worked investment banking and this was his life. As he became more senior, it got slightly better but involved more travel. I think he wavers on if it was worth it based on salary. Hard to say no when you pay everything off and could retire early. We don’t have kids so it may be more acceptable to us.
    I could never work that much.

  195. Give Them My Number*

    I will happily sell away the best years of my life in exchange for ~1 million USD liquid. You won’t get much more than 5 years out of me, but give them my email and put us in touch.

  196. MeepMeep*

    I had a job like that (in BigLaw). 80-100 hour weeks, no weekends, no time off, the only time I went home was to sleep. I lasted a year and felt that even that was too long.

    One thing not mentioned by the commenters is that this kind of job can ruin your health permanently. At our firm, I knew someone who wrecked her thyroid after doing too many all-nighters. She now has to take thyroid pills for the rest of her life. After I left, I met another BigLaw refugee at a contract job. She developed a horrendous chronic bronchitis that means she has to take heavy-duty medication in order to not break her ribs from coughing. She can never get pregnant because pregnancy would mean she would have to go off the medication. Someone else I met developed a debilitating autoimmune issue that attacked her eyes, and now has to take serious medication to not go blind.

    LW is not going to pay these people’s disability expenses if they screw up their health, are they now?

  197. TeapotNinja*

    I’ve been investment banking adjacent for a very long time.
    There are very few people who actually think of these jobs as careers. Most young people I’ve talked to over the years consider it a temporary gig. They never intend to stick around in the first place, but make the temporary sacrifice because of the amount of money they can make.
    I’ve always wondered what kind of person actually thrives in that sort of environment. But then I read about all the unethical and downright illegal stuff investment banks do as routine, and I know.

  198. Justin*

    ba da ba ba ba
    I’m loving it.

    So many of my college classmates got these jobs. They’re rich now, and I’m not, but they sure all seemed deeply miserable for a decade until they got promoted and exploited the next rung down. I wouldn’t have survived, literally.

  199. Laufey*

    I am in either the same or the similar industry… and when I was graduating from college, I very deliberately decided not to pursue that type of employment. I was fairly certain I was smart enough/diligent enough/hufflepuff enough to do the work, but I frankly just wasn’t interested in making a ton of money but not being able to do my outdoor-in-nature hobbies that I enjoy (and keep me sane and/or from needing therapy).

    So I deliberately found a job in a smaller city in a slightly niche field that certainly paid less than I could have gotten in NYC/Chicago/Charlotte… but I am still there nine and half years later. The best perk my job offered me (that I earned, after 3-4 years) was the ability to come into the office ~two hours late one day a week (with the hours to be made up, so really just getting a degree of flextime) so I could do said rural out-in-nature hobby when there were fewer people out there. I have turned down headhunters because I *know* the big corps wouldn’t offer me that perk, and it is honestly worth more than cash to me.

    Worth more than cash to me. Please reflect on that. Not all of an employee’s compensation is their paycheck, and many people of my generation just frankly don’t want to do that lifestyle any more. And since we have options, we don’t *have* to.

  200. Essess*

    Expecting people to work 100-hour work weeks for years is just plain abusive. For that pay, and the amount of hours of work that you need, you should be hiring 2 people instead of just 1. This is not healthy for any human body to work those types of hours, no matter how much you are paying them. I was forced to work 84-hour work weeks for about 6 months without a choice and ended up in the hospital being tested for a heart attack due to the amount of work. Expecting people to do this for 2 years should be criminal.

  202. RB*

    Such an obvious solution – MORE PEOPLE. Did the OP come back on to say why they hadn’t considered that?

    2. Rainy*

      Apparently it’s cheaper to fill the positions every 8 months than it would be to hire enough people to make the workload sustainable. Somehow.

      1. Lenora Rose*

        Honestly, I think this is it.

        There’s a lot of talk about clients’ needs, and a lot of talk about “but I did it” an a lot fo talk about “The CEO wouldn’t let us”. And a constant, continuing chant of “industry standard”. It’s also clear they’re deeply unhappy in their own job and should move on to start a new place that has a better work life balance.

        1. MCMonkeyBean*

          It honestly makes sense to me that they are seeing people quit after finally getting a weekend off. OP expects them to see that (normally standard thing) as some kind of amazing treat they should be so grateful for–but the reality is that having two days to actually sleep and clear your head and then look ahead at all the hours you are about to jump back into on Monday is exactly the time it may suddenly occur to them that they cannot stand to work there for even one second longer.

  203. Chuck*

    It’s interesting that there’s no consideration for hiring older people. If this is a boom and bust industry then there should be a decent crop of them, no? For example the legal industry went through a famous collapse during the early teens – I’m sure there are plenty of 30-something lawyers who’d jump at the chance to make some decent money to pay down debt and work in big law for two years.

    1. Dezzi*

      Yeah, no, no one over 30 is going to “jump” to sign up for 100-hour weeks and not a single day off for two straight years, unless they’ve been working in a job that’s brainwashed them into thinking that’s normal/acceptable instead of completely insane. People have lives.

  204. librarymouse*

    I don’t even know what I would do with that much money if I had to work 100 hours a week!

    1. FridayFriyay*

      You’d spend all of it and then some outsourcing the cost/time of doing the activities of daily living you wouldn’t have time for (feeding, laundry, cleaning, etc.)

    2. Dr. Rebecca*

      Pay off your student loans because we’re stuck with them due to the inaction of our toothless government, eat really high-priced takeout in the 15 minutes you can scrounge up between meetings, buy a house you never see apart from sleeping in it, buy a car you only use to commute, and if you’re paired up, buy a multi-carat-weight engagement ring for a person you’re going to physically and emotionally abandon.

      1. Dr. Rebecca*

        If they are in distress, they would do better to sit with that a little bit and contemplate why all they’ve done is deflect and defend, and seem to want to use what little power they have to be punitive.

  206. Ina Lummick*

    I worked 100+ hours for two weeks.

    After those 2 weeks, I was in severe pain and housebound for roughly a month. For me, no job is worth going through that ever again.

  207. it's-a-me*

    “It’s always been this way” is not a valid justification for anything. If there is a better way for it to be, ‘tradition’ is just not good enough.

  208. A Feast of Fools*

    This is like the other side of those text conversations between Boss and Employee that are making the rounds on the internet.

    The manager who texts a bartender in the wee hours of the morning on their day off to [rudely] tell them they have to work an event that day at 11:00 AM. Bartender quits, manager is verklempt. Can’t believe the person would do something so rash!

    The manager who texts an employee to say that they’ll be having a “conversation” with them on their next scheduled day of work because the manager reviewed that day’s security footage and saw that — gasp! — the employee had been sitting on a stool all day (while hitting the best metrics for the department ever). Employee’s use of stool was approved by another manager but Employee has had it with work environments that are abusive just for the sake of being abusive and quits. Manager is verklempt. Can’t believe the person would do something so rash!

    Or the meme about how “back in my day, we were paid a penny a day and the manager kicked us in the d*ck just for the lulz. And, solely based on the fact that I am still alive, no one should ever have it any better than I did.”

  209. HS Teacher*

    As someone who left a very similar, high-paying industry and makes significantly less in education, after a while of living that way, it gets really old. You run out of things to buy and start realizing there’s more to life than how much crap you can accumulate and that life is about so much more than that.

    If you want them to stay, you’re going to need to offer more of a work-life balance, as cliche as it sounds.

  210. SuperBB*

    @Vaca, you’ve said a few times that you have an obligation to your client to work these crazy hours. I’d like to point out that you also have an obligation to your family to be present. If your kids are young, the need YOU. Sure, they enjoy the perks of your high income, but at the end of the day, the thing they’ll remember most is that their dad was always working. Unless you’re leaving this out of your description of your life, your order of priorities is:
    1. Clients
    2. Junior staff
    3. Family

    Think about whether that’s what you want to be remembered for when you’re 85,

  211. pmg1984*

    100 hour weeks are absolute insanity. I can count on one hand the # of times I worked more than 50 hours/week in a 15-year software engineering career (which can also be demanding and lucrative). I have straight up left jobs that required too much of a weekend/evening commitment, especially after I started a family. There are too many options out there to get yanked around.

    Outside of a few super-motivated workaholics/entrepreneurs, 100 hour weeks ain’t sustainable for anyone. There are only 168 hours in a week. Assuming you get a measly 6 hours/sleep per night (42/week), 2 hours for eating each day (14/week), that leaves you with exactly 12 hours of free time. That doesn’t even count things like getting dressed/prepared, commuting and going to the bathroom. That’s flipping ridiculous.

    Whatever this field is…I wouldn’t touch for a million dollars (OK ..maybe I would do it for 6-9 months and move on)….because I would be burned the hell out long before then. I’ve long since learned that time is more valuable than money. Some people might be desperate enough to do this to break into your field, but you are naive if you think people are gonna stick around for that abuse once they have options.

    Stop thinking that paying enough money will allow you to abuse and exploit your workers. You’d be better off restructuring your company so people can have a life.

    Unless this is something where people’s lives are literally on the line (like medical residencies), I don’t even know how this crap is justified in 2021.

  212. Not A Manager*

    @Vaca – I really hope you read this far. I’ve scrolled through and read all of your comments. I really like you. I like your literary allusions, I like your self-deprecating humor, and I like how you’ve analyzed the situation from an industry perspective.

    I don’t think you have an employment problem, I think you have a job problem. This job is bad for you and you probably know it. Your hours suck, your boss doesn’t respect you, and you’re required to get results but you have no authority to achieve those results. You see problems in the future for your industry in general and for your firm in particular.

    For some reason, the adrenaline of your daily experience combined with your fairy tale of being “responsible” to people who feel no responsibility to you is keeping you tethered. I think the very best investment of your limited time would be to find a good person to talk to about all of this. You’re smart enough to know that whatever is keeping you in this job is not healthy or realistic.

    1. Butter Makes Things Better*

      Me too, Not a Manager! SoftwareDev said it above — I’ve learned SO much about investment banking thanks to Vaca (OP)’s full-throttle willingness to interact here. I hope Vaca leaves to start her own firm, and circles back in Q1 to update us.

      (Also, I’m shocked that no one’s mentioned Billions; everything Vaca wrote had me playing scenes from past seasons in my head, going Ohhhhhh, that makes so much more sense now …)

      1. Vaca*

        Thanks you two! I will say, you haven’t really gotten to know me yet, so there’s still plenty of time to develop the low-grade antipathy that I usually inspire.

        It’s going to be a tough choice. Based on the way things are shaping up, I’m going to be in a position come late Q1 where my current firm will owe me somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million dollars over the next twelve months. If I walk, I walk away from that. I have a good friend who’s an employment lawyer and she’s helping me out a bit on that front. I will definitely keep you updated.

        1. Not A Manager*

          I know you’ve said you’re not coming back to this thread, which is understandable, but you’ve mentioned a few times that your firm owes you a lot of money.

          I am not an investment banker, but even I understand the sunk cost fallacy. That they owe you a bunch of money is not an additional reason to STAY in this degrading situation.

          1. Hibiscus*

            This is also a factor in why the younger people leave–they aren’t even getting the biweekly dopamine jolt of watching savings grow/loan balances go down/putting money in investments. They’re giving up 100 hrs per week to be dumped on by Vaca and the partners and not getting everything they are owed up front? Nope, not gonna do it.

  213. Stanley’s Mom*

    Vaca- maybe it’s too late for you to see this comment, but i wanted to offer one actionable solution you could offer your analysts without shifting your whole hiring practice or industry.

    I used to work in one of these industries and it would have meant the world to me if project leads let us go home/take a break during the lulls WITHOUT USING PTO (and there were always some lulls. E.g., client suddenly needs a half day to reconvene internally, a deal falls through, end of a major project before the next one has started up, etc.) In these lulls, it costs you nothing to let them go home (with no expectation that they stay online or look busy) and tell them to leave their phones on ring and you’ll call them if they need to come back in.

    It doesn’t change those stretches where you take 2-3 all-nighters in a row but it shows a lot of respect for their time in those rare moments when nothing is really going on. And I could have really used the occasional 3-hour lull to nap or go to the gym without having to make me use my PTO or pretend to be busy to not seem lazy.

    1. Vaca*

      thanks – we don’t really track PTO. During lulls, I encourage people not to come in and to take as much time to rest as they can. Unfortunately, the powers that be are fond of the saying “if you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday.” If you’re not in the office, you’re not working; if you’re not working, you’re not a “real” banker. I’m realizing how much this is the firm’s fault rather than the analysts’ fault. I have to decide what to do with that realization.

      1. Stanley's Mom*

        I guess this is directly what I’m pushing back on. I was always really frustrated that my previous 2-3 days of nonstop work would be forgotten if I chose to rest on the one lull afternoon that came up later. It was especially demoralizing because in those lulls I couldn’t see any real reason why we couldn’t be home (and completely did understand why we needed to be there all-night during a big push).

        I agree with you that it is likely not possible for a small firm to change many of the things about this industry and work, but this is a change that actually could happen. The only reason it isn’t is because of these attitudes of the “powers that be.”

      2. Carly*

        Yeah this is a horrible idea. Now that I’ve gotten all the way down I’m really leaning towards maybe the hours are typical, but your firms culture must be worse if people are quitting like this. A horrible daily work situation is what makes people quit and forgo any future money. Seeing their bosses never spend any time with their kids also makes people want to quit.

  214. RAM*

    OP – I read a bunch of the comments and you mention two things:
    * Some people are overworked and it’s too much
    * Some people want the $$ instead of the work/life balance and if you hire 2 people instead of 1 for half the amount, you’d lose them to competitors

    So why don’t you let people *choose*? If you have the go-getter who wants to make $$ quick, they get placed on the fast track that does the 100 hour work weeks, and the pay is competitive with the company across the street. If you have the junior that wants to live life while they make progress in the field, they only work 40-50 hours a week but it takes them longer to get to senior and they get paid half the amount. Essentially choose your own adventure.. and if someone realizes that the 100 hour work weeks aren’t for them, they can go to the slower track.

    There’s a lot of ways to do this – i’ll let you decide the details based on what makes sense for your industry.

  215. ThatLibTech*

    I’m kind of terrified of the concept of a workplace that sees their employees regularly leave for other workplaces, and assuming those workplaces are known and recognized in the industry, decide to *not* try and like, match what their competitors are doing.

    There’s a reason why it comes up so often here on AAM of when people are leaving their company and are given offers or counter-offers to stay that match or go above what the new company is offering. The fact that your workplace doesn’t seem to even consider this (at least judging by the comments I’ve seen?) is … missing the point on how to *actually* retain employees.

    1. FridayFriyay*

      And not offering what competitors offer because they see the competitors as a “fraud” who will definitely rescind those benefits at some undefined point in the future when they industry experiences a major hardship is…. Fancfiction. This is not a certainty and there is no clear timeline for if or when this will happen and there is no reason not to treat your employees more humanely at least until then – and it’s what they’re leaving to get from other companies.

      1. aebhel*

        It’s also worth noting that a lot of the young people leaving for those benefits probably know or guess that they’re a fraud. What the LW doesn’t seem to quite get is that ‘you have job security here, we won’t lay you off when things get bad, promise’ looks absolutely, HILARIOUSLY fraudulent to basically anyone under the age of 40. I feel reasonably confident about my job security because I’m in civil service and my employer would have to jump through a lot of hoops to fire me without clear cause, but a for-profit firm? Sorry, virtually no young person believes that their employer will put loyalty to them over profits or convenience, and for good reason.

        1. Vaca*

          That’s probably fair. I can tell you, without question, that the promises made by larger firms to protect time off and not to lay people off are lies. Both promises were made to me, and I hit the floor in 2008. I have some crazy stories from that time, including getting a severance letter with somebody else’s name on it. The lifestyle at the big banks is maniacally bad, and so I find it pretty preposterous when I hear from people that they are making the jump to a bulge bracket. Plus, if you think our comp policies suck, wait until you’re getting the bulk of your comp in deferred public stock that you can’t even sell for three years! If you leave, for any reason, you forfeit *all* of it. That’s a fun trick I’ve seen – you just make the lifestyle intolerable so that people choose to walk away from the stock. I stand by my assessment that the promises made will all be broken. I don’t break promises. Part of my fury here is that my firm clearly does.

          1. wut*

            Your firm would fire you tomorrow if they had to. You need to stop telling juniors that they have permanent, pinky-swear job security, because that is not true and they don’t believe it the way you seem to.

          3. MCMonkeyBean*

            To be honest, it seems like you have never gotten over being laid off in 2008 and it’s left you with a highly unreasonable amount of gratitude and loyalty to your current employer/clients in a really unhealthy way. No one can promise you will never be let go. The best you can hope for is to be happy with the current salary and hours in the job you have for as long as you have it.

            There were many years where employers were able to take advantage of people who feel like you do because it was hard to find a job elsewhere. That’s not where the balance of power falls now and you’re not going to find that same level of loyalty in your current recruits because they understand they should not devote themselves so fully to an employer who cannot and will not extend the same back.

  216. Combinatorialist*

    Another possibility is to move everyone from salaried exempt to hourly exempt.

    – Figure out what a fair hourly wage is and pay people that.
    – Tell them you expect 40-50 hours a week, but to be a real superstar, they need to work 100 hours a week.
    – Reframe the training program in terms of number of hours instead of number of months. When they hit the number of hours, they get a pay raise.
    – Use shifts, staggering, 3 14 days on followed by 14 hours night to ensure the coverage you need on your analysts for your mid-level people.

    Everyone “wins” (if we accept that staying in this bonkers industry is a “win”):
    – you retain people who want a “reasonable” work-life balance
    – you have analyst coverage for the tight turnarounds
    – the people who “want” to work 100 hours and be compensated accordingly are free to do so

    You can pay people hourly even if they are exempt.

  217. Tex*

    I have friends who were in investment banking, both at the MBA and undergrad level. At the undergrad level, most of them are interested in paying off their loans and then ‘doing what they really want to do.’ So, ironically, a higher salary might be a deterrent to retention. With MBAs, it was more of a commitment to the industry. Also, they weren’t fresh to the working world, so they knew how to adult instead of grappling with a wholesale change in lifestyle.

    My first suggestion is to look at finance undergrads who are 1-2 years out of school and have a pathway for early career finance professionals ( a lot of industries have rotational programs where anyone under 3 or 5 years of experience is welcome to apply). There are accounting and corporate finance 24 year olds who, if they find out they love finance, may be more than interested to jump into investment banking and be easier to get up to speed to be proficient bankers. Most new grad hires (22 year olds hired directly out of college recruiting), no matter what industry, are disillusioned by their first jobs and really question their choice of career.

    My second suggestion is to stretch it into a three year program, with a contract with signing bonus that needs to be repaid if they leave. The hours should be less overall, but you can take a page from tech companies and software sprints – expectations are to be on the project for 100 hour weeks, and then have significant time off. Similar to consulting assignments: 4-6 weeks of intense work and then on the beach until the next assignment (except in this case I would give them actual time off when they’re not even on call, not just face time in the office). You would need more people and could stagger a schedule so some people are on the project, others are on-call and ready for whatever drops in, and the last group who is actually on vacation. The hours should average a lot lower, but you get the intense work of a small team as needed.

    Lastly, I had friends in this industry who complained that the bosses were ok for them to roll in by 9 am (if they worked late the night before or did not have a call in the morning), but they actually did nothing all day until they got their assignments between 4 and 6 pm. Then they stayed until 3 or 4 in the morning. I don’t know if this has changed recently. Bot utilizing them during the day or just busy work is unconscionable when they are spending that many hours at work.

    Lastly, you’ve mentioned that you are senior leadership but you cannot change an entire industry. It sounds like you’re at a boutique firm and your leadership is scrambling for answers. A smaller firm might mean your firm has more flexibility to try out new ideas. There may be some out of the box suggestions in the commentariat replies but if your management is really desperate and ready to try anything, they just might be more receptive to hearing non-traditional solutions from you.

    Your company declaring that are looking out for their junior analysts welfare and are committed to doing things differently by offering work/life balance would be an incredible selling point for your company’s new recruits – you might even poach some of the larger banks’ best recruits.

    1. MissDisplaced*

      Ugh! I once had a job where we had to be in at 8am but would seldom get any actual work to do until 4-5pm. Then we’d be there until midnight or later and have to still be in at 8. Salaried of course so no overtime pay or you’d bet your shit they’d have changed shifts right quick. It was total wage theft because your $40k salary was less than minimum wage.

  218. Beth*

    OP, it sounds to me like you know what the problem is. Your industry is based on an abusive work schedule for junior employees. You can’t change the structural abuse built into the system; you do what you can on an individual level to mitigate it, but all you can do is chip at the very edges, and it sounds like even that tiny level of impact is seriously burning you out. You can’t offer the level of prestige that bigger firms can offer, so the few that are willing to put up with this are likely to get poached at some point. And you can’t offer enough money to retain people, because for a lot of people, there is no level of money that’s worth this treatment. Of course you have retention problems!

    It sounds like you wrote in hoping that you would find suggestions on how to pull off a miracle. We can’t offer you that. The problem you’re dealing with is bigger than you; I’m taking you at your word that you don’t have the power to change the system, and that’s what would be necessary to have a real impact here. The question then is, given that this system is collapsing, and given that you have no authority to implement a different system, what do you do? Do you want to hold on knowing this is what’s happening? Do you want to get out (out of a retention-related role, or possibly out of the industry) before it collapses? Do you want to hold on in hopes that the system does eventually reform, knowing you have no power over that? I want to give you permission to stop expecting miracles from yourself and start thinking through your realistic options.

  219. Queen Bananamanafofana*

    You say “It’s ALWAYS been this way.”
    Always doesn’t mean forever. Change the way it’s done. Simple as that.

  220. Usually Lurking*

    I work 12 hours days, 7 days a week. But then I get a blessed whole week off, and we’re furloughed for a few months in the winter, and my job is not high stress and I even have the downtime to do some reading or drawing during work hours. And yet, we have really high turnover, and cannot retain anyone with obligations outside of work like a spouse or kids. This year we were down so many people, that I was only getting 3 or 4 days off instead of 7, and I just about walked out the door. Told my boss that I won’t be back next year as I am spent from this year’s chaos. I can’t imagine 100 hour work weeks, every week, for years. There is no amount of money you could pay me to do that.

  221. Hal Jordan*

    I’m 26, just a shade older than the employees you’re struggling to retain, so hopefully I can give you a little insight into your employees’ state of mind.

    From the time I was 22 until about two months ago when I went started grad school, I strung multiple part-time jobs in different industries together to make my living. I would start my day at 5AM, get to my first job at 7AM, leave my last job at midnight or 1AM, and head home and crash. I usually got one day, either Tuesday or Thursday, off a week; once, I was both clever and a suck-up to my three managers, and managed to arrange four straight days off over Christmas — only possible because Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were paid holidays at one of my jobs each. I was doing this for significantly less money than your people — $12-$15/hour for most of that time.

    It. Was. Miserable. I only did it because I had to do it — it was the only option for me to pay my bills and help my family out. I triggered several health problems, including worsening my chronic migraines, something is up with my auditory system, and I aggravating an old sports injury so badly that I can’t walk without a cane in the colder months. (That’s just the stuff I know about — at no point have I had health insurance, so I haven’t been to a doctor since I was 20 and had an asthma attack, so there’s likely more.) I genuinely loved the work I was doing — libraries, grocery, and a music store, plus some remote temping — but I just can’t keep living like that. I spent most of my days off staring into space, unable to get out of bed, dreading going to work the next morning.

    Your employees aren’t me. They’re smarter, more driven, and they have way more options. They don’t have to string together 100+ hours of their week in commuting and work time just to scrape by. If they wanted to be miserable and never see the sun, they could work anywhere. But I think your employees want the same thing I want, the same reason I said “FUCK THIS.” and quit a job I liked: They want to breathe. They want to go to museums and go on hikes and play video games and eat good sushi with better friends. They want to see their partners and siblings and parents and children. Life is so incredibly short. Why would you want to spend it killing yourself for people who don’t care if you live or die?

    I didn’t want to die of COVID. I also wouldn’t want to die of a cocaine overdose or a heart attack at 32. I don’t want to permanently cripple myself any more than I already have. Your employees probably don’t, either.

  222. pfft*

    Excellent reply from Alison.

    But, if the company is successful, LW just needs to hire more people to manage the workload, while still paying the same high salary.

    I would also add that what LW is suggesting as a penalty for an early departure is not only vile, it is also extremely illegal in a number of jurisdictions.

  224. Sleeve McQueen*

    I agree with the “stop overworking” them sentiment, but as Alison said, you also need to think about the role in response to the current environment. I work in an industry where people are staying in entry-level roles for shorter and shorter times. As well as working on retention, we are also thinking “assuming this person will be in a role for 6 months to year, how would we change what we do. How do we ensure important knowledge is kept in the business? How do we handle client-facing functions? What parts of their role don’t require industry-specific skills and perhaps could be done by say, a part-time admin person with hopefully lower turnover “. Whenever I hear Xs have always done Y I grit my teeth.

  225. Nora*

    By requiring these batshit insane hours you are excluding many disabled people and people with families. Frankly it’s a miracle your company hasn’t been sued for discrimination yet.

  226. Phil*

    The movie business is like this for below the line-techs, hair, makup,etc-but without the bonuses. And because of it there have been deaths driving home.

    1. Lenora Rose*

      And because of it there’s been a massive fight that nearly involved a full fledged strike to change those hours that ended last weekend, and another very public death just this week due to trying to hire un-unionized workers to replace weapon handlers.

      Peoples’ willingness to put up with this is ebbing hard in all industries.

  227. Retired (but not really)*

    At my first full time job, many years ago, we had a single month when our department had an unprecedented number of new accounts to process. Unfortunately we had to work very long hours to accomplish this. It was only the final week of the month that we put in 18 hour days. A second shift of new employees was scheduled to begin the following month but there was no way in the world that we could have combined training new workers with getting what needed to be done in the time we had before the end of the month. In fact we didn’t quite make the deadline but made sure we got the vast majority of the most pressing part done.
    If we had had to continue with that sort of schedule (2 weeks of 12 hr days and one week of 18 hr days) for longer than one month I’m pretty sure all of us would have been totally unable to do so. How your company can expect people to do so for two whole years is totally mind boggling.
    And yes we were a bunch of about a dozen twenty somethings. The second shift which about half of us switched to as trainers was mostly made up of older workers, many of them entering the workplace for the first time as widows. Got to know some really cool ladies. The night of the moon landing we all went to one of ladies home and watched it together as a group which was really fun! Tells you how long ago that was.

    Please, please, please help your company figure out a way to get the job done with more people working shorter hours per day. Don’t just try to get people to continue torturing themselves even if you offer to pay them more.

  228. ets*

    I suspect this is high finance or big 3 consulting and that the letter writer has close to zero ability to change such an entrenched culture. Regardless, the reason that your workers leave is that you’re no longer the only game in town for young, bright ambitious recent grads; the pay in tech can be just as good and the hours are much, much better. Hopefully, this culture will change at some point — it’s unnecessary and inhuman.

  229. SnappinTerrapin*

    When I was chief of police in a small town for a year, I averaged 90-100 hours a week on duty, and was on call the rest of the time. And because of the stakes of the decisions I could be called on to make, even if out of town, I chose to refrain from drinking even a little bit while I held that job.

    The compensation wasn’t that high, either, but it was an experience I wouldn’t trade.

    And not just because I met and married my first (dearly departed) wife during that year.

    I was in my late 30s at the time. I had the opportunity to hire and train a young rookie. I gained invaluable experience in keeping the peace in a town that was so politically dysfunctional that we went several months without a municipal court judge. I gained a lot of respect, even from people who were adamantly opposed to anything proposed by the mayor who hired me.

    The experience was valuable when I returned to work in a State agency I had previously served, and it has been valuable as I worked as a supervisor in four different private security firms.

    But I still wouldn’t recommend working 100 hours a week as a long-time career path. It was just the right thing to do under those particular circumstances.

    I do occasionally miss sleeping with a radio on the head of the bed, with my uniform laid out on a chair, and my boots, socks and gunbelt in the floor at the foot of the bed. My youngest brother is a firefighter, and I could probably beat him getting dressed in an emergency!

  230. Unusually Anon Tonight*

    Vaca, I don’t know if you’re still reading the comments this far down the thread, but I have to ask: is your undergraduate degree from the same tier of schools you typically recruit analysts from? Do you have an MBA? The answers to those questions may explain a lot about how you view career mobility and loyalty to your firm.

    I don’t mean this in an insulting way at all. The reason I ask is that almost everyone I know who’s stayed in a toxic job like this (including myself) didn’t necessarily have the “credentials of choice” to feel competitive on the job market. Even with tons of experience and legitimately top-flight skills. This includes a couple people I know who moved up in IB and private equity on the basis of being rockstar analysts, rather than because they left to get a top-flight MBA. Both of them have the same sorts of attitudes towards career development of juniors that you’re describing, as well as the same ideas about accountability to clients.

    Those ideas have a common underpinning of unlimited sweat equity being the most important thing someone can offer to their firm or industry. When you don’t have the right degrees or are perhaps a member of a marginalized group or not of the right class background, it’s easy to fall into that trap and hold it up as your value proposition. The thing is, though, that’s not reasonable to impose on junior staff. Especially if they have a lot of the characteristics and bona fides that lend themselves to mobility in finance or elsewhere. If you don’t have these yourself, this might be a much more uncomfortable journey to embark on, because you’ll have to accept that your charges can get as far as you and quit a bit further with less pain. Is that going to help you come to peace with your career path? No, but it’s not fair to hold them to an unreasonable and harmful standard, either.

  231. JM60*

    You’re looking at ways to penalize them for leaving … but having exhausted, overworked people who are there only because you will bill them if they leave is a recipe for demoralized and resentful staff.

    If I were working for the OP and got burned out, having these penalties in my contract would make me try to get fired to avoid the penalties. In this case, I might just try working “only” 40 hours a week.

  232. Feral Fairy*

    I grew up with a parent who is a successful attorney and well known in his field. He did not work in BigLaw. Anyways, he worked a lot of long hours when I was a kid and then he’d frequently work during the weekends as well. I still don’t think there have been any extended periods of time when he was working 100 hours a week. That is a lot to expect of anyone, no matter how much they make.

    If people are leaving for the same types of positions at bigger competitors, it’s worth trying to find out if these companies have figured out how to make the workload a little less excessive. If people are leaving after 9 months and getting hired into non fixed term positions at different companies, the 2 year fixed term set up might be getting outdated since other companies are seeing the value in hiring people wjo havent completed their 2 year contracts.

  233. Observer*

    but what else can we be doing to keep people for the full two-year program?

    Stop treating them like machines?

    I’m sympathetic to the pleas that this job is life-consuming, but it’s ALWAYS been that way and nobody pretends otherwise during the interview process.

    So? Replace the phrase “life consuming” with “life threatening” and then tell me that “it’s always been that way” is a reasonable response. The fact that something ridiculous has “ALWAYS been that way” and everyone knows it doesn’t mean that the problem is any less serious because it’s been around for a long time. And it’s also worht pointing out that “life threatening” is not so far off the mark. The industries where this kind of thing are “normal” have been rocked by some fairly high profile deaths – suicides and collapses in young and healthy folks who simply couldn’t manage. From what you say, the only reason it hasn’t been worse is because more people are quitting before that point.

    It doesn’t speak well to you and your industry attitudes that your first thought in response to choose to quit rather than literally kill themselves is to try to penalize them. No suggestion of perhaps rethinking the program.

    Your logic doesn’t engender any sympathy. The fact that you went through this hazing (whether that’s what it’s intended as, that IS what it is, among other ways to describe it) doesn’t make it any better. Just like it’s not ok to claim that a kid who won’t go to school without shoes is spoiled because grandpa walked to school barefoot in the snow.

    I’m also finding hard to respond politely to your description of the situation as “lack of work life balance.” That’s not what it is, and it’s disgusting that you try to cloak the inhumanity here that way. 100 hour weeks is NOT just about never getting a weekend off. It’s about literally not having enough time to take care of basic needs. It’s 14 – 15 hour days, 7 days a week. Which means that on a *good* day, your junior staff gets enough time to commute to their apartment, eat something hot, get a reasonable amount of sleep and then get up early enough to actually take a shower and eat breakfast before heading back to the office. On not such a good day? They get to “choose” whether to skip food or sleep.

    The surprise is not that people are jumping ship. The surprise is that your manage to keep anyone on.

    I would say that your industry had better start rethinking this structure. Because one of these days the wrong person is going to die and then regulations WILL come down the pike.

  234. castle*

    Previous generations put in these hours early in their careers because there was an expectation that a career was possible. Sometimes I don’t think older generations understand how much the world of work has changed for the current youth. Today’s college graduates have only ever seen the economy in the toilet post-2008 crash. Nobody stays in a job longer than a couple of years. The concept of staying at one company and working your way up the ladder until retirement is a fantasy.
    My father is 75 and he still receives a monthly pension that would pay my entire Bay Area apartment rent from a job he left in 1995. The concept of a pension just *does not exist* anymore if you’re not in government.

    People don’t want to put up with these hours anymore for zero reward. It’s not viable or acceptable anymore to sell your soul and body to a job and after a couple of years find a spouse who will stay at home alone with the kids because you’re never around. People want better now and they deserve it.

  235. pcake*

    It’s like an endurance test, only there’s no reason for the test when you could hire one more person or maybe two to take up the slack.

    When I was in my 20s, I worked 100 hour weeks. I ended up breaking down completely with severe burnout syndrome, literally non-functional. For the first time in my life, I developed phobias; I was afraid to go up stairs, could no longer drive on freeways, had severe nightmare during what little sleep I got, and my life completely fell apart. I was unable to work for nearly a year after I left that job. Months after those 7-day, 100-hour weeks, I’d find I was crying for no reason, I couldn’t sleep, my blood pressure, which had always been normal, was very high. I never fully recovered.

    Unless there’s a compelling, business-related reason to overwork people so badly, please hire a couple more people and let everyone have time to live their lives – or at least get some sleep, time for a shower and time to eat meals at a normal pace.

  236. Imsostartled*

    I think I’ve posted once in the past 10 (OMG 10?!?!) years I’ve been a reader, but this post made me do it! I am not 100% certain that the OP is operating in good faith here. Well, that’s not exactly the right way to put it, but there is something off about it when hundreds of posters are telling you one thing and you state that A) you can’t do anything to change it, B) There are reasons?? why the industry works this way? Like I get it, I like to think I’m a vital employee/person too and while I do think I make a positive impact in the world being a med dev engineer, I know for a fact there are others more important then me. and C) You can not leave (at least for 6 months) because of the extraordinary trust these clients give you and the relationship you have with them. Even thought they will toss you like old news if you “possibly” request a extra day/hour/minute to get things done.

    I sense this is more about receiving attention from us here at Askamanager at this point, because the advice is clear and not actually that tricky. Plus you haven’t really responded to the posters that have put hard math into the calculations where it shows you that while yes it’s a huge amount of money to receive in two years, they are actually making an average/lower salary per hour.

    Frankly, I think you should take a good look at your life and if it’s really what you’d like it to be. Actually have a conversation with your spouse and kids (if you have either) and be vulnerable and ask them if they’d be ok with you making less, but being around more. Or, if that doesn’t resonate, just be honest with yourself… You love this amount of work, don’t want it to change and don’t really care about potential ramifications to your life. Very very very few people will be able to live up to this standard. Plus even if people “can” work those hours, most don’t want to and would find other options.

    One last thing. You made a comment about (paraphrasing) “Bodies flying from the rooftops when the next one hits” I assume you mean from those who were laid off by other firms and those who lost a lot of money??? (Side note, that was horrendous imagery). Just …. no, I mean sure some people will commit suicide when they face a job loss or money loss. Most won’t and most have been through that type of thing before. I’ve been laid off from a company that I was (unwisely) very dedicated to and I WAS FINE! More then fine. Guess what? That’s happened to thousands and thousands of people these past 2 years because of COVID! Jobs and money lost. Poof. Guess what’s pretty traumatic? Maybe a pandemic? So I found it a bit crass and naïve to think that because there might be another recession coming, everyone is going to commit suicide and not be cognizant of the TIME you are currently saying this in.

  237. Time for change*

    OP- Your ideas on how to keep staff longer are exactly what you should implement if you don’t want anyone to accept the job offer in the first place.

    It’s a new age and the younger generations have realized that there isn’t a dollar figure on the planet worth giving up life for. They’ve watched previous generations waste their entire lives working to build a fortune only to have it wiped away whether from economic downturns or medical expenses. Even you admit that you don’t want to work every weekend. And I’m willing to bet you’re paid significantly more than $175k. Realistically, that’s not a lot of money in most major cities where people waiting tables can make $120k in just 40 hours a week. Please stop fooling yourself into thinking they’re well paid.

    The only choice companies have now is to embrace change. The longer you fight it the more it will cost you. Hire more people at the same salary. Expect 60 hours a week out of them. Give them days off. They may not see as many projects from beginning to end, but they will certainly still learn and be useful. This letter is obviously from the investment banking industry which is full of people over valuing themselves. You’re not doctors or saving lives. You’re playing with a made up system that benefits a very small percentage of the population. It’s not a feel good job. I know this from experience, as someone who has worked 80-100 hour weeks and would never go back.

    1. Alexa*

      Expect 40 hours a week. Why do people keep saying 60 hours? That’s 10 hours a day six days a week, it’s completely unacceptable.

      1. Time for change*

        I was suggesting 5 days, 12 hours a day. For a short period of time this is doable for young and hungry staff. I certainly didn’t mind doing it early in my career before I had a family. People keep saying 60 hours because in some industries dropping from 100 to 40 is just not reasonable yet, especially to keep the salary the same. At 60 hours a week that’s $56 an hour for junior staff, which is competitive enough to ensure they have applicants. If they cut down to 40 hours and offer half the pay it winds up being significantly less an hour. While it would be fantastic for them to pay people $175k to work 40 hours a week, that’s just not going to happen. Corporate greed prevents that every time.

  238. Ouch*

    At 100 hrs/wk salary of $275-300k equals to $55-60/hr at best. That is the same as $180k salary at 60 hrs/wk. People need to have a life. The workday simply needs to be structured differently.

  239. Heffalump*

    In 1992-93 I worked a 4-month contract assignment where I was working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. It wasn’t actually mandatory that I put in that many hours, but I’d recently been laid off from a direct job of several years, it was my first experience with contract work, and I thought I should sock away some money while I could. The hourly wage was good by my standards at the time, and anything above 40 hours a week was time and a half.

    It was tolerable because the logistics of my life (grocery shopping, the commute to the assignment, laundry) weren’t too time-consuming, and I knew in advance about how long the assignment would be. I also drew a line and decided that 10-hour days were the longest I’d do, full stop.

    Having said that, I don’t think I could have sustained this for even 8 months.

    I wonder whether the LW’s employees think they can handle the workload when they hear about it during interviews, but the reality of it is another matter.

  240. MyGoingConcern*

    First, stop deferring comp to year end. Both basic finance and psychology agree that the dollar you pay me today is worth more (in every respect) than one you promise to pay me in a year. If your bonuses & incentives aren’t motivating enough then try having them come more frequently, not less. You’ve got data to show that the current tactic hasn’t worked and more frequent incentives is a better fit for the high-octane character of your industry. At the same time, review the system to make sure bonuses & performance incentives are tied to the best metrics – that’s rarely just time at the desk.

    The tougher change will be moving to a different model that doesn’t limit your employee pool to people willing to work 100 hour weeks for years. That population is disappearing – it’s a cultural shift that isn’t just impacting your firm or industry. The good news on that front is that it means there’s zero reason to believe your firm is alone in this dilemma. The ecosystem has changed, and now it’s time to see which firms adapt to the dwindling of your favorite food source and which die off. Start putting together numbers on how you could reduce required hours & increase the headcount. That doesn’t necessarily mean doubling your junior staff; there’s a good chance you’ll find that your ideal candidate thrives on 60-80 hour weeks & good vacation time to spend their $$$. *Extra vacation time makes a great incentive when you’re working crazy hours, btw.* And as long as you’ve got a strong performance-based incentive system in place there’s no reason to expect you’ll lose the people thriving in the current system. They can still put in the hours, rake in the cash and be the hotshot up & comers. Your talent pool will just expand.

    1. wut*

      Especially since @Vaca keeps saying they are owed a lot of money, and that’s why they’re trapped in this hell. The juniors see that and decide they’re never going to get paid out anyway.

  241. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    I’ve worked, briefly, in software development in an industry that has an appalling tendency to overwork staff, keep them in the office all day, subject them to incredible levels of harassment (especially if you’re female) and regard it as just ‘what the industry requires’

    By the amount of news coming out about horrible incidents (including people ending their lives because it’s got so bad) it certainly isn’t what is required. There’ll always be the ‘it’s part of the culture, you have to fit in’ people but gradually the public opinion is starting to swing against firms that treat staff like they don’t need sleep/a life outside of work.

    Moving away from a ‘well, let’s work people to unsustainable levels’ ethos may be slow and take a lot of effort but it’s better than having the company name vilified across the net for harming their staff.

    1. Andy*

      Specifically in software development, these sort of hours are choice. They can be choice by management or worker himself. However, business itself does not require it. It is strictly because somebody wants the company to have long hours.

      1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        Very true. That whole ‘crunch time requires it’ thing is simply bad project management.

  242. MentallyTired*

    No amount of money replaces mental health, physical health (since clearly there isn’t time for doctors appts or exercise), relationships with friends and family that could irreparably damaged.

    Do the math on these hours. Assuming 100 hour work week and 8 hours of sleep a night, that is 12 hours left for all chores, hygiene, seeing other humans, handling tasks that can’t be ignored like paying bills. That’s not enough. It’s just not.

    They are quitting because this kind of grind for that long, is not just about work. It really equates to the mental/emotional labor of having a life that is only work and nothing else, and the fact that we now live in a culture where people already KNOW it’s damaging to their well being in the long run.

  243. Jane*

    Genuine question, not being sarcastic:

    What does working 100 hours a week look like? What hours/days do you do? I can’t get my head around this – can someone who works these hours share what their week looks like?

    1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      Not OP but when I was pulling serious health wrecking hours I’d leave home at around 4am and not get back till around 8pm. I did it for nearly 2 years. It nearly killed me, it nearly killed my marriage. Never again.

    2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      Rise at 10 am.
      Get to work at around 11 am.
      Breakfast at ~6 pm (what do *you* call your first meal of the day?)
      Wrap work up at 1 am.
      Leave at 2 am.
      Drive home with the windows down while telling off strategically selected coworkers in absentia.
      Zonk around 3 am.

      Repeat until the asylum.

      Accomplish maybe 33% more than you could in 8 hours.

    3. Lissajous*

      I’ve booked 100 hr weeks once. However:
      – it was a remote mine site, i.e you don’t have to run your home life when you’re there. Normal day would be 12 hrs, and all you have to do is your own washing. No cooking, no cleaning, nothing.
      – the 14+ hr days included 2 hrs of commute each day (camp was full so we had to stay in town an hour away. We’d drive in, run pre-start with the crews, and then the people staying in town would go get breakfast from the mess. Boss was perfectly happy for us to leave early and do a shorter day, but it was quicker to wait for the mess to open and grab something quickly for dinner than to find something at a restaurant in town. We were carpooling – I usually drove in the morning, because once I’m awake I’m awake, something else did the drive back.)
      – We were basically doing 5am to 7pm including the drive, longer sometimes if commissioning ran into hiccups (that water pipeline has to be working, can’t leave it gushing a fountain!)
      – I literally just worked and slept. Normally on site the 12 hr day (6 to 6) gives enough time for a bit of wind down.
      – I did it for three weeks. I remember thinking when the plane landed when I flew home that if there were any messages on my phone from my boss when I turned it on I would burst into tears right then and there in the airport. I had nothing left to give. (Fortunately, there were not.) I also lost about 5-6% of my body weight on that swing, mainly because sleep was more important than eating a full dinner. Not good.

      And all of that was on a roster – so there’s at least a week off when you get back. Doing it all the time for two years? No. No way.

      When the mining industry FIFO rosters have better work hours than you, maybe it’s time to rethink your industry.

  244. Ana Gram*

    Did y’all see that study a couple years ago that said more money does make people happier….until about $70K/year? After that, they are not significantly happier. Yeah, that’s what happening here. OP, you saw this in action when you raised the pay and it didn’t help. These new hires don’t want more money. They want free time. Until the equation changes to give them more, this problem won’t stop.

  245. Paul Pearson*

    “I’m sympathetic to the pleas that this job is life-consuming, but it’s ALWAYS been that way and nobody pretends otherwise during the interview process”

    You keep identifying the problem and handwaving it. The job you are offering is life consuming, expects utterly unreasonable and unacceptable hours, is debilitating to mental health or any kind of life outside the job

    You know the problem. Address it. You can’t keep nibbling at the edges and skirting round it and hope to fix anything.

    1. Lizzie (with a deaf cat)*

      Hello Vaca, about a thousand comments up-thread, you listed the reasons why you are doing this job. One of those really jumped out at me, where you said “Psychologically, if I’m not working I’m getting depressed and/or into trouble”. I feel there is a lot worth unpacking in that sentence, and I think it could be very valuable to you to talk about it with a qualified therapist. You don’t need to detail anything for us! But please find someone qualified to help you with this. Depression can be treated, and “getting into trouble” can be dealt with as well. Best wishes to you, Lizzie

      1. Liz*

        A thousand times this. As a trainee therapist myself, I couldn’t help but notice that statement. I try to avoid playing the “get therapy” card too much because I realise I’m biassed in that regard, but I do feel this is warranted. If work is your distraction from life’s problems, it’s natural to throw itself into it to the detriment of everything else, but when work BECOMES the problem, that can leave you cornered. I would gently suggest therapy to tackle the underlying cause of your workaholic tendencies and your depression and risk taking, and you may find that frees you up to approach your work choices in a more flexible manner and give you more autonomy.

    2. Paul Pearson*

      And if you can’t change this fundamental problem then your initial question is moot – you cannot make people stay. You cannot address the major, life destroying madness that is forcing them out.

      Your choices:
      Accept it, keep picking up the slack and long hours you think your industry requires. I advise against this

      Don’t pick up the slack, let it collapse. Sometimes those who DO have the power to change things will not be moved until the landslide is heading their way. Stop supporting it, let big boss see changes need to be made

      Leave

      But making people work these ridiculous conditions is not only impossible but immoral. This system needs to die. You get to chose whether you burn up trying to save it, try to direct it in its descent or get clear of the wreckage

  246. Cheesesteak in Paradise*

    I haven’t read all the comments but I don’t think OP explained why if they have enough money to hire one person for $200k for 100 hours, they can’t hire 2-3 people for 75-100k for 35-45 hours each? That’s what most 24/7 workplaces do.

    1. Mannheim Steamroller*

      Don’t forget to consider space requirements. Double the number of people means twice as much office space with twice as many desks, chairs, computers, etc. — unless they share desks on rotating shifts.

      1. Alexa*

        Umm people can work from home now – this is finance in all likelihood. There’s no reason more people needs to equal more office space anymore.

        1. gmg22*

          Sure it seems like you can do the work from home, but everything I’ve read about this industry over the last 18 months indicates that the big banks couldn’t WAIT to force people back to the office. Micromanagement of junior staff is baked into the culture, and it’s hard to micromanage remote employees. OP has described what sounds like an old-school firm that simply can’t or won’t change anything about how they do business. Betting that if we asked about their pandemic-era approach to WFH, the answer would be something like “Well, the senior partners kept us in the office until Cuomo shut everything down and not a minute before, then still tried to argue that we were ‘essential,’ then finally caved, but pushed us all back to the office the minute it was humanly possible/not openly defying New York State emergency orders.”

  247. Guin*

    My son went to good schools and many of his high school and college friends went into this horrible financial industry. He is a successful musician and a teacher, but for a long time felt badly because all his friends were making six figures right out of school. I finally got him to see that his friends envied HIM – he was getting paid to play music! He got the summers off! He was home every night by five! Meanwhile his financial friends hadn’t had a vacation in two years and were living in shoeboxes in NYC. Five years after graduation, only about half his friends are still in the financial meat-grinder.

  248. Liz*

    OP, I get the impression you’re ultimately asking this from a place of self preservation. You’re picking up a lot of the slack when colleagues leave and you seem to be realising that this isn’t any more sustainable for you than it is for them.

    You’ve said that you can’t singlehandedly change the industry, but if your colleagues are leaving for firms that DO offer more time off, that would suggest that the industry is already changing (or at least parts of it) and your organisation is clinging to the old model and losing staff as a result.

    As many others are pointing out, there is a shift in employee values and economic balance. Workers value their wellbeing more. Salaries have not risen in line with inflation and property prices, so those high wages might not be “worth it” in terms of real money any more. The old era of the housewife taking care of all that “life” stuff while the menfolk work around the clock is gone, so many of those junior employees will most likely be doing far more at home than previous generations. With that in mind, I don’t think penalising these workers financially is going to make a difference. I don’t even think offering more money is going to cut it either, because the workload is going to be quite literally impossible for 99.9% of the population, quite regardless of their initial drive and motivation.

    So what CAN you do? You can make an attempt to argue the point to your employers. You can hold up the evidence that employees are leaving for better working conditions, look into what those conditions are and how those firms are able to offer them, and propose how you may do the same. Your employers may see reason. They may not. You can’t force them.

    I would beg you to look to yourself and assess how you can bring about change for yourself. How unhappy are you with your current work situation? Assuming you can’t force your employers to change the culture OR force those junior workers to stay, how can YOU change your circumstances? You talk about feeling an obligation to your clients – I’d ask you to challenge that feeling of obligation. If you were suddenly taken ill tomorrow, what would they do? Odds are, they would ultimately find another advisor or firm to work with.

    You also mentioned having money tied up in this role – I don’t pretend to understand the mechanics of this, but beware of the sunk cost fallacy: just because you have poured x amount of time and cash into something does not mean you must continue to do so. If you are struggling this much, would the loss of that sum be worth it to buy back your life? What is your wellbeing worth to you? Time with your family? The freedom to work in a stable and respectful environment? If you could put a dollar amount on those things, would absorbing that financial cost simply be the price worth paying for a better life? And if not now, then when? How many more years of this are you willing/able to maintain? What if your situation remains changed for 5 years? What about 10? At what point would you cut your losses and move on to greener pastures?

    I’ve read all of your comments and I’m heartened to see that you are not exhibiting the “I suffered so you should all suffer” mentality. That’s good to see. But I do think you yourself have been so immersed in this toxic environment for so long that at least for yourself, you see it as something that must simply be endured. But it is not. You can leave. You might take a financial hit, but you can decide whether or not it is worth it. Have a serious talk with yourself and with your family and seriously consider all your options, because life does not have to be this way. There are other jobs, other firms, other industries. Look to them, and make an informed choice, but don’t back yourself into a corner. You are clearly a very motivated, capable individual and you will do well, wherever you choose to direct those energies.

  249. Lizzie (with a deaf cat)*

    For those in the comments who like Transactional Analysis, I think we have all played a hard (and absorbing) psychological game of “why don’t you -yes but” (google Eric Berne, Games People Play, ‘why don’t you-yes but’ if you want to know more). I really like Transactional Analysis for seeing where and how we get ‘stuck’ in our thinking, and how we approach changing things.
    Brief overview of this game (called a game, because there are players, not because it is fun or tricksy) – the words adult, Child, and Parent describe different ego states.
    “This game begins when a person states a problem in their life, and another responds by offering constructive suggestions on how to solve it. The subject says ‘yes, but…’ and proceeds to find issue with the solutions. In adult mode she would examine and probably take on board a solution (an Adult stance), but this is not the purpose of the exchange. Its purpose is to allow the subject to gain sympathy from others in her inadequacy to meet the situation (Child mode). The problem-solvers, in turn, get the opportunity to play wise Parent.

  250. thatrecruiters*

    I’ve found your problem. If they are really working 100 hour weeks, and I’m assuming no vacation, thats 5200 hours a year. Even at 275k thats 52$ an hour.

    I work in tech recruitment – highly competitive, and likely going after the same talent you are. My company has fantastic work/life balance. 100k-125k base salaries are not uncommon, for “junior” people with maybe a couple years of work experience if they are good. That’s not including stock options. For engineers? Packages of 200k for relatively junior aren’t crazy. And honestly, we are working like 35 hours a week. Maybe less. By that math, my team is paid more on average hourly than your team.

    You’re hiring people smart enough to work in (I’m assuming) investment banking – they’re smart enough to do the above math. And they’re smart enough to realize they can earn probably 150k base salary or more at Google, and get a sweet stock package worth x2 that amount over 4 years.

    Investment banking is no longer where the money is at. Your salary should be at least triple if not quadruple what you are paying to compete with big tech companies that can pay top dollar, plus with stock, for a great work/life balance today – not in a few years once they’ve paid their dues.

    Adapt or die. Same as companies that are paying barely livable wages complaining they can’t find talent.

  251. WantonSeedStitch*

    Penalizing people who are unwilling to sacrifice their mental and physical well-being for the sake of work is not going to be sustainable. If there’s absolutely no possible way you can structure things such that the people who work for you can have something roughly approaching a normal schedule (like the idea of twice as many people, half as much work, half as much pay), then what you need to do is find some additional incentives to provide for the people willing to make the sacrifice, rather than penalties for the ones who don’t. And you have to make sure you give them as much support as possible, because they are going to need it. Have a damned good EAP available. Have the best health benefits money can buy, and very little of the cost should be passed on to the employees. Make it easy for people to work remotely as much as possible. And if they aren’t able to take any real time off during those two years, make it not just possible, but expected, that they will take a LONG vacation at the end of that time to recharge.

  252. Alexa*

    100 hours a week/52 weeks a year (because no one is getting time off at that level, let’s be honest) at 275,000 per year works out to about 52 bucks an hour. That’s not “excellent” pay, that’s a living wage for (in all likelihood) NYC.

    Nobody is seeing this as an attractive lifestyle anymore and these monstrous employers need to take a beat, hire triple the number of people, allow for flexibility and vacations, and cut down hours, simple as that.

  253. Workfromhome*

    All the ideas regarding “backloading” compensation to after the 2 year apprenticeship is done is really just “kicking the can down the road”.

    People already leave for other jobs after 6 months. All backloading accomplishes is that some hardy souls will circle the date 2 years down the road that they get their full payout and have a new job lined up to start after the day after. Yes you get an extra year work out of them but you still have churn its just pushed out a little farther.

    It brings to mind that joke cartoon where the boss says “The beatings will continue until morale improves”. Ask what made you leave after 6 months. The answer is the crushing workload. Its like paying someone to go in a 100 mile race and 50 miles in they break their legs and c ant walk anymore. Are you going to tell them well if you finish the race we will give you a bonus or if you dont finish the race you wont get paid? is that going to make them crawl 50 miles on their hands?

  254. The Prettiest Curse*

    OP, you remind me of a buggy whip manufacturer looking around at all the new cars and wondering why they’re about to go out of business. The simple answer is that people aren’t buying what you’re selling any more, because they want to buy something else.
    So you need to find out what would be most attractive in terms of staff retention, and start offering that as part of your package. Otherwise, your company is going to be the modern-day equivalent of a buggy whip manufacturer.

  255. Kaiko*

    I know this comment thread is a slog, so I hope this doesn’t get buried, but: I think you have a couple places to put this “can we fine the staff that leave before two years?” energy into more productive places.

    1) Have you actually evaluated why people are leaving? Having data in hand that says “80% of our staffing losses before end of year one are directly related to workload and work-life balance” is a lot different from saying “a lot of people leave because of the hours!” While it seems obvious, from my experience working with data-driven sectors, changes have to come from data. So compile as much of it as you can: attrition rates, exit interviews, productivity month-over-month pegged to individual staffers, requests for PTO, all of it. Model the data to show the pain points. Work with experts. Solving this problem will save you money in the long run and shift *your* culture in ways that are more appealing to staffers; without staffers, you can’t serve clients, so this is a good thing, right?

    2) I know you’ve said this is an industry-wide norm and you’re not in a position to drive change. Let that go. You’re not trying to solve IB – you’re trying to solve retention at your firm. There are a lot of really smart comments here, most of which boil down to “please don’t try to force this non-normal work thing just because you did it/do it” and “for the love of god, just job-share already.” Splitting the role into two, with an early shift and late shift, does ensure better client coverage, fresher workers, and probably solves the retention problem for you. If there are adjustments to be made, then make them – you’d mentioned something about “the person who did the model has to be around to answer questions about it,” which is in no way the same as “only one person can make or understand any given model.” Have your split staff have overlap time to coordinate. Figure it out.

    3) Building on 2 – is having someone available for each client not a selling point? Am I missing something? If I was a client, I’d be good with having a dedicated team of two working on my file – it means I can call at 8 AM and midnight and have someone pick up the phone, and that person isn’t loopy with fatigue, resentment, or distraction. And advertising this to potential staffers is a way of saying “by the way, we understand you’re human beings and not just work-machine cogs that we haven’t figured out how to AI yet.”

    4) Please do not stay attached to this model of work as “the way.” From my understanding, this 100-workweek norm is relatively young (like, younger than me, and I’m a millennial), and if you’re getting significant pushback from employees about it, it’s time to shift into the next phase of work. You’re in a position to figure out what that is.

    1. introverted af*

      I really like that your first point actually drives at ways to convince people to change as well

    2. College Career Counselor*

      Re: #1 above….I hesitate to speak for Vaca/OP, but from what they’ve said, they don’t have the time to conduct that data-gathering and analysis and there is absolutely no inclination of TPTB to hire it out (because they don’t care). The industry and this firm demonstrate fundamentally perverse incentives on hiring/retaining staff and glorify a toxic culture in the name of selecting the “best and the brightest” when, as others have pointed out, all they are selecting for is people who can handle 100 hours per week being available when the work shows up (often after 6pm).

      1. NotAnotherManager!*

        I think this is accurate. BigLaw was always difficult to change because the people at the top were the once who did their 100-hour weeks and looked down on people who couldn’t hack it. They also brought in the most work and profited the most from that model. It’s also a relationship business, so workers are not fungible. Trying to get leadership in this sort of structure is extremely difficult, and the only reason BigLaw ever inches toward change is because the clients demand it.

  256. Student*

    You’ve been in this field a while, and you say that you went through 100-hour weeks when you started out.

    Surely, then, you realize that 100-hr weeks in 2021 are profoundly different than 100-hr weeks in 2010 or 2000 or 1990. I’m not (just) talking about the pandemic. Cell phones! Changes to info available on the internet, especially for investing! Cryptocurrency, the great recession, the dot-com crash, etc.

    How many of those 100 hours a week were you nose-to-grindstone, vs more social activities? Have you thought a out how that’s changed? Because it has changed in every field to be less social, more instant jumping for bosses, clients, etc. with easy access to you via phone all the time. Were clients more courteous and fun, and less irrational, demanding, changed their minds less? Thank the internet – that’s also happened in virtually all fields, since anybody can now spend 2 minutes reading a Reddit post or wiki article or watching a video and think they know better than an expert (…and sometimes be right!)

    100 hours now at entry level in your field is probably significantly harder than it was when you did it. It’s happened to a lot of high end fields.

  257. Boof*

    Well op, if it’s any comfort it sounds like this is a widespread phenomenon, so much so that new york times recently wrote about it (will attach link in reply)
    Sounds like popularity of investment banking and heck, maybe even the crazy lifestyle was popularized up in the 1980s, peaked in the 1990s, and crashed in 2008. Probably time to find a new model; is it really even a path to be a billionaire (high millionaire?) anymore? Sounds like people used to do it to earn millions a year eventually

    2. Boof*

      Sorry OP I know I’m all over this letter – probably because as a US physician I have seen this debate and I think the medical system has weathered some major changes in allowing for more work life balance / less brutal training.
      I think you are hearing claxtons that things need to change. In medicine, someone who made a good political symbol had to die for the change to get popularized (ie, failure to recognize what I think was seratonin syndrome or malignant hyperthermia, treating it with restrains instead of benzos etc… ); I can’t help but think the 2008 crash should have also been the IB wakeup call, but maybe it didn’t
      I hear you that you don’t think you can change the system. I hear you that the system worked for you.
      If you have any authority, however, I bet you can start making, or even just advocating, for little changes that might make the difference between breaking a trainee and getting them through.
      — it will be critical that they have regular, protected time off. At least 1 day a week where they will NOT be suddenly called by work
      — offload any busywork they do not need to do, or only need to do a little of, to support staff; hire support staff if you can and/or start advocating to do it, run numbers to the bigwigs who can approve these decisions about how much more efficient it will be, etc etc.
      — if you don’t already have locking call rooms with a bed or comfey couch to crash and take a nap in, make that happen. Do everything you can to allow enough sleep, time to exercise, etc, by minimizing commutes, making sure that what time is off is protected, and that there’s enough of a chunk, etc.
      — consider again looking at physician residency duty hour caps etc as a model on how to try to change things and what should be considered the bare minimum off time for an intense training program

      1. Boof*

        Oh yes finally treating them well emotionally, agreeing things are hard but they will get through, and not belittling their concerns fatigue, thanking them for their hard work, etc may also make a big difference. Thoroughly evaluate your group’s culture, how they treat trainees (are they treated as valuable team members, or underlings who ought to be grateful, how are complaints handled, how are small mistakes handled, etc). Etc.

  258. Maths are hard.*

    I’m seeing a lot of people commenting on the 14 hour day/7 days a week math.

    A new piece of math on this that I haven’t seen yet on this 100-hour workweek at 175k..

    They are earning 33 dollars an hour BEFORE taxes and deductions. (38/hr at the 200k mark)

    How is that even remotely justifiable for that workload and that work-life balance?

  259. Stephp*

    This is most likely investment banking – as many here have mentioned. Though it could also be Public Accounting or Big Law. While it is true that it is client service and not making widgets, it IS possible to assign less clients per junior staff or more junior staff per client.
    As Allison mentioned, there is a very simple answer – higher more people and pay them less. The ONLY reason this is not already happening is the mindset that Allison mentioned – it’s always been this way.
    It’s amazing to me that some of the most educated minds can’t get past that one phrase.

  260. Hacker For Hire*

    If the OP is trying to kill the new hires, it would be quicker and easier to put strychnine in their coffee.

  261. ELK*

    Have you even ASKED those juniors why they are leaving? Do you even do detailed exit interviews? Do you listen to them at all? What are they telling you? Are you taking those answers back to the seniors? What are you learning from the juniors who stay, but also – what are you learning from the ones who leave?

  262. Vaca*

    OP here – I’m going to make one last post because, as others have pointed out, I should be working given how much is on my plate.

    Thank you for all the advice. I recognize that there are aspects of this industry that are shocking; I am also realizing that there are toxic aspects to this firm in particular that should be addressed. I think Alison’s advice (and the majority of the community’s) was very constructive. It is also difficult if not impossible to implement in my current situation. I’m responsible for delivering revenue but I don’t have much (or really any) say in hiring.

    I’ll provide an update when I have one. For right now, my best choice is to keep my head down and collect my own bonus in Q1.

    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      Good luck – I work in a similar industry and sympathize with your posts. I think your best bet is to gather up some info on the impact this turnover has on the business’s bottom line and the attraction/retention of dealmakers/rainmakers. In my experience, our sort of organizations only change in response to client demand or loss of business or revenue.

    2. WindmillArms*

      If it’s impossible to change *and* the current way is unsustainable…well, there’s your answer. It can’t be fixed and the industry (or at least your firm) is about to die off. Do with that information what you will.

    3. Siege (The other one)*

      Thank you for engaging and listening to the comments, op. I wish you the best and am looking forward to an update!

    4. HerdingCatsWouldBeEasier*

      I appreciate all your interaction and wish you the best, Vaca. I’ll be holding out hope for an update from you where you’ve escaped to a better place.

    5. Zillah*

      Vaca, take care of yourself. I get feeling dedicated to something, but I think it’s not just hiring practices that need to change for long-term success – it’s how you look at work, and this place is warping a lot of your perceptions.

      You mentioned above that if you don’t take on a small project, you won’t get the next big one. Is that really such a bad thing? How would not getting the next big project change your job and the jobs of your junior employees? How would having fewer small projects change those jobs? Have you actually tried telling your clients “we’ll have this to you Tuesday” and then seeing how they react? (I cannot imagine that a client will pack up and move because you say it a couple times – all else aside, it’s just so much effort for having to wait a little longer for a couple things.) Is every task you’re all spending time on in the name of training more valuable than having that extra hour or three a day would be? Are people actually operating at their most efficient if they’re working on four or five different projects at once rather than two or three?

      The answers might seem obvious to you, but really try to play it out in your head and focus on what the changes that would involve mean.

      Tbh, though, it seems to me like this is fundamentally broken, there’s no way to decrease people’s hours enough to retain the people who aren’t going to leave anyway, and that you should get out because it’s really, really not good for you.

    6. Liz*

      This sounds like a promising realisation. I see from your earlier posts that the bonus you are waiting on is a really, truly, life-changing amount of money. I can fully understand why you feel compelled to stay and I hope it brings you the security and autonomy and frees you to make choices that will improve your sense of wellbeing. It sounds like you’ve been through this particular grind yourself, and if you feel you can continue with that end in sight, then that’s 100% your call to make. Just bear in mind that, based on what you have said, the situation in your workplace and issues regarding retention sound likely to continue for that period, so be sure to figure that in your calculations (it sounds like you already have).

      As an aside, the industry you have described sounds like it makes common practice of holding money over people’s heads to motivate them into working inhumane hours and staying longer than they otherwise would. Given the high turnover, I’ll hazard a guess that they make these promises pretty much assuming (or even HOPING) that the staff won’t stick around and they won’t have to pay out. With this in mind, is there any chance they may move the goalposts when payout time comes? Do you need to lawyer up or anticipate a fight? I hope not, but might be something to consider if the company is as iffy as they sound.

      I do hope we hear from you again, and thank you for sharing and responding.

  264. Jennifer*

    100 hour weeks?

    I would argue they *aren’t* overpaid. I wouldn’t work 14.25 hours a day, 7 days a week for $275,000. That’s not even enough time to have any kind of relationship (including a pet), decent sleep schedule, nutrition intake or exercise program outside of work. It sounds soul-crushing and like it would drive many people to a state of depression or anxiety.

    I mean good luck, but also wtf.

  265. BabyElephantWalk*

    Are you actually, genuinely interested in finding a solution? OP, I’m reading your comments and they are very much in the line of “this is the way it’s always been done and it can’t be changed” and “This is what us senior people had to go through, it’s part of the process”.

    Why are you so defensive of this system? This system that’s clearly not working for you anymore, because people are leaving and you’re dealing with the fall out. If you genuinely don’t think the system can change, is work as it is right now something that you want to do long term? Because it ‘s unlikely to get significantly better.

    1. Boof*

      yeah, I think first maybe OP needs to convince themselves that this system is no longer workable/competitive

      Maybe OP can do a QI project – what is the drop out rate in the last 5 years? Where do they want it to be? (something achievable, do not pick 100% – if say currently they are only keeping 50% of trainees, maybe goal could be 80% in the next 3 years, IDK). What would be the savings if they met that goal? If they spent that much on the program, not by increasing salaries but say, by hiring more support staff to do whatever work can be offloaded on the trainees to maybe make the weeks “only” 80 hrs, with hard cuttoffs and real breaks (not on call breaks, actual, regular down time) – would the numbers balance? If so, try to do it; see if the QI goals of 80% retention are met.

  266. Tiffany*

    My best guess would be finance or accounting. I know accounting, at least in public accounting, tax season is awful for junior staffers. I also didn’t think they made that much money, however.

    Lol, I’d work 100hr weeks for $175K-$200K/year.

  267. KateDee*

    You say this is well paid work…but it’s working the hours of 2.5 jobs. Is that REALLY well paid work for these individuals? At a normal 40 hour work week they would be pulling in $80k.

    $200k is a lot of money, sure…but are these people who could make $100-120k at a normal 9-5 job and then, you know, actually live a life after? They are working all but their sleeping and commuting hours for 2 years. That’s no life. It’s very unsurprising that they are seeking greener pastures.

  268. halfwolf*

    i’m a couple years farther along in my career than the people OP is hiring, but i have to say: there is literally no amount of money that an employer could pay me to work 100 hour weeks as a rule. full stop. to be honest, i would consider one (1) 100 hour week ever to be a potential dealbreaker for a job. there are 168 hours in a week. nothing any employer could ever say, do, or pay me would ever convince me to spend almost 60% of my life at work. if nothing else, when and on what does someone even spend that extravagant salary? thinking back to when i was 23, i wonder if i could have been convinced to give up my life for a ton of money, and maybe i could have. if there is any silver lining to the pandemic, i hope that 23-year-olds today are seeing first hand that no job is ever worth devoting more than half of your entire life to.

  269. Springly*

    OP deserves the results that they are creating.
    For 2 years they want to grind into everyone how little they matter as people.
    Then they are surprised when competition can pluck them away with tiny improvements to their lives.

    I know of many, many, many technology companies, not just FAANG, who pay good recent grads in excess of 100k for 40 hour weeks. So this 200k for 100 hours stuff, well it’s not competitive is it. Not even close. Little tiny midwest companies who you’ll never even hear of pay better than the weak sauce Cheesy McBank wants to pay.

  270. Midwestern Transplant*

    I see I missed a lot of interesting discussion already, and it’s likely this will slip under the radar, but if it helps anyone I feel it was a worthwhile comment to make: OP, I’m a millennial in my late 20s who grew up with slightly older (boomer) parents who are now in their mid-60s and I fundamentally just see so much of my dad in your level of devotion to your job. He’s a BigLaw attorney who routinely still bills absurd numbers of hours per month despite what I as his kid saw as a distinct lack of investment in his personal well-being on the part of his employer. I know that he grew up in dramatically different financial conditions than what he was able to provide for me, and that being able to take care of our little family was and is a big deal for him. But I guess what strikes me the most is someone who by all accounts has become quite the expert on his own field of practice, done the scaling the ladder thing properly, paid his dues to our capitalistic overlords many times over, who’s by all accounts a success story for what we’re told is the aims of this entire slog, at the end of the day feeling so utterly unempowered to enact any real change in the place he’s given so much of his time and labor to. If you can’t, who can? What is any of this for?

    I know not all of us are activists by any means. It’s exhausting. It takes energy like everything else. But it isn’t a totally radical act to take a step back and ask yourself if the current system, no longer how long it’s seemed to work for you until now, is really still working. What are you okay with teaching your kids they should accept from their employers? Because looking at it from the other side of things, I’ve landed in a place where I admire my dad’s work ethic but fundamentally don’t really have a relationship with him because his job was just such a main priority for every moment of my childhood in a way I just couldn’t be. There are only so many hours in a week. I really feel bad for you and the position you’ve found yourself in–it sounds intolerable and I can’t imagine it isn’t affecting your family to some extent as well. But here you also have a lot of commenters giving you something my dad didn’t have–some great jumping off points for how you can make things better for yourself.

    1. Mangofan*

      This is such a kind and thoughtful comment! I suspect it is more likely to land than the hundreds of other comments telling OP that they should obviously hire more people / are a bad person / should overthrow capitalism.

  271. magical*

    Hey OP, I also work in an industry that isn’t quite as bad as this but is similar for mentality and overwork (animation). Almost always, the ridiculous hours come from unmanaged client expectations. Either initial requests or not keeping new requests in line with what is possible/what they’ve actually agreed to and paid for. Every single time, it falls on the workers to “just do it” because upper management is not willing to have those hard talks with clients. People are well paid and get overtime but they quickly hit a point where they don’t care about the money anymore — they want time off and a reasonable job. It leads to burnout very quickly and people jump ship from companies with bad work life balance. Especially with COVID, people are realizing they don’t have to put up with this. Those with more experience especially have realized their value and that they can be more choosy with jobs. Bad clients are a thing and workers do not want them.

    I know that there’s a fear that clients will take their work elsewhere because they can’t get what they want (24/7 access) and the business will fail. While this is a risk, the businesses with horrible reputations for employee abuse fizzle out anyways because no one will work there. It might not be instant, but industries are changing and one way or another companies are going to have to adapt. The companies that focus on treating people well and creating reasonable expectations up front are the ones that will keep getting work. Plus how happy is a client going to be if you have no staff (or terribly trained staff because of high turnover)?

    As others have mentioned, the pay is also not very good considering this enormous downside to the job. The hours are such a huge negative that the positives need to outweigh them and right now that’s not the case. You need to not just pay people well per hour — you need to massively overpay them as an acknowledgement that the schedule is horrible and the money is the incentive to stay. To be honest, this would be the case even if they worked 50-60 hours every week because even that is way too much for most people. Also I assume you don’t pay overtime on top of this? So there’s really no incentive to continue the hours from a worker perspective.

    Ultimately you shouldn’t be asking “how can we convince people to stay with the model that we have” but instead “how can we change the model so that it works long term for everyone (clients, workers, management)”. Question the assumptions that you have and the notion that things cannot change. It is not your responsibility to change an entire industry, or even your company if that’s not possible. But hopefully all of this will help arm you with the answers you need to talk to your company when they ask why they can’t retain anyone. It sounds like you are pretty high up — approaching those who are at your level with these ideologies will eventually help them understand why things aren’t improving.

  272. Eileen*

    @Vaca, I think you might be in a cult. Or you’re just in so deep you can’t see that what you are being asked to do is unreasonable.

    Your interns are telling you they cannot live that life. Are you really asking if it is a good to somehow financially incentivize people to sacrifice their minds, their bodies and their souls for TWO YEARS even more than you already are? People are already leaving money on the table to get away from this approach and you want to double down?

    Take a vacation. A true one. Where you unplug for at least a week. Then quit, and go find what’s left of your life.

  274. ex IBD intern*

    I’ve interned in this field – I declined my full time offer because of the hours. Went to tech. Most of my friends who went to IBD left quickly. I get both sides.

    I disagree strongly with everyone saying hire more people with less pay – candidates that want to go into IBD want big bucks. You would have to decrease the hours without cutting the pay (maybe some but not by much) to compete. (Consider that, but obviously quite expensive). I agree with folks that 100 hour weeks don’t have to be the norm but I also agree with you that changing this is not going to come from anyone other than the big banks. Goldman & JPM has to start telling clients to wait until Monday for that to work, then everyone can do this too. (I honestly think a pursuing a collective bargaining agreement with firms on this in the name of recruitment and retention and better work for clients would be actually fruitful, because I believe deeply that most things can actually wait until Monday/actual business hours but what a major mountain to climb!) There is a deep culture across the US of client first mentality that I believe is unhealthy and driving this. More companies should shift to employees first. But I digress.

    Here’s my practical advice for the short term:

    Reorient to a 1 year program, get the recruiting absolutely right, get the training absolutely right, and get the most out of someone within 6 months to a year. Recruit regularly so you can replace folks quickly. And then expect people to leave quickly.

    You need to change your expectations and assume that most folks will leave at 1 year, and build your program around that. At this level, you shouldn’t have to train someone for three months to get them to format an Excel well (what?? If I hadn’t known those basics I would have been laughed out of my interview). Get an HR team, with talent acquisition folks, so they can find and screen candidates really well. Get candidates that have the raw skills already and just need a bit of touching up. Get training the street.

    Getting someone up to speed should take 1 month tops. Focus on getting training done very quickly, not by you, and have them churning out good work quickly. Then expect them to leave after 6 months – 1 year, and make sure you are constantly recruiting. If you are constantly recruiting, especially out of cycle, then an analyst leaving would just be replaced by another analyst. It will be a revolving door, but it will prevent you from working weekends. Would recommend investing in an HR department with a TA team that can churn out candidates for you. Consider investing in a training team so you don’t have to do the training yourself and can focus on bringing in business! (This could be a great 50 hour week role for an analyst that wants to step off the wheelhouse).

    I also agree with you – most of the real change will have to be industry wide, as first movers in this will lose all of their staff. But in the meantime, you have to adapt and change your expectations.

  275. cheeky*

    hahahahahahahahaha

    I am so glad young people aren’t taking this BS anymore. 100 hour work weeks is ridiculous.

  276. MsInMS*

    Material things aren’t the status symbol they used to be since “stuff” is more readily available (amazon, less expensive goods manufactured in other countries, etc). People now want a flexible schedule to craft their “experiences”. On top of that less single earner households so both spouses are sharing the workload (ie cant work 100
    hr weeks bc my spouse is working 40)

  277. Rebecca*

    Anyone who signs a contract forcing them to finish the two years or owe $$ back is an idiot. NO ONE is going to sign that. Cut the hours/salary in half and extend the program. This job sounds absolutely miserable and just because you yourself put up with the abuse when you were young, doesn’t mean others have to too. It’s funny though that your entire business model is dependent on abusing interns and is crumbling without them. Maybe your business shouldn’t BE one anymore if you have to abuse people to be successful.

  278. SunshineOH*

    This will likely get lost in so many comments, and has probably been mentioned, but I guarantee yours is not the only firm having this “problem”. You’re all hiring from the same demographic pool of candidates, right? The industry will have to change and the clientele will adjust.

  279. raida7*

    If this is the 4th person this year to leave, wouldn’t it be better to simply hire 6 people initially, with a 4-day work week each, with defined days?
    Then when one leaves you can offer more days to the others, you’ve lost less labour per week, and you pay each one less for the commensurate change in hours.
    Instead of being a bit ticked off that you had it hard why should you help them now, how about blue-sky thinking where it’s NOT a shitty, burnout-inducing program?

    Paying people more money doesn’t mean the job sucks less. Bribing people to stay in a shitty job doesn’t solves the problem, it just makes them more expensive to the business.

    Get more people.
    Do less hours.
    And while you’re at it: Clearly define the training program’s outcomes, guidelines, achievements, milestones so that each applicant has an idea of the path they’ll be travelling in learning and achieving things and at what stages they’d expect to work, for example, with a top-tier client solo for the first time.
    That would give another way ot showing the value in staying in the job – regular professional goals.

  280. Sally*

    I am sorry about the state you are in but I do want to address one thing which seems so obvious but may not be when you are in a bubble. You keep bringing up the 2008 recession. The 23-year-olds you are hiring now were 10 at the time. They don’t care. They want to live in the world which exists today. They want to be able to meet a friend after work or go to a movie on a Saturday or binge-watch a show till midnight on a Friday or any number of things that give them JOY. They don’t feel grateful that you gave them ONE weekend off. There are a vast variety of jobs in this world that give financial security and career accomplishments without sacrificing their mental, physical and emotional well being. There is a reason the people who are in your industry are either naive college students who didn’t know better at the time of hiring or they are people like who have never experienced something different.
    Context: I am 27.

  281. I WORKED on a Hellmouth*

    Everyone else has already weighed in and said what I would have (and I’m not even sure if you are going to see this), but just in case:

    Please, please stop 1) Mentioning 2008, it is almost 2022–unless you are an honest to god precog you don’t know that another 2008 is rolling around any time soon and it comes across like Great Grandpa talking about how he keeps his money hidden in his mattress because the Great Depression proved that banks aren’t trustworthy, and 2) Using the word “fraud.” We all know that the job perks we have today can change tomorrow. Having weekends off NOW isn’t “fraud” if, someday down the line, circumstances change and the company says “Hey, we need you to work weekends.” It’s not fraud, it’s a change. People will either roll with it, or they will go find another job with free weekends.

  282. Karak*

    “We are literally trying to kill people, and they escape with their lives. Why?”

    OP, that schedule is insane. Two years of that will take time off someone’s life. If you’re doing something life-saving, like surgery, the effectiveness of the person drops the more hours they work, and it’s a bad idea.

    If you’re not doing something that’s life-saving, this schedule is designed to be sadistic for the lesson? joy? of torturing a human being, to get worse results and break their spirit. That’s a bad idea.

    No matter how you slice it, this schedule is a bad idea, and unsustainable for 2 years.

    The job you’re offering is needlessly terrible. That’s why no one will stay. Hire someone else and cut the hours. You’re wasting money training people over and over again anyway. Just… hire 2-4 to handle the workload.

  283. lmfao*

    Investment banking is not that urgent. Your clients will not die if they have to wait 48 hours for a report instead of 24 hours. Every industry thinks they’re special and they’re the one job that HAS to have insanely high hours and high standards, when it’s really just unreasonable bosses who still act like it’s 1956.

  284. TheCardboardKid*

    This is basic economics. You aren’t offering a good enough deal for people to stick around past the point they’ve made their nut and want to move onto something else that isn’t stupid and exploitative. All of these juniors are making a calculation, taking a ton of money from you, and moving on to somewhere that isn’t a garbage workplace. You need to do what you’re supposedly good at and recalibrate for that calculation.

    Seriously. Economics. Actually do it.

  285. trebond98*

    @OP Lots of comments but I’m going to add something. I think part of the problem here is the identity of being an investment banker. Your sense of self is wrapped up in this truly terrible industry that is capitalism at its very worst. All those hours to make money for…people who are already wealthy. I see this identity issue in academic. There are so many professors in their 70s and 80s who will not retire because who are they if they aren’t a professor. There’s more to life than work. There’s more to life than money. Many people have posted about the $70k stat and it’s actually true if you adjust for COL in a given place. Everything after that amount is just gravy. Now that I make more I buy more stuff. I like the stuff (handbags, board games, books) but I really really don’t need them but really the ONLY thing that I would hold onto with all of my strength is my cleaning service. I don’t even have a large apartment but the cleaning service gives me at least 3 hours back to my life every three weeks. It’s a true exchange of money for time. Your junior employees are telling you that the exchange you are offering them is a raw deal. Those large salaries are all gravy for nothing. You can’t even enjoy your money.

  286. Drebin*

    This might be out of line, but 14 hour days/7 days a week?

    In this day and age, during these pandemic times, even with spiraling costs-of-living and ever-rising bars to enter things like home-ownership (which let’s be frank, are things taken for granted by earlier generations) making the need for a well-paying job a basic requirement, why on earth would I bother? As a GenXer, I’ve been there two decades ago, and got nothing for it. I cannot fathom the trust required for me to consider it now, let alone the impact on my health.

    If younger folk are attempting it, and realizing that they can’t, well good for them!

    If management is not willing (or able) to adapt their business processes to account for the necessary changes in scope and costs to hire more people to cover the manpower costs, well frankly, perhaps your company needs to fail. Yes, this hurts other employees, but in this market, they’ll find a new job quickly enough. And if enough of these 80’s style companies fail, maybe the shareholders will start to demand a modernization of management techniques and demand planning/expectations that IMO is long overdue.

  287. Barry*

    The invocations of ‘The Mythical Man Month’ are IMHO making a logical error – there are many tasks which can’t be efficiently broken down between people, but there a lot that can be. Even if this were only to cut the job down to 80 hours a week, that is doable for longer, and would cause smaller gaps to be filled in when people leave.

    Also, turnover on the scale of 6-9 months is a killer. Assuming that somebody in their first quarter of work is nothing but a time suck and an error factory, around one-third of this group is a strong net negative. Shifting the time to leave up to a year would make this one-quarter of the staff, and have around half of the staff in the 6-12 months higher productivity range.

  288. AussieBear*

    As these industries are supposed to be full of highly intelligent people, I suspect that soon some entrepreneur with strong data analysis skills will put together all of the research on lack of sleep and stress and how this affects work quality.
    Then they will market themselves as being different, doing higher quality analysis with staff that are alert and have a good work life balance. They are then likely to scoop up great candidates who will not apply to the ‘classic’ model and roar ahead. If I was a smaller player in the field this is what I would do. Spin the story positive and then have companies hiring your people and publicising why. A lot like many big companies are now embracing environmental technologies as investors, superannuation companies will then invest and be able to showcase a ‘Green portfolio’ gathering public kudos. So if the OP doesn’t get out, this is the move I’d make and rather than going in with a long list of ‘why we shouldn’t keep going the way we are’ give a positive list of changes. First step of change management is to provide a solution with a reason to embrace the changes. I think it will take some time but it will happen.

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