Get used to it, young man. In recent months, some of the biggest banks on Wall Street have upended their nose-to-the-grindstone traditions by urging their junior bankers to do the unthinkable: Take weekend days off. Regularly.

In January, Bank of America Merrill Lynch told its junior bankers to take four weekend days off a month. Credit Suisse and Citigroup have urged their analysts and associates not to work on Saturdays. Last year, Goldman Sachs recommended that its analysts take weekends off whenever possible, and JPMorgan Chase announced an initiative to ensure that young staff members would have one “protected weekend” every month.

“We want them to be challenged, but also to operate at a pace where they’re going to stay here and learn important skills that are going to stick,” said David M. Solomon, co-head of the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs, in announcing the schedule change along with other initiatives.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” he said.

Some may view the schedule change for overworked junior bankers as small potatoes. (Work around the clock and get one weekend off a month!) But in an industry in which grueling schedules are embraced as a badge of honor, it reflects a significant shift in corporate culture.

The move to rethink the workload of interns and junior bankers, known as analysts and associates, picked up steam last summer when a 21-year-old intern at Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s London office died after an epileptic seizure. Reports on social networking forums suggested that he had worked three nights in a row.