Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

jjjjj wrote:

He will likely have many job offers, however. Think of the pr gain that a firm gets from taking this guy on. They would be saying that they really are about the client's interests first. .

It would be professional suicide to hire this guy. Nobody would choose to deal with him. He is now a pariah in investment banking.

Eh, I doubt it. If he's got a good relationship with his clients he can probably bring them over to wherever he goes next. Maybe just to some hedge fund, but so what? I'm sure he'll get work somewhere. It's not like he lost a billion dollars or anything.

Fat Drunk & Stupid wrote:

jjjjj wrote:

He will likely have many job offers, however. Think of the pr gain that a firm gets from taking this guy on. They would be saying that they really are about the client's interests first. .

It would be professional suicide to hire this guy. Nobody would choose to deal with him. He is now a pariah in investment banking.

__

he is like an innoculation - can you imagine a boutique firm bragging that they sought out and hired this guy because of his stance on putting the customer first?

And if that doesn't work, he can always find work managing pension money - who has a better BS detector than him?

I await the reply of (sound of thunder at his name) Flagpole Willy.

Just watched "Margin Call" great flick.

agip wrote:he is like an innoculation - can you imagine a boutique firm bragging that they sought out and hired this guy because of his stance on putting the customer first?

And if that doesn't work, he can always find work managing pension money - who has a better BS detector than him?

I'm sure his new managers will be very trusting of him....not knowing if anything they say to him could end up in the media somewhere.

No investment bank or broker dealer will hire him. I know I would not. You cannot trust the guy. clients? The only reason they dealt with him is the name over the door. You think they would follow him to Joe's IBD?

So why aren't any G-S people in jail?

Instead these polecat bas*ards are in charge of the chicken coop.

Go watch "Margin Call"

I would never hire him.

I read that he e-mailed his resignation to his bosses 15 minutes before the Op-ed appeared and then aired the dirty laundry to the world. He claims he is a man who wants to do the right thing but then goes and does this.

There are many people at GS who are great people. Instead of trying to fix things internally, he told the world only the bad. He, in his position, likely only sees a small part of what the huge company does. Then he proceeds to resign by e-mail and not provide any notice. For a guy who wants to do the right thing, he doesn't practice what he preaches.

He may do ok with a book deal or in another industry but he is likely gone in the financial industry.

This doesn't mean that GS is perfect but this is not how you do things especially when you are trying to take the high road.

He is wrong wrote:

I would never hire him.

I read that he e-mailed his resignation to his bosses 15 minutes before the Op-ed appeared and then aired the dirty laundry to the world. He claims he is a man who wants to do the right thing but then goes and does this.

I'd never hire him either. Sounds like a big baby. Let him startup his own company like I did. Then he won't have to complain to anyone except himself. I do very well though, probably as well as this guy did in some of his best years.

[/quote]"Firstly, I am shocked that this made it through the relatively discriminating NYT op-ed filters."

Then you don't read the Times enough. They post not based on quality but what will please/interest their readers. The average Times reader has just been waiting eagerly for someone to take GS down from the inside, so they can chuckle smugly and think about how great it is that they work for NYPIRG and eat their whole foods arugula in a tiny apartment.

[/quote]"For those claiming he has made enough to call it quits, grow up."

Except for the book deal that will probably follow. That will earn him money/fame/royalty deals to match the GS income.

[/quote]"My largest problem with the piece is, what is the goal?"

1) self-promote. Greg Smith is now known much more widely than he was a week ago. 2) Start a converation. We are, after all, talking about this at the moment yeah? 3) Perhaps confirm what legislators already think about the investment banks and encourage regulation. 4) Get your name in the Times. Who wouldn't want that?

What bothers me most about this piece is, again, the self-promotion. Like the part where he mentions the Maccabiah games: Who TF cares? I want to be like Dawg, as a member of the Tribe I can confidently say that beating the rest of us in ping pong is something you shouldn't be beating your chest about.

Barnaby Smalls wrote:

The best part, to me, is that what's wrong with Goldman Sachs is that they aren't treating their insanely rich clients with enough respect. He's arguing like the head of the household cleaning staff, making sure the servants don't pinch fine silverware after dinner parties.

Homeslice seems blithely unaware that, say, the super rich clients, whose fortunes are amassed on the back of cheap, dehumanizing labor, are actually worthy of treating with much respect. The proprietor of an estate is hardly moral because they're successful. They're rich because they extort poor people. If that's allowed, why is it so wrong to extort money from the rich who are too distracted to manage their own middenous treasure.

You are too bitter to be a real American. You have to be French or British.

The guy who wrote this will get a job or he won't get a job.

Who cares? That won't effect many people.

Will this have any long term effect on Golman Sachs or the investment bank culture in general?

Does it reinvigerate Occupy Wall Street? (this and the end of winter)

Since this piece went out, there have been articles written saying that GS has been sacrificing long term greed for short term greed.

And that this action to increase shareholder value right now may actually hurt long term share holder value.

We know they made big money with the real estate run up and jumped off when they saw it going down yet kept selling while they were betting against it.

And they were rescued when the system collapsed and paid big bonuses in the middle of all this.

Is there another investment bubble brewing while they rake in fees from the muppets?

I certainly don't know.

But I have a feeling that if they are not providing adequate value for their compensation then something will come of it in a form of a correction.

I am going to forget that you just flat-lined his income over 10 years and assumed he earned $500K his first year out of school and point out that even with your retarded assumptions: $1.5 million is not a lot of money for a 33 year old to retire on for 50 years which might include some more taxes and inflation. I know you were all excited about insulting me, but if you had thought about it you would realize that when he joined the firm out of school, best case he got paid around $75K-100K. Even if you assume a nice 20% increase per year which brings him to the $500K or so in year 10, he is only netting $100K after taxes in years 5 thru 10; probably only saving about $400K after 10 yrs if he lives on $100K in cash. $400K may be enough to retire on in your school district, but he probably wants his kids to go to college.

I know no one ever checks old threads on this forum but concerning his motives and future earning potential:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/greg-smith-goldman-sachs-book-deal_n_1391938.html

$1.5 mil advance? not bad at all.

Segarra was a former bank examiner who looked into Goldman Sachs for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and claims she got fired in 2012 after making too much noise about Goldman’s alleged conflicts.

The New York Fed has often been blasted for its lackadaisical approach to overseeing banks leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Its last president, William Dudley, was named in 2009 after spending 21 years at Goldman. But Segarra’s book claims that the problem persisted for years after the crisis, with regulators happy to act on the banks’ behalf.

“We want [Goldman] to feel pain, but not too much,” her boss — who goes by the pseudonym Connor O’Sullivan in the book — told her, Segarra claims

Goldman Sachs has been the firm with Autobahn Express Lane from Wall Street to White House. Goldman Sachs has never been the biggest. Pre-Merrill Lynch Bank of America merger Merrill Lynch was bigger than Goldman Sachs. There was never a 100% clean era for Goldman Sachs. Those there always lived with situational ethics due to the lifestyle.

Everyone I know at Goldman (mostly managing directors and up) believes him or her self a progressive, is very book smart, is decent looking and self confident, and has totally sold out any morlas and ethics he or she might have once had (some are even decent runners). They convince themselves they are entitled to all the $$$$ because they are more talented and harder working than you, and they ocassionally feel a bit of guilt about, so they give a bit of money to the Obama or Clinton campaign (there's a tax deduction, of course) and invite some activist acquaintances from Harvard/Princeton to brunch on Sunday. The kids go to 20k a year charter school, but it has an open m k nded modern curriculum, and some minority students whose parents also work somewhere respectable like Goldman. They mingle with the people when they jog along the riverside or send the doorman for a bagel at the deli.