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- Kathryn Shiber worked for Centerview for 10 weeks before she was terminated.
- Her lawsuit sheds light on what’s required for junior investment bankers.
- From 24-hour days to ‘unpredictable’ hours, here’s what it takes to make it on Wall Street.
Long hours, unpredictable schedules, and standing around in case you’re needed.
This is the life of the typical junior banker — but how does it look in practice? An ongoing legal case involving boutique bank Centerview Partners offers some clues.
The dispute, which has been unfolding in Manhattan federal court since 2021, centers on a young woman who began working at the New York-based bank in July 2020 following her graduation from Dartmouth College. Ten weeks later, she was terminated. In between, she told human resources and her bosses that she needed eight to nine hours of sleep a night due to some underlying medical conditions.
The case, which a judge recently Ok’d to move forward over objections from the bank, has generated documents that shed light on what investment banks expect of their junior ranks. Known more formally as “investment banking analysts,” junior bankers tend to be recent graduates who are starting at the bottom rung of Wall Street’s multibillion-dollar dealmaking operations, whether M&A, IPOs, or issuing debt to raise capital for companies in need of cash.
Centerview declined to comment. Lawyers for the plaintiff, Kathryn Shiber, said they look forward to presenting her disability discrimination claims in court.
Here’s the rundown on what this case reveals about life on Wall Street.
24-hour days
Depositions filed in the case show that long weeks are par for the course, especially when there’s an active deal in the works. When questioned by Shiber’s lawyers about “the typical hours that a first-year analyst would work,” Centerview partner Tony Kim said it ranges between 60 and 120 hours a week.
“In some projects, you are working 24 hours a day,” Kim said in a 2023 deposition. “It’s not a goal to have it happen, but that does come up,” Kim said about 24-hour days.
When asked whether junior bankers ever work more than 120 hours a week, Kim said it “rarely, if ever” happens.
This workflow, he added, is the norm across the industry.
“It’s the nature of the business,” he said, adding, “I think most people understand that — most people come into the business of investment banking understand that they might be occasionally asked to work 24 hours straight.”
The finish line is always moving
Shiber’s clash with the bank started after she was assigned to an active deal nicknamed Project Dragon. After working till about 2 am for several days in a row, she logged off at around 1 am on a Friday without first communicating her plans to the team leads, court filings show.
This led to email exchanges between Shiber and Timothy Ernst, who was then an associate at Centerview. Shiber told Ernst that she left because she thought her work was done and expressed frustration at what she described as an unpredictable workflow.
“There were several times throughout the day yesterday when I would have been able to do more work on it if had known about it earlier,” she wrote.
Ernst responded: “One part of this job (and the worst part of this job) is many times you can’t ‘get ahead’ of things or work through things early because there will always be more for you to do.”
“I think you’ll get the hang of it, but in general, the finish line is always going to be moving,” he added.
Kim used the word “unpredictable” in his deposition.
“The nature of the job is that it is very unpredictable,” he said. “You don’t know when you are going to need to be available. You just need to be available when the team needs you.”
Don’t sign off without checking in
In the emails, Ernst stressed the importance of getting clearance before signing off.
“When I was first starting and wasn’t sure if I was done or not, I would always email/jabber my associate/analyst to make sure there was nothing else for me to be doing or if I was done for the night,” he said.
He asked Shiber to share her work with him or another member of the team before concluding she was done for the day, because, he said, “we will definitely have comments (just part of being a first year) and then those need to be finished before signing off.”
In his deposition, Kim said: “If you are on an active project, and your team was staying up late into the night, it is your responsibility to check in with them and to let them know that you are going to sleep,” he said.
Kim added: “And it would be polite to ask, ‘Is there anything more I can do to help?'”
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