When Sanjna Pathania posted on TikTok about the demands of working in consulting, she found little sympathy.
“I get a call at 7pm from this partner,” the former employee at consultancy KPMG recounted in her 2022 video. “He says to me: ‘hey Sanjna, you didn’t send me the piece of work that I asked you for, can you send it to me tomorrow?’”
Rather than empathising, some commenters replied that she was naive for expecting weekends off and called her story “tame”.
Pathania, who now works as a mortgage broker, did not respond to a request for comment, but the response shows how money and professional opportunities have shaped the work expectations for people in high-end, white-collar work.
While data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows Australians work an average of 35 hours a week, a 2024 survey of 2500 professionals in the financial services sector found the average working week for sell-side firms, such as investment banks, extended up to 70 hours.
Anecdotally, management consultants, too, can eclipse 80 hours a week, especially when their company has a major transaction or project underway.
A KPMG spokeswoman pointed to the firm’s 2025 impact plan, which says it had “embedded sustainable work practices that support healthier ways of working” into company culture, but acknowledged it had more work to do.
Australia’s employment law states that a standard working week is 38 hours but that employers can ask their employees to work “reasonable additional hours”.
University of Sydney associate professor Stephen Clibborn says there is little guidance from the courts about what “reasonable” means.
A test case brought by the Finance Sector Union against National Australia Bank is currently before the courts with four managers at the bank claiming they had to work 55 to 80-hour work weeks with unreasonable unpaid hours.
Clibborn says there is a balance between the interests of the employer and those of the employee, but that whether additional hours are reasonable also depends on whether notice is given, whether penalties and overtime are paid, and the type of role in question.
“If you’re very well remunerated, you’re probably less able to argue your hours are unreasonable,” he says. “But businesses also have obligations, so far as it is reasonable and practical, to limit stress and health risks from excessive hours.”
According to employment review site Glassdoor, the average base pay for an investment banking analyst – the most junior, entry-level position – is $135,000 a year, excluding bonuses and additional pay, while those at the top can earn millions of dollars.
Saurav Risbud, who is focusing on his careers podcast, Non Linear, and writing after quitting his consulting job at Bain last year, says the long hours were worth it.
Depending on the project, he says some days could stretch up to 10pm or 11pm. “It wasn’t unheard of for days to extend beyond that,” he says. “There was no explicit pressure, but the nature of the job meant it was a bit of a norm.
“You do work long hours, but you go into that career with your eyes wide open to that,” he says. “It’s high pressure, but there’s also a high pay-off, especially early in your career when you can learn things.”
As one of the top consultancy firms, Bain tends to pay staff more than places like KPMG, and its staff do more strategic work.
John Howe, a Melbourne Law School professor specialising in labour market regulation and policy, says while there are also awards for some banking and financing professionals which spell out minimum conditions, they tend not to cover those in managerial positions or earning above a certain salary, and that they were generally reluctant to speak out.
“Lawyers and investment bankers don’t want to bring those cases because they want to keep working in the industry,” he says. “There’s a culture that because these employees are paid a lot, they should work whatever hours the employer requires, and a culture of not complaining or taking legal action because you’ll be blacklisted from getting a job somewhere else.”
However, Howe says the landscape is changing, with people in other sectors, such as junior doctors and solicitors, pursuing class actions for excessive working hours and underpayment.
These class actions – where a group of people in the same position pursues a legal case – can reduce the individual financial costs of taking an employer to court and also reduce reputational damage for those who might otherwise be worried about their future job prospects.
And Howe says a growing number of litigation funders – who pay for legal costs in exchange for a share of the proceeds if the case is successful – are prepared to back the claims.
“In the past, there weren’t many of these cases at all, but now we’re seeing a lot of them because of law firms looking for class actions and litigation funders willing to bankroll them,” he says. “I have certainly heard some talk of investment banking being the next frontier for class action litigators.”
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Millie Muroi is the economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was formerly an economics correspondent based in Canberra’s Press Gallery and the banking writer based in Sydney.Connect via X or email.
