For young Wall Street employees who live their lives through social
media, working at a big bank can feel as if the plug has been pulled.
Most financial firms ban Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, and block most
music and video streaming sites.
Working on Wall Street is "a full life commitment, and without access to
social media or personal email it can often feel like nothing exists
outside of work," said one JPMorgan Chase analyst who spoke on condition
that he not be named because he is not allowed to talk to the media.
So he and other first- and second-year analysts, who commonly work
more than 80 hours a week, are fighting back. They are relying on an
informal network of strategies to subvert company firewalls and stay
connected.
To watch soccer highlights, for example, one analyst translated the
names of the teams through Google and looked for them on Rutube,
YouTube's Russian equivalent.
"It's draconian," the analyst said of his company's website blocks.
"It's a job where you spend a lot of time waiting to get assignments
back from superiors, and you have to find ways to kill the time."
"YouTube is the biggest obstacle," said an analyst at Bank of America
Merrill Lynch who also spoke anonymously.
He says that, instead, he searches Vimeo for videos, but it is not
nearly as satisfying.
Steven Neil Kaplan, a professor of business and entrepreneurship at
the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said killing time
had always been part of the job of a young analyst. While working as an
analyst at Kidder Peabody in the early 1980s, he, too, would spend hours
talking to his friends on the phone.
"You work very long hours," Kaplan said, "and often you're waiting for
someone to turn something around."
Time spent slacking is acceptable as long as an analyst completes the
material when it is assigned.
"At the end of the day, if they don't get their work done, they're
toast," he said.
Investment banks say regulation is the primary motivator for blocking
social media. According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority,
firms must keep a record of any business communication for three years.
The rule applies to correspondence on any device or website. While firms
are able to monitor emails and instant messages internally, it is
impossible to track what one employee among hundreds of thousands is
communicating on Twitter or through a Facebook chat.
"You have to be able to monitor what people are saying in real time,"
said a Goldman Sachs spokesman, Richard Siewert Jr.
Still, bans on YouTube and other streaming content sites suggest the
firewalls are also intended to stifle distractions in the workplace.
While banks are wary of media sharing sites because of their comments
sections, they say it is also a bandwidth issue; 200,000 employees
streaming YouTube videos hinders their software systems.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/social-media-like-facebook-twitter-and-gmail-banned-on-wall-street/articleshow/17333633.cms
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