Why I'm Leaving Goldman Sachs

vivatifosi

TruckerT wrote: »

Do you mean like 40 years ago?

Like I said, it's time for a new idea

TruckerT

The problem with saying that its time for a new idea is that nobody can say what that new idea is. Instead you hear things like:

"We need to protect British jobs" protectionism - tried before - didn't work. You've only got to look at how far behind the US car industry fell to see that.

"We need to see more equality of earnings" - as tried under communist and socialist systems. Russia had to give up on that.

"We need to stop the foreigners coming in and taking all of our jobs/money" - mmmm.. Need I mention Nazi Europe.

I'm not saying the systems are necessarily all bad. For example, protectionism works up to a point in China - you've only got to try to be a foreigner and try to buy land or shares in China to see that - but there will come a time that it bites back. Similarly there are doubtless good points about the old Soviet system or you wouldn't have so many elderly Russians hankering for the good old days. Plus of course Nazi Europe is what happened in extreme circumstances. However they illustrate the difficulty of coming up with a new system. There isn't a one size fits all system that most countries will be happy with. Until someone does then capitalism (or more specifically corporate capitalism) is what we've got, though we will probably see more regulatory tinkering around the edges.

Mrs_Bones

worldtraveller wrote: »

I thought that, particularly a few DHP&E regulars, as others of course, would like to see this article in the New York Times today:

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.....

New York Times

Interesting. I know that is from a banker and that as a profession they are currently supposed to be the worlds nemesis but the points raised in the letter about customer service I think could be related elsewhere as well. Bankers are just the top of the tree so to speak.

I worked completely at the other end of the scale in retail but for firms that were over 100 years old and I noticed the change in culture over the last few decades as well. If Bankers were the top I guess we'd be bottom of the scale but the change in work practice seems to have effected many companies.

When I started work over 30 years ago, the customer was king, it was drummed in to staff that without customers the retail business wouldn't survive. Quality service was a bench mark of a good company. Slowly over the last decade or so that changed. Targets became king, hitting targets and profit slowly superseded customer service. It wasn't just bank staff that were being asked to sell on other products all staff in retail positions were. It was called link selling, didn't matter any longer if you though it was something the customer actually needed or wanted, you were just expected to try and get extra sales. I think this change can even be seen in public services like the NHS, nurses don't have time to care any more, targets again have taken over.

People use to have pride in their work they did as a whole. Now people measure their work worth in how much money or sales they can make, targets they can reach. That sort of culture doesn't breed respect either for the job or the company. Customers everywhere have slowly been sidelined and instead of being seen as the life blood a business needs to survive, they are now just a commodity that is to squeezed as much as possible for profit.

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

I'm not saying the systems are necessarily all bad. For example, protectionism works up to a point in China - you've only got to try to be a foreigner and try to buy land or shares in China to see that - but there will come a time that it bites back. Similarly there are doubtless good points about the old Soviet system or you wouldn't have so many elderly Russians hankering for the good old days. Plus of course Nazi Europe is what happened in extreme circumstances. However they illustrate the difficulty of coming up with a new system. There isn't a one size fits all system that most countries will be happy with. Until someone does then capitalism (or more specifically corporate capitalism) is what we've got, though we will probably see more regulatory tinkering around the edges.

One way to view the relative success of economies is to look at GDP per head (i.e. the GDP of the country divided by the population).

China ranks #117 in the world according to the latest figures from the CIA World Factbook. That means GDP per head in China is less than world economic powerhouses such as Suriname (#113), The Northern Mariana Islands (#94) and Equatorial Guinea (#65).

The sclerotic UK hangs on in a lowly 33rd in the world. Maybe a Liberal democracy combined with capitalism works ok after all, for all its flaws. Here is the list in full if you're interested:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

TruckerT

vivatifosi wrote: »

The problem with saying that its time for a new idea is that nobody can say what that new idea is

New ideas are all over the place, mostly on Radio phone-ins, and TruckerT mse posts

Capitalism was never 'an idea', it just happened, and for two centuries, it worked well - Marxism simply proved that Capitalism was actually a very good economic system

But Capitalism grew up alongside, and depends upon, a reliable and effective banking system

And since 2007/8, the Banks have been failing to play their part - I believe that they have seen the writing on the wall (for capitalism), and are behaving accordingly

We now know that Capitalism and Climate Change are inseparable, and that therefore the days of Capitalism are numbered

I heard today of a guy who was clearing some land recently to create a campsite, and struck a pipeline which carries aviation fuel across East Anglia/South Midlands - this pipeline was installed around 1960-1980, to replace a WW2 original

But apparently it is not feasible in the 21st century to construct a pipeline to carry water from the North and West of the British Isles to the South and East

Clearly, water is not as sexy as aviation fuel... YET....

Hopefully, the banks will work out the realities before it is too late, and pump their money into a network of water distribution to match the canal system, the railway system, the national grid, the North Sea Gas pipelines, and the Motorways (not to mention the mobile phone system and the internet)

That would definitely be a 'New Idea'

TruckerT

worldtraveller

Goldman Sachs Group Inc has begun scanning internal emails for the term "muppet" and other evidence that employees referred to clients in derogatory ways, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein told partners in a conference call this week, according to people familiar with the call.

The company-wide email review comes after an executive director named Greg Smith resigned last week in a scathing op-ed column in the New York Times in which he said he saw five Goldman managing directors refer to clients as "muppets," at times over internal email.

Reuters

Muppets!