Expected the headline to be wrong or it be a newsthump article, turns out to be neither.
Our US office has ‘unlimited holiday’. People take less than they did when they had a fixed entitlement. Who wants to be the person who takes the most holiday? Everyone tries to outdo each other by taking the least, lest they be seen as the slacker. Stick with the fixed entitlement.
>Junior bankers, however, will still only be entitled to a fixed amount of holiday.
95 hours???
I’m no genius but I’m pretty sure the majority of that wasn’t productive. Just because you sit at a desk for that long doesn’t mean you achieve anything
“Unlimited holiday” isn’t the great perk that people think it is.
If you get 30 days of holiday, you know that you can take 30 days of holiday a year and that the company has to find a way to cope without you for those 30 days. In the vast majority of places that offer unlimited holiday, there will be pressure not to take much holiday as well as pressure to be working during your holidays as there’s an expectation that the “quid pro quo” for your unlimited holiday is that it’s your responsibility to make sure that your work is being done when you’re *choosing* to take some holiday days.
If a company was *really* offering unlimited holiday, there’d be people who simply never turned up to work again and enjoyed their paycheque. The company would obviously not be all right with this. If there were people who took 100 days of holiday, the company would fire them or tell them that the amount of holiday they’re taking is unreasonable. So the idea that holiday is “unlimited” is obviously a lie in roughly 100% of those companies.
There’s still a limit, but it’s arbitrary and capricious. You’ll feel the need to justify why you’re taking holiday, you’ll end up working on your holiday days and you’ll end up taking less holiday than you would if you worked somewhere with a decent holiday allowance.
This is becoming the norm in accounting/finance. Our office has it and everyone is encouraged to take time off. Since it was implemented there has been less turnover and I think HR reported on average 5 more days of leave were being used per employee than before.
I trust GS as far as I could throw them.
Always paid off.
We heard you were struggling and that super stressed us out, totally ruined brunch, so we decided to go on holiday.
I’d have thought discouraging 95 hour work weeks would have been a bit easier, but what do I know? Even capping them at 60-70 hours would make a huge difference to the health of their employees; a 95 hour week is a great way to lay the foundations for heart disease, type two diabetes and dementia in later life. What is the point of pursuing money if you are too ill to use it later in life?
I know everybody is focusing on the unlimited vacation, but I can’t wrap my head around 95h work week.
How do you even work that much? You still need to sleep, eat, shower and whatnot, I don’t think I even have 95h after all that even if I didn’t work.
JUNIOR staff complained but senior staff received unlimited time off? 😂
Unlimited holidays are bad, it actually leads to people taking less holiday.
Don’t fall for this shit.
“Unlimited holiday weeks” are not fun, let me tell you.
Although it sounds amazing, at my previous place of work, we had unlimited holidays for all those who had been working at my place of work for over a year. I hit that year and I’m not kidding when I say EVERY holiday you have has to be justified. I was consistently hammered by “What are you doing, you don’t need it, you do know you were off last month” and it just became a headache. They were never like this in my first year of employment and to be fair, I’d maybe had 2 weeks off and it was June when I was getting these questions.
To paraphrase the clash ‘you have the right to unlimited holiday. Unless your dum enough to actually try it.
BAD! Unlimited Holidays is a trap, It’s to stop them paying you for any unused holidays when you leave.
Sadly, there will always be a large supply of naive, over-ambitious 2:1 business grads willing to apply for these jobs enmass because they want the above average salary.
Things won’t change.
I don’t quite get this. Goldman has always been famous for long hours, stress and high wages. They’ve been very up front about it. If you sign up with them, it is to have 10 years of extreme shit and earn a tonne of money. Then you can either retire or move somewhere less stressful, or even stay and get a much better position.
As long as they’re up front about the deal, and your pay cheques clear, I don’t see the problem.
My employer is in a similar position, we’re a startup. I read anyone I interview a disclaimer. We actively discuss how to communicate better the work life (im)balance at interviews or before.
17 comments
Expected the headline to be wrong or it be a newsthump article, turns out to be neither.
Our US office has ‘unlimited holiday’. People take less than they did when they had a fixed entitlement. Who wants to be the person who takes the most holiday? Everyone tries to outdo each other by taking the least, lest they be seen as the slacker. Stick with the fixed entitlement.
>Junior bankers, however, will still only be entitled to a fixed amount of holiday.
95 hours???
I’m no genius but I’m pretty sure the majority of that wasn’t productive. Just because you sit at a desk for that long doesn’t mean you achieve anything
“Unlimited holiday” isn’t the great perk that people think it is.
If you get 30 days of holiday, you know that you can take 30 days of holiday a year and that the company has to find a way to cope without you for those 30 days. In the vast majority of places that offer unlimited holiday, there will be pressure not to take much holiday as well as pressure to be working during your holidays as there’s an expectation that the “quid pro quo” for your unlimited holiday is that it’s your responsibility to make sure that your work is being done when you’re *choosing* to take some holiday days.
If a company was *really* offering unlimited holiday, there’d be people who simply never turned up to work again and enjoyed their paycheque. The company would obviously not be all right with this. If there were people who took 100 days of holiday, the company would fire them or tell them that the amount of holiday they’re taking is unreasonable. So the idea that holiday is “unlimited” is obviously a lie in roughly 100% of those companies.
There’s still a limit, but it’s arbitrary and capricious. You’ll feel the need to justify why you’re taking holiday, you’ll end up working on your holiday days and you’ll end up taking less holiday than you would if you worked somewhere with a decent holiday allowance.
This is becoming the norm in accounting/finance. Our office has it and everyone is encouraged to take time off. Since it was implemented there has been less turnover and I think HR reported on average 5 more days of leave were being used per employee than before.
I trust GS as far as I could throw them.
Always paid off.
We heard you were struggling and that super stressed us out, totally ruined brunch, so we decided to go on holiday.
I’d have thought discouraging 95 hour work weeks would have been a bit easier, but what do I know? Even capping them at 60-70 hours would make a huge difference to the health of their employees; a 95 hour week is a great way to lay the foundations for heart disease, type two diabetes and dementia in later life. What is the point of pursuing money if you are too ill to use it later in life?
I know everybody is focusing on the unlimited vacation, but I can’t wrap my head around 95h work week.
How do you even work that much? You still need to sleep, eat, shower and whatnot, I don’t think I even have 95h after all that even if I didn’t work.
JUNIOR staff complained but senior staff received unlimited time off? 😂
Unlimited holidays are bad, it actually leads to people taking less holiday.
Don’t fall for this shit.
“Unlimited holiday weeks” are not fun, let me tell you.
Although it sounds amazing, at my previous place of work, we had unlimited holidays for all those who had been working at my place of work for over a year. I hit that year and I’m not kidding when I say EVERY holiday you have has to be justified. I was consistently hammered by “What are you doing, you don’t need it, you do know you were off last month” and it just became a headache. They were never like this in my first year of employment and to be fair, I’d maybe had 2 weeks off and it was June when I was getting these questions.
To paraphrase the clash ‘you have the right to unlimited holiday. Unless your dum enough to actually try it.
BAD! Unlimited Holidays is a trap, It’s to stop them paying you for any unused holidays when you leave.
Sadly, there will always be a large supply of naive, over-ambitious 2:1 business grads willing to apply for these jobs enmass because they want the above average salary.
Things won’t change.
I don’t quite get this. Goldman has always been famous for long hours, stress and high wages. They’ve been very up front about it. If you sign up with them, it is to have 10 years of extreme shit and earn a tonne of money. Then you can either retire or move somewhere less stressful, or even stay and get a much better position.
As long as they’re up front about the deal, and your pay cheques clear, I don’t see the problem.
My employer is in a similar position, we’re a startup. I read anyone I interview a disclaimer. We actively discuss how to communicate better the work life (im)balance at interviews or before.