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Opinion
Marcus Ashworth and Elisa Martinuzzi

Young Bankers Have an Absurd Work Life

Junior Goldman Sachs analysts complaining about 100-hour work weeks should just suck it up, apparently. Why is investment banking so stuck in the past?

A dysfunctional culture.

A dysfunctional culture.

Photographer: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images

In the first episode of “Industry,” a BBC and HBO television drama about young investment bankers, the depiction of their world couldn’t be bleaker: A graduate trainee dies in the office toilet after pulling several all-nighters.

Both writers of the cult show had left banking disenchanted by their own experiences, and they had a real example to give the plotline substance. In 2013 a summer intern at Bank of America Corp. in London died from an epileptic seizure caused by overwork.