While many companies are hailing the Covid work-from-home experiment as a success, top Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan aren’t so sure.
They hope that being back in the office will cure the malaise that many of their junior bankers are feeling.
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Remote work “does not work for younger people,” JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in May. “It doesn’t work for those who want to hustle.”
At Goldman, a class of 3,000 new interns and analysts started remotely at the bank in summer 2020. But CEO David Solomon said he didn’t want that to happen again.
“I fully appreciate how busy our people have been,” Mr. Solomon said in April. “This has been exacerbated by the isolation of working remotely.”
Remote work has not hurt Wall Street profitability
Lots of Wall Street Gen Zers graduated in the pandemic and have never met many of their co-workers face to face. Bankers say the mentorship, training and camaraderie that come naturally when your colleagues are one desk over can’t be replicated on Zoom.
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By GlobalDataIn a survey conducted by Fishbowl, a social-media chat site for professionals, about two-thirds of respondents in finance said their work-life balance had gotten worse during the pandemic.
But the work-from-home era didn’t dent Wall Street’s profitability. Early in the pandemic, nervous corporate clients raced to raise cash.
Then, clients raced to go public through special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Revenues and profits hit records.
Plenty of senior bankers have marvelled—often from their vacation homes—at how business marched on.
That has spurred some to grumble about being called back, and firms such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan could lose some staff to firms that are more lenient about the future of office face time.
Many Gen Zers seem to favour the office
But young employees in many industries often prefer the office, where it can be easier to get a boss’s feedback or make friends.
Nearly two-thirds of college seniors want to be mostly in the office, according to an April survey by hiring company iCIMS. Two percent want to be fully remote.
For young bankers in particular, setting up multiple computer monitors and a Bloomberg screen might be difficult in a cramped studio apartment or childhood bedroom.
Long hours are easier to endure with the help of company-paid dinners or drinks with colleagues.
“It’s a huge part of your social life,” said Adam Kahn, managing partner at recruiting firm Odyssey Search Partners. “It’s like pledging a fraternity together.”
