Dream Job at Lehman Brothers

Every year, a goodly swath of the brightest - if not necessarily the best - graduates of  the country's top business schools head to Wall Street to take up careers in investment banking. A number of these MBA's would, quite naturally, have decided to ply their trade at Lehman Brothers.

Sure, the hours were going to be long - 80 hour weeks are the norm, 100 hour weeks are not unheard of - but, oh, the upside: $200K starting packages and the prospect of a life of expensive cigars, bespoke suits, swank co-operatives, and retirement at 50 or so, after which you can turn to philanthropy and/or golf and/or making even more money now that the pressure's off.

But when that pressure's on, it's sure intense - and ultra competitive.

I have a friend (Stanford MBA) who started his career many years ago at Morgan Stanley (at that time, jokingly referred to by those in the associate ranks as MS - Crippler of Young Adults). While visiting us over a holiday weekend, he remembered that he had left a confidential file out on his desk. Knowing that someone would be at work, he called and spoke to a colleague (Wharton MBA, if I remember correctly), asking her to put the file in a drawer.

"Why should I?" she asked. "I'm working you're not. Put your own damn file away."

And so my friend took the next shuttle back to NYC for the sole purpose of opening a drawer and tucking a file into it.

As the stakes have gotten even higher - mo' better money - I'm sure that the competition for the plum jobs (and the competition to keep them) has gotten even more fiercer than it was 25 years ago.

Last spring, when second year MBA's at Stanford, Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Sloan/MIT and the other top schools were weighing their offers, plenty of them weighed in on Lehman Brothers (thanking the gods of finance that they hadn't taken the bid from Bear Sterns before that august institution went belly-up).

I'm not sure when class starts in investment banking - having been nowhere near being brightest or best when I was in business school, nor having any interest whatsoever in anything to do with finance - but I'm guessing that some folks began their careers in June, while others took the summer off to see Machu Pichu, get married, or stock up on braces, cufflinks, and bow ties.

Welcome back!

This is Lehman Brothers.

You're well on your way to becoming a Master (or Mistress) of the Universe.

Barely time to get the sterling Tiffany frame holding a picture of your beloved up on your desk before the venerable old institution's crumbling down around your ears. Even the building's up for grabs. Yikes!

Oh, some of the departments will be sucked into still-viable investment banks. But, hey, you just got your MBA in June and you don't exactly have a track record, other than crunching a few numbers for a deal that hadn't gone down quite yet.

So much for the dream job at Lehman.

Calls are now being placed to the placement departments at all those fancy B-schools. Get me out of here!

Should I even bother to put Lehman on my résumé? After all, I was only there three weeks....

I do feel kind of sorry for all these folks who took the offer from Lehman and assumed they had a good shot at a long and lucrative career. Of course, they still have a good shot at a long and lucrative career - they've got fancy MBA's from fancy B-schools. It's just not going to be at Lehman. So they're likely feeling a bit panicky right now, and trying to avoid the sympathy (and, no doubt, a few gloating smirks) on the other end of the line from their former classmates who took the dream job at Goldman Sachs.

Yeah, I do feel kind of sorry for them.

But you know who I feel sorrier for?

The folks in IT, marketing, HR, operations, accounting. The receptionists. The support staff.  The assistants. The guys in the back office and elsewhere behind the scenes who made it all work. The waiters in the corporate dining room.

The people who made a decent living but who were never going to strike it rich. The people who probably had their savings invested in Lehman stock. The people who spent 10, 20, 30 years there (not just 10, 20, 30 days), and who thought they had a job for life.

Pink slips are coming at Lehman Brothers.

Lots of people there to feel sorry for, and the newly minted MBA's who thought they had a lock on their dream job may not be at the bottom on my list (that's where CEO Dick Fuld is). But they're sure in the lower quartile - probably for the first time in their lives.

 

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UPDATE: September 25:

eMindful.com  - which "brings live online classes in stress reduction, complementary healing, and personal growth, via video conferencing, into people's homes and offices" - is offering a free online stress reduction classes for those who are impacted by the current Wall Street woes. I can't vouch for the classes (and I don't want to sign up for one and take the place of some Wall Streeter who could really use one), but this is marketing at its best. Sure, they're capitalizing on a current crisis, but they're offering something that is to the point, useful, and free. (Kudos to Jeff Porter of APCO Worldwide, eMindful's communications firm, for letting me know about it.)