The Zeitgeist

[update: Several "Wall St Insider" type sites claim this letter is a hoax... digging a little deeper, several of the people named in the letter can actually be found on LinkedIn and are working at JPMC according to their LinkedIn profiles. However, even if this is a hoax, there are plenty of people -- I know a few of them -- who have written and published similar farewell missives... my opinions on its usefulness and the intelligence of such an action still stand.]

Here’s a supposed “Today is my last day” email, ostensibly from a now ex-JPMorgan-Chase employee that is making the rounds. It’s a pretty familiar litany of the backstabbing, duplicity and other poor behavior that goes on in IT on Wall St. (where “Wall St.” == every financial firm on the planet).

The sad thing is that if this is for real, and this guy’s true identity ever gets out he’ll likely never work in IT (anywhere) again. It’s not that what he’s describing isn’t most likely true — it IS. I worked on Wall St (including at JPMorgan, as well as Citigroup, and BearStearns) for the better part of 20 years, and I’ve seen all the stuff he describes, and much, much more. Like all big organizations, all these firms have insane, petty politics, lots of incompetent managers, and inane and broken processes and policies.

So what… Welcome to the world of work.
The downside for this guy is that in IT, and especially in the financial services IT world, people tend to circulate from firm to firm; sometimes back and forth between the same firms… more than likely he’ll run into a lot of these folks again, and if not them, their friends and associates. As horrible and stupid as all of the political BS is at these places, it’s usually not actually personal. There’s a saying in academia: “The politics in academia are so intense because the stakes are so low!” And the same thing is true in IT in financial services companies.

Interestingly, we IT folks actually make modern financial services possible, but because we’re on the cost-center side, and not the profit-center side, the senior management utterly dismisses IT as an annoying but necessary evil. The real money, power and bonuses come (obviously) from being on the money/deal side. Because the bonus pie is so small, and the actual power is so thin on the IT side, the politics and general stupidity can and does rise to simply insane, comical levels. It goes with the territory. However, eventually the really bad, technologically clueless managers age-out and retire; the other folks get stuck in one job because of their own technical or managerial limitations or general incompetence; they’ll either evolve or get out-sourced. Really good technologists keep learning and growing, and either move to better and higher-value positions if they want to stay in financial services, or, like I did, they leave Wall St. and become entrepreneurs where the can indulge their creative passions without the politics and other silliness.

However, this letter is making the rounds, and there are a lot of managers who won’t hire people who burn bridges like this… as annoying as his job was, a better approach would have been to exit gracefully, and, hopefully cultivate his former antagonists as references. Nothing says “hire-able” more than someone who can get a recommendation from a boss he hated or from co-workers with whom he disagreed. These days, having a good online profile on something like LinkedIn where prospective employers are going to scrutinize your career is more important than the momentary satisfaction of venting your spleen. And, you know what? Very quickly, your emotions about all the silly politics and inside-baseball competition/rivalries of jobs you’ve had fade quietly into the background noise of your life anyway; but poison pen letters you’ve loosed into the world? …not so much.

The upshot is: Don’t Try this at Home, Kids: Save the character assassination for your tell-all memoir when you’re very old, very rich, and never need to work again.

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