Overheard On Wall Street (OOWS) has become synonymous with speaking out against the harsh realities of working as a banker in some of America’s top financial institutions. OOWS has even gone as far as to say that Wall Street is full of “sweat shops.”
When it conducted a survey in 2023, it named and shamed a number of companies for bad management, bad culture, and being considered a "sweat shop." Overheard said it conducted the survey to protect people “from making bad career moves.” Respondents could leave anonymous comments about their places of work—either praising their employers, or warning others about the company's toxic traits. The negative commentary far outweighed the positive.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal highlighted how prescription stimulants are an open secret in the industry. And when bankers spoke out about using ADHD meds like Adderall (despite not being diagnosed with ADHD), they weren’t worried about using their real names. Some spoke of how their colleagues coached them on what to say in order to get a prescription.
"As Mark Moran was facing another 90-hour week as an investment-banking intern at Credit Suisse in New York, he knew he needed help to survive the rest of the summer," reads the opening paragraph of the WSJ feature. "His colleagues gave him a tip: Visit a Wall Street health clinic and tell the staff he had trouble focusing."
The article also mentions private equity principal and former banking analyst, Jonah Frey. Frey became addicted to Adderall and eventually quit his job, moving back in with his parents. He tells of how he would increase his dosage as his workload quadrupled. While the meds made him much more productive, they wreaked havoc on his health.
He finally went cold turkey when he realized how much weight he’d lost, and how negative his lifestyle had become. Frey told the WSJ that using prescription stimulants to cope is common on Wall Street, and that "nobody blinked an eye" when his colleagues openly took them at their desks.
The stress of working on Wall Street came under the spotlight in May of this year, following the death of a Bank of America employee who suffered a fatal blood clot that many believed was related to his grueling working hours. “His death came after he had allegedly been working some 100 hours a week for several weeks in a row on a $2 billion merger that was completed last Monday—three days before his tragic death,” reported the New York Post.
Hundreds of Wall Street workers flooded social media at the time, calling out the industry for prioritizing wealth over health. “There have been incidents where analysts pass out in meetings due to lack of sleep/food, and other times where analysts are hospitalized due to panic attacks — and nobody steps in to check in on them,” one Bank of America employee was quoted as claiming.
It's not the first time Wall Street has come under fire for overworking its bankers. Fierce debate has been raging for decades, with several incidents sparking calls for compassion. In 2021, a group of young Goldman Sachs employees put together a slideshow, begging bosses to reduce their working hours from 100 to 80 hours a week. The presentation was leaked and caused much controversy online.
