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Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

nytimes.com

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Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#131

Post by monkeyfacebag »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #117
danssig wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Forbes article is a great one. Personally I think now that the cat is out of the bag, we should start to see things changing at the executive level (though it's going to take years). For a long time, many of us have speculated that CEOs were overpaid but suggesting this was met with claims of being "anti-capitalist" and other such nonsense. Now thanks to the Forbes article and the book it's talking about, we can…

Could you define what you mean by "overpaid"? Is it merely a complaint that CEOs are paid more than you wish they were, or something else? Meanwhile the rest of us produce vastly more than, say, 20 years ago, yet wages remain mostly flat. This claim betrays a misunderstanding of how productivity is measured, and how workers are compensated for their productivity (i.e., comp is wages + benefits, not wages). Wages + be…

Yeah, except he didn't say compensation was flat. He said wages were flat. The fact that we have a higher percentage of our compensation tied up in the skyrocketing cost of health care only underscores his point.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#132

Post by byrneseyeview »

create_account wrote: post #129
byrneseyeview wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mirabile Dictu! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230469280457728... When Goldman doled out annual bonuses earlier this year, Mr. Smith's small payment became a point of friction, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Smith hadn't previously voiced his concerns about Goldman to his managers, according to people familiar with the matter. Occam's Razor says that the NYT was masterfully trolled.

He effectively blacklists himself from any future job in finance (and therefore ends his career) just because he doesn't like his bonus? So no, it's not Occam's Razor: if he were merely unhappy with his bonus, he would call another i-bank and move on. BTW, I notice you're always quick to defend the big money status quo around here (you were against net neutrality a while back, IIRC). What's in it for you, as a mere S…

I don't really know what he's thinking. But it is interesting that he was fine with the culture during most of his career, then not-fine with the culture after he found out how much money he'd be making in the future. There are many boutique banks whose management shares his sentiments, in the sense that they believe big banks are too self-serving and too indifferent to their clients. Some of those banks do very well, and it wouldn't be terrible for their PR to hire him.

Do you know anyone who pays people for saying stuff like this on random message boards? I tend to say this kind of thing because I think it's true, and because I'm unimpressed with the quality of opposing arguments and would like someone to refute me. But if I can get paid while I'm at it, that's even better! I don't think the economics really work out, though.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#133

Post by mattwrench »

silverlake wrote: post #105
steve8918 wrote: post #49

It's interesting how the tone of this article is almost exactly the same as the one about the Microsoft employee that recently quit Google. Something happens to companies as they get larger, where the culture of a company starts dying from a death-by-a-thousand-cuts, and then they start promoting the wrong people into upper management that seem to really poison a very good company culture. It sounds like Goldman Sach…

> Something happens to companies as they get larger They went public. My gf is a senior manager at GS (200+ drones in her department). When the company went public the partners could easily cash out. Without as much skin in the game, they could squeeze as much profit (aka bonus) from GS without worrying about the long-term viability. Also, hedge funds are now a more lucrative place to work for many people. So if GS d…

I agree that going public hurts companies but not because the partners/founders can cash out. At least in the tech world once a company reaches a certain size, it seems as though founders can liquidate a large portion of their stock pre-IPO; Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need to worry about Facebook's IPO in order to get rich. Rather, I feel that having a somewhat-arbitrary, short-term indicator in the form of stock price is what hurts public companies and their culture much more than the loss of its leaders.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#134

Post by ig1 »

illumin8 wrote: post #120
byrneseyeview wrote: post #92

Goldman has a kind of hilarious understated response, in which they note that this guy was a VP (there are thousands of VPs at Goldman) and that the group he managed consisted of him and him alone. Plus, this was a bad year for bonuses. Nothing like a slow career and a dwindling bank account to make you aware of how morally imperative it is that you switch careers! The people I know at Goldman are generally bright an…

Managing $1T in client assets doesn't sound like a job for a lowly VP. Your comment is mostly an ad-hominem attack against the author because he may or may not have received a smaller bonus this year.

When I was working at a mid-tier bank I wrote software responsible for pricing over a trillion dollars of transactions while in a vp-level position

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#135

Post by byrneseyeview »

illumin8 wrote: post #120
byrneseyeview wrote: post #92

Goldman has a kind of hilarious understated response, in which they note that this guy was a VP (there are thousands of VPs at Goldman) and that the group he managed consisted of him and him alone. Plus, this was a bad year for bonuses. Nothing like a slow career and a dwindling bank account to make you aware of how morally imperative it is that you switch careers! The people I know at Goldman are generally bright an…

Managing $1T in client assets doesn't sound like a job for a lowly VP. Your comment is mostly an ad-hominem attack against the author because he may or may not have received a smaller bonus this year.

The article is all about the hominem. He says he left because of how he felt. It's entirely appropriate to ask if there might be other feelings involved.

As another reply points out, he didn't manage that much money. Goldman had clients who managed that much money, and he apparently handled equity derivatives for those clients.

I once worked at a company that worked on an internal web app for one of the largest advertisers in the world, but that doesn't mean I "ran advertising for clients with a multi-billion dollar marketing spend."

To be clear, I can sympathize with someone who used to be in the business of working as an agent for his clients, and who is now in the business of executing the same transactions but taking the opposite side and then hedging his risk. I just don't think moral outrage is the right response to a change in the macro situation. One could argue that while financial markets got more sophisticated, Goldman Sachs coincidentally got evil, but I think it's more likely that markets evolved, Goldman evolved with them, he didn't evolve with Goldman, and he took it personally.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#136

Post by pnathan »

mathattack wrote: post #46

The article still overflows with ego. From table tennis champion to Rhodes Scholar!

Part of that is building creditability. If he had said nothing about himself, how should you believe him?

But as the ancients implied, one who testifies of themself is not trustworthy. :-/

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#137

Post by create_account »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #132
create_account wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He effectively blacklists himself from any future job in finance (and therefore ends his career) just because he doesn't like his bonus? So no, it's not Occam's Razor: if he were merely unhappy with his bonus, he would call another i-bank and move on. BTW, I notice you're always quick to defend the big money status quo around here (you were against net neutrality a while back, IIRC). What's in it for you, as a mere S…

I don't really know what he's thinking. But it is interesting that he was fine with the culture during most of his career, then not-fine with the culture after he found out how much money he'd be making in the future. There are many boutique banks whose management shares his sentiments, in the sense that they believe big banks are too self-serving and too indifferent to their clients. Some of those banks do very well…

Some of those banks do very well, and it wouldn't be terrible for their PR to hire him.

Possible, but unlikely.

Smith must have known he'd be attacked personally (as in that ad hominem piece you posted), and it's unlikely another bank would want to touch him, regardless of their true feelings towards Goldman.

Do you know anyone who pays people for saying stuff like this on random message boards?

Sure: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/pku22/iama_former_koch...

I tend to say this kind of thing because I think it's true, and because I'm unimpressed with the quality of opposing arguments and would like someone to refute me.

I'll give you credit for the latter (if it's true), but not the former.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#138

Post by yumraj »

Call me a cynic but a large percentage of people in I-Banks make their money and move on. Not that I doubt what he is saying, but it seems odd for people to just develop morality after 12 years at GS where he must have made his millions.

Basically, IMHO, he has made his money, is burnt out and wants to do something else and thought it'd be a good idea to write this article since it perhaps increases his profile for he wants to do next.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#139

Post by yummyfajitas »

monkeyfacebag wrote: post #131
yummyfajitas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you define what you mean by "overpaid"? Is it merely a complaint that CEOs are paid more than you wish they were, or something else? Meanwhile the rest of us produce vastly more than, say, 20 years ago, yet wages remain mostly flat. This claim betrays a misunderstanding of how productivity is measured, and how workers are compensated for their productivity (i.e., comp is wages + benefits, not wages). Wages + be…

Yeah, except he didn't say compensation was flat. He said wages were flat. The fact that we have a higher percentage of our compensation tied up in the skyrocketing cost of health care only underscores his point.

I wasn't disagreeing that CPI-adjusted wages are flat, I was pointing out that there is no reason for CPI-adjusted wages to be related to productivity.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#140

Post by anabis »

chime wrote: post #69
steve8918 wrote: post #49

It's interesting how the tone of this article is almost exactly the same as the one about the Microsoft employee that recently quit Google. Something happens to companies as they get larger, where the culture of a company starts dying from a death-by-a-thousand-cuts, and then they start promoting the wrong people into upper management that seem to really poison a very good company culture. It sounds like Goldman Sach…

> Something happens to companies as they get larger... I think promotion happens. When you're a fresh grad right out-of-college and the Managing Director says "client is our #1 priority", you take it to heart. That's your new mantra now. Nine years later, when the same Director, now promoted to the Board says the same line, you groan inside because you know exactly how often he calls his clients muppets. Slowly you b…

Yeah, Goldman Sachs made a predatory loan to Greece in 2002. That is just 2 years after this guy got hired.
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