Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits (23 page)

34.
“young bankers are ‘oriented into a culture of instability and competition where they must hit the ground running.’”
Ho, chapter 2.

35.
“At Goldman Sachs…what used to be the human resources department is now known as ‘Human Capital Management’”:
Most other Wall Street firms have stuck with “human resources.” If, for some odd reason, you’re interested in why corporations like Goldman Sachs call their employees “human capital,” and how the term differs from “human resources,” there is an entire book on the subject:
Human Capital Management: Achieving Added Value through People
, by Angela Baron and Michael Armstrong (Kogan Page, 2008).

36.
“I reflected on a passage from
The Financiers
”:
This book, by Michael Jensen (Weybright and Talley, 1976) is cited in the introduction to Ho’s
Liquidated
.

39.
“the Series 7”:
In
Why I Left Goldman Sachs
, former Goldman vice president Greg Smith describes the Series 7 as “your first big test on Wall Street, a rite of passage that allows you to start calling clients and being useful. The exam is six hours long, and the material is about the thickness of two large encyclopedias.”

39.
“the Series 63”:
Smith describes the Series 63 as being “deceptively shorter but actually harder” than the Series 7.

40.
“Goldman’s internships paid around $15,000 for ten weeks of work”:
Kevin Roose, “Fewer Perks and More Work for Wall Street’s Summer Interns,”
New York Times,
July 21, 2011.

40.
“At Goldman, the hierarchy of prestige was shifting rapidly”:
Matthias Rieker, “Goldman to Close Prop-Trading Unit,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 4, 2010.

40.
“an elite team of investors known throughout the bank as SSG—the Special Situations Group”:
Christine Harper, “Goldman Sachs’s SSG: Lending or Trading?,”
Bloomberg Businessweek
, March 31, 2011.

41.
“a successful trader with several years of experience could easily make $500,000 or $600,000 a year”:
A 2013
Bloomberg Businessweek
article put the average Goldman Sachs worker’s pay for three months at $135,594, which translates to about $542,000 per year (Peter Coy, “At Goldman, the Average Pay for Three Months Is $135,594,” April 16, 2013).

42.
“The commodities division’s prestige could be traced to 1981, the year that Goldman bought J. Aron”:
Susanne Craig, “The J. Aron Takeover of Goldman Sachs,”
New York Times
(DealBook), October 1, 2012.

48.
“200 West Street in Battery Park City, was a $2.1 billion monument”:
Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic at the
New Yorker
, wrote that the Goldman headquarters “appears to have been designed in the hope of rendering the company invisible.” (“Shadow Building,” May 17, 2010.)

49.
“The popular backlash had started in the summer of 2009 with a
Rolling Stone
story”:
Matt Taibbi, “The Great American Bubble Machine,”
Rolling Stone
, July 9, 2009. Taibbi’s article was later expanded into part of a book,
Griftopia
(Spiegel & Grau, 2010).

49.
“a mortgage-backed CDO called Abacus 2007-AC1”:
Gregory Zuckerman, Susanne Craig, and Serena Ng, “Goldman Sachs Charged with Fraud,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 17, 2010.

50.
“Goldman’s mortgage trading desk, the same one Samson was slated to work on, was at the center of the scandal”:
Kate Kelly, “Goldman’s Take-No-Prisoners Attitude,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 26, 2010.

55.
“On Wall Street, this is called the ‘Seamless Belly,’ after the website that is used to order restaurant meals on the company dime”:
Fast Company
’s Austin Carr wrote about how Wall Street analysts have discovered how to game Seamless in order to squeeze the maximum possible use out of their meal stipends. (“How Wall Street Bankers Use Seamless to Feast on Free Lobster, Steak, and Beer,” March 5, 2012.)

56.
“He lived in Windsor Court, a massive apartment complex in Murray Hill”:
The
New York Times
described Windsor Court as a place where “recent college graduates can find themselves among fellow alumni, meet up for familiar drinking rituals and flock to the frozen-yogurt shops and sushi bars that help them stay fit and find a mate for the next stage of life.” (Joseph Berger, “In Murray Hill, the College Life Need Never End,” January 18, 2011.)

57.
“abbreviations: DCF, CIM, LBO, VIX, and hundreds more”:
If you’re curious: discounted cash flow, confidential information memorandum, leveraged buyout, and CBOE Volatility Index.

58.
“bars like Joshua Tree…and the Patriot Saloon are considered first-year watering holes”:
For more establishments in the same vein, see Business Insider’s “The Most Obnoxious Bars on Wall Street” slideshow (Linette Lopez, August 3, 2012.)

58.
“Most large investment banks block…social media services in their offices”:
William Alden, “On Wall St., Keeping a Tight Rein on Twitter,”
New York Times
(DealBook), March 21, 2012.

59.
“A recent academic study of young bankers”:
Alexandra Michel, “Transcending Socialization: A Nine-Year Ethnography of the Body’s Role in Organizational Control and Knowledge Workers’ Transformation,”
Administrative Science Quarterly
, September 2011, vol. 56, no. 3.

63.
“A few minutes earlier, Soo-jin had finished hearing Deutsche Bank’s male investment bank chief”
: Kevin Roose, “The Continuing Trials of Wall Street’s Women,”
New York Times
(DealBook), October 26, 2010.

64.
“he, too, was a veteran”:
Caroline Copley, “Swiss to Vote on Scrapping Social ‘Glue’ of Military Draft,” Reuters, September 17, 2013.

64.
“the uniformed officer, outfitted in military fatigues, who stood outside the bank’s 60 Wall Street headquarters every day”:
From personal experience, I can tell you that these guards look scary, but they are in fact incredibly kind, even to reporters attempting to sneak into the Deutsche Bank atrium.

65.
“Zoe Cruz, the number two executive at Morgan Stanley, was fired in late 2007”:
Joe Hagan, “Only the Men Survive,”
New York
, April 27, 2008.

65.
“Erin Callan, the CFO of Lehman Brothers, was fired in 2008”:
Patricia Sellers, “The Fall of a Wall Street Highflier,”
Fortune
, March 15, 2010.

65.
“Sallie Krawcheck, a high-ranking Citigroup executive, was forced out of her bank”:
Geraldine Fabrikant, “When Citi Lost Sallie,”
New York Times
, November 15, 2008.

65.
“Krawcheck, who was later hired (and ousted again) by Bank of America Merrill Lynch”:
Dan Fitzpatrick and Robin Sidel, “BofA Shakes Up Senior Ranks,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 7, 2011.

65.
“On a case-by-case-by-case basis”:
Sallie Krawcheck, “Should We Care About Diversity? (Yes, It’s a Serious Question),” LinkedIn, October 18, 2012.

65.
“According to Melissa S. Fisher”:
Fisher’s statistics are credited to a
Wall Street Journal
article (Kyle Stock, “Ranks of Women on Wall Street Thin,” September 20, 2010).

65.
“Fisher blames the loss of female bodies, in part, on the crisis”:
Melissa S. Fisher,
Wall Street Women
, p. 156.

66.
“No longer are job applicants to Wall Street firms asked”:
Ibid, p. 51.

66.
“A 2006 analysis conducted by the
New York Times
”:
Jenny Anderson, “Wall Street’s Women Face a Fork in the Road,”
New York Times
, August 6, 2006.

66.
“At Deutsche Bank, where Soo-jin worked”:
Angela Cullen, “Merkel Seeks Women on Boards as Ackermann Draws Howls,” Bloomberg News, February 28, 2011.

66.
“both Goldman Sachs and Citigroup were hit with class-action lawsuits”:
Bob Van Voris and Christine Harper, “Goldman Sachs Sued Over Alleged Gender Discrimination,” Bloomberg News, September 15, 2010; Thomas Kaplan, “6 Women Accuse Citigroup of Gender Bias,”
New York Times
(DealBook), October 13, 2010.

67.
“real gender inequality was only given a light gloss”:
For more on the experience of being a female on Wall Street, read Nina Godiwalla’s
Suits
, a memoir of her time as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. (Atlas, 2011.)

67.
“Several months later, Soo-jin saw something even more troubling”:
Tom Bawden and Julia Kollewe, “Pretty and Colourful: What Women Bring to the DB Boardroom, Says Ackermann,”
The Telegraph
, February 7, 2011.

71.
“Can I get an offer on the 70-by-110 collars in Cal 15 for 50 lots per month?”:
If you want to learn more about complex options trading, a good place to start might be Lawrence G. McMillan’s
Options as a Strategic Investment
(Prentice Hall Press, 5th ed., 2012), which is considered the bible of options investing. (I say “might” because I cannot actually vouch for the book’s quality, having gotten only about a dozen pages into it before getting a headache.)

76.
“Traders who came through on big axes would often get congratulated in the morning meetings, and often found their year-end bonuses increased as a result”:
Greg Smith talks about Goldman’s “axe” culture as well, describing axes as “something…Goldman wants to clear from its inventory, making a compelling but not always completely accurate case for clients to buy them.” Smith also writes that “double GCs were sometimes awarded for axe-filling successes.” (
Why I Left Goldman Sachs
, p. 231.)

78.
“In July, it settled the Abacus fraud lawsuit”:
Sewell Chan and Louise Story, “Goldman Pays $550 Million to Settle Fraud Case,”
New York Times
, July 15, 2010.

78.
“In September, it began to disband Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies”:
Christine Harper and Saijel Kishan, “Goldman Sachs Said to Shut Principal Strategies Unit,” Bloomberg News, September 3, 2010.

78.
“the firm announced mediocre quarterly earnings that were down 40 percent”:
Susanne Craig, “Lower Profit at Goldman Reflects Wall St. Slowdown,”
New York Times
(DealBook), October 19, 2010.

79.
“
Vanity Fair
demoted Lloyd Blankfein”:
“The Vanity Fair 100,”
Vanity Fair
, October 2010.

79.
“Goldman tried to pare some of its image woes”:
Shira Ovide, “Goldman’s New Ads: Healing the Damage from ‘God’s Work’?,”
Wall Street Journal
(Deal Journal), September 29, 2010.

85.
“There are conferences, workshops, and affinity groups”:
A few of many examples include Citigroup’s “Hispanic Heritage” and “African Heritage” employee groups, Morgan Stanley’s “Jet Career Management Program,” and Credit Suisse’s “Black Professionals Network.”

85.
“A study by CUNY professors Richard Alba and Joseph Pereira”:
“Progress and Pitfalls of Diversity on Wall Street,” CUNY Center for Urban Research, December 2011.

85.
“A 2010 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office”:
Orice Williams Brown, “Overall Trends in Management-Level Diversity and Diversity Initiatives,” testimony given before the Subcommittees on Oversight and Investigations and Housing and Community Opportunity, House Committee on Financial Services, May 12, 2010.

94.
“Young people, they said, were prone to overreacting when their managers called them out on mistakes, and would often get highly emotional when confronted with anything other than unadulterated praise”:
Many studies have been done about the challenges of managing millennials—the dumb name given to people in Chelsea’s and my generation—in the workplace. One, by University of California Santa Barbara professors Karen K. Myers and Kamyab Sadaghiani (“Millennials in the Workplace: A Communication Perspective on Millennials’ Organizational Relationships and Performance,”
Journal of Business and Psychology
, June 2010) suggests that “Millennials thrive on recognition and promotions, but they also expect to become involved in projects that have a major impact on the organization.” Clearly, first-year investment banking doesn’t fit the bill.

99.
“offers as high as $250,000 a year for a talented private equity analyst are common”:
Kyle Stock, “Private Equity Paying More for Less Experienced Analysts,” FINS Finance, June 6, 2011.

99.
“They were thought to be slash-and-burn buyout artists who took over companies and
extracted all the profit they could for themselves, then left the limp carcasses behind”:
This reputation was not entirely undeserved. See Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s
Barbarians at the Gate
, the classic book about the 1980s leveraged buyout business.

99.
“firms have been pushing the process earlier and earlier”:
Kevin Roose, “A Grab for Wall Street’s Rising Stars Before They’ve Risen,
New York Times
(DealBook), March 9, 2011.

102.
“In social psychology, this phenomenon is called the ‘hedonic treadmill’”:
Shane Frederick, “Hedonic Treadmill,” entry in
Encyclopedia of Social Psychology
, eds. R. F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs, Sage Publications, 2007.

102.
“There was less to go around…tighter opportunity sets”:
Max Abelson and Ambereen Choudhury, “After Massive Job Cuts, Wall Street’s a Different Place,”
Bloomberg
Businessweek
, December 1, 2011.