You Can Easily Replace ‘Investment Banking’ with ‘Public Accounting’ In These Reactions to the Goldman Sachs Workplace Abuse Claims

Posted on by Jason Bramwell

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or neck deep in tax returns, you probably heard about the recent allegations from 13 first-year analysts who work at Goldman Sachs that their employer is actually a sweatshop disguised as an investment bank. In a Working Conditions Survey created and only answered by those 13 GS analysts, on average they work more than 95 hours a week and only get about five hours a sleep a night. In addition, 77% believe they’re a victim of workplace abuse. (How is this not 100%?) And some don’t even bathe.

Quotes from the analysts that were included with the survey report are pretty disturbing. Here are a few:

  • “My body physically hurts all the time and mentally I’m in a really dark place.”
  • “Being unemployed is less frightening to me than what my body might succumb to if I keep up this lifestyle.”
  • “I didn’t come into this job expecting a 9am-5pm’s, but I also didn’t expect consistent 9am-5am’s either.”

During the 11-plus-year history of this website, we may have joked a time or two about public accounting firms being sweatshop-like. Sure, it’s not unheard of for some of you to be pulling 80-hour workweeks this time a year (unless you work at EY in Hong Kong, then you’re probably working close to 100 hours a week too), but all that overtime you’re getting is great, right? Oh yeah, no OT. But hey, all that toll on your physical and mental health experience will look sooooo good on your résumé, right? Right.

Earlier today the New York Times posted 10 anonymous reactions to the Goldman Sachs analysts’ survey from readers around the world. The 10 people, according to the NYT, are current, former, or aspiring investment bankers. So I decided to do a fun little exercise. Every time a person said “investment banking” or “banking” in his or her comment, I inserted “public accounting” to see if their reaction would still make sense to those of you toiling (or who have toiled) in PA.

It did.

  • “I had heard all about the long hours, but once I was in it, I found that I had underestimated. I threw in the towel and left [public accounting], because no amount of money was worth the terrible lifestyle.” — Anonymous in New York
  • “There is no money that rewards the mental and physical harm that [public accounting] does to you. Of course, it’s a hell of an experience, Excel and PowerPoint-wise.” — Anonymous in São Paulo
  • “I spent many long nights in the office at the behest of associates and V.P.s, most of the time for no reason but ‘they might need me.’ Then I joined the military, where I had better work-life balance and more respectful leadership than I did in [public accounting].” — Anonymous in New York
  • “I am an incoming [public accounting] intern. I knew about the work conditions before applying to the job. Anyone engaging in a career at a top [public accounting firm] knows about it, or else they applied for the wrong reasons.” — Anonymous in Europe

Don’t work too-too late tonight, you guys.

Current and former investment bankers react to claims of workplace abuse by junior analysts at Goldman Sachs. [New York Times]

Related article:

This EY Manager’s Expectations of Staff Are Slightly Unreasonable And By Slightly We Mean Holy F*ck Dude

Related Posts

Big 4 Aspirant Wants Help Choosing a City

Welcome to the way-to-double-bogey-18-Phil edition of Accounting Career Emergencies. In today’s edition, a prospective Big 4 associate wants help deciding between a large or mid-market city. Let’s see what we can do to get her out of the sticks.

Have a spotty past that may hurt your career aspirations? Need help spending some tools? Email us at advice@goingconcern.com and we’ll point you to some sharper folks.

Meanwhile, back on the farm:

Hello,

I am preparing for recruiting season this Fall, and I attend a heavily-recruited university on the east coast. Recruiters from the Big 4 (as well as other firms) recruit nationally from my school, so I pretty much have my pick of what city I would like to work, if I were to get hired by one of them. I know that they ask us for our preference in location, and that is my current dilemma – I am not sure yet which one to pick.

I know for sure that I want to leave my current city, as it is mostly a college town. I have family in both Miami and Phoenix, so I am considering those options, but those are middle markets. My dream has always been to live in a big city, so I am considering NYC and possibly Chicago. Obviously there are big differences in size, both in terms of number of employees and clients. However, I have no family in any large city, so I would have to live on my own or find a roommate. But wouldn’t working in a bigger city provide me with a greater advantage, career-wise? There are a lot more possible clients and industries to pick from when you work out of a large city. I would really like to know the advantages and disadvantages of working in a middle-sized office versus a really large one (Big 4 firm specifically). I would truly appreciate any feedback that you may have on this matter – maybe even post it as a blog on the website so that the readers can share their insight.

Dear Big City Dreamer,

Live on your own?! Roommate?! Is it possible that you’re becoming an adult? That may have a – gasp – job in the very near future? This can all be very scary, I realize so I’ll stop with the jokes…for now. Lucky for you, I’ve lived and worked in both a mid-sized and a large city, so I’ll share my personal experience and then we’ll throw it to the group.

When choosing where to live it’s important to know what you want to get out of that city. You’re going to be living there after all and believe it or not, you will have free time occasionally to do some things other than work. You say that living in a big city is your “dream” so I’d encourage you to go for a big market so you can enjoy everything that they offer. I lived and worked in New York for about two years and while the hours were long, I still had the great opportunity to experience everything the City has to offer. Plus, I made a lot of cool friends in a part of the country where I didn’t previously know anyone. Professionally speaking, it’s true that you’ll be exposed to a wider variety of clients and a bigger network of people. All good things for someone who’s looking for options.

The main disadvantage to a larger office is that it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. If you’re not hell-bent on being Ms. PwC, just want to do your job and go enjoy your life outside of work, sometimes that can work against you. It’ll be important for you to foster good relationships with people that will go to bat for you when it comes to performance reviews and staffing you on clients. If you’re always billing and you’ve got a good relationship with your superiors, you should be fine. If you find yourself floating around, you may end up being a name no one recognizes and that makes you expendable.

A mid-sized office, on the other hand, is a little more familial. You’ll get to know everyone, including the support staff who can be lifesavers when you inevitably find yourself in some kind of jam where they can help. Mid-sized cities can be fun because they have a different feel from the big city. Denver, for example, has a great music scene and amazing weather so you spend a lot of time outdoors. No, you don’t have the Met or a grip of five-star restaurants but you make the most of wherever you go.

The main problem with a smaller city is that because it can feel familial, there’s always familial problems. It can feel a little bit like high school at times and most people will know your business one way or another. If there’s a beef amongst team members or someone else, EVERYONE WILL KNOW ABOUT IT. Also, because line-of-business groups are smaller, it can make the promotion process and the internal politics a little trickier. There are fewer clients to chase and so the higher up you go, the fewer manager and partner spots are available. As a staff you won’t really be affected by this but if you want to stay with your firm for awhile, it may become an issue later.

Ultimately, go with your instincts. If you want to live in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, you should go for it. You’re young and eager, so you may as well use that high energy on those high-energy places now. Good luck.

2 thoughts on “You Can Easily Replace ‘Investment Banking’ with ‘Public Accounting’ In These Reactions to the Goldman Sachs Workplace Abuse Claims”

  2. As a former big 4 auditor who is married to a former investment banker, I promise you public accounting hours are a nice vacation compared to investment banking and we should politely excuse ourselves from this conversation 🙂 For the most part, during my 4.5 years in audit, outside of busy season I could reasonably expect my weekends to be free and to not have to work late every single night and my teammates actually respected PTO. Sure my busy seasons and quarters were exhausting and miserable and the planning/interim deadlines were stressful, but for the most part I could still have somewhat of a life outside of work. I can’t speak for the tax and consulting folks, but the ones I knew at least during my time there I would say felt the same.

    Meanwhile my husband could literally never make solid weekend plans and many nights where he would think he could wrap up around 8/9pm and he would get a ‘plz fix immediately’ email from an MD and be back online until 2 or 3 in the morning only to not have the MD look at it again for 3 more days. A lot of times those late nights were mandated just to be on standby in case they received something from a client and then nothing would come of it. There was no excuse not to be checking your email or answering your phone 24/7. One time we went to a close friend’s wedding for a weekend and he came back to a scathing email from an MD telling him it was absolutely unacceptable that he hadn’t been available even though he had told his entire team he would be traveling that weekend. There’s no mercy in staffing – no one cares if you already have 50 deals you’re working on and if you can’t keep up, it’s not that you’re overworked, it’s that you’re not working hard enough.

    All that to say is yes, public accounting is miserable (hence why I am no longer in it) but if the investment bankers saw this article they would be laughing at us. They need a full on culture change and probably serious labor regulations. At least public accounting pretends to care about work/life balance.

Comments are closed.