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.Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
"Why I'm Leaving Goldman Sachs"
Holy crap, read this:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Kottke made a nice comparison between that letter and similar letters from a former Yahoo! and a former Google employee.
ReplyDeleteI had a photo gig at Merrill Lynch a few years ago, covering a panel discussion just after it was bought by Bank of America but before the takeover had really happened. The panelists talked a lot about the sort of positive cultural things that Greg Smith talks about – the things that had made the company both effective at attracting and holding customers, and just a nice place to work. And unfailingly, immediately after saying these great things about the culture, they would make sure to stress just how absolutely sure they were that it would remain like that after the B of A takeover. In that "read: it will not be the same" kind of way.
Part of the issue is just size – as a company gets to be truly big, it's impossible to maintain all of the things that made it great when it was smaller. The legal structure and financial expectations we have of corporations make it all but inevitable that they grow increasingly evil as they grow larger. But ugh, corporate consultant culture sure doesn't help.
Anyway, great read. Fuck Goldman Sachs and everything it stands for in today's economy.