Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Time at Lehman

nickchirls.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 198 posts

Re: My Time at Lehman

#91

Post by tomkarlo »

I worked at Lehman for 4+ years (left in 2008) and while I didn't feel so negative about work (I was more senior than the OP) I definitely was in a spot where I knew that if I kept at it for another 10-20 years -- no matter how much money I made -- I would feel like I wasted my time.

I went back to tech, and now I have a job where I'm still well paid by any reasonable standard, and I really enjoy what I work on and who I work with. Given how much of our lives we spend at work and thinking about work, it can be a mistake to overvalue compensation as an element in our career decisions.

Re: My Time at Lehman

#92

Post by nchirls »

tomkarlo wrote: post #91

I worked at Lehman for 4+ years (left in 2008) and while I didn't feel so negative about work (I was more senior than the OP) I definitely was in a spot where I knew that if I kept at it for another 10-20 years -- no matter how much money I made -- I would feel like I wasted my time. I went back to tech, and now I have a job where I'm still well paid by any reasonable standard, and I really enjoy what I work on and w…

Amen.

Re: My Time at Lehman

#93

Post by mapgrep »

rayiner wrote: post #9

"Which, it turns out, is a trader’s field day. What this meant, in its simplest form, is that these traders (or salespeople) could buy bonds at the "market" price from intelligent hedge fund managers in NYC and sell this same crap at much higher levels to unsophisticated (but legally considered "sophisticated") pension funds and insurance companies in middle America. What I discovered, quite starkly, is that the part…

>what do you expect in a free market system that rewards every marginal advantage

I expect the government to allow so-called free market capitalists to fail when they fail. Lehman was emphatically NOT staffed by the best and brightest -- it collapsed.

All the other big banks should have been allowed to collapse as well, rather than be bailed out by a staggering infusion of free government money and hidden bailouts like the proppping of AIG. (And don't get on about how the money was paid back - TARP was just one portion of the bailout, the Fed discount window was hugely important as banks bellied up to borrow at a discount and then lend the money right back to the govt at higher rates by buying treasury bonds.)

If that had been allowed to happen, your use of the term "free market" might have some validity in abstract terms. In the case of Wall Street, that term is inappropriate in virtually every sense.

Re: My Time at Lehman

#94

Post by iTrollFreely »

so sad. i've seen hundreds of similar sob stories from the wall st fallout during 08 09.

from his linkedin I can see this guy didn't last 2 years at lehman. He states he started as an analyst, presumably never even made it to associate, and has the balls to call himself a 'trader' in linkedin. What a joke!

As a first year s&t analyst you don't do shit. You are not a trader. You are not a junior trader. You are not an assistant trader. You are basically a back/mid office donkey.

All this demonization of wall street by wannabes that never made it past the first five years in the business is all too common. "Oohh they're all too evil, I just had to get out of the business" "oh I got out of the industry cuz my moral compass wouldn't allow it"

BULLSHIT. they would be singing another song if they made it. michael lewis and henry blodget, i'm lookin at you.

Re: My Time at Lehman

#95

Post by enraged_camel »

potatolicious wrote: post #47
np422 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever read an eula? Have you ever heard of someone winning a lawsuit against a software vendor? Have you even heard of someone getting any kind of monetary compensation for mishaps caused by software bugs? The suing part is purely fictional.

It's not about the lawsuits, but it is very much about risk reduction. This applies to all consultancies, not just Oracle. If you hand-roll your own solution for (almost) free using open source components, you're the one who gets fired when it goes down. If you buy an enterprise-level solution from Vendor XYZ, with a requisite expensive support contract, they fucked up when it goes down, and you are safe because good…

Yeah. They had a saying for this in the 80s and 90s: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." Interesting reading here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

Re: My Time at Lehman

#96

Post by lesterbuck »

nissimk wrote: post #41
harryh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're investing over the long term and can afford to ride out the shocks then historically speaking stocks have always out performed bonds. That's not gambling. It's not a zero sum game between you & Goldman. In a growing economy everyone can win by investing.

While cash securities markets (i.e. stocks and bonds) are not a zero sum game, derivatives markets (i.e. futures, options and all kinds of swaps) are zero or negative sum by definition. Also, derivatives markets are far larger in size [1]. There are always 2 parties to each transaction and one makes the money that the other one loses. The additional transaction fees that go to the banks and various other operations p…

My understanding of the original idea for derivatives was apportioning risks into pieces that could be independently valued by different experts/markets. For example, say a company wanted to finance an X factory in Y country. The original lender would have to be an expert at evaluating risk in the X market and the Y currency market, which is a small pool of investors. If derivatives could split the risk into X market risk and Y currency risk and sell them separately to specialists in each risk, then the factory was much more likely to find funding, at lower rates, etc. The "world" ended up with a factory that would not have been built, with all the associated wealth, which is positive sum. Am I missing something that makes derivatives negative sum in this case?

Re: My Time at Lehman

#97

Post by nilkn »

rayiner wrote: post #33
nilkn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wouldn't you feel shorted if you made the company 10x that in profit on your trades That guy didn't make the company all that money entirely on his own. Lehman supplied the capital, they get the bulk of the profit. That's how it works. If he wants the truly big bucks (as if a million isn't), then he should trade his OWN money. But of course he probably didn't have anywhere close to enough to do so.

> That guy didn't make the company all that money entirely on his own. Lehman supplied the capital, they get the bulk of the profit. That's how it works. Capital doesn't sit there and make money by itself. The allocation between how much of the profit the bank gets versus the trader is itself a market transaction--if the bank low-balls traders consistently, they'll just go to another bank. If the supply of traders wh…

Yes, that's true. In fact, that's true of all employees at all companies (just replace "trader" with "employee" and "bank" with "company").

However, we do not know that this trader was underpaid relative to other traders. All we know is that he was unhappy with his bonus. Once you join the Manhattan rat race, you'll find all sorts of ways to be unhappy with your bonus no matter how big it is and regardless of whether you are paid the same relative to your peers or not. In Manhattan, the sky is the limit as far as apartment prices go, for instance. If you want a place just slightly nicer or in just a slightly more ideal location, after a certain point that might be an extra million right there. There's a culture of making everyone constantly feel poor, especially after a transition in the 1900s where it became hip to live in the city rather than out of the city.

Re: My Time at Lehman

#98

Post by tome »

nissimk wrote: post #41
harryh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're investing over the long term and can afford to ride out the shocks then historically speaking stocks have always out performed bonds. That's not gambling. It's not a zero sum game between you & Goldman. In a growing economy everyone can win by investing.

While cash securities markets (i.e. stocks and bonds) are not a zero sum game, derivatives markets (i.e. futures, options and all kinds of swaps) are zero or negative sum by definition. Also, derivatives markets are far larger in size [1]. There are always 2 parties to each transaction and one makes the money that the other one loses. The additional transaction fees that go to the banks and various other operations p…

This is nonsense. With a future, for example, both sides lock in future cash flows and can lead to a reduction in risk for each party. Reduction in risk for each party can be beneficial for each party.

You might as well say that buying milk is a zero sum game, because the milk is either over or under priced. That's just wrong. Financial securities have more to them than just their price.

Re: My Time at Lehman

#99

Post by tome »

vijayr wrote: post #77
ap22213 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know several people who make a lot of money in trading, and I hear the liquidity argument constantly as the justification for their behavior. They describe the millions that they make as payment for all the 'value' that they've given to everyone; But, as an ignorant, I can't see how those millions could have come from anywhere than other (less informed) peoples' pockets. To me, the worst part (again, as an ignorant…

I am more ignorant than anyone on this subject, I too have similar questions on the stock market as a whole, not just traders. Originally, stock market was created to raise large amounts of capital for big projects/companies. Once the IPO is done, people keep buying and selling stocks - how does it benefit anyone other than the seller who makes a profit? It doesn't add extra capital to the company, doesn't "create" a…

Investors will generally only be keen to buy into an IPO if they know that there is the possibility of selling the stock in the future in an open market.

Re: My Time at Lehman

#100

Post by RestlessMind »

mapgrep wrote: post #93
rayiner wrote: post #9

"Which, it turns out, is a trader’s field day. What this meant, in its simplest form, is that these traders (or salespeople) could buy bonds at the "market" price from intelligent hedge fund managers in NYC and sell this same crap at much higher levels to unsophisticated (but legally considered "sophisticated") pension funds and insurance companies in middle America. What I discovered, quite starkly, is that the part…

>what do you expect in a free market system that rewards every marginal advantage I expect the government to allow so-called free market capitalists to fail when they fail. Lehman was emphatically NOT staffed by the best and brightest -- it collapsed. All the other big banks should have been allowed to collapse as well, rather than be bailed out by a staggering infusion of free government money and hidden bailouts li…

>Lehman was emphatically NOT staffed by the best and brightest -- it collapsed.

"Lehman collapsing" might be unrelated to "individuals at Lehman succeeding". You make a big gamble and if you succeed, there is big bonus. If you lose, there are no financial penalties (at worst, you lose your job which should not be a big deal for someone who has already made millions. Like, Dick Fuld). In fact, in absence of regulations like bonus clawback or multi-year bonus vesting, folks on Wall St. seem to have behaved in a completely rational way until 2008 crash.

Post reply on HN