Working 14 hours a day is ruinous to your health, your family, your relationships, your personality and your temper. It’s also thoroughly inefficient. We know all this, but the sad case of Moritz Erhardt has reminded us of it, all over again.
Even if it turns out that the death of the Bank of America intern had nothing to do with the long hours he worked, the story still makes me marvel over one of the greatest mysteries of office life. Why is it that a way of working that is both unpleasant and unproductive is common practice in the most sought-after and successful corner of the economy?
Why do young investment bankers put up with it? They know that they will be working round the clock, but they appear not to mind. This year Goldman Sachs had 17,000 applications for 350 opportunities to spend the summer working far harder than is healthy or wise.