Goldman Sachs junior bankers describe 'inhumane' working conditions where they don't have time to eat or shower in a brutal internal survey

March 18, 2021

First-year analysts at Goldman Sachs are sounding the alarm about abusive working conditions.
An informal survey of 13 junior bankers is making the rounds on social media.
The analysts describe declining mental health, grueling 100-hour work weeks, and a lack of sleep.
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Overworked junior staffers at one of the world’s most prominent investment banks are fed up.

First-year investment analysts at Goldman Sachs detailed what they call “inhumane” working conditions in an informal, 13-person survey that made the rounds on social media on Thursday. The analysts styled the February survey’s findings like an official Goldman slide deck, and they shared the results with management, Bloomberg reported.

The 24-question survey paints a brutal picture of burnout, sleep deprivation, and declining mental and physical health among Goldman’s most junior bankers.

According to the questionnaire, analysts worked an average of 98 hours per week since the beginning of 2021, sleeping an average of five hours per night. All respondents said their work hours had negatively affected their relationships with family and friends.

“There was a point where I was not eating, showering, or doing anything else other than working from morning until after midnight,” one unnamed analyst said.

On a scale of one to 10, respondents rated their mental health as a 2.8 and their physical wellbeing as a 2.1, as compared with 8.8 and 9.0, respectively, before starting at Goldman. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they felt like they had been a victim of workplace abuse, while 75% indicated they had considered mental-health counseling over work-related stress.

“What is not ok to me is 110-120 hours over the course of a week! The math is simple, that leaves 4 hours a day for eating, sleeping, showering, bathroom and general transition time,” one analyst said. “This is beyond the level of ‘hard-working,’ this is inhumane/abuse”

Goldman, for its part, said it intends to address the employees’ complaints.

“We recognize that our people are very busy because business is strong and volumes are at historic levels. A year into COVID, people are understandably quite stretched, and that’s why we are listening to their concerns and taking multiple steps to address them,” a Goldman spokesperson told Insider in a statement.

Goldman pays its first-year investment banking analysts an average of $123,500 per year including base salary and bonuses, according to data from Wall Street Oasis. Elite Wall Street institutions bet that young employees will work long hours and take on a demanding workload for the shot to eventually pull down millions in upper management.

But those surveyed don’t think the paycheck justifies the stress of it all. On a scale of one to 10, the analysts put the chances they’d still be working at Goldman in six months at a 3.5 if working conditions don’t change.

“The sleep deprivation, the treatment by senior bankers, the mental and physical stress…I’ve been through foster care and this is arguably worse,” one employee said.

To rectify the situation, the young bankers recommended solutions like limiting workweeks to 80 hours and making sure that client meetings are always scheduled one week in advance. Junior bankers shouldn’t be expected to work after 9 p.m. on Fridays or on Saturdays without advance notice, they said.

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