... And remember the winners don't care what the losers have to say. Make sure you know which group you are in sooner rather than later so you can do something about it... I love that. .. It's so true for every area of life.
How does one measure success ? 1. Trader A is happy, but never made a dime in his 3 year career. 2. Trader B is miserable but makes millions for his firm. Who is successful?
This is very accurate. The vast majority of people don't get how your standard of living and it's associated costs steadily creeps up as you make more money. People who think that if their fairy godmother waved a wand and pufft! they stepped into an alternate universe where they made $500,000 or $750,000 working on Wall Street, that suddenly life is good will find that they are oddly enough not happier, not more relaxed and not more fulfilled than when they were making $50,000. You have flashier stuff and more exotic vacations, but it doesn't actually make you happy - in fact the only thing you've achieved is you can't imagine the thought of stepping down. I mean, what will your friends on the Street say or think? That's why there are so many people on Wall Street unhappily trudging along , with retirement nowhere in sight even while making 10 times the median wage. One way out is to not care at all what other people think, keep company with much poorer friends, and salt away your savings like a miser, refuse to buy stuff and move up in quality of life. But seriously, how many people can accomplish that? Also, human beings can get nasty - many have deep rooted socialist tendencies and bad vibes can generate between your poorer friends and you.
Not true. I know people at Goldies on far less than that [Edit: yes, I realise this is an average, but these are competent people and thus I believe a reasonable indicator]. GS has successfully developed this mythique about it being the elite place to work but if you measure by pay, this certainly isn't so. Look at GS' compensation expenses as a percentage of revenue and you'll see it's no higher and maybe even lower than the other bulge bracket firms (usually 48-50% of sales). I once worked at a bulge bracket shop where comp costs got out of control and ended up at the mid to high 50s level, not that I complained You're probably thinking about the media reports to the effect that if you took all the bonuses paid at GS this year and averaged them it would be 600k. True, but with many at the high end on bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars (and reportedly some are on even more), that's not surprising. Like I said, total comp isn't that high. Suss
A wise man once said "expenses rise to meet income." "The best things in life are free." and "The best times in my life were when I had the least money" 1 million a year ain't shit
This figure is true, but means a lot less than you think. Aside from mean, median and standard deviation are other important things to know about statistics Most Goldman employees at the juniorish level get paid less than elsewhere on the Street. It's euphemistically called paying for the Goldman Halo. It has been a pretty severe discount in the past. Although a comforting side effect of the lower cost of peons is that Goldman has also been better at staff retention during downturns. So the median pay is substantially below 600,000. Indeed it wouldn't surprise me if it was below most of the other wall st banks. Pay at Goldman is very top heavy, successfully recreating the pot of gold that the path to partnership represented in the past. It's indeed the most powerful retention tool ever invented. However, the folks over at the GS hedge fund unit Global Alpha are probably shedding tears this year end.