Heh, 60 hours is a low intensity week in management consulting and especially investment banking. Once upon a time, a banker 2-3 years out of an MBA (say 28-30) would make $300-500K cash. The hourly rate is lower than minimum wage though (these guys used to put in 100+ hours). They did it in the hopes of landing a private equity gig that would pay them $1M+ for a 50-70 hour work week. That's a deal I would take in a heart beat, if I found the work interesting.
There was an interesting article in Fortune a while ago. The tldr was that you shouldn't get mad that Wall Street pays too much, but that the rest of corporate America pays too little. When companies are building war chests in the tens of hundreds of billions, and also feel the need to collude to prevent "poaching", you have to wonder.
The sad part is that people in technology sometimes love the work so much, that they are willing to put in more than they should on pure economic terms. The finance and consulting types are more ruthless about their own worth.
EDIT: My minimum wage comment was more about making a point. Banker types like to say they make lots of money but make less per-hour than a McDonald's employee.
> Once upon a time, a banker 2-3 years out of an MBA (say 28-30) would make $300-500K cash. The hourly rate is lower than minimum wage though (these guys used to put in 100+ hours).
No, its not lower than minimum wage, even at the low end of that range, and even if they worked all 168 hours of every week.
$300K / 8,760 hours a year (assuming a non-leap-year, and 24/7 schedule) = $34.24/hour
Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr; even with the +50% premium for overtime after the first 40 hours in a week, that's only $10.88/hr for the overtime hours. So its literally impossible to clear $300K a year and be making less than minimum wage, without some kind of weird time warping ability that lets you work 3+ years of 24/7 work in one calendar year.
EDIT: To respond to the edit of the parent post...
> My minimum wage comment was more about making a point.
What point is made by this drastically false claim?
> Banker types like to say they make lots of money but make less per-hour than a McDonald's employee.
If that's true (along with the compensation numbers you present), that tells us that one of the following is true:
1. Bankers are innumerate,
2. Bankers are ignorant of their own compensation,
3. Bankers are ignorant of the compensation of low-wage workers, or
4. Bankers are being dishonest, perhaps in an effort to deflect criticism of their compensation compared to other workers.
Even with your edit, you still don't get it. McDonald's employee's don't make > $50 an hour. No one can make $300k+ working at mcdonalds, even if they work 24/7. Even if you worked LITERALLY every single hour of the year (8760) minimum wage would get you to ~63.5k. That's a far cry from 300-500k
Any banker type that says something like that is an asshole or is really bad at math. Assuming he's a competent banker he's probably not actually bad at math and is just an asshole.
I'm sorry that's just frankly not possible. Even with your lowest value of 300k a year and you're hours value of 100 hours a week you're looking at ~60$/hour assuming they have no vacation or time off. Now look at the minimum wage and realize it's still many times that. I have a lawyer friend who says the same thing as you, and I seriously doubt it's so over the long run.
I think the saying comes from junior bankers and lawyers, before their first bonus check, although even then, the math does not work out to minimum wage.
When I graduated college, base salaries in banking were about $65,000, which leads to $12.50 / hour. After their first bonus check, this doubles, of course, but that first year can feel pretty bad. Still not minimum wage, but I think the point they want to make is that, yes, we make lots of money, but is it worth it with the hours. In comparison, a $120,000 tech job at a big company (not counting equity), working 40 hours a week with 2 weeks vacation comes to about $60 / hour.
The difference is that the professional services compensation grows at a much faster rate than the tech compensation, unless you happen to pick the next Google/FB/whatever and get on-board early on.
There was an interesting article in Fortune a while ago. The tldr was that you shouldn't get mad that Wall Street pays too much, but that the rest of corporate America pays too little. When companies are building war chests in the tens of hundreds of billions, and also feel the need to collude to prevent "poaching", you have to wonder.
The sad part is that people in technology sometimes love the work so much, that they are willing to put in more than they should on pure economic terms. The finance and consulting types are more ruthless about their own worth.
EDIT: My minimum wage comment was more about making a point. Banker types like to say they make lots of money but make less per-hour than a McDonald's employee.