Mod Note (Andy): This post by @SSits is a comment originally posted in this thread "Karoshi": Death from Overwork on Wall Street" and I thought it deserved it's own spot on the frontpage
Yeah banking sucks in terms of work-life balance, but you don't succeed without hard work and sacrifice.
Good god, you Americans love your cliches.
A lot of people succeed without hard work or sacrifice, particularly people who are good at sales.
The people who are fixated on the false equation of "hard work + sacrifice = eventual success" in banking are typically the naive analysts and associates stuck on their hamster wheels.
Banking is a meritocracy, but often the definition of "merit" is not what your American myths of boot-strapping, hard work and sacrifice etc schooled you to think.
EDIT:
A major cause of burn out is when naive analysts and associates despair to themselves, "I'm working so hard, why is success not coming to me for my hard work and sacrifice, like the legends promised? DOES NOT COMPUTE!"
It's because your education system and surrounding myths of success convince you to think that if you work hard and sacrifice, you will certainly get to the top. "You go girl!" and all that Oprah Winfrey shit, or its male equivalent (eg "you don't succeed without hard work and sacrifice").
I see plenty of smart kids who aren't smart enough to think around their programming, smashing their heads into the wall of a stalling career, stumbling back, then smashing their heads against the wall again because they adamantly believe HARD WORK + SACRIFICE is the only key to success.
Hard work and sacrifice will get you only so far.
And often, there are faster alternatives to get to the same level of success (although that often means having a lot of natural talent and/or connections).
Dumb-arse persistent belief in high school mythology is not the only cause of career burn out, but it's certainly a big one.