The financial press is twittering (like birds, not social media addicts) about a leaked report prepared by a group of 13 first-year analysts in Goldman Sach’s vaunted training program which showed they worked an “average” of 98 hours each week and only get 5 hours sleep each night. Added to these “statistics” were accident-porn type quotes like, “My body physically hurts all the time”, “mentally I’m in a really dark place”, and “I dreamt of serving margaritas to the Firmwide Client and Business Standards Committee in just my underwear”. Okay, not the last one. That would have been hyperbole.
Thankfully the financial media pounced on the story with the same degree of subtlety and sophistication we’re accustomed to. The gist of their thoughtful take amounted to, “wow, 98 hours is a lot!” and “wow, that must feel awful!”, and the perennial, “wow, this is so bad for Goldman!”.
Seriously? We’re supposed to feel sorry for these guys? And Goldman is evil because… they overwork their people?? What’s next, a Goldman Lives Matter protest march? Why do I sometimes feel I’m living on a different planet?
My thoughts regarding the tragic lives of the Goldman analysts:
- Anyone accepted into the Goldman training program is in the top 0.1% of all human beings who are alive or who ever lived in terms of net present value of future expected earnings and wealth.
- Anyone who survives the Goldman training program can, with a modicum of effort, go from fantastically fortunate to stupidly piggishly rich in a decade or two.
- No one in the Goldman training program was captured in the wild and enslaved at 200 West Street. They are there of their own free will, such as it is.
- There are no allegations that any trainees were subjected to verbal or physical abuse other than being asked to exclusively use Microsoft Office applications which, while maddening in their pointless and ever growing complexity, do not consist of literal torture.
- Making up realistic-looking profit forecasts for pre-IPO “businesses” whose marketing spend exceeds revenues, though not conducive to critical thought or ethical behavior, ain’t exactly digging ditches.
- Elite investment banking training programs are designed to weed out normal people and i
I’m concerned… that it’s only 98 hours. dentify those who will gladly erase their humanity in exchange for the potential of vast wealth (Another dude who made the same trade and felt bad later).
- Just as damp, exhausted sand-encrusted would-be Navy SEALs rise from the surf and trudge up the beach to ring the bell announcing their “resignation”, Goldman analysts who do not wish to self-crush their souls in exchange for vast lucre, may… leave! At any time!
- Goldman is evil for a thousand reasons. Asking Ivy League grads earning six figures to pull all-nighters in exchange for the prospect of seven and eight-figure jobs is not one of them.
And now, having exhausted my interest in this topic, we will return to consideration of that all important question: what really went on between Meghan and Kate?
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