Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
It's interesting how the tone of this article is almost exactly the same as the one about the Microsoft employee that recently quit Google.<p>Something happens to companies as they get larger, where the culture of a company starts dying from a death-by-a-thousand-cuts, and then they start promoting the wrong people into upper management that seem to really poison a very good company culture.  It sounds like Goldman Sachs is one of these companies.<p>The irony is that I think the shift in mentality came from Wall Street itself pushing the idea of "maximizing shareholder value", in the 80s.  This lead to a bunch of financially positive but culturally negative (some would say sociopathic) decisions, such as closing plants that were profitable, <i>but weren't profitable enough</i>.  I think Michael Moore had a movie on this called "The Big One".<p>Forbes has an article on this, calling it "The Dumbest Idea in the World":<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizi...</a><p>I read the biography on Goldman Sachs, and I don't doubt for one second that there was a historic culture that most of the employees were fiercely proud of.  But as the author mentioned, a few mistaken promotions into power and the whole culture of a company can change through death by a thousand cuts.  No doubt the same thing is happening at all large companies that started off with great roots.  I saw this occur at Yahoo, where completely idiotic decisions were made in order to preserve revenues so that managers' bonuses were left in tact.<p>Is this something that can be avoided?  I'm not sure... corporate culture starts at the top and works its way down.  It's something that must be demonstrated by the leaders of the company at every level, and it filters down to the lowest ranks.  So if you have a company with strong leadership, then I think it can be staved off for a while, but it requires a relentless focus.