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Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

nytimes.com

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Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#71

Post by michaelochurch »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60
michaelochurch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some start-ups have their employees working 90+ hours. This isn't because they're evil but because they have limited resources, a lot of work, and the people there are amazingly passionate about what they're doing. Limited resources. That's why the long hours are not a sign of evil in startups but are one in banking. Banks could easily hire more people. Startups generally hire good people as soon as they can.

Whether they could is debatable given that many of them are aggressively trying to raise capital, even if it means laying off workers to cut costs. But let's assume they can. That doesn't mean they should. Most bankers I knew were much more upset about losing their week-end beer fridge or a $5 reduction in their daily meal allowance than they were about putting in a few more hours. You have to remember that most anal…

Whether they could is debatable given that many of them are aggressively trying to raise capital, even if it means laying off workers to cut costs.

They could always, you know, stop paying million-dollar salaries to people with no skills other than office politics. I know this sounds radical, but it would free up some of the money.

Most bankers I knew were much more upset about losing their week-end beer fridge or a $5 reduction in their daily meal allowance than they were about putting in a few more hours.

I'm not talking about "a few more". I'm talking about the difference between 40-50 (sustainable, safe, sane) and 80-120.

In most companies, a 5:00 pm work drop with 6 hours of work due next morning would be taken as a sign of dysfunctional process. It might happen occasionally, such as during a production crisis, but it wouldn't be an everyday event. Bankers like to hire naive college kids because they don't know their rights and don't know that these kinds of late-day work drops are a textbook example of bad process.

they want all the experience they can get so they have a gilded resume at the end of it.

You and I both know that the "experience" most analysts are getting isn't very useful or interesting-- not enough to merit working 100+ hours per week. Checking pitchbooks at 1:30 am? Downloading 600 corporate logos? Do you really think people learn much doing this kind of grunt work that a high-schooler could do?

They just want the name on the resume and the automatic acceptance at a top business school, because for whatever reason B-schools still believe people actually get something useful about being an investment bank's peon for two years.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#73

Post by danssig »

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…

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 demonstrate that CEOs are * clearly* overpaid. Their own pay has gone up, while company performance per salary dollar has gone down. Meanwhile the rest of us produce vastly more than, say, 20 years ago, yet wages remain mostly flat.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#74

Post by smackfu »

nostrademons wrote: post #19
einhverfr wrote: post #6

I keep thinking about this article and the recent Google one as well. And I wonder, is this sort of moral decay necessarily part of the current corporate world? Is it possible, over the long run, to have a tech firm, or any other firm, that empowers employees to do what is best for everyone and to hell with the rules? Or is this merely a matter of a few good leaders who get it, and everyone else eventually overcoming…

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…

> Unfortunately, they don't care that they don't have all the information; they want Google to work as expected,

OTOH, if they had all the information, they might set new expectations. Essentially you are describing a corporation that is failing to communicate properly.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#76

Post by kokey »

panacea wrote: post #34

"Why I left reddit" 'It changed man. The culture wasn't the same as when I joined five years ago.' These 'I said GOODBYE SIR!'s are interesting, but I'm not sure how much reliable information can be gleaned from them. What ever happened to not 'burning your bridges'? This is a resumé.

It's good to take them with a pinch of salt, just as you take what your girlfriend say about her ex with a pinch of salt. That said, after the salt has been applied you are still left with some useful information.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#77

Post by khafra »

bhousel wrote: post #47
nostrademons wrote: post #19

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…

Rationality can serve whatever values you have. You can rationally optimize the amount of love, happiness, and fuzzy puppies in the world if you want to. You can also rationally strive to keep a company efficient and non-evil. But the bigger it gets, the harder that gets, modulo economies of scale.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#78

Post by einhverfr »

lrobb wrote: post #53
einhverfr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not denying that corporate culture takes on a life of its own, and that the system's rationality and the participants are not closely linked. What I am asking is whether great places to work inevitable decay as the company gets large, and if that is the case, what is the point of a startup? Why not seek to make an idea that scales down rather than scales up? Is it all about personal wealth? But for those of us w…

What I am asking is whether great places to work inevitable decay as the company gets large Odds are you will definitely lose that personal connection as you go from working for "the owner" to working for a manager that reports to a VP that reports to the CEO that reports to the Board that reports to the shareholders. But what I've seen in a lot of these "leaving" posts isn't quite that... It's more of a "the king ha…

What lessons can be learned from managing an open source community that can be applied to a formal corporation?

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#79

Post by chernevik »

nostrademons wrote: post #19
einhverfr wrote: post #6

I keep thinking about this article and the recent Google one as well. And I wonder, is this sort of moral decay necessarily part of the current corporate world? Is it possible, over the long run, to have a tech firm, or any other firm, that empowers employees to do what is best for everyone and to hell with the rules? Or is this merely a matter of a few good leaders who get it, and everyone else eventually overcoming…

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…

Most decisions are made under incomplete information. So the principles that guide you in uncertainty are very important. I think it's quite rational to select principles that guide you well even under uncertainty, even if their immediate conclusions don't seem maximizing. Likewise it's rational to use principles that will be comprehensible to those observing you, so they can predict your behavior and retain trust in your decisions.

To the parent post question, of avoiding deterioration of institutional culture from such principles there are two answers. Best is to align corporate equity interests with long-term interests, which are generally customer interests. That generally means not going public, as stock market attention to short-term interests is a constant distraction from long-term interests. Failing that, be lead by a mutant like Buffett or Jobs, who understand the long-term interests and have the authority to ignore the short-term to get long. But the availability of mutants is unpredictable and it's really best to get the capital structured properly.

Re: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

#80

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23
guelo wrote: post #13

So he thinks Goldman was honorable back when he was young and had no idea what was going on. Bullshit. I happen to know of some shady Goldman credit swaps from the 90s that my municipality has been trying to get out of. I'm sure there is plenty of other garbage that went on back then too. You don't hire a bunch of mostly young male type-A personalities and wave million dollar bonuses in their faces and not expect que…

> mostly young male type-A personalities...wave million dollar bonuses in their face This also characterises hackers and Silicon Valley. There are some really good people on Wall Street just as there are some real turds in Silicon Valley. If you go back into Goldman Sachs's history it was a venerable firm with a storied past of forsaking short-term profit for the client, i.e. being long-term greedy instead of short-t…

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