10 things people told me when I ran a Wall Street trading division

It's coming up to year-end and if you work on Wall Street, you're going to be thinking about your bonus. You might get the idea that you should petition your boss ahead of time. And when you receive your bonus, you might want to express some outrage. 

Once you've been in the industry a while, you hear the same stuff over and over. These were the most common. People ask me if I miss banking at this time of the year. Read the list and I'll give you my answer...

1. Ten people in a group EACH tell you (at bonus time) that they personally made $10m dollars for the firm that year ..... but weirdly the group is up only $31m in the total P&L .

2. “This is an outrage. I was massively underpaid this year. I have resting bids away for double at 3 different firms” ..... but weirdly they are still sitting in their seat on June 30th.

3. “The franchise is not worth anything. I made all of this money due to my supreme trading acumen. I just choose NOT to work at a hedge fund” 

4. “I have been paid down four years in a row to $600k. It’s almost not worth doing this job anymore”

5. “What do you mean I only come by to see you in November and December?” 

6. “Look I’m not here to stab my co-head in the back, but I think you know that if this firm needed only one of us, it’d obviously be me. “ 

7. “The reason this client deals here is because of me. It has nothing to do with anything else like all the money we lend him.” 

8. “What do you mean the bonus pool is down? That's a disaster I have a wife and kids!” 

9. “What I do here is irreplaceable.”

10. “If you left this place I’d follow you wherever you ended up going. “

The answer is that I don't miss it at all! And if you want to complain about your bonus, please at least think of something original to further your cause.

Donald Schneider is a pseudonym of the former head of a trading division at a major bank in New York City.

 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available.

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

Photo by Marcus Lenk on Unsplash