[ 2021-03-19 ]

Goldman Sachs staff revolt at ‘98-hour week’
Goldman Sachs has acknowledged that staff are
“quite stretched” after a group of young
analysts sounded the alarm over
“unsurmountable” levels of work.

Steep demands and tight deadlines throughout the
week have prompted 13 first-year staff to claim
they have been working an average of 98 hours a
week.

The Wall Street investment bank said it was
listening to the concerns of employees after they
produced a presentation outlining their
frustrations, which surfaced on social media.

The small group reported getting to sleep at an
average time of 3am, according to slides
highlighted by the eFinancial careers website.
“I didn’t come into this job expecting a 9am
to 5pm,” one analyst complained. “But I also
wasn’t expecting consistent 9ams to 5ams
either.”

Goldman is one of the world’s best-known
investment banks, with a market value of more than
$120 billion and almost 40,000 staff worldwide.

Its profits more than doubled in the last quarter.
Shares in the bank closed up 0.9 per cent, or
$3.05, at $348 in New York last night.

The presentation, understood to have been produced
last month, indicated that the 13 analysts rate
their satisfaction with work at two out of ten and
satisfaction with life outside work at one out of
ten.

They said working 98 hours a week was affecting
their mental and physical health. The analysts
proposed a series of measures to improve the
climate at Goldman, including company-wide respect
for its policy of no work on Saturdays and a halt
at 9pm on Friday nights. They also recommended
working no more than 80 hours each week.

A spokesman for Goldman said: “We recognise 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.”

In 2015 Goldman told its interns they had to stop
work by midnight and not return to the office
before 7am in the aftermath of the death of a
21-year-old Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern.

Source - The Times, UK

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