61–70 of 268 posts
The article still overflows with ego. From table tennis champion to Rhodes Scholar!
in all seriousness though, he probably saw this as a golden moment to build his personal brand, gain some media exposure, and leverage that exposure and brand building into another job offer, a writing gig, or a TV gig. consider it a golden parachute moment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Currently work at Google, obviously speaking for myself and not my employer. In my experience - yes, this moral decay is a necessary part of the current corporate world. Or any corporate world. Or really, any world without the possibility of failure baked into it. I've seen a lot of idiotic decisions made at Google, many of which have been complained about on Hacker News, many more of which are hidden causes of thing…
I really think that you're completely missing the point in defending Google and maybe Goldman Sachs by saying that their decisions are ok because they are made rationally. Rationality is emotionless and mechanical. It's about making a reasonable decision based on whatever information is available to you. However, rational decisions do not involve morals, culture, or feelings. This is exactly what companies like Googl…
The article still overflows with ego. From table tennis champion to Rhodes Scholar!
it's hard to sell common sense values and mores without dropping hints and lines about who you associate with and how awesome you are. in all seriousness though, he probably saw this as a golden moment to build his personal brand, gain some media exposure, and leverage that exposure and brand building into another job offer, a writing gig, or a TV gig. consider it a golden parachute moment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a long time finance has been the place where the most interesting tech was going on (not to say there isn't a lot of boring bog standard stuff as well). It's an industry where many firms have had to develop their own network transport layers, database engines, languages, etc. Where machine learning and big data have been standard practice for over a decade. Where understanding complexity and concurrency theory ar…
I'm wondering if any of that work has been made available, eg. as an open source project? There's a standard practice among tech/web companies to share innovation on the infrastructural level, but I cannot name one example of a bank innovating openly in that way. Perhaps they do publish academic papers about their innovations?
But obviously a lot of it remains behind closed doors, but there certainly some of that sort of thing going on.
Some of it also happens indirectly, for example a bank might design an improvement to the Linux kernel but because they want to remain covered by their support contract with say RedHat they might supply to the patch to RedHat and RedHat will then verify it and merge it into their core release and submit it back upstream, but it would have RedHat's name on it rather than the originating bank who might want to remain anonymous.
The gentleman era of investment banking is largely mythical. There was a long period where they were notably less scummy and cutthroat than other investment banks (compare: Salomon Brothers in the 1980s) but they were always an investment bank. The most visible (to a young person) sign of a bank's character is how it treats its employees. The 90+ hour weeks and terrible conditions in the "analyst" program (the term h…
There was a qualitative change after the banks went public. The old partnerships were inherently more prudent. And that's where the old culture came from. The new corporate structure rewards any risk-taking where losses lag gains by a year or more. So the culture changes.
While it feels good to recognize the eroding integrity of the industry (assuming it existed in the first place); I don't think this messenger is praiseworthy. Reeks of self-righteousness to me... and somehow I'm certain he'll be starting his own fund in the coming months.
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…
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…
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 begin to feel that the company is no longer the same wonderful, inspirational place of work that you signed up for.
Positions of power at any company, non-profit, government, or political organizations are not filled with do-gooders who want to give everyone a hug. They are filled with thick-skinned, ambitious, practical people who have learnt to say the right things at the right time. So if you're a junior exec., you will hear inspirational BS. As you join their ranks, you will hear their real thoughts. If the latter disgust you, it clearly means you aren't fit to join their ranks, not because of any lack of skills on your part but rather the difference in how you view the world.
To me all these execs leaving companies and saying "it's so different now" just means they all grew up and realized they didn't like what they signed up for. It's no different than couples splitting because "we grew apart." I highly recommend people quitting if things aren't working out ( http://chir.ag/200804242130 ) but I do not recommend airing out the dirty laundry, especially when no laws were broken because you're just scaring off the next company you intend to work for.
None of my above comments were in reference to anything at GS/Google/MS specifically. Facebook will start charging for integration some day too and some Dropbox exec will joke in company meetings about all the stupid people who save personal photos on their servers. People are people and companies are companies.
So, Goldman used to be honest? They rated their own chapter in 'The Great Crash, 1929': http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2010/10/in-goldman-sachs-we-tr...