A legal test of Wall Street’s grinding culture goes to trial next week.
A banker fired by Centerview in 2020 two months into her employment says the firm wouldn’t accommodate her medical need for eight hours of sleep a night and is seeking millions of dollars in compensation. The case helped fuel a revolt across Wall Street, mostly since quelled, by junior talent tired of 120-hour weeks.
That it hasn’t settled — Centerview can easily afford to make the matter go away — suggests the firm doesn’t want to set a precedent and sees value in the grind. And it has the tacit support of a cohort of executives who see a decline in generational hustle. “You can’t get around the effort part of” investment banking, Lazard’s Peter Orszag said last year. “There is not a goddamn person you can get a hold of” on work-from-home Fridays, Jamie Dimon vented.
Both sides, though, are fighting the last war. Few industries are set to be as upended by AI as the spreadsheet-wrangling, PowerPoint presentation-polishing work done by Wall Street’s youngest bankers. The question is whether the time that AI tools save will go toward more sleep, or simply more deals. Centerview declined to comment.