Contrary to all the CEO protests that junior bankers prefer to be in the office, it seems the reality is much more nuanced. When Wall Street Oasis asked 450 analysts where they preferred hanging out last month, just 17% of first-years and 13% of third-years said the office was their favorite place to work. And yet, more than a third of Wall Street Oasis respondents said they were back in the office at least 75% of the time.
As banks continue to compete fiercely for junior banking talent, it’s easy to see where this could go next. In order to get new analysts over the line, it will be tempting to dangle the prospect of working from home much more than in their current role. Once there, however, it can also be tempting to go back.
We’re not saying this is still happening in finance, but there are already opportunities for disappointed expectations. A quick look on Google reveals many vacancies at Goldman Sachs, for example, which are ostensibly ‘work from anywhere’, but are actually in London or elsewhere when reviewed on their own. Goldman website.
Baiting in with remote work and then moving to the office is already a thing in the tech industry, where fully remote working is more common. A lengthy HackerNews thread emerged yesterday filled with tech staff complaining that their seemingly remote work turned out to be anything but. People who have been recruited for remote positions and have accepted jobs are urged to report to the office, the original poster reads. When they complain, they’re told “the job ad didn’t say remote, the agreement they signed didn’t say remote. The recruiter got it wrong, but that’s not the business problem”.
This is followed by a torrent of responses from people who have encountered a similar phenomenon. Someone says they interviewed at Google and were told by a potential manager that the job would be remote but their manager turned it down (this person went to work remotely for Facebook instead). Another says he interviewed at Amazon and the recruiter tried to manipulate him into “assigning a local office”, saying he would have to go through “an approval process” otherwise, and that now that he is joined, he is asked to go to regular meetings back at the office. There are stories of recruiters luring people into interviews with promises of a day in the office every two weeks, then revealing the job is four days a week in the office…
If it’s happening in tech, it’s probably happening in finance too. HackerNews technologists suggest a few solutions. First, they say you need to check the job posting on a company’s website to verify what they themselves say about the location. Second, they say if you’re going to work remotely, you have to get it in writing.
“No verbal promises. Make sure everything you discussed is written in the offer. If you said 100% remote, make sure the offer says 100% remote. If not, ask them to add it before signing,” advises someone who describes himself as “old”. “And then if they go back there, keep working there, look for a new job, don’t go to the office even if they tell you you have to, and tell them you have it in writing that it’s 100% remote.”
Similar shenanigans are coming to banking soon (assuming they aren’t here already).
Separately, since we found out that old-school hedge fund manager Chase Coleman III is married to an old-school woman who tried her hand at banking before deciding it sounded like too much hard work then that she could just sip cocktails at Cipriani on her trust fund, we thought “indeed.” Why would you work 80 hours a week in banking if you come from the kind of family that Thorstein Vebler wrote about over 100 years ago when he identified leisure as the greatest sign of status (/leisure combined with a cocktail budget)?
As a result, new research from the UK Institute for Tax Studies has found that the more money you earn in the UK, the less likely you are to be an employee. To be in the top 1% in the country, you need an income of over £100,000 ($170,000). To be in the top 0.1% you need an income of over £500,000. 20% of the income of the richest 1% comes from self-employment, and 30% for the richest 0.01%.
Of course, this means that 80% of the top 1% and 70% of the top 0.1% could still work in finance, but it’s worth noting that we’ve been here before. In 2017, a London banker earning around $400,000 complained that he felt poor compared to the parents at his children’s school. While he worked all the time, they simply lived off their possessions. “It seems rich to me,” he said. “None of them really work.”
Meanwhile…
Goldman Sachs offers its former partners to invest in a new “1869 fund” which invests in many private funds managed by its asset management division. He has raised $1 billion so far. (FinancialTimes)
Peter Thiel described Warren Buffett as a “sociopathic grandfather”. Jamie Dimon was mentioned in the next breath. (Bloomberg)
A 51-year-old American Yale graduate, who was head of equities at SMBC Securities in Tokyo, is charged with improper trading and faces 15 years in prison. Friends say he ruffled feathers: “The fact that the foreigner went there and did things that Japanese bosses never did put you in the crosshairs.” (WSJ)
TD Securities wants its staff back in the office. “After more than two years, it’s time to come together again — joining the thousands of colleagues already on site today. It will be a time of listening, learning and building our new places of work together. » (Financial item)
Colm Kelleher is now chairman of UBS. No pressure. (FiNews)
20% of the highest paid bankers in the UK are non-doms. (The temperature)
A Goldman Sachs banker charged with misuse of financial information in 2014 spent years battling the charge before deciding life was too short and allowed himself to be disbarred without accepting or denying the charges. “He fought every day to clear his name, but given the passage of time and his plans for the future, the endless litigation no longer made sense. He is happy to leave it behind as he did. (FinancialTimes)
Rokos Capital Management is seeking licenses to manage assets in Hong Kong and Singapore. (FinancialTimes)
Walmart is raising starting salaries for its truck drivers between $95,000 and $110,000 a year, compared to an average starting salary of $87,000. (WSJ)
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