Banking on Pain
When Casey Woo ’03 landed a position as an analyst with the investment bank Morgan Stanley in New York, he thought his exhausting undergraduate routine had paid off. He had a hot job, and he had mastered the Harvard lifestyle, which he was sure would serve him well in the workplace.
Nearly a year later, he’s got a new threshold of pain. “Imagine you’re taking 6 classes, all with deadlines in the next few days, and your professors are standing over you, each asking you to read just a few more pages or complete one more problem set,” he says. “That’s kind of what this job is like.”
And while 80-hour weeks filled with intense assignments may entice only masochists, Woo’s self-described position as a “workhorse” for his senior management team remains one of the most coveted options for seniors.
Brian W. Flanagan ’04, who will begin banking for JP Morgan in July, is looking forward to the job. “I think the draw to banking is the resumé cache, the skills you learn, the money, and the city. There are also so many great exit opportunities,” he says.
Apparently there are more than enough masochists around. When they analyze cost versus benefit, i-bankers say loss of social and intellectual life, not to mention REM cycles, is worth it. Must be the money.
The Grind
Keith Hahn ’03 signed on to his job as an analyst at J.P. Morgan without prior banking experience, but says that he knew what he was getting into. “I had seen documentaries on the Patan death march and the Holocaust, so I feel that I was prepared for the day-to-day i-banking life,” he says.
Over at Goldman Sachs, Laura Seaton ’03 offers a less severe description of her daily tasks. “A typical day consists of meetings and conference calls internally and with clients and more concentrated work during the evening on financial models and other research needs that may arise during the day,” she says.
“It’s just not natural to be doing this amount of work,” said Steve Sceery ’03, who recently joined Morgan Stanley across the Atlantic in London. “It’s brutal,” he says, adding that the environment in London was still more relaxed than in the US.
His New York counterpart and former roommate, Woo says many don’t quite understand what the job comprises. “A lot of people ask what I do for 80 hours a week.”
With many months practice in model-making, Woo immediately puts i-banking in a nutshell: “Essentially, my boss schmoozes with CEOs on the golfcourse to convince them to do something to make money in the big picture. I’m in the small picture. I do all the gruntwork, crunching numbers and creating presentations.”
Most of the analysts admitted to finding only some of their work stimulating. “I really enjoy the model making aspect,” Seaton says. But she admitted that other tasks, like compiling text about companies, were not as thrilling.
Another first year analyst at Goldman Sachs, who preferred not to be named, explains the mathematical breakdown. “I’d say 25 percent of this work is interesting and the other 75 percent is pretty mindless.”
Hahn offers another calculation. “A lot of the time I’m calculating which people in the office I want to strangle,” he says.
A Hard Day’s Night
The i-bankers strive to keep perspective, but it isn’t easy. “For a year you have no personal life. It’s hard enough to do my laundry,” says the Goldman Sachs analyst, whose worst work week lasted 155 hours, leaving him with just 13 hours to sleep.
Seaton points out that the world of banking left some academic inclinations under-utilized. “I try to read and go to museums on weeknights. I don’t want to lose that academic side.”
While Seaton worries about losing her intellectual side, Hahn frets about losing his physique. “Morning calistenics are essential. You want to make sure you achieve a great burn in your gluts in the morning because you remain amorphously attached to your seat during the day and all the food you’re expensing can go straight to your ass.”
Out of the office and off his ass, Sceery had managed to fly into Cambridge for the weekend. He was glad to visit his girlfriend here, but wondered if he’d still have his job on Monday. “I’m at a period in my life where I have the most enthusiasm for adventure, no responsibilities or attachments, but instead I decided to spend 17 hours a day in an office seven days a week. It makes you start to wonder,” he says.
Though Sceery is able to maintain his relationship overseas, analysts who were not previously involved in a relationship say it would be nearly impossible to meet someone.
“At this point, I’ve honed my asexuality to the point where I have become adept at budding and spores,” Hahn said. “My gametophytes are just roaming around the office.”
Perhaps it will take unattached bankers several years to produce the next generation, but nine months in i-banking has given birth to many reflections about the job.
Woo says he can walk away from his experience knowing he is well-prepared for almost any financial job in the future, “The bottom line is that I really have learned a lot.” But he says he’d only recommend the experience for specific personalities. “You have to like finance and you have to like pain,” he says. “[People are] attracted to the name and the glamour, but there really is no glamour.”
It’s All About the Benjamins
Few analysts have any interest in continuing in banking for more than their two year commitment. Most plan to move on to business school and take on less rigorous jobs in the worlds of finance and management.
“When we leave here it’s all down hill,” Woo says. “I’m going to go from working over 80 hours a week to 40. I could take on two full time jobs.”
While Woo points to dreams of financial security and disposable income (DI) in the future, Hahn reflects more whimsically on the past. “I guess you really have to have the skills to pay the bills,” he admitted, but said that money wasn’t absolutely everything.
“Some of us are all about the DI,” he says, “but what I would say is ‘follow your kindergarten pipe dream and become that ballerina in space you always wanted to be.’”
Too bad astronaut training isn’t part of the Core.