Karoshi for American interns

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Interesting:

They say Moritz Erhardt was caught up in what the banking industry calls a “magic roundabout,” in which a taxi drives you home after a 24-hour shift, waits outside while you shower and change, then drives you right back for another daylong stint at the office.

After three days of endless work and six weeks of sometimes 100-hour-or-more work weeks, the 21-year-old German exchange student working a summer gig at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London collapsed and died in his shower. The tragedy flicked the spotlight on the banking industry, with its punishing hours and demanding internships.

Students happily accept a summer internship believing it could lead them to their dream job only to find out it’s a brutal three months full of all-nighters, office-bound weekends and the magic roundabout, a spokesperson from career advice group FinanceInterns tells the U.K. Independent.

Perhaps Erhardt had epilepsy, as some reports suggest. Perhaps he popped stimulants to keep awake long hours. Perhaps he pulled the all-nighters by the sheer strength of his own volition. Regardless of the specific cause, the circumstances leading to his death seem unforgivable for a young man bent on proving himself. The hours he kept, though evidently typical, were inhumanly arduous and exploitative. Any doctor will tell you that fatigue that great can make a person susceptible to fatal collapse.

In Japan, there’s a word for it. Karoshi refers to death by overwork, a legal term that allows surviving family to petition a judge for compensation for damages from the government and the company. Toxicology and inquest are pending, but in the West we have no such legal designation of protracted corporate suicide.

Erhardt almost made it through his well-paid internship. He was nearing the end of his placement and emerging as one of the top performers – a superstar, his colleagues say. The University of Michigan business student was exactly the kind of guy a high-caliber financial firm would want as an intern.

Bank of America head of international communications John McIvor declined to speculate about how much the industry should rethink its expectations.

“I have not got any comment to make on our work patterns,” he says dismissively. “Do people in investment banking sometimes work long hours? Yes they do.”

Now, commentary is coming out about how long-hours culture is more political than productive. People stay past midnight not because they’re getting more done, but because they don’t want to be the first to leave, even though it’s been documented that sleep-deprivation blunts cognitive ability, leading to dumb decisions and questionable judgment.

Post external references

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    http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2013/08/21/interns-death-puts-banking-culture-under-microscope/
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