This week Megan McArdle in The Washington Post had a useful essay on the reaction of the investment banking world to COVID-19 and work habits. She writes about her prior experience working in an investment bank where the importance of being in the office was critical – even if there was no useful work to do.
She noted: “This system is legendarily abusive, and arguably unproductive. But it was durable, at least until covid-19, when a flurry of stories suggested that investment banks were ‘rethinking their pre-coronavirus lifestyle of exhausting global travel, interrupted family time and all-nighters in the office.’”
She then goes on to highlight a particular element of the investment banking culture: “:So I suspect that bankers are going back to the office, not because the organization or the nation requires it, but because bank culture has spent decades filtering for macho displays of pointless sacrifice, and the people at the top are apt to be among those who most enjoy them.”
I think the core to the last comment relates to the issue of “macho displays of pointless sacrifice.” Is this culture one which will allow finance to benefit society? Or one which only allows those to succeed who could care less about the impact of their work on society?
