NYTimes Op-Ed: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

This will be zinging around the Internet. To channel Bill Simmons, he took a page out of Dylan McCay's book: "May the bridges I burn light the way!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?ref=todayspaper

 

Wow! No doubt that Michael Lewis applauds.

It seems like the Goldman culture changed a lot when they
went from partnership to corporation. Behind the limited risk of corporation the leadership was will to push the envelope a bit further.

 

What I'd say to the naive writer?

Boo hoo
Welcome to the world.
You could make the same argument about just about any company over time. They change. They get less personal, less customer-oriented, more focused on the bottom line... even (gasp) unethical.

It sucks, but Valhalla doesn't exist in corporate culture -- and certainly NOT in banking.
What was he thinking?

(He must be about 34.)

 

Bullshit.

This like Congressman and Senators who decry "partisanship" when they decide not to seek re-election.

You think Goldman has really changed that much? Maybe he's changed. Maybe he's just gotten enough coin in his pocket.

But, to pretend the business has changed so much is bs.

 

Whether the culture has changed or not, it's pretty damning that a higher-up leaves Goldman saying the company exists to screw its clients out of their money, and by extension, screw the U.S. economy. If nothing else, if you have money, why would you trust it to Goldman at this point?

 

He may just be a disillusioned guy in his mid-30s. Hardly uncommon in any walk of life.

But Goldman has changed. The Goldman of 20 years ago wasn't trying to pass off bad derivatives to unsuspecting customers and banks, with the side benefit of torpedoing the world economy, because those things didn't exist. And the pre-corporation Goldman probably was an entirely different place, according to many other accounts as well.

 

Greedy investment bank is greedy.

 

That guy was grossly overpaid. I know this because he wrote something foe the newspaper.

 

Back when they had a partnership model, the business strategy was "long-term greed". When you convert to a public ownership, you create principal-agent problems--people no longer have the same incentives to think about the long-term.