Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym. Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you.

Champions There are organizations and individuals who are using the principles of Reinventing Fire to make money and gain durable advantage in their industry. We invite you to explore some champions below. Transportation: Jimmy Yates of Mesilla Valley Transportation Jimmy Yates of Mesilla Valley Transportation has achieved a significant amount of success with his large locally-owned freight service. What's his secret? In addition to decades of experience maintaining, driving and managing class-8 heavy trucks, he focuses on efficiency. But it's not just the trucks—Jimmy also offers quarterly rewards to the most efficient drivers in his fleet. The innovations found in Jimmy’s fleet are only the beginning of technical, operational and logistical improvements for trucks. Jimmy Yates spends time with each driver in order to train them to accelerate gently, cruise efficienctly and utilize the aid of electronic tool kits that show real-time MPG changes. Industry: Texas Instruments

The New Prosperity Initiative | Bucknell University - Calendar One account. All of Google. Sign in to continue to Google Calendar Find my account Forgot password? Sign in with a different account Create account One Google Account for everything Google Financial Crisis for Beginners We believe that everyone should be able to understand how the financial crisis came about, what it means for all of us, and what our options are for getting out of it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of all writing about the crisis – including this blog – assumes some familiarity with the world of mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and so on. You’ve probably heard dozens of journalists use these terms without explaining what they mean. Contents Articles on this page Separate posts Planet Money collaboration National debt Radio This American Life, The Giant Pool of Money (May 2008; 59 min.): If you don’t understand what happened in the housing and mortgage industries in the last decade, this is absolutely the best (and most fun) place to start.This American Life, Another Frightening Show About the Economy (October 2008, 59 min.): This one aired on October 4-5 (right after the Paulson plan passed). Video Other web sites Credit Default Swaps

In 20 Years, We’re All Going To Realize This Apple Ad Is Nuts “This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product.” These are the opening words of Apple’s heartstring-tugging "Designed In California" commercial. Read them to yourself a few times. “This is it. Watch the ad closely for me. A woman closes her eyes on the subway to soak in electronic music. In what should be a warm, humanizing montage, people are constantly directing their attention away from one another and the real, panoramic world to soak in pixels. This is a crazy world. Now I’m not saying the ad isn’t representative of real human behavior. My fundamental problem with the ad--why it’s begun to make my shoulders tense and stomach churn every time it comes on TV--is not that it’s lying about how we use technology, but Apple’s consecrating the behavior, and even going on to say that their products, not the lives they serve, are “what matters.“ That outlook is so different from Apple’s other recent, non-advertised piece on design.