Oh Look Someone On Wall Street Doesn’t Understand How People Learn

I mean, it’s not really that surprising, but according to this article, JPMorgan executive Mary Callahan Erdoes thinks that you can shorthand learning your craft by just doing it 12 hours per day as if she has never seen a single bit of research about how much worse we get cognitively the longer we work on something.

Based on the idea that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to gain “base-level mastery” of something, it’s going to take around five years if someone works eight-hour days, five days a week, said Erdoes.

 

“On Wall Street, it’s more like 12 hours a day, six days a week. That cuts you down to about two-and-a-half years before you become mastered in something.”

So, not only does she not really get the nuances of the 10,000-hour rule. Like the fact that 10,000 hours wasn’t anything more than a number picked out of the air, but she also doesn’t seem to understand the cognitive limits of human intelligence.

Let me fix it for you, what JPMorgan is really doing, is weeding out anyone who might actually want to work differently than the way Wall Street has always worked.

It’s almost like they have no interest in actual diversity, employee mental health, or work-life balance. Of course, we know they don’t. Wealth Management isn’t about the people who work for you, it’s about how much money they bring in, period.

If you offer the kind of money that Wall Street does, maybe you can get away with that. That as the lone incentive might attract enough people to keep you going, but it’s not going to attract the best talent out there.

It’s also just kind of gross.

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