After Complaints Of ‘100-Hour’ Workweeks, Goldman Sachs Is Allowing Bankers To Take Off On Saturdays (2024)

FAQs

After Complaints Of ‘100-Hour’ Workweeks, Goldman Sachs Is Allowing Bankers To Take Off On Saturdays? ›

According to the New York Post, “In a voice memo late Sunday, the hard-charging chief executive [David Solomon of Goldman Sachs] told employees he will 'strengthen enforcement' of the Wall Street giant's 'Saturday rule' — which means that employees cannot work from 9 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Sunday except in certain ...

They requested a cap of 80 hours. In response, Solomon praised the workers' rare step, and said the company's existing 'Saturday rule' that junior bankers are forbidden to work from Friday at 9pm until Sunday morning will be enforced.

Do investment bankers work on weekends? Investment bankers may work on weekends. They typically respond quickly to new developments in the market. Other times, they may work with clients who require their input as soon as possible or on projects requiring around-the-clock availability.

Goldman Sachs addressed junior bankers' complaints over heightened workloads. CEO David Solomon emphasized the firm's commitment to protected Saturdays for junior bankers after a survey conducted by first-year analysts noted crushing workloads. “We're strengthening enforcement of the Saturday rule.

Investment bankers get between 10 to 20 vacation days per year. This is about the same as the national average for all professions in the United States. Factors that can impact the number of vacation days include seniority, company size, and performance.

While lots of businesses work Monday through Friday with Saturday and Sunday classed as non-working days, there are plenty of organisations that do consider the weekends as part of their business week, or even run a 24/7 operation.

A banking day is any day on which banks are open to the public and are generally carrying on their normal banking functions. A banking day is generally any day except Saturday, Sundays and legal holidays.

The bank cut 500 employees in September 2022, Reuters had reported earlier, citing sources. Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report. In June, Goldman's managing directors were invited to meetings to receive an ominous message: take even more painful steps to cut costs.

How Many Hours Do Investment Bankers Actually Work? Investment banking is not a normal 9-to-5 job — investment bankers can work anywhere from 60 to over 100 hours per week, depending on the company and the deals at hand.

The well-known bulge bracket banks like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Bank of America tend to work analyst-level investment bankers at the industry standard scale of 60-80 hours per week.

How much PTO does Goldman Sachs give? ›

The minimum you get is 18 paid days a year and 9 sick days. The longer you are at the firm it increases e.g after 5 years you get 5 extra days and after 10 you get 10 extra days. Pretty good - 21 days minimum amount in the US and then get more when promoted or been longer at firm. Also get 5 extra days when married.

The investment bank's new policy, announced in April and rolled out a few weeks ago, gives senior employees unlimited vacation days and requires all employees to take 15 days off, a move that firm leadership has framed as an attempt to scale back on norms that have left bankers depleted and exhausted.

They have to be in their office promptly around 10 a.m.

On a normal day, investment bankers can spend 45 to 60 minutes on their lunch break, which is plentiful considering the long stressful day ahead. These breaks are also great opportunities for investment bankers to network and build rapport with their colleagues.

The jaw-droppingly long hours investment bankers work are legendary. A widely-reported recent survey of first year analysts at Goldman Sachs revealed that they work on average more than 95 hours per week, and sleep around 5 hours each night.

Yes, bankers can make a lot of money.

For example, a motivated personal banker can make more than $50,000 in total compensation their first year and more than that after establishing a broad customer base. Meanwhile, an investment banker and other Wall Street bankers typically make around $100,000 a year on average.

"We refresh our 'Rule of 10' screen, which identifies stocks with realized and expected annual sales growth greater than 10% during the five years from 2021 through 2025," Kostin noted. Some of the top analysts at Goldman Sachs have been recommending stocks that align with the 'Rule of 10' criteria.

"We screen for S&P 500 stocks that grew sales by at least 10% during each of the previous two years and are expected to grow sales by at least 10% in the current year and each of the next two years," Goldman Sachs' David Kostin said.

J.P. Morgan introduced 'Protected weekends' in December 2013

Instead of giving its juniors Saturdays off, J.P Morgan opted to assign them once-monthly 'protected weekends' from December 2013. Under this policy, JPM juniors are barred from working for one full weekend per month.

Earlier this month, Goldman laid off more than 3,000 employees. But the bigger-than-usual layoffs announced by Goldman this year also marked another facet of Wall Street life that has returned: annual performance reviews.