New Beginnings :: No Energy

Currently Listening To :: Feel It (Jazzy Jeff Remix) :: Black Eyed Peas

It's official. Starting at 6:30am this cold morning, my days as a gentleman of leisure ended as abruptly as they started. I'm both physically and mentally tired, having driven a total of two hours to get to and from work, sandwiching in a day long course on demand planning and supply chain inductions.

I'm too tired to write, so what's the next best thing? Take someone else's writing and co-opt it as my own! Well, not really, but if I only worked 8:30 - 6:00 today, what more for those poor IB kids? Heh - fuck pity, I'm not getting paid nearly as much as them! Enjoy these (extended) snippets.


No sex please, we're bankers

Elizabeth Kazi
21 April 2006
Australian Financial Review

Investment banks fear the social habits of their fancy-free young staff are threatening the bottom line, Elizabeth Kazi writes.

They are young, work long hours and have plenty of cash to spare. But organisational psychologists worry how long the new Gordon Geckos of the investment banking world can do without sex - well, sex as part of a long-term meaningful relationship, anyway.

The sharemarkets and economy have been running so strongly that deal-makers have been working around the clock with little time for love.

And with investment banks struggling to stop go-getters jumping ship to high-paying local rivals or worse, heading overseas, the poor love lives of their young staff are threatening the bottom line.

What's more, "No sex please, we're investment bankers" is hardly a good slogan as recruiters head into universities for the annual round of interviews for next year's intake of graduates.

Tom, not his real name, works at a large investment bank and is single.

In his group, 92 per cent of investment bankers are single.

Within three months of starting the job his previous relationship ended, the overseas training trips - "everybody gets with everybody" - and long hours not making a relationship desirable, he says.

One banker recounts this story: "In training, we had one of the speakers ask us to put up our hand if we were single, and half the group put up their hand. Then he said 'put up your hand if you're in a relationship', and half put up their hand, then he said to them 'right, get ready to join the first group'."

Heartbeat Trends social researcher Vanessa Briese says generation Ys (people in their early to late 20s) are focusing on living the "good life".

"They are delaying marriage and commitment," she says.

"They're not even thinking about marriage, their preference is to go on holidays and have a fling and fun. They much prefer to have 20 relationships while they're young rather than meeting their life or long-term partner at 20 years old."

While hardworking bankers "can develop sophisticated communication skills and a range of skills that would be useful in relationships", they become "too emotionally drained at the end of the day to use them in their [personal] relationship".

Organisational studies senior lecturer at University of Sydney, Grant Michelson, says that high-pressure industries with deadlines, where people go out drinking to celebrate deals or work well done, are the most likely to have inter-office relationships.

"During the course of a person's career, that is between the ages of 18 to 60, the chance of being involved with a co-worker at least once is 80 per cent," says Michelson.

In tough industries, romance is a way to cope. A 2001 survey of 1000 European workers conducted by the Italian Gestalt Institute found that flirting was good for anxiety and stress in the workplace and that an "erotic charge" helped about 70 per cent of workers get through the day.

Many stressed workers prefer to engage in physical rather than emotional relationships that won't have an impact on the long hours, says Michelson.

Corporate dating agencies are ready to make the most of these time-poor professionals who want to meet someone but don't have too much time or energy.

It's Just Lunch launched in Australia three months ago, advertising itself as the "recruiters for your dating life". Director Tania Johnston says that the large population of single professionals in Sydney make it an ideal location to set up shop.