Exhausted Bankers, by Carl Vonderau

Eight months ago I wrote about bankers working such long hours that they collapsed at their desks. In 2024 a 35-year-old former special forces intern at Bank of America was working more than 100 hours a week. Think about this. That’s 14 hours a day and 7 days a week. He collapsed and died. The autopsy said the cause was a blood clot formed in a coronary artery. Did that allow Bank of America to escape association with his death? Maybe. Another banker in the Bank of America London office died in 2013, apparently from overwork. They put in many rules to limit stress on young employees such as required work hour logging, protected weekends, and human resources tracking and intervention. Did that help? Apparently managers instructed employees not to report their extended hours. The employees were afraid to complain because they would be labeled as uncommitted or weak. One woman worked 20 hours a day for a week and broke down crying in the restroom. A senior manager reported it and she got a reprieve. The bank still lost the deal. I wonder if she is still employed there.,

It isn’t just Bank of America. It appears that all the investment banks give lip service to work-life balance while insisting their junior employees work incredible hours. It became even worse during an investment bank downturn when these banks cut employees and saddled the others with more work. This is the market. If your group doesn’t work to meet demanding deadlines, a competitor will and you will lose the deal.

With this kind of publicity you would think it would get better. This week the Wall Street Journal reported that at Robert W. Baird, a boutique investment bank in Chicago, 110-hour work weeks were not uncommon. Two employees were hospitalized following long stretches of work. One went twice to a hospital and was subsequently fired. When employees complained they were told to be more efficient. The bank has a “No A-Hole Rule.” Would you call that cognitive dissonance?

Does the compensation and prestige from these jobs entice people to sacrifice their health and mental well-being? “Just hang in there a few years,” senior partners tell them. Then the million dollar paydays will come? If you are still a whole person.

Everyone worries that AI will take over our jobs. AI will ruthlessly cut employees to maximize profits. It won’t care about the kind of personal tragedy its calculations yield. Perhaps the investment banking culture is its own form of AI.