Elite student works 75 hour weeks, earns $68k. Deutsche Bank plays dirty on layoffs

Imagine. You’re one of the most gifted students of your generation. You strive for a position that plenty of other people want. You get it, and then… you find yourself working crazy hours for a pittance. Such is the lot of academics at the UK’s top universities.

“I can think of few professions where you are financially penalized for securing a job at the most prestigious employer in your sector, but this is the case at Oxbridge universities,” complains an Oxbridge (ie. Oxford or Cambridge) academic writing in the Guardian. While associate professors at the likes of Harvard are paid $121k (£80k), the median salary for an academic who isn’t a full professor at Oxford is just £45k ($68k), says the anonymous writer. For this, he says he works something akin to IBD hours: “In my first few years as an Oxbridge academic, I regularly worked in excess of 75 hours a week, just to keep on top of things.”  It’s a lifestyle that’s worth drawing to the attention of the young investment bankers who are regretting their choice of career and wishing they’d become academics instead.

Separately, the Sunday Times says Deutsche Bank will be cutting 1,000 jobs in London early in 2016. Given that Deutsche will also be awarding and paying bonuses early next year, that’s unfortunate. Banks in the UK typically insert clauses into employment contracts stating that people won’t be eligible for bonuses if they’re no longer in employment on the date bonuses are due to be paid. It seems likely, therefore, that 1,000 Deutsche employees will not only lose their jobs but their entire bonuses for 2015.

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First Job Lessons (Business Insider)

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Zuckerberg's Example (Telegraph) 

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Quote of the Day: 

“Traders used to be first-class citizens of the financial world, but that’s not true any more. Technologists are the priority now. It’s easier to hire a computer scientist and teach them the financial world than the other way around,” hedge funds start poaching from Silicon Valley.