It’s been a very volatile week on Wall Street and a tumultuous summer for finance interns.
For those lucky enough to get a summer job, salaries are higher than ever, with some companies hiring less than 1% of applicants.
Top banks like Goldman Sachs and major hedge funds like Citadel typically pay $50 to $150 an hour, meaning some summer hires can make more than $20,000 a month — often more than first-year analysts make.
And working conditions have never been more affordable.
Banks have become extremely careful about interns’ hours after the death of Bank of America trader Leo Lukenas III, 35, in May after working a 100-hour week.
“Banks are nervous about making the right impression and not overworking interns, so they’re telling their teams to be on the lookout,” a senior Goldman employee told The Post.
“No one works more than 12 hours. [a day]” added the Goldman summer intern.
This left plenty of time for partying, with many interns going out four or five days a week instead of two or three as they had done before.
“Almost everyone” spends hundreds of dollars on Ubers and drinks every weekend, a source at one boutique company told The Post.
An anonymous banker from the popular Instagram account “Overheard on Wall Street” told The Washington Post one particularly shocking story.
During an orientation session where a major company flew in trainees early and put them up in a hotel, one of the trainees got drunk and passed out in the hotel shower drain, causing $50,000 in flood damage.
“Intern season is my favorite. It’s always the most fun time of the year,” he said of the tumultuous month. “Some people are trying to do their bucket list…Everyone goes to The Standard and Mr. Purple the first week.”
A Goldman intern described the Lower East Side, a four- or five-block stretch of bars including La Caverna, Hair of the Dog and Kind Regards, as “basically a hangout spot for interns.” (Interns typically turn 21 during their senior year of college; younger interns use fake IDs or borrow ones from friends to avoid being ostracized.)
For interns who haven’t spent any time in New York, the price of cocktails, and the idea of paying to get into a club, can be shocking, with some feeling “overwhelmed” the first few nights, a Goldman intern said.
Popular spots like Phebe’s and Fiddlesticks are pretty reasonable, with cocktails costing $16 and wine by the glass at $10, but some people are willing to pay for a more sophisticated experience.
“A lot of the wealthy young people go to The Blondes, Little Sisters and Paul’s” where cocktails cost well over $20 and bottle service can run more than $1,000, another Goldman source added.
Some excited interns might book a table on the spur of the moment, not realizing the cost.
One consulting intern told The Washington Post that he was invited by a colleague who had reserved a seat, but was asked to pay about $500 via Venmo the next morning, which he refused to pay.
Still, it’s not the 1980s.
Some interns experiment with cocaine or magic mushrooms during nights out, or take Adderall to stay awake until morning. But drugs were not the norm on the streets during the Greed Decade, a source told The Post. “It’s no longer the norm. [drugs] “More than I did in college,” the Goldman intern noted. [atcollege”notedtheGoldmanintern
This generation of ambitious young people loves to party, but they are also very wary of damaging their future opportunities.
Sources told the Post that some interns are so competitive that they avoid hooking up with one another, finding it easier and more convenient to find sexual partners elsewhere in the city or even within the company.
Interns at this small company noted that meeting full-time employees is more enjoyable than meeting other interns, and full-time employees also typically have better housing options (interns tend to live in NYU dorms or in shoddy housing rented through Craigslist or Airbnb).
At the end of the day, it’s important to have fun, but not too much.
“Nobody wants to be called into HR,” the Goldman intern said.
The goal of the game, they say, is to “play it safe, get a reward offer, and try not to self-destruct.”
