back to work today after the long weekend and i am on earlies this week which is ok. i get to miss the worst bits of the rush hour which makes it almost worth waking up at 6.30am.
i also get to read my book called liars poker, on the tube in the morning because there is enough space to hold a book in front of you as opposed to the mosh pit it usually is on the train. only a few pages left and will probably finish it off on my way home this afternoon. its very good and having worked in banking recently, it is not entirely unfamiliar even though this is recounting stories from salomon brothers 20 years ago. actually its probably familiar to lots of people who work in any company. inept upper management, people getting promoted through politics and not ability, people taking credit for other peoples work....you get the idea. a lot of this went on at the internet company i used to work as well. i still hear the stories. it probably happens at my current place as well but i am just to new to know any of the politics and i just don't want to know either.
it also recounts how salomon brothers expanded aggressively and quite recklessly in hindsight, and it reminded me of the investment bank bear stearns, that blew up last year.
a couple of years ago when i was trying to break into the closed circle of investment banking, i had an interview there. at the time they were based high up in canary wharf and had 4 floors at the top of the tower but they were already building their own 12 storey building just down the road and preparing to move into that a few months later. i met a couple of managers in the technology division and they went through what i had done and what i knew.
both of them seemed long term company men, and i would guess that they had been there for 10 years at least. they just had that look about them. i remember one of them was wearing a rolex submariner, which is a very nice watch but seems to be part of the standard uniform of someone who has worked in banking for a few years. they must get a voucher or coupon for them after 5 years of service i reckon.
anyways the interview went well and i killed any questions they asked me, and we talked about tech stuff in general as well. i was prattling on about everything and anything. it was then that i got the feeling things were not going my way. the 2 guys shared a knowing look and then said that they were impressed but that i might be over qualified for the job they were hiring for. i probably was but i had no banking experience and at the time i just wanted to get the name of a bank on my cv. i tried to convince them that i was keen to do the work they had and i knew what the role was that i was going for and was happy to do it, but i knew they weren't convinced.
also in the interview they mentioned their expansion plans and i remember being a little startled when they went through it. they said that they were recruiting because they were planning on growing their operation in london, which was why they were building their own purpose built offices down the road. they said they had 1,500 staff but were planning on increasing this to 3,500 staff in the next 2 years. i remember sitting there doing some mental arithmetic in my head when he said it and thinking....you are going to more than double in size in 2 years!!??....2000 new hires in 2 years....thats 1,000 new hires a year.....thats 19 new starters a week, every week for the next 2 years.... are you guys fucking nuts!!!. you are an 80 year old investment bank, not some internet startup in the dot com boom (and we all know what happened to most of them).
anyways, they ended up not offering me the job and the agent initimated that it was because they thought i was overqualified. they were probably right but i also thought that they should hire the best people they could and not deliberately turn away able candidates for ones less able. that seemed a little unfair at the time.
less than a year later bear stearns collapsed under a mountain of mortgage backed debt that lost its value in the US real estate crash. i was working at a japanese investment bank at the time and a lot of my friends told me how lucky i was i didn't end up getting the job at bear. i dodged a bullet on that one.
anyways reading about some of the stuff that happened at salomon brothers, it reminded me of bear stearns. on my travels around london at other banks i ended up working in the canary wharf area about a year ago, and there was a brand new, almost completed new building, just down the street, that was where bear stearns was supposed to be, but which was lying empty, a symbol and reminder to everyone about irrational exhuberence, greed, ambition, mis-management, and folly. i don't know if its still uninhabited or what the plans are for it. they should leave it empty and let it serve as a monument to excessive greed and misplaced ambition.
arsenal v man utd in the semi final of the european cup. come on the arsenal, though i think it will be tough. i hate man u, but even i have to admit that rooney and ronaldo and tevez are awesome players. chelsea v barcelona tomorrow night. artists v thugs. beauty v beast, football v anti-football, good v evil,...you get the idea. viva barca!.
today i have mostly been listening to gin blossoms - found out about you. one of my most favourite songs ever.
you look after yourself flower.
No comments:
Post a Comment