‘Not an excuse’: Wall Street banker slams junior staff for not checking email at 3am

Boss cited fact they sleep for five hours ‘on average’ as reason for employees to be working in dead of night

A screenshot from an email exchange in which an investment banker castigates a junior for not checking their emails at 3am has gone viral, reviving the debate over exhausting work cultures in banking and high finance.

The image, first shared by the Instagram account @arbitrage.andy, purports to show an email exchange (with names redacted) between employees at investment bank PJT Partners. Under the subject line “Bid Deck”, an employee writes: “We’re working on these now (and have been), but we didn’t receive these until 3am our time and were already in bed.”

The senior employee’s response is telling. While apologising for the late night comments, the reply sets clear expectations: “To be clear I am working [Eastern] time and I expect my junior team to notify me when they log off … Not an excuse 3 am ET I sleep average (sic) of 5 hours or less. Expect the same or more from my junior team especially on live deals. Please turn around my comments and work as fast as you can.”

The timestamp on the junior employee’s email confirms it was sent at 6:38am.

Commenting to the New York Post, which says it has confirmed the senior employee works at the firm, a PJT spokesperson said: “While we do not comment on personnel matters, maintaining a culture of respect, collaboration and a commitment to excellence is our highest priority at PJT Partners.

The post has gone viral across social media, especially among those who work in banking themselves. On the forum Wall Street Oasis, the shared post appears next to a list of the week’s most popular topics – among them “Dealing with Loneliness”, “How do you deal with the stress”, and “The Examined Life – Rethinking Career & Life Goals Post COVID-19”.

The financial services sector is notorious for cultures of sleep deprivation coupled with stress, a problem brought to public attention in 2013 by the tragic death of Bank of America Merrill Lynch Moritz Erhardt, who died after reportedly working for 72 hours straight.

While he was found to have died of an epileptic seizure, the coroner at his inquest pointed out that “one of the triggers for epilepsy is exhaustion, and it may be that because Moritz had been working so hard his fatigue was a trigger for the seizure that killed him.”