Hitting the Wall

Welcome back! Here’s what we’re exploring in this week’s newsletter:

??? A reckoning on Wall Street?

?? Diving into LinkedIn’s latest jobs report

?? Barbara Corcoran ’s go-to book on business

What's Going on on Wall Street?

The sudden death of a 35-year-old investment banker earlier this year has forced Wall Street to take a cold, hard look at its unforgiving culture of overwork. Leo Lukenas III was reportedly working over 100 hours a week for about a month as part of a team finalizing a $2 billion deal for Bank of America. Days after the deal closed, the former Green Beret died of a blood clot that formed in a coronary artery.

Now, both Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase — two of the country’s largest and most storied financial institutions —?are taking steps to prevent another tragedy. According to the Wall Street Journal , JPMorgan will cap the hours its junior investment bankers work to 80 a week. (To be clear, this is still a staggering amount of labor: If you were to work six days a week, that would mean clocking in at 8:30 a.m. and out at 10 p.m.). Meanwhile, Bank of America will implement a new tool meant to enforce its limit of weekly hours, which its younger employees were frequently flouting —?in some cases, by the urging of their managers, per a Journal investigation.

But can Wall Street really reform itself? Some insiders are skeptical.

“You can track hours and promise days off, but at the end of the day, if there’s work to get done and the expectation is that it’s coming from your senior banker because a client needs it, that’s going to get done,” a former Bank of America employee told Business Insider . “That’s how they make money.”

For the inside scoop, we turned to Khemaridh (Khe) Hy . In a past life, Hy was a junior investment banker who worked obscene hours and climbed up the ladder to become one of BlackRock’s youngest managing directors. Then, at 35, he reached his breaking point and left finance to start a popular newsletter , coach others looking to escape their golden handcuffs, and surf.

He’d like to believe that banks will be able to create a more sustainable working environment for their employees, but the problem has to do with the nature of the work itself: “People tend to forget that investment banking is a client services business. So if you’re working on a deal for GE, for example, if they ask you to jump, the expectation is that you say, How high? You’re really at the whim of the client.”

The other part is the culture, Hy says. According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary for an entry-level investment banker is close to $139,000 — that’s more than twice what the average new grad would bank in a year —?and the prevailing belief on Wall Street is that you’re being amply compensated for your suffering.

“They’re not really motivated to make your life less miserable, because you’re getting paid for that misery,” Hy says.?

For more on this movement within Wall Street, check out the Journal ’s investigation on the sector’s hustle culture and the toll it’s exacting on its young workers.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that unemployment has declined and over 250,000 jobs were added last month. But according to a new study by LinkedIn , the job market should still be considered “fragile,” says Catherine Fisher , a LinkedIn career expert.

For one, the competition for jobs is heating up, she tells us. There are now 2.5 applicants per job opening, compared to 1.5 in 2022, new LinkedIn data indicates, “so be kind to yourself if it’s taking you longer than expected” to land something, she says. And because new opportunities are harder to come by, fewer people appear to be leaving their roles: LinkedIn’s survey found that 43 percent of professionals feel stuck in their career right now.

If you’re struggling to find a new gig, Fisher has a couple tips:

• “The job market won’t improve overnight, so remain open to different roles and industries, and focus on building a versatile skill set.”
• “Consider a lateral move. Internal mobility rates have risen significantly over the past few years, up from 18.7 percent in 2021 to 24.4 percent in 2023. Look to see what other roles and opportunities could open up for you across the broader company, where more growth may be happening.”
• “We recently surveyed over 1,000 hiring managers , and enthusiasm was the most important factor to them when considering a candidate. Demonstrate your enthusiasm and passion for a role by doing your homework and being specific about why you want a particular role or why you want to work at a specific company. This also means responding promptly to hiring managers.”?

Recommended Reading

We recently sat down with real estate mogul and Shark Tank ABC fan favorite Barbara Corcoran to discuss her rags to riches story and how she spent years caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s. We’ll share our full conversation in our next Wake-Up Call at Work (make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it), but for now we’ll leave you with Corcoran’s absolute favorite book on business. It’s an oldie but goodie: Dale Carnegie’s classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People .

“It’s still my go-to book. I read it every three or four years,” she tells us. “You know why? It’s because I happen to believe that people who build good, sizable businesses have great people skills. And I read it to remind myself to pay attention to people. It’s easy to get caught up in what you’re doing, and it makes me stop and appreciate the people around me. I think it’s practical and accessible, and hands down the best book written about business.”

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