May 9 (Bloomberg) -- It was a Friday in the fall of 2004 and Umber Ahmad

had been invited to read a poem at the wedding of one of her closest
friends. She was planning to catch a 7 p.m. flight from New York to Toronto
when a vice president at Morgan Stanley called her in. The client in a big
merger deal needed work done over the weekend. A mergers and
acquisitions specialist, Ahmad had no choice. She canceled the flight and
started revising her analysis of the deal, Bloomberg Markets magazine will
report in its June issue.
The missed wedding was just one of dozens of dinners, family get-togethers
and other events that Ahmad did not attend as she worked 70- and 80-hour
weeks as a young associate at Morgan Stanley and later as a vice president
at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Ahmad, the Michigan-born daughter of a
Pakistani doctor who taught at Harvard Medical School, likens the long
hours and all-nighters to serving in the army.
The military will show you that sleep deprivation is a form of torture, she
says. Not being able to get regular sleep is a detriment to your life, to your
health.
Her life revolved around her job, she says. She dated another banker. Many
of her friends were -- and still are -- bankers because they understood lastminute cancellations and upset vacation plans.
You always remain close to the people youve gone to war with, she says.
Its a lot of misery they can understand.
Ahmad says she loved her job, as exhausting as it was. It was exciting; it
was drinking from a fire hose every day, she says.

Stress Relief
She left Goldman in 2007 to start her own investment firm. She didnt
forget that in her rare leisure hours at the banks, she used baking to help

ease the stress. So, in 2013, Ahmad founded Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery, a New
Yorkbased luxury pastry company launched with celebrity chef Tom
Colicchio. She is also a managing director at New York investment firm
Specialized Capital Management & Advisory.
For Ahmad, banking was a springboard to her new life as an entrepreneur.
As hard as it was and as trying as it was and as sleepless as it was, it also
afforded me the opportunity to be where I am today, she says.
Some of the best and brightest of Wall Streets young investment bankers
are bailing out of their high-paying, prestigious jobs at big financial
institutions. Many are setting up their own businesses, especially in
technology. While there are no precise statistics on the trend, data from the
U.S. Census Bureau show that the number of employees aged 25 to 34 in
the New York metropolitan area in finance and insurance fell to 109,187 as
of the second quarter of 2013, down 19 percent from the second quarter of
2007.

Prestige and Riches

Forgoing a personal life has long been considered a fair exchange for the
prestige and riches that can be earned in investment banking and trading.
Competition remains intense for the coveted two-year bank training
programs that pay graduates and new MBAs from $100,000 to $300,000 a
year.
That talented young people are questioning these trade-offs doesnt
surprise Patrick Curtis, who worked as an analyst for two years at boutique
investment banking firm Rothschild Inc. a decade ago.
Its definitely not worth the money, says Curtis, 34, who now runs a
career advice and networking website called WallStreetOasis.com. Youre

working 90 hours a week on average. It can go up to 120 when its really

bad. Is it worth it? No.

Student Dropouts
At elite universities, fewer MBA and finance candidates are willing to even
consider a life of missed weddings, busted romances and deep-into-thenight deal negotiations. The percentage of Harvard Business School
graduates entering investment banking, sales or trading dropped to 5
percent last year from 12 percent in 2006, while those entering technology
almost tripled to 18 percent during that period.
At the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School, the percentage of
MBAs entering investment banking dropped to 13.3 percent last year from
26 percent in 2006, while those entering tech more than doubled to 11.1
percent.
Theres less willingness on the students part to make the sacrifices that
they might have been willing to make five years ago, 10 years ago, says
Jonathan Shepherd, associate director of the MBA career and professional
development office at the Harvard Business School and a former analyst at
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Banks are acutely aware of the too-high attrition rate among their young
associates and analysts -- the titles carried by most junior bankers -- and
have initiated programs to combat it. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan,
among others, are rethinking the way deals are brought to fruition.

War for Talent

Theres a war for talent, says Jeff Urwin, who was promoted in April to
co-run corporate and investment banking at JPMorgan. Youve got to
compete.

One result is guaranteed days off to keep young employees from burning
out. The banks are focusing attention on their M&A groups, where sevenday, 80-hour workweeks are the norm and the hours can run around the
clock in a big deal like Comcast Corp.s $45.2 billion offer to buy Time
Warner Cable Inc. The banks involved: JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.
Last August, Bank of America Corp. intern Moritz Erhardt, who worked in
the firms London office, died following round-the-clock work on a merger.
Though the official cause of death was an epileptic seizure, Mary Hassell,
the coroner who investigated the death, said his fatigue may have triggered
the convulsion that killed him. The 21-year-old banker was found dead in
the shower at Claredale House, a student residential facility in East
London.

London Death
Moritz had a natural cause of death, though its not so natural that a young
man should die like this, Hassell said during a formal inquiry in
November.
Bank of America said at the time that it would review all aspects of this
tragedy. In January, the bank issued new guidelines saying that managers
would closely monitor work volume among junior bankers and summer
associates. The policy also recommends that analysts and associates take off
four weekend days a month and requires that they take all their vacation
days.
Erhardts death raised a more general alarm among bank executives.
Im not sure how you stop work if theres a deal on, Morgan Stanley Chief
Executive Officer James Gorman told Bloomberg Television in January. Yet
the incident in London, he added, has caused everyone to step back and
say, Hey, have we got this right?

Managers at JPMorgan, which employs 1,000 men and women as

associates and analysts worldwide, track their hours on a color-coded
spreadsheet. Bankers who spend more than 75 hours in the office per week
are marked in red; those who work fewer hours are branded blue or yellow.
Urwin studies the charts every week. He isnt looking to see whos not
working enough. Hes looking to see whos working too much.
There are only two things you control in investment banking management:
how you use financial capital and how you use human capital, Urwin says.
Junior bankers who keep lighting up red, and the people who manage
them, typically get a call from Urwin to find out what they are working on
and if the hours are justified. If not, the manager requesting the work may
get a warning.

Goldman Initiatives
Both JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have formed in-house committees
designed to improve the experience of their junior bankers. At Goldman,
the resulting changes included the formation of a junior banker career
development committee, several of whose recommendations the firm has
adopted. One change: Goldman did away with its two-year training
program in 2012 in favor of hiring new graduates on a permanent basis.
In an effort to reduce young bankers workloads, Goldman changed the way
senior managers commission work so junior bankers dont have to create a
50-page presentation for a client when a 15-page report would suffice. In
October, Goldman began requiring entry-level bankers and slightly moresenior associates in the investment-banking division to take Saturdays off.
Curtis of Wall Street Oasis laughs at the idea that forcing bankers to take a
few weekend days off will resolve the overwork issue.

Its not necessarily lowering the overall hours analysts are working, he
says. Its shifting it to Sunday nights and during the week. So theyre
getting more all-nighters during the week.

Bank Self-Interest
Kevin Roose spent three years following the careers of eight young bankers
for his book Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Streets PostCrash Recruits (Grand Central Publishing, 2014). He says its good that the
banks are taking better care of their junior bankers.
But this is not a charitable act, Roose says. Theyre losing a lot of their
young people and theyre having a lot of trouble recruiting, so these banks
are panicking about how to keep hold of the next generation.
In the high-pressure environment of an investment bank, the typical
professional stays on the job between seven and nine years before changing
careers or leaving for other areas of finance, according to a study that will
be published this summer by Alexandra Michel, who started her career as a
junior banker at Goldman Sachs in 1992 and now teaches management at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Michel, who has a Ph.D. in management from the Wharton School, has
spent the past 13 years studying the working conditions of investment
bankers. She has found that the long hours and stress begin taking their toll
after four years.

Chronic Pain
On year four, physical breakdowns occur, initially minor, she says.
Chronic pain, insomnia, endocrine disorders set in. Pain is really
common. Weight gain, hair loss, anxiety, depression and generalized low
energy are also common complaints, Michel says.

When severe stress kicks in, the young bankers are often able to perform at
a high level only with the help of high-caffeine drinks, prescription
stimulants and sleeping pills, she says.
Its whatever it takes to keep functioning, Michel says. So if you have to
work around the clock, you take the chemicals you need to still be sharp
and awake, and if you cant sleep because youre so depressed and stressed,
you take a different set of pills.
Michel is skeptical of the new programs to relieve young bankers pain.

Nothing Has Changed

As one set of depleted bankers leaves, the next is already moving through
the door, she says. It isnt bad for banking in the least, and thats why
nothing has changed.
Executives can be less interested in their young assistants health than they
are in getting a deal done, former junior bankers say. One recalls working
on a deal through a nasty sinus infection. When the banker resisted flying
out of town to meet with the client, the managing directors said it was
mandatory.
The pressure from the flight ruptured the bankers eardrum, which started
bleeding. The team pushed on with the deal talks despite the fact that the
banker had lost hearing in one ear. Upon returning to New York, the banker
went straight to the emergency room, where doctors ordered no flying for
the next five months, preventing the banker from attending future client
meetings on crucial deals.
Former junior bankers say they quickly learned how to make do on four to
five hours of sleep a night, especially during the financial meltdown in
2008 to 2009.

24-Hour Workday
Hamilton Colwell started as a junior banker at JPMorgans structuredforeign-exchange desk in 2006, when he was 27. His specialty was helping
clients manage risk through interest-rate derivatives. His skills were in high
demand both before and during the crisis. In 2008 and early 2009, Colwell
often worked day and night, he says, returning home only to shower and
change.
In dealing with friends and family, I learned quickly not to make promises
I couldnt keep, Colwell says. He had a girlfriend. Weekends away and
dinners out with her were always sacrificed, he says. It quickly became
normal. The two eventually broke up.
After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, the crush of work made
Colwell, now 36, realize he couldnt stay in banking. Even after the markets
calmed, Colwell was still working 13 hours a day during the week and often
on weekends. He says for a while it was invigorating. That faded.

I Saw the Light

I saw the light and realized that I needed to do something more
meaningful, he says.
After leaving JPMorgan in 2010, Colwell used the money he earned but
never had time to spend to start a company called Healthy Mom LLC,
which produces Maia Yogurt. A foodie in his meager spare time, he made
the first batch on the stove of his Manhattan apartment after his cousin bet
him that he couldnt make a tasty yogurt that would also be good for her
during her pregnancy.
The company manufactures its products at a dairy plant in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. It now sells 100,000 cups a week of the low-sugar, low-fat
yogurt, which is enhanced with probiotics, to supermarkets including

Whole Foods Market Inc., Safeway Inc., Giant Food Stores LLC and Stop &
Shop Supermarket Co.
Roger Wu, who was an intern at Goldman Sachs in 1999, also decided that
the bankers life was not for him. He remembers being angry and frustrated
when clients made unreasonable demands, such as requesting at the end of
the day a presentation for the following morning.
So guess whos staying up all night? Wu asks. You are, because the client
gives you this thing at 6 oclock, and they need it on their desk by 9 a.m.
Wu, 37, recalls that even when he wasnt actually working, his life was not
his own.
A lot of what youre doing is twiddling your fingers, he says. Leaving the
office, while sometimes encouraged, isnt really a viable option because the
work flow isnt predictable.
If you go to a museum or the movies, your BlackBerry goes off and youve
got to get back to the office, Wu says.
He turned down a job offer from Goldman to join a technology company
that converted organic waste into fossil fuels. He currently helps run
Cooperatize Inc., a business-to-business advertising platform he cofounded with a friend.

Bullpen Camaraderie
While the 80-hour workweeks are grueling, Len Podolsky says, they also
generate enormous camaraderie in the bullpen -- the group of cubicles
where junior bankers are usually clustered. Podolsky left JPMorgan last
year after almost three years as an associate on the banks health-care team.
His group advised health insurers, medical-device companies and other
health-related firms on strategic deals.

Culture really matters, says Podolsky, 33, a Wharton graduate. How the
bullpen interacts is critical. You can work 80 hours a week and not mind it
so much because the people you work with are awesome.
Podolsky now works as director of operations at Connolly LLC, a healthcare audit firm based in Wilton, Connecticut. While the pay is about the
same, his hours are better, and he now gets to make decisions on staffing
and strategy instead of giving advice to other executives, he says.
On campus, meanwhile, career placement officers say students can now
choose among jobs at hundreds of tech companies and startups. Many
would rather try to get in on the next Facebook Inc. or Tesla Motors Inc.
than work a grinding schedule in the bureaucracy of a big bank.

Bitter Parents
Sometimes the decision is personal. A lot of them have parents who lost
jobs in the financial crisis, and thats led to a distrust of large corporations,
Harvard MBA career director Shepherd says. The financial crisis, negative
press and the Occupy Wall Street movement have helped fuel the defection
from large corporate finance firms.
Big, in general, is bad, Shepherd says.
Recent graduates are drawn to smaller, more-nimble firms, says Pulin
Sanghvi, executive director of career services at Princeton University.
Companies that didnt exist two or three years ago are now hiring in force,
he says. Theres just more choice for students. And the students want to
go to a job where they dont start on the bottom rung.
For our students, finding a job is less of a concern than finding the right
job, Sanghvi says. What matters most to them is where they think they
can make a difference.

Work-Life Balance
Taylor Russell, whos pursuing a masters degree in finance at Princeton,
was recruited by some top investment banks. He considered them, but
ended up rejecting the dealmakers in favor of asset manager BlackRock Inc.
for his internship.
Work-life balance is important, and that was a big part of my decisionmaking process, says Russell, 25, who spent three years teaching high
school math and coaching swimming before entering Princeton. While the
banks have their own in-house asset management divisions, Russell says he
liked the more relaxed culture at BlackRock and thought he could have
greater impact managing risk for individual investors.
Having a place where my personality fits in is more important than having
a bigger bonus at the end of the year, says Russell, who has an applied
math degree from Brown University. Either way, Ill be making a good
living.

No Thanks, Banks
Russells Princeton classmate Karen Leiton was recruited by Goldman
Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. and hedge fund Bridgewater Associates
LP, then chose an internship at the World Bank, where she will make about
a third of the compensation. The 26-year-old Colombian worked for Banco
de la Republica, her home countrys central bank, from 2009 through 2013.
Leiton, who has an undergraduate degree in international finance, says,
Working in the markets is very exciting for some people, but people that
work in the government arent there for the money. They are there because
they can have an impact in the long term.
Colwell, the yogurt maker, says his grueling schedule at JPMorgan helped
prepare him for life as an entrepreneur.

My work is much, much more difficult now, says Colwell, whose yogurt
company uses only locally sourced milk from grass-fed cows in rural
Pennsylvania. Yet theres a big difference between being the first employee
of a new company versus just one of JPMorgans army of 250,000, he says.
As punishing as her jobs in finance were, Ahmad, the banker turned baker,
has no regrets.
We actively chose to be bankers; we actively chose to live that lifestyle,
she says. I couldnt have learned what I learned at any other job. Its an
accelerated education.