My brother worked on Wall Street for years, and then invested for companies after that. He was always pretty conservative regarding risks, but managed a solid 8-10 percent return per year anyway. But that wasn’t good enough for him to fly with the hotshots - the same hotshots who ended up taking the financial system to the edge of ruin, and who always ended up adversely impacting my brother because their risk ended up screwing up his division’s profits.
What your brother experienced is exactly what this guy is talking about.
I don’t know how high up the corporate ladder your brother is, but a lot of decisions made regarding risk taking is made very high up.
As the author states :
“And by the way, very few people at Lehman really understood how upper management was playing this meritocracy game with the rest of Wall Street with the rank and files’ careers.
When that trade went south, and their creditors pulled their short-term financing, (OK, Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan was particularly egregious pulling a $5 billion plug), the ugly side of meritocracy reared its head. You lose money, you’re out. Goodbye. It was nice knowing you. Every single person working at Lehman knew this personally, or should have known. That’s the giant sword hanging over everyone’s head, the stench of fear, that keeps the game going and going. I’ve got to use my 99 percentile smarts and win. If I don’t, I’m toast, so I’ll work harder, think harder, and of course play harder with my winnings that everyone else. The outside-meritocracy downside became the inside-meritocracy homicide.”