Junior bankers at Goldman Sachs are threatening to quit over demands that they show up to the office five days a week as the pandemic wanes — and some gripe that their bosses have been quietly checking attendance.
As bonuses across Wall Street hit record highs, underlings at Goldman — headed by hard-charging Chief Executive David Solomon — are nevertheless stepping up complaints of “hellhole” working conditions that have notoriously included 100-hour weeks.
Most recently, some junior Goldmanites claim that they are being “bullied” into showing up in person “5-0” — meaning five days working in the office, zero from home — and that the bullying is being orchestrated by top managers armed with spreadsheets.
“In GS, the top management says it’s employees choice but internally they track which team has most in office attendance,” one Goldman employee wrote on the corporate message board Blind, which verifies users’ place of employment with the help of their company email accounts.
“It’s f**ing bulls**t from top management saying they are people first,” the miffed Goldman underling added. “In our team meeting, manager showed us the excel where the MDs are tracking which department has not met in-office commitments,” the staffer wrote, referring to the high-level managing directors.
Another Goldman employee chimed in: “Apparently they are tracking everyone’s attendance and managers are getting lists of people who have low attendance so they can bully them into coming in.”
Last year, Solomon called working from home a pandemic “aberration,” even as he drew bitter comments over his habit of working from the Hamptons and spending long weekends in the Caribbean.
But after asking all employees to return to the office five days a week in June, Goldman Sachs had to walk it back after the outbreak of Omicron in December. The bank called all employees back again in February.
“David Solomon sucks,” one user griped on Blind. “Nobody wants to be in 5-0 and plenty of companies are willing to allow hybrid/remote.”
Indeed, some younger staffers say they are looking to “GTFO” of Wall Street as they interview with tech companies which offer better compensation and more flexibility. One said she was “negotiating with two FAANGs” — a comment referring to Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix and Google that prompted other users to ask to connect offline in the hopes they might jump to tech companies themselves.
A Goldman spokesperson declined to comment for the record. A person close to the bank disputed there was widespread frustration. “Far from a scientific survey, The Post has chosen a handful of comments submitted to an online forum no one has heard of.”
JPMorgan, meanwhile, has taken a more relaxed approach than Goldman. The mega-bank headed by Jamie Dimon offers some hybrid options and many employees are allowed to work from home at least one day a week.
Nevertheless, employees continue to kvetch. One said he’s working remote until “I get fired.” Others asked whether they’d be punished if they simply refused to return to the office.
“I don’t feel like traveling to office and I want to continue WFH. Anyone facing any action from manager or HR for not returning to office?” one user asked.
Another JPMorgan employee said she doesn’t plan to go into the office even if it means getting cut: “Yeah… I’m working remote until I get fired.”
JPMorgan declined to comment.
During the pandemic, banks have ramped up efforts to keep junior employees happy, doling out the biggest bonuses on record — an average of $257,500, according to the state of New York — even as they have pledged to hire more staff to help with the workload.
Goldman and JPMorgan increased first-year pay by roughly 30 percent — to $110,000. Morgan Stanley said it would boost first-year pay to $110,000, while boutique investment bank Evercore raised first-year salaries to $120,000.
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