"I Had to Sell the Porsche"

It is a month or so now that 24 people were laid off at my firm. Most of them did exactly what will never again be done: helping banks package and sell sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. The "sub-prime crisis" has been reported on ad naseum and I have been following the denouement, as it were, of the crisis from reports of worrying signs in early August to the publishing of the Federal Reserve's new guidelines on mortgage lending yesterday. Ironically, for once, I could feel like what we (broadly speaking) do is "real;" it has an effect on the course of events in the real world. Unsurprisingly, the effect is bad. However minor my personal contribution may be to the mess, it is undeniable that there is one.

My contribution is not significant enough to make me feel particularly guilty and was evidently not sufficient to get fired either. I don't really know any of the people who were on the "LIST."I do know that, in early September, the managing partner called a meeting where he said "[Read my lips], nobody in this room will be fired. The partners will take the hit." As depicted in movies made about corporate greed in the '80s, three months later the affected associates were called into one of the large (and hence intimidating) conference rooms one by one and told by the same managing partner and a couple of other partners for whom these people worked that they should find a new job because they would almost certainly be laid off by January 31. It is not their fault, they should not take it personally and, to make the parting less painful, they would be paid through the end of March. 

Naturally, they did take it personally. It is hard to imagine how not to. The partners took great pains to reassure those of us who had not fired telling us that our continued presence was welcome, that our contribution to the firm was much valued, and that there would definitely not be any further layoffs. For sure. They also wanted to show that it was not easy for them to fire people and that lest we thought they just made a rational business decision, they did not. They took a "major hit" too.  "I had to sell  the Porsche. Even had to cancel our family vacation to the Bahamas! -" said one. "I am taking home hundreds of thousands less than I thought would -" said the other. "I felt so bad that I could not go home to my family [in my million-dollar mansion in Connecticut], I had to stay at the office and drink Scotch all night with the other partners -" said the third. Enough already. That's what I say.