Analysis A scathing book by former banker Jamie Higgins raises uncomfortable questions about sexism in finance. Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent Sep 5, 2022 https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-services/the-dark-side-of-goldman-sachs-20220904-p5bf81 Goldman Sachs is more than an investment bank. As one of great institutions of global finance, the company is so respected for its professionalism, cleverness and connections, that when it does something, good or bad, the business world notices. Which is why an insider’s tale from the bank’s trading floor raises troubling questions about efforts to improve the treatment of women and minorities that are sweeping through the banking world. Former Goldman Sachs banker Jamie Higgins. Jamie Higgins, a former managing director in the bank’s New York office, last week published a brutal review of her ex-employer, Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs. Higgins, who left in 2016 to spend more time with her four children and husband, alleges the bank operated a culture that “harassed and intimated women and people of colour” – an assertion so damaging because it cuts across decades of cultural and behavioural work in high-paying, male-dominated workplaces. “At Goldman, sex will propel you further than an Ivy League diploma,” she writes. “No wonder so few women lasted at Goldman long-term since it seemed to me that they always protected the men.” Not surprisingly, the bank disagrees with the criticism. “We have a zero tolerance policy for discrimination or retaliation against employees reporting misconduct, and all claims are thoroughly investigated with discretion and sensitivity,” it said on Sunday. ‘Hush money’ In a crowded field, one of Higgins’ more shocking allegations is that a resentful male subordinate grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground over a decision he didn’t like. Higgins’ manager refused to fire the employee – he had a great golf game – which meant a human resources complaint would likely backfire. She was paid well, though, which seemed to be reward for gross tolerance. “I felt that my bonus was just a big pile of hush money,” she writes. The weirdness began on her first day, in 1998, when she was offered cocaine during a long, drunken induction lunch. It didn’t get better over the years. Traders engage in quantitative analysis of new female employees’ “tit size, ass shape and leg length”. “We can’t rate f---ability by just a black-and-white picture,” one says. Others crack anti-gay slurs on their way to mandatory LGBTQ+ sensitivity training. A better-performing woman is fired instead of a man during a downturn because she’s single and he’s got a family. When Higgins returns to her desk after using the bank’s lactation centre to pump breast milk for her newly born child, she finds a carton of milk on her desk. The next time there is a stuffed cow. Later, male coworkers murmur “moo”. When she is promoted, a colleague says: “The only reason you got it is because of your vagina.” Higgins gets an opportunity to expose the sexism to the bank’s lawyers. She stays quiet after being semi-promised a promotion by her boss, Mike, that doesn’t come through anyway. “I walked out of his office straight to the ladies’ room,” she writes. “I was so tired of lying. This place was killing me, and my morals were dying first.” A tolerant meritocracy Higgins’ account is radically different to Goldman Sachs’ cultivated image, which is of a sophisticated and tolerant meritocracy. Promoting “under-represented groups” is an explicit objective of an “inclusive environment” that welcomes “diverse perspectives” “We empower people to bring their authentic selves to work,” the bank says. Each year the bank employs equal numbers of men and women, but women suffer higher rates of attrition. In 2020, 25 per cent of managing directors and only 18 per cent of partners were women. Like many investment banks, Goldman Sachs is known for punishing work hours, something it is trying to keep under control. Last year chief executive David Solomon said staff should only work between 9pm Friday and 9am Sunday in exceptional circumstances, a requirement known as The Saturday rule. The directive was designed to stop seven-day work weeks, which are particularly tough on new mothers. Goldman Sachs Australia CEO Simon Rothery at a Champions Of Change function in Melbourne in 2015 with businesswoman Kathryn Fagg. Arsineh Houspian One of the primary causes of the male-female pay gap is women stopping work to give birth, and not returning. Creating workplaces they want to return to is a big part of the solution, and many male business leaders regard it as an important part of their responsibilities, including in Australia. Championing change Goldman Sachs’ local chief executive, Simon Rothery, has been a member of the Champions of Change organisation, which lobbies for the hiring of women into senior positions, for a decade. Yet even his business has struggled. Last year, 37 per cent of Goldman Sachs Australia staff, 24 per cent of its senior managers and none of its key management personnel were women, but 97 per cent of its clerical and administrative staff were female, according to the company’s filing with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The comparative figures for the whole finance and insurance industry were: 53 per cent, 37 per cent, 31 per cent and 69 per cent. A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs Australia declined to comment on the gender split. Rothery said in 2014: “The change of culture has to come from the top.” According to Higgins, who is from a middle-class New Jersey immigrant family, investment banking’s underlying problem is class-driven exceptionalism. The revelation came when she caught two colleagues having sex in a computer room. “I realised that night that I could study the Dow Jones [stock index] to my heart’s content,” Higgins writes. “I could read research reports, investing textbooks and The Wall Street Journal. I could nail a stock pitch. “For a moment, I could be in their world. But then it would be over because although I could study their lifestyle and eventually earn a salary to mildly afford it, I didn’t think I could live it, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “The country clubs, the fancy restaurants, the Broadway shows, the laissez-faire attitude, the casual sex with each other, the cocaine, this strange world that seemed to operate with different rules but rule so much more of society. I couldn’t give myself a blue blood transfusion.” If her analysis is correct – that bankers are boorish libertarians – then it might not be surprising that Goldman Sachs’ 38-page Code of Business Conduct and Ethics hasn’t changed their behaviour. And if the king of Wall St can’t or won’t, which bank will?
Two sides to every story. https://nypost.com/2022/08/20/inside-goldman-sachs-shocking-sexist-bullying-work-culture/ The woman is an ingrate. She probably stashed enough away to become the social worker that she always aspire to be. PS actuality 3 sides to every story. My side. Your side and the truth.
This is an odd story. Who would allow their wife to be assaulted? I wonder what prevented her from filing a police report of assault against the choker? His golf game would not have hindered LEO from investigating the matter.
GS is an extremely successful business, so just like Apple, Google et al it seems they don't suffer for lacking women and coloreds.
My thoughts exactly. She wrote about all those outrageous behaviour happening in the company and yet she was able to work there for 20+ years when her ambition has always been wanting to be a social worker? And during the 20+ years that she's been there, she was not sidelined or denied promotion but was promoted repeatedly to a managing director position that only 8% of Goldman Sach's employees reached with bonuses topping $1 million that allowed her to have FOUR children in New York, one of the state that has the highest cost of living? And with the resentment that she received from her male colleagues for getting promoted because she's a woman, to me it shows that Goldman Sachs actually encourages and supports women's advancement in the company and empowers women, even at the expense of men. Honestly, Goldman Sach's probably the only company I dare say in North America that has an entire floor dedicated to be a lactation centre with hospital-grade equipment and even with a nursing consultant and this the dark side of working in Goldman Sachs?? LOL Well if that's the dark side of working at Goldman Sachs, then I don't know what's the bright side when 99% of the companies don't even have lactation sections or rooms let alone a lactation centre that occupies an entire floor!! And some of the gestures of having a carton of milk placed on her computer, a stuffed cow or the sound of "moo", those were probably innocent gestures of joking with her with regards to her breastfeeding experience that she probably laughed it off at the time with the stuffed cow being so cute and etc. otherwise if she had been bothered so much as by just a carton of milk or stuffed cow at her desk, she wouldn't have lasted 20+ years at that company. So why is she bringing them up now and characterizing them as examples of behaviours of colleagues not supporting her breastfeeding all of sudden? And with the other behaviour of her throat being grabbed by her subordinate and with the verbal threats, that's not something that you just complain to your superior, that's something that you call the police and file a police report with the guy's handprint on her neck. That's not a behaviour that should be punished with just being fired, that's a behaviour that's punishable by jail sentences. What the guy "Eric" committed were federal offenses, aggravated assault and verbal assaults with uttering threats. Why didn't she go to the police?? Not saying that those behaviours that she described never happened but I would like to hear Goldman Sach's side of the story. Because what she's saying is not adding up with her successful working experience. And if she really felt she was subjected to sexual harassment and physical assault from what she recounted, why is she not bringing charges to Goldman Sachs and taking it to court, at least to civil court to be rewarded damages so we can know the whole truth?
The intimidation, the money, and the frat boy culture, and the cultish nature of wall street, i can easily believe some aspects of the story are true. But she knew what she was getting into and many many women succeed at goldman. She, herself, made MD - which is no simple feat and likely means she accumulated a networth of 10-20MM+.
Fair points. She points out her version of the negative things that allegedly happened after having a few years to stew over all of it, but as you guys mentioned - the entire career was largely positive. I've been a part of organizations like this and I've got two primary thoughts after reading this; 1) They actually liked her and considered her one of them. Leaving the milk on her desk and other stuff like that - while edgy - was in good fun. The time to worry is when they STOP doing that and STOP telling you jokes or talking to you. 2) It sounds like those guys sometimes treated her poorly. As many of us know, those same guys treated their fellow guys much worse. Lots of us have stories of what the boys do to the boys over the years in some of these places, and it's far worse than anything I've read above.
If you find that interesting obviously you are not a regular NYPost reader. Most of the paper is available.
No I am not a regular New York Post reader because I find most of their articles are behind a paywall. Too rich for my blood!