Or you do like a friend of mine - you work for 3-4 years like a slave, once you move in the hierarchy you still work 90 hours a week but that now include "networking" activities like golf and extended lunches.

You drag it while you can, buying a new flat cash with the bonus you get each year. At 32, the bank finally noticed, you are fired with a few years salary and you retire in your all-paid luxury flat, enjoy income from your other 5 flats, get kids and enjoy seeing them grow while living in a luxury.

The only problem of that lifestyle is that in the first 3-4 years, you have basically 1 chance in 10 to make it through. After working in such pressure, you are brainwashed, so it takes some serious willpower to first invest your money properly instead of living the high life and then prepare your exit strategy.

edit: the bank finally notice that you are not as eager as the next batch of freshly promoted coworker. So if your department made slightly less profit, you get selected in the next batch of firing that happen generally just before bonus time.

So your friend was the 1 in 10. What happens to the other 9?

For me my priorities are providing for my future family and being there with them. I wouldnt want to be gone when my child walks or other small events early in life.

I was billing hours while my wife was in labor (it's actually a pretty long and boring process). My kid was almost certainly in daycare when she took her first steps. She won't remember anything that happens before four or five. Whether I'm there for any particular random milestone only has the importance that I assign to it mentally. Obviously kids want your time and you need time with them. The best part of my day is when my daughter toddles up to me when I get home. But kids are usually really flexible. You don't have to be there for artificial milestones just because some parenting magazine hypes them up.

The other 9 either try and try again until they are wasted. The other just fall back on regular job, like what happens for developers when they tire of startup.

About the priorities, the problem is the brainwashing and easy money that lead people to try to get always more.

If you have the willpower you are able to retire very early and be with your kids full time while still living a life normal people need 2 good full time salaries to live.

I would not have had the willpower my friend displayed so I have limited regrets. But I still need to put my kid at the nursery in November, need to live in a foreign country far from our family and live in poor area of the city that I hope I will be able to leave before I need to send my kid to school.

Wait so the bank fired him for buying new flats every year ?

I edited my comment for precision, but what happens is that the bank finally notice that you are not as eager as the next batch of freshly promoted coworker. (i.e. you have a life on the side, you cannot be contacted during the we, you go on holiday, ...)

So if your department made slightly less profit that year, you get selected in the next batch of firing that happen generally just before bonus time.

Note that firing is a regular event for bankers. There is not much stigma attached to it, you just need to have the willpower to use the opportunity to retire.

The opportunities investment banking opens up are fantastic. It's the easiest way, and often times the only way, to get into private equity, hedge funds, or corporate development, and make a ton of money while doing so. It also helps get into a great business school. The modeling/valuation work is also something that I and most finance people find the most interesting, even though that is probably 5% of the job for an analyst. It's something I was and am still willing to do but it's very hard to get an interview if you didn't go to a top school or know anyone in banking, neither of which I have going for me.

I enjoy what I do now, corp finance for a tech company, but banking would be ideal.

The point is that the older employees are hazing the new ones to limit entry into the company. Employment within finance is declining sharply. It would not be shocking if it returns to its low level of prestige that it was at before the 1980s.

I would say that it's not a great sign that Ivy types are looking to recreate the happy-slappy Greenspan years in another sector.

My father worked for Goldman in the 1990s, up to a relatively high level. He was home at 7 pm each day and would often eat breakfast with us before school, and he rode the subway to work. Now, he would also often be commuting cross-continent and be gone for all the weekdays at a time, and would have to spend some time reading reports and financial journals on weekends, but still he never went through the sort of fraternity absurdities that seem common now, even when he started in the industry in his early 30s.

Also, clients have more options now and can demand more from the banks -- their relative bargaining position is weaker. Being that they're all public companies now rather than partnerships, the entire culture has shifted, and they're under more performance pressure. The raw dollar amounts are much higher, but the core business model is eroding.

OK, if you're a client, do you want to have your account handled by some frenetic kid on amphetamines working 100 hours a week, or do you want it handled by someone with class who is going to likely be with the firm for the rest of his life? Junior on speed is going to die of a heart attack at 27 and might jump to another firm or a hedge fund. Taking your confidential information with him in his head to some other firm who might use that information against you some day.

Why would you trust your business with a team of substance-enhanced Juniors with impeccable academic credentials?

Like Bill Solomon recently said on his 100th birthday (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-02/billy-salomon-turns...):

"When you are a partnership there is a different atmosphere,” Salomon said. “You’re working for each other.” That discipline helped instill a culture where clients trusted their advisers, he said."

That trust is gone, and it can't be replaced by just throwing amphetamine-fueled-all-nighters at the problem.

More on Salomon culture:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Brothers#1990s_Treasu...

Ite not "Solomon" :-)

Oops, haha!

People aren't that delicate. I've known factory workers who've done 50-80 hour weeks for decades on end. When I was a machine operator at Harte-Hanks outside of Baltimore, I worked a 76 hour week without a day off for three months straight (12h * 5, 8h * 2). They refused to open the plant on Thanksgiving, so it broke my streak.

Right now, somebody in Germany is wondering how I can deal with only having 2 weeks of vacation a year, and speculating that it could lead to serious medical problems.

My father had a series of mini-strokes after having a pleasant salmon dinner.

>When I was a machine operator at Harte-Hanks outside of Baltimore, I worked a 76 hour week without a day off for three months straight (12h * 5, 8h * 2).

Was it worth it though? It doesnt look like you are still at that job.

The salmon dinner didnt cause the stroke, its not usually what you are doing at the time that causes the heart attack/stroke. It was probably the decades of bad health/choices whatever that caused it.

>Right now, somebody in Germany is wondering how I can deal with only having 2 weeks of vacation a year

Hell right now I am asking myself why I dont live in Europe.

50-80, 80-90, 90-110, any difference?

Factory work can be high or low stress, depending on the pacing and risk of injury.

My thinking exactly, if you are only screwing bolt A and B to nut A and B every time I dont think you have a lot of job stress, youre just working long hours.

I knew a guy who worked 60 hours a week putting stickers on a package he loved his job. No stress and his productivity determined his pay no.

Considering the generally healthy state of teh german economy, maybe they're onto something.

I got a lot of BS answers to this question when I wanted to be an investment banker. The only reasonable answer I got is that it's a low-risk way to make a ton of money. Instead of risk you give up your life and/or health.

"low-risk"..."give up your life and/or health"

Does not compute.

I think "more guaranteed" or "higher probability" would be a better way of describing it.

If you can do it for say 10 years and make enough to retire comfortably that can sound like a good deal.

(To me the more curious question is why anyone would employ people to do that, given that you get less done in an 80-hour week than a 35-hour one)

A huge chunk of finance is selling snake oil to rich people and the appearance that people are working there ass off is vary important.

Money, prestige and the promise of future success makes 22 year olds do stupid things.

Most people who go into finance do so right after undergrad, when they're 22-23. Working a few years of 80-90 hour weeks* at a major bank almost guarantees admission to a top business school, allows you to save up a significant amount of money for later ventures, and is a resume line-item that carries almost universal weight in the F500 business world.

*) Although that's more typical of M&A than finance as a whole. My brother is a trader at one of the big banks and probably works more like 60.