Work Sucks, I Know

Malt Liquidity 84

Damn, it’s no good to be a Banker

Something people outside the industry assume, but probably don’t realize the extent of, is how watched you are when working at a bank. All your trading accounts need to be reported, your trades have to be cleared, your email can be read and referred to at any time (and emails that aren’t inter-bank are flagged, screened and noted by compliance), and if anything goes wrong, all your messages will be read. In my opinion, this is why Bloomberg has such a stronghold on the industry with the terminal — it’s one of the only compliance-approved externally facing chat programs and has the most amount of people on it. Bankers are just like the rest of us — the internet gives us troves and troves of data, but we primarily just want to communicate. 3 of the top 5 sites in the world are social media sites, with your average WhatsApp and iMessage user sending about 40-50 messages per day on average.

The problem comes in that, especially in a business of relationships involving the wristwatch class,

…the reason why I call the investor class “wristwatches” is twofold. One is because mechanical watch owners aren’t really concerned with efficiency, are they? The nicest Lange is less accurate than a $10 quartz Mickey Mouse watch. The other is due to how watches appreciate in value — take the Paul Newman Daytona for example. Functionally, it’s the same as any other Daytona — a watch that retails for around mid 5 figures — but due to the story behind the watch, it sells for roughly $18 million. The story itself multiplies the value of the same watch by 360x, which I think highlights the essence of how you understand the wristwatch class

the lines between work conversation and casual conversation can be pretty fluid. If you’re trying to build a personal relationship to pitch asset management services or M&A services, do you really want to have to go through the formal channel of email every time? Imagine texting a person you want to get to know better a dinner invite where if they say “sure, how about after work?”, you immediately have to switch to an email chain to discuss the topic of when you actually can leave work and what’s keeping you busy. Major buzzkill alert.

I bring this up because, I’m not gonna lie, I kind of feel bad for some of these employees:

Wall Street bankers and executives are getting their pay docked for using text messaging apps that circumvented record-keeping rules and led to hefty fines for the banks.

Morgan Stanley has imposed individual fines of more than $1 million on some of its bankers for their role in the matter, a person familiar with the bank said. In late 2021, JPMorgan Chase & Co. had reduced the pay of several members of its top leadership team over the issue, a person familiar with JPMorgan said. 

The big banks and a group of their peers agreed to pay a total of $2 billion in fines to U.S. regulators over their employees’ use of social-messaging applications such as WhatsApp. Banks are supposed to track correspondence between staff and clients…

JPMorgan clawed back pay from members of the bank’s operating committee, the group of executives closest to Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, the person familiar with the situation at JPMorgan said. Among them was the head of the bank’s asset and wealth management division, Mary Erdoes, according to a regulatory filing last year.  

Look, I’ve read a lot about illegal communications between bankers and traders over the years. There are always chat logs present whenever traders are doing illicit activities, probably due to the fact that trading is so tepid most of the time that they simply can’t reprogram their senses to, y’know, not put things in a monitored communication channel. This isn’t unique to institutional types — every type of trader ends up having done something incredibly stupid regarding chat messages whenever they get caught. In trading cases, if someone is deleting messages, of course that’s suspicious.

I don’t really think bankers seeking asset management clients are in that same category. Asset management relationships are about building trust — for a small fee, we’ll take care of your assets such that you don’t have to think about them. The actual “management” is done at a lower level — the highest rung of employees are essentially relationship builders. Would you want all your communications between you and a friend to be read by some omniscient compliance department?

The SEC’s complaint also refers to voluminous amounts of intrabank communications as well. Honestly, I don’t know a single person who doesn’t hate work email. Eyes glaze over, and if you are glued to your job like your average Goldman employee is, you’re kind of expecting work messages to be flowing nonstop through your personal channels anyway, right? I dunno. Obviously traders deleting messages due to an impending investigation is material for fines. But man, if I had to avoid using chat methodology of my own preference in favor of bank-approved services only, my work productivity would grind to a halt. Feels bad, man.

Damn, it’s slightly less awesome to be a Tech worker

As a sort-of railbird around my network, my view of big tech has generally fallen into the realm of “adult daycare”. I’ve witnessed and heard of catered meals, nap pods, haircut trucks, and more. So I feel slightly less bad for the people affected by this scenario:

When signing a contract at a big tech group, staffers have grown to expect free or heavily-subsidized food, with multiple cuisines in the canteen. Trendy office space is another must, with plenty of breakout spaces for catching up with colleagues and blowing off some steam. Offices are often kitted with gyms and games rooms to keep body and mind healthy.

In the past year, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has reduced its health and wellness benefits, cutting its in-house laundry service, ended taxi credits and slimmed food budgets. Alphabet’s job cuts are reported to have included some 27 in-house massage therapists and Salesforce is said to be ending “wellbeing days” — a day off once a month to focus on health issues.

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate companies that take care of their employees. The extent of corporate perks I’ve experienced personally was the reduction of my weekly HR meetings to bi-weekly. These kind of cutbacks are about more than financials — obviously Google’s bottom line is not affected by 27 massage therapists — rather, it’s signaling to the wristwatch class.

When things are going great and your revenue/profit growth is scaling properly quarter to quarter, you can get away with a lot. Especially in big tech, employees and investors alike got too accustomed to “up-only” equity during ZIRP. Before everything became political post-2016, big tech was regarded to be at the forefront of both innovation and intellectualism. “Talks at Google” weren’t “propaganda”, but rather an “educated broadening of horizons.” Quirks were celebrated. As always, we “snap back” to reality rather than gradually returning to it. Shenanigans like this

Salesforce investors are concerned Benioff has become distracted. As one of the software world’s most effective marketers, Benioff has long cultivated close relationships with a number of high-profile figures to help further the company. But the fondness for surrounding himself with celebrities, including on corporate business, has also raised concerns. According to one person familiar with the company, both musician Will.i.am and actor Matthew McConaughey are frequently involved in strategy discussions at the company, distracting from normal business. An outsider who has attended internal Salesforce meetings also expressed surprise at bumping into celebrities in high-level corporate discussions.

are no longer tolerated when your stock is down nearly 50% in the past 16 months or so.

I do have a little sympathy for people who have not known another work environment, though. My corporate illusions were dispelled by 10th grade, when I happened to watch Office Space for the first time. (Note to parents: I watched Pulp Fiction when I was 11, along with plenty of other rated R movies. By far the movie that did the most damage to my career path was that one. Consider putting it on the block list or downplaying its existence.) While much fun was made of the “Tech TikToker”, on some level, weren’t we all jealous that they were having that much fun at work?

Nicole Tsai has amassed millions of views on TikTok by sharing videos of a typical day working for Google. Upon entering the office in one, she grabs a handful of sweets at reception, takes a couple of video calls in themed meeting rooms adorned with gold sequin or butterflies and hangs out with “dooglers” (the dogs of staffers). “And, of course, everything you see in the office is free,” she declares in her voiceover over lunch before “wrapping up her day” in a massage chair. Last Sunday, though, Tsai went viral with a starkly different video after posting “a day in the life getting laid off at Google”. Captioned with the hashtag #corporatelife, the montage of shots included a grey computer screen locked out of work accounts, Tsai crying, and scenes at Disneyland where she had sought solace.

Ironically, a dose of Office Space might be just what the former corporate consultant ordered. Having to accept a more muted corporate environment can cause an existential crisis in and of itself — the simplicity of Ron Livingston’s absurdist relief could go a long way in helping come to terms with the fact that regular corporate work just kinda sucks, ya know?