Hazard of the Trade

Hazard of the Trade: Bankers’ Health

By: Leslie Kwoh

The Wall Street Journal

2/15/2012

Description - The stress levels and work life balance of many post-MBA professions including Investment Bankers, Traders, and Salespeople take a huge tool on their bodies and have severe consequences if left unattended to. Many of these professions are very attractive to fresh-out-of-Business-School Graduates as they often include high salaries, generous performance-related bonuses, and perks such as car services, fancy meals, and expense accounts. However, along with these incentives comes an expectation of performance, and a culture of 100+ hour workweeks that can eventually lead to stress-related physical and emotional ailments including insomnia, alcoholism, heart palpitations, eating disorders, and explosive tempers. If the warning signs are not discovered in time, these problems can result in low employee retention shifting the company culture and losing those employees with Deep Smarts, less productive employees, and even a potential liability in the form of dangerous, substance abusing employees.

Story - Ms. Kwoh definitely takes the point of view that high stress jobs are directly related to these diseases. The article serves more as an eye-opener for anybody in a high stress job, especially investment banking, that they will almost certainly experience some type of physical or emotional ailment within 5 years of beginning their career. The article only highlights the evidence that supports her claim, citing many statistics that show how often this happens, but only making brief mention of the study participants who decided to make their health a priority and failing to give specific examples of how many participants contracted which type of ailments.

Evidence - Hazard of the Trade: Bankers’ Health is based primarily on a study entitled “Transcending Socialization: A Nine-Year Ethnography of the Body’s Role in Organizational Control and Knowledge Workers’...