Father Sunil Gupta pulls his heart rending essay off the web.

AB Wire

NEW YORK: Sarvshreshth Gupta, the 22-year-old Indian American investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., who was found dead in April, in a parking lot of the apartment building he lived, in San Francisco, committed “suicide by jumping”, according to a police report.

Surveillance video showed an individual falling from an apartment building into a parking lot about 4:20 a.m. on April 16, according to an incident report released Tuesday by police, reported Bloomberg.

In a heartbreaking essay posted on Medium last month, which has now been removed, Gupta’s father, Sunil Gupta, wrote about how his son was dealing with stress at work before his death, reported Business Insider.

Related Story: Did Indian American analyst at Goldman Sachs Sarvshreshth Gupta commit suicide?

Gupta, who attended the Delhi Public School in New Delhi, then did his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by an MBA at the Wharton School of Business, worked as a tech/media/telecom analyst in Goldman’s San Francisco office.

At Penn, he made the dean’s list and was a member of Eta Kappa Nu, an electrical and computer engineering honor society. He was a fan of soccer and the television shows “House” and “Family Guy,” according to his Facebook profile.

While back pain limited Gupta’s ability to play sports in college, he enjoyed marathon games of chess with his father, according to the essay. Even as work kept the banker from seeing his parents on weeknights during a September visit, he was “happy and excited” as he discussed his Goldman Sachs job over pizza with his father.

“After the meal, my son offered to pay the check,” his father wrote. “My chest swelled with pride. Emotions were uncontrollable. Eyes were moist with love, pride and happiness.”

Gupta began his career at Goldman Sachs last fall, and had to work long hours which began to take a toll on his physical and mental health, according to his father, whose poignant narrative of his son’s ordeal has Wall Street thinking of measures of how to minimize damage to new workers who join high intensity jobs.

Sunil Gupta’s essay entitled “A Son Never Dies” on May 17th, a month after his son’s death, revealed how Sarvshresth complained about the intense hours early on in his career, but claimed he could handle it.

He wrote: “… ‘Papa, I do not get enough sleep. I work twenty hours at a stretch.’ During certain weeks, he was working on weekends too. I protested. ‘Son you will ruin your health,’ I complained. He would say, ‘Come on Papa, I am young and strong. Investment banking is hard work.’

“From mid-January, he started complaining.’ This job is not for me. Too much work and too little time. I want to come back home.’

“As probably, any parent would react, we counselled him to keep going, as such difficult phases were inevitable in a high pressure new job. ‘Sonny, all are of your age, young and ambitious, keep going,’ I would say.

“In third week of March 2015, he submitted his resignation, without consulting us, and called us. My first sentence to him was, ‘ Sonny I did not want you to quit, but now since, you have done so, we are with you. Come back home’. He sounded sad and disturbed, ‘Papa, it will take some time to exit. HR will close in some time.’ I asked, ‘what you want to do now?’ ‘Well, I will rejuvenate myself, eat home cooked food, walk and go to gym, and finally work with and expand our school,’ he replied.”

Soon after, though, Gupta rejoined Goldman, and his troubles began soon again, despite counseling services at work.

Sunil wrote: “Destiny was marking its time for the family. We had no clue that we were going to be hit by a tsunami, which would uproot our lives, never to be rooted again. By a quirk of fate, he was asked by his company, to reconsider his resignation and under pressure from me, he rejoined.

“Poor son, he re-joined and did his best to come to terms with hard, continuous work, no breaks, no sleep and no respite.

“April, 16, 2015, 3.10 pm, India time. That is,+ 12.30 hours, California time. He calls us and says, ‘it is too much. I have not slept for two days, have a client meeting tomorrow morning, have to complete a presentation, my VP is annoyed and I am working alone in my office.’

“I got furious. ‘Take fifteen days leave and come home’, I said. He quipped ‘they will not allow’. I said, ‘tell them to consider this as your resignation letter.’

“Finally, he agreed to complete his work in about an hour, go to his apartment which was half a mile from his office block and return in the morning.

“The dawn never came in our lives, my sonny boy, never reached his apartment. A monster, a devil in his giant motor vehicle, sniffed the life out of him. My son, whose bones, blood and flesh were my very own, was victim of a cruel, momentary lapse of an individual, who too, is surely somebody’s son.”

Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs, have sought in recent years to improve the experience for their new recruits, who carry out the Excel and Powerpoint grunt work that goes into presentations and ideas for clients, reported Bloomberg. The shift, prompted by the 2013 death of a Bank of America Corp. intern, has been driven in part by a fear that the brightest college graduates don’t view investment banking as a sustainable career, Bloomberg report said.

Still, 100-hour weeks aren’t unheard of, and a client request can easily wreck a junior employee’s weekend. Gupta’s late nights on the technology, media and telecom banking team would have helped serve some of the firm’s highest-profile clients, it noted.

Business Insider reported the conversation on long hours on Wall Street really began back in August 2013 when Bank of America intern Moritz Erhardt died after reportedly working consecutive all-nighters at the bank’s London office.

In the past two years, there have been numerous suicides and unexpected deaths among financial-services employees. In May, Thomas Hughes, a 29-year-old banker from Moelis & Co., died after leaping from his luxury apartment building in downtown Manhattan. His father told the Daily Mail his son didn’t have much free time from work and that “at a time when he was under stress he probably resorted to illegal drugs, causing this incredibly poor judgement.”

Banks have been trying to do more to improve the lifestyles of their employees, especially the junior-level ones. Goldman makes it so Saturdays are off for their junior bankers. JPMorgan Chase offers one “protected weekend” each month for its younger employees. Lower-level employees at Bank of America Merrill Lynch are required to take four weekend days off each month.