Goldman Sachs bankers still face 70 to 80-hour weeks

Why the hours stay long

The cleanest way to understand Goldman Sachs’s workload is to stop treating long hours as a temporary complaint and start treating them as part of the business model. Analysts are still commonly expected to work 70 to 80 hours a week or more, and that number falls only gradually as bankers move up to associate, vice president, and managing director, where weeks may land closer to 50 to 60 hours but rarely resemble anything close to a standard 9-to-5.

That is the central point of the hours debate: the pressure is not just about live transactions. It is about a culture that rewards responsiveness, endurance, and visible availability, especially when clients are unpredictable and senior bankers expect instant turnaround. In practice, that means junior teams live in a constant state of readiness, fielding revisions, comments, client asks, and weekend turnaround requests even when they are not actively on a call or in a model.

Goldman’s own operating logic makes that easier to understand. If the firm wanted much shorter hours, it could probably engineer them. But that would change the candidate pool, the pace of work, and the culture that comes with them. For analysts and associates, that tradeoff is the real story: the job is built to select for people who can absorb intensity, not just people who can optimize efficiency.

What a normal week looks like at the junior level

The hours problem is especially visible at the analyst layer because junior bankers do not just do assigned tasks. They sit inside a live service chain where their time is shaped by whatever the client, deal team, or senior banker needs next. That is why the work often feels endless even when the actual deliverables are manageable in theory.

A useful plain-English description of investment banking hours makes the point directly: the long week is not only about the amount of work, but about being available when work arrives. That expectation is why junior bankers so often feel permanently on call. If a presentation is reworked late at night, if a client changes direction on Saturday, or if a managing director wants a new version before a Monday meeting, the analyst is expected to absorb the disruption without slowing the process.

For people trying to build careers at Goldman, that has two consequences. First, time management becomes a professional skill, not a lifestyle preference. Second, learning to reduce rework and communicate clearly matters because every round of avoidable revisions extends the day. The bankers who handle that best do not simply move faster; they make themselves less dependent on last-minute rescue work.

Goldman’s 2021 response changed the edges, not the structure

Goldman’s public reaction to junior-banker burnout in 2021 showed how hard it is to reduce hours without touching the deeper mechanics of the job. In an internal survey, first-year analysts reported averaging 95 hours a week and sleeping about five hours a night. They also warned senior management that they were overworked and would quit within six months unless conditions improved.

David Solomon responded by saying the firm would strengthen enforcement of its so-called Saturday rule and try to give junior bankers at least one day off each week. Reuters also reported that Goldman planned to shift bankers from other divisions to the busiest teams, a classic staffing fix that helps at the margins but does not rewrite the demands of live deals. The message was clear: the bank was willing to relieve pressure, but not willing to abandon the service model that created it.

The same year also brought a sharp jump in base pay. Goldman raised first-year analyst salary to $110,000 from $85,000, second-year analyst pay to $125,000 from $95,000, and first-year associate pay to $150,000. That mattered, but it should be read carefully. Higher pay can improve retention and soften the edges of burnout, yet it does not change the fact that the hours are built into how the work is staffed, supervised, and sold internally.

Pay, staffing, and the office were all part of the same message

Goldman’s response did not stop at compensation. In May 2021, the firm asked U.S.-based employees to return to the office by June 14 and U.K.-based employees by June 21, reinforcing leadership’s preference for an in-person operating model. Teams were also given specific instructions, which underscored that this was not simply a symbolic gesture about presence. It was part of how the firm wanted the machine to run.

That matters because office policy is not separate from hours culture. A firm that prizes physical proximity, rapid coordination, and constant access tends to normalize the idea that availability is part of performance. For junior bankers, that usually means more informal requests, more immediate follow-up, and fewer boundaries between official work and the next assignment.

The staffing response and the office-return push point to the same underlying pattern: Goldman tried to manage the strain without changing the core expectation that elite client service requires visible commitment. For employees, that means the firm’s response to burnout has often been to adjust the inputs, not the operating logic.

What the hours mean for a Goldman career

For analysts and associates, the practical lesson is not that the workload will vanish. It is that survival and advancement depend on learning how the system rewards effort. The bankers who stay effective are usually the ones who can manage rework, keep communication crisp, and avoid becoming the bottleneck that turns one revision into three.

For senior bankers, the issue is a talent-management problem as much as a scheduling problem. If long hours remain a permanent feature of the industry, firms that improve staffing, technology, and coordination without compromising client service may have an edge in retention. But the evidence so far suggests that AI alone will not solve the issue, because the force keeping hours long is structural as much as technological.

Industry commentary in 2024 and 2025 continued to describe Goldman as a place where long hours remain a defining feature despite monitoring and pay increases. That is the reality junior bankers inherit when they join a platform built around responsiveness, prestige, and client service at all hours. The work still carries the draw of elite training and strong exit opportunities, but the price of that brand is a schedule that remains intense by design.