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I have to laugh at this article, it took this guy 12 years to realize how businesses make big profits? Sales & Marketing is all about selling products and services that the company profits from the most. It even begins with the salesman who wants to make the most commissions by selling the products or services he makes the most commissions on. I have 30+ years in sales and marketing and I remember when I was selling for an appliance retailer and one salesmen would only sell a certain brand because it paid the largest spiffs and this guy was always a six figure a year income. What GS has been doing has been going on since its existence and with every business in every industry in the world. Why should they be any different that any other company.? Its up to us the consumer to educate ourselves on what product or service we benefit the most and at the best value. Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning this practice, but simply saying this is par for the course in business.
Good article. Also, imo it's not just about GS but also their(and big banks and politics') influence on the failed regulatory authorities of the financial industry.
You seem to not understand how a business keeps customers.
You do not do business long-term by selling your customers crap.
Of course, you have to make money in a business, Smith didn't say otherwise. What he said was that they took care of their customers before and now they don't.
A business model that involves ripping customers off will not get repeat business. This is fine if you are selling ice creams in Times Square but not if you are GS.
Plus - fact is - some people do have a conscience.
'I no longer have the pride, or the belief'
After almost 12 years, first as a summer intern, then in the Death Star and now in London, I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its massive, genocidal space machines. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
To put the problem in the simplest terms, throttling people with your mind continues to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making people dead.
The Empire is one of the galaxy's largest and most important oppressive regimes and it is too integral to galactic murder to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of Yoda College that I can no longer in good conscience point menacingly and say that I identify with what it stands for.
For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates, some of whom were my secret children, through our gruelling interview process. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in detecting strange disturbances in the Force for the 80 younglings who made the cut.
I knew it was time to leave when I realised I could no longer speak to these students inside their heads and tell them what a great place this was to work.
How did we get here? The Empire changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and killing your former mentor with a light sabre. Today, if you make enough money you will be promoted into a position of influence, even if you have a disturbing lack of faith.
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm's 'axes', which is Empire-speak for persuading your clients to invest in 'prime-quality' residential building plots on Alderaan that don't exist and have not existed since we blew it up. b) 'Hunt Elephants'. In English: get your clients - some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren't - to tempt their friends to Cloud City and then betray them. c) Hand over rebel smugglers to an incredibly fat gangster.
When I was a first-year analyst I didn't know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces telepathically. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a protocol droid was and putting my helmet on properly
so people could not see my badly damaged head.
My proudest moments in life - the pod race, being lured over to the Dark Side and winning a bronze medal for mind control ping-pong at the Midi-Chlorian Games - known as the Jedi Olympics - have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts.
The Empire today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about remote strangulation. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.
I hope this can be a wake-up call. Make killing people in terrifying and unstoppable ways the focal point of your business again. Without it you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much non-existent Alderaan real estate they sell. And get the culture right again, so people want to make millions of voices cry out in terror before being suddenly silenced.
I find it hard to believe that this was the reason for his resignation. of course I might be totally wrong, but it looks to me more like frustration. reasons could be pay, promotion etc.
about ripping off clients. when customers are involved in trading/sales, there's always a conflict of interest. many times the customer is on the other side of a trade. but that's nothing new.
one big problem is called shareholder value. the pressure of improving your earnings. sure you want to keep your customers and make them happy. but on the other side you have to think about your shareholders as well. especially after the bailouts, you can't really afford to disappoint your shareholders again.
That's a pretty BOLD statement you make about my business knowledge. If you must know, I have 30+ years in Executive Management with small business and major corporations, such as John Hancock and Prudential. My point is in sales and marketing its all about psychology, and how does the customers know if they are being pushed on the best fit for their needs? When I worked in the Insurance field both John Hancock and Prudential were pushing Variable Insurance products as a way to show the client that their policies would build equity. IMO those policies were misleading and not as pitched to the client. The company and the agents made big bucks on these products instead of selling term life policies and investing the rest. These companies are still large in the Northeast with increasing profits. These customers still don't know what they have other than they have insurance coverage with a little equity building. I'm sure those product are gone now and they just changed the policy and names.
Statements like yours is the reason I stopped and limited my posting in the forum. Good luck with your trading!
"Successful trading is one long journey, not a destination" Peter Borish Former Head of Research for Paul Tudor Jones speaking on conversations with John F. Carter
Henry Goldman III, the great-grandson of Goldman Sachs founder Marcus Goldman, says he agreed with Greg Smith's New York Times op-ed criticizing the firm's predatory culture.
"I thought it was spot on," Goldman told Business Insider in an exclusive interview.
Now a semi-retired financial professional currently residing in Colorado Springs, Goldman said the culture had changed "for the worse" since the days when his family maintained direct control over the company.
He added that Smith's views on Wall Street could be applied beyond Goldman.
"I thought the article was a reflection of Wall Street in general and 'let buyer beware,'" he said.
And this is not just a topic he's thinking about now. On the 'predatory' behavior of Wall Street, Goldman added: "It's certainly something friends of mine have discussed ad infinitum."
So far, the only inside response to Greg Smith's damning NYT op-ed on Goldman Sachs has been from the company's PR department. They simply said they didn't agree with Smith, no color, no context to why he would write this piece.
But a former intern who worked under Smith gave Business Insider a look into who Smith was at Goldman. Avneesh Singh Saluja, a fellow Stanford alum, was willing to speak out for the guy most Goldmanites are probably fuming at:
"I worked for GS both as an intern in 06 and as a full time analyst from July 07 to March 09. I was in the NY office until March 08 and then I was in HK for a year. I interacted with Greg mainly during my 06 summer and from 07 to March 08, when I was physically in the NY office. Greg was the Stanford "Equities Captain", i.e., he was a mentor for the incoming Stanford grads in the Equities department of the Sales & Trading (Securities) division of the firm. I hold him in very high regard - he took care of us junior guys, gave us great pieces of advice, and in general came across as one of the more personable, friendly, and genuine guys on the floor.
