Goldman Sachs Group Inc. just drew a new work boundary for its summer investment-banking interns: No staying in the office overnight. In an effort to improve working conditions and to cut down on the stress caused by excessive hours, Goldman Sachs told its latest group of interns to take a break from the office — at least between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m. The maximum number of hours summer interns can work is now a "mere" 17 hours a day.
Interns aren't the first in the banking industry to be told to take it easy. Goldman Sachs recently began encouraging junior bankers to take Saturdays off, and Bank of America told junior employees to take at least four weekend days off every month. But even these constraints might not be enough to curb the stress of 100-hour work weeks, work days that end at 3 or even 4 in the morning, and little to no time off, even on the weekends. In April, an analyst on one of Goldman Sach's investment-banking teams committed suicide after grappling with the decision of whether he wanted to quit under his job's increasingly intense demands.
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