By: Benyamin Davidsons
Pampered millennials and Gen-Z’ers who have been working—but not too hard—at Wall Street jobs, may be in for a rude awakening.
As reported by the NY Post, CEOs at big banks including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, are ready to take on the looming recession by reasserting their prowess and showing the young execs what it means to sweat. The successful seniors at the company had made their way to the top by working long hours and enduring being screamed at by the higher-ups. Now, they are seeing an influx of employees from the new generation, who wish to continue working remotely, and many of whom were influenced by woke college professors and administrators into believing that their feelings are most important – even if their feelings are telling them not to work too hard. The generation is said to be the most coddled in Wall Street history, but there may be an end in sight. Though there hasn’t been any public statement, higher-ups in the financial sector are looking at the slowdown in deal-making as an opportunity to file out the slackers and restore the work place cultures of old.
During the last several years, amid the boom in mergers, acquisitions and IPOs, Wall Street giants had set aside their Darwinian mindset, and allowed the offices to become college safe spots, with more perks, flexible hours and remote work schedules. The companies felt they didn’t really have a choice, as they needed to lure in as many entry- and associate-level workers as possible, while also competing with the tech industry for talent. Productivity levels were lagging, but they needed all hands on deck.
As per the Post, with the recession now looming at the corner, last week, David Solomon, Chief Executive of Goldman, announced that all employees are expected back into the office five days a week, effective after Labor Day. In the most recent quarter, Goldman reported that profits were close to half what they were last year. The looming recession, rising interest rates and inflation are leading the bank to implement company-wide cost cuts. “Given the challenging operating environment, we are closely re-examining all of our forward spending and investment plans,” Chief Financial Officer Denis Coleman said on the company’s earnings call last month. “Specifically, we have made the decision to slow hiring velocity and reduce certain professional fees going forward.”
Other big banks are facing similar circumstances. Morgan Stanley’s head of HR followed suit, issued a similar memo lifting all COVID-19 protocol and asking employees to stop working from home because of productivity concerns. Wall Street is predicting layoffs later in the year, anyways, so losing some slackers now will just be weeding out the masses. JP Morgan Chase already announced in June that it is laying off hundreds of employees in its mortgage and home-lending business. “Our staffing decision this week was a result of cyclical changes in the mortgage market,” a spokesperson for the bank had said at the time regarding the layoffs, blaming a slowdown in home sales across the country.
