As Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s top brass sounded the alarm of a return to pre-pandemic office life, one group of workers was reassured they’d get to keep some of their treasured flexibility.
The Wall Street firm’s coders can continue to work from home two days a week, according to people briefed on the firm’s plans. They’re not alone. Across financial services, the software engineers who have been at the heart of talent wars are winning more freedom than the bankers they work with.
Wells Fargo & Co. told employees last month that work from home will be capped at two days a week for many roles, but said it would make an exception for most of its technology team. Citigroup Inc. chalks up some of its recent wins around tech recruiting to the firm’s greater flexibility around remote work.
Other lenders, including Barclays Plc, have also made clear that some roles would get more flexibility and the bank would leave the details of its hybrid approaches to the managers. The British bank is giving up its second office in London’s Canary Wharf financial district.
“There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach,” Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley recently said.
These diverging approaches are increasingly gaining favor. The spread of Covid-19 variants has forced plenty of finance firms to delay their return-to-office plans. Even if the virus recedes, the broad range of roles inside banks means implementing a consistent policy across roles and regions will be difficult.
A spokesperson for Goldman declined to comment.
Strong Hand
Office-shy engineers have long enjoyed special treatment. During the dot-com boom, Goldman added foosball tables to its old New York headquarters in a bid to present a more appealing workplace to its engineering talent.
Coders have an even stronger negotiating hand today. Tech firms are booming and many have made work-from-home an integral part of their new normal. Fintechs and companies like Alphabet Inc. are targeting people with deep product knowledge in financial services as they look to build expertise in the space.
Software has become a major part of big banks’ business, from replacing branches with digital retail offerings to moving bigger swathes of the fixed-income markets to electronic trading. JPMorgan Chase & Co. spends more than $10 billion a year on technology, while HSBC Holdings Plc said its tech expenses climbed to $3 billion in this year’s first half.