Goldman Sucks
DJ D-Sol refuses to remix Goldman's company culture
I’ve been toying with the idea of a Great Gatsby adaptation for the 21st century. My first draft of the script went something like this:
A boy named Mandy (short for Mandalorian) raises himself from poverty by selling vibrators and mood lights underneath viral Tweets. A digital nomad cannabis entrepreneur takes him under his wing and they travel the world together. They develop a vertical aspect ratio content platform for stoners, but Mandy is cheated out of a fortune in stock options by the SPAC taking them public. Destitute again at age 27, he is drafted into Generalissimo Tucker Carlson’s Space Force to fight the global War on Critical Race Theory. He finishes his service and amasses a fortune flipping NFT art of Goku and Stewie Griffin dressed like Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi. Mandy purchases a large mansion overlooking the Brooklyn Seawall and converts it into a “Soho House for the Clout Generation.” All the while, he dreams of reconnecting with a goth fem catboy he sexted with during the Covid-27 pandemic. They find each other, but the catboy takes too many caffeine pills during a 36 hour Among Us stream fundraiser for the DSA, and dies. One of the catboy’s reply guys blames Mandy for the accident and kills him.
But that feels a little convoluted.
A better adaptation might be the story of David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Here’s a man who gets $24 million a year (plus benefits, including dental and vision). He has a net worth well into the nine digits and will almost certainly die a billionaire. He is one of the most powerful men in the world, whether he admits it or not. And yet, he still feels the need to spend his time DJing and buying bottles at Surf Lodge.
I’ve talked at length about the modern power-to-popularity pipeline: Obama the Netflix producer, Prince Harry the podcaster, Bashar al-Assad the OnlyFans model. But Solomon actively gigging as a professional DJ is another level of odd. The only explanation is that he is lurking around the Hamptons to find his lost love (a FashionNova girl) to steal her away from her new husband (one of the Big Bootie Mix guys), or at least find out if their marriage is open.
DJ D-Sol is back in the news this week, getting his worst publicity since he opened for The Chainsmokers at a superspreader concert last summer, which was deemed an act of bioterrorism by the International Criminal Court. A leaked slide deck surfaced, revealing horrendous working conditions within the Goldman Investment Banking division. The details would make Jacob Riis blush.
The average workweek is 105 hours; the mean mental health self-rating is 2.8/10 and physical health is 2.3/10; 100% of employees report negative impacts on their relationships with family and friends; 77% say they are victims of workplace abuse. More than half had posted a black screen on their Snapchat story captioned “streaks. idk if can take it anymore. real ones know what’s up tho 🥀”
True, it’s unlikely that anyone working in IB at Goldman was unaware of what they were getting into. True, also, that they are richly compensated for their suffering. But no matter how you feel about the bankers of Goldman Sachs, this is not good. The thought of any worker being abused by their bosses upsets me, even if their work is societally malignant. With such abysmal mental health standards, it’s only a matter of time before something tragic happens. If that still doesn’t make you care, then think of it this way: if Goldman employees are allowed to work less, they will get less of their evil work done.
Even before his employees went public about their mistreatment, David Solomon was already an unpopular boss. Solomon defends his performance the way he justifies the workload on junior staffers: Goldman is having a record profitable year, the stock price is booming, and everyone is so busy because the company is getting so much business. (There might be some truth to that: the junior employees assessed their likelihood of staying at GS for six more months at 3.5/10, yet rated their likelihood of recommending the firm at 5.4/10.) But that has not stemmed a raft of unusual high-profile departures. Many top bankers have left, citing Solomon’s abrasive nature and general shittiness. This has cost the firm a fortune, as each person dramatically quits with an Office Space-style stunt.
Other anecdotes are funnier: after getting stranded overnight in Anchorage due to a plane problem, Solomon demanded Goldman buy an executive jet for him to use. This was something the firm had long considered tacky and refused to do, but they relented when Solomon started crying in the middle of the plane store, sat down on the floor, and refused to move until he got his Gulfstream. Solomon then ordered custom tail numbers for the jet, the aerial equivalent of vanity plates, which read “H0RNY4S3X”. (Correction: the tail number included “WS” as a reference to Wall Street and did not contain the phrase “H0RNY4S3X”. Chazzy regrets the error.) Solomon has since used the plane to make weekly trips to the Bahamas, Montana, and elsewhere throughout the pandemic, raising concerns about appropriate use of company funds, and why Solomon gets to stink the jet up all the time while other C-Suiters have waited decades to join the Mile High Club.
In a Hamptons restaurant this summer, D-Sol was enjoying a leisurely lunch, nursing his hangover after a long night of spinning vinyl and swallowing mystery pressies that he found on the floor. A junior employee spotted him, approached his table, and introduced himself and the other Goldman employees at the table. Solomon was enraged that his employees were not working and became convinced that work from home was being used as an excuse to slack off. Of course, he only knew they were at a restaurant during a workday because he was also at a restaurant during a workday. For this feat of cognitive dissonance, David Solomon is this week’s Chazzy’s World Messy Bitch Who Can’t Stay Out Of The Drama Because They Are The Drama.
Solomon has continued to use this anecdote to justify his negative view of remote work. He has called it an “aberration” and said it would not be the “new normal” for Goldman. While many corporations announce indefinite remote work plans (Amazon, Facebook, Ford) or hybrid models (Microsoft, Deutsche Bank), Goldman is one of the few to put the kibosh on it early. Such is the butterfly effect: 38,300 employees have to go back to the office because one guy felt a little confident after a third lunchtime Aperol Spritz.
This raises an interesting prospect for the future of remote work itself. It probably bodes well for the idea that its biggest naysayer is in the news for giving his entire staff depression. It would not shock me if in-person work became associated with “toxic” white-collar workplaces, whatever that really means.
I’ve been skeptical of work from home for a year now, as I wrote back in May. Many of my friends dislike it, saying it feels more like living at work, with emails and Slacks arriving at all hours. But some enjoy it, saying it gives them more freedom, eliminating monotonous commutes and awkward office dynamics. I personally despise it, and believe that laboring and leisuring within the same four walls day in day out is horrendous for the mind, body, and spirit. That said, I don’t like working for other people in general. I recently considered retiring early, but my finance app told me my savings would only cover 11 to 13 minutes of expenses. I also don’t think the plight of salaried, degreed knowledge workers is our most pressing issue. In fact, I recently learned a new wellness practice: if someone tells you they are a “product manager in tech,” you have no obligation to ask them any questions or keep the conversation going whatsoever. Protect your energy!
The mistake is to think that companies decide whether workers should work from home based on how it affects workers. That is a non-factor. Instead, they consider if they can lower expenses by reducing office space, cutting benefits, and pegging your salary to the cost of living wherever you are. They evaluate if the office’s social nature matters, and whether they can effectively surveil workers through keyloggers, screentrackers, and read receipts. They measure what happens to employee productivity, and studies suggest it goes up. Many people I know cite their increased productivity as an argument for working from home, in which case: Go ahead, cog! Speed up that means of production for its owner, who is not you!
Ultimately, the question boils down to the same logic that every corporate decision is based on: profitability. Mark Zuckerberg thinks work from home makes money. David Solomon thinks it loses money. That’s all it is. Your fate is determined by someone who is concerned that his suicidal underlings make for bad PR, indignant that you dare to eat lunch near him, and worried his promoter is not getting “the right type of chicks” at his sets. Whether you like remote work or not is up to you. Just remember that the guy making the decision doesn’t give a fuck what you like.
And never trust a DJ who doesn’t care what you like. Their job is to serve the party.