When a more than $100,000 salary is still not enough They said their mental health and physical health had declined. The bankers said they worked 98 hours per week, on average, and they slept five hours per night. "They want to make sure that they're staying on par."īut it's unclear if more money will be enough to improve recruitment and retention at investment banks – especially in the midst of a pandemic that deprives young bankers from the networking and the on-site learning that have been essential to the job.Ī few months ago, about a dozen young bankers at Goldman Sachs created a PowerPoint presentation that detailed their desperation. "I think the investment banks are watching each other, and they're also watching other highly competitive industries," Pascarella says. The pay being offered to junior bankers, many straight out of college, can sound obscene: It can now surpass $150,000, when factoring in a performance bonus, or roughly five times the per capita income in the U.S. Most banks including Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs boosted pay in recent weeks for young employees and now offer starting salaries of at least $100,000. Wall Street is responding with their weapon of choice: compensation.
"I kind of thought about it as a means to an end, but when I started, I realized that it wasn't necessarily the means to an end that I wanted," Hossain remembers.
But Hossain soon found herself putting in long hours, crunching numbers in Excel spreadsheets and preparing PowerPoint presentations for more senior bankers. And the six-figure paycheck wouldn't hurt. But she figured a detour to Wall Street would teach her useful skills and provide networking opportunities. Hossain had interned for nonprofits and was seriously considering going to graduate school. 11.įor years, Wall Street was a top destination for star students like Tashrima Hossain, a class president at Stanford University with ambitions to change the world. She posed for a portrait at Alamo Square in San Francisco on Aug. Tashrima Hossain, who used to work on Wall Street, but quit to join Facebook, is part of a growing number of young people who are no longer attracted to investment banking despite surging salaries.