United States | News & Politics

It was a long time ago and yes.

They actually hired me away from college. I was like 21, it was during the first .com boom. They offered me $76k a year, which seemed like so much money, plus commissions (I got a bounty essentially, if I found them a good opportunity). One of the partners had encountered me in another context and was like "I don't need people with skills man, I need smart people who wanna learn." At first I did it part time, for $30 an hour, 'cause I was going to school, but after a month they were like "We need you full time man, you're gonna make so much money, you don't need a degree." They said I was gonna make 5 times my salary off commissions, but I didn't even come close to that. Some guys I worked with there did, but I didn't have the predatory instinct for it.

The worst part was the blatant misogyny. It was like some Wolf of Wallstreet shit. Me and the other analysts would be working and the partners would be looking at Russian mail order bride websites or talking about how the senior partner was "gonna hire a bunch of hookers and take 'em out on his speed boat." No women worked there, and the partners would talk about how "Women's brains are smaller, and we can't hire them cause they take longer in the bathroom, so we miss opportunities."

The next worse part was the enforced caffeination. This job ruined coffee for me to this day. First thing in the morning, the boss would stop by your desk and if you didn't have a big cup of coffee from the cafe in the lobby, he'd just quietly set caffeine pills in a paper cup by your mouse. This would continue throughout the day... the message was "if you're not heavily caffeinated during work hours, you're not sharp enough and we're gonna miss opportunities." "Missing opportunities" was an unforgivable sin. There was even one time one of the partners told me he was "keeping my commission from one thing I'd done, to make up for this other opportunity that I'd missed." I was too young and unconfident to stick up for myself. In retrospect, I think that was a test, and I failed.

Everything was a $$$ dick measuring contest. The partners had a whole pecking order of who was worth more and who was making more money. I'm not sure how they divided income amongst themselves, but there was a lot of "You keep what you kill" going on, but they also had a lot of joint venture entities too. Each partner had their own LLC, then there were two other LLCs, one of which was the entity my paychecks came from, but we ended up doing work on all kinds of stuff. They were into stocks, bonds, derivatives, tech startups, medical startups, real estate and they would create new entities all the time. Who my commissions came from depended on which entity was benefiting off whatever work I was doing.

I've been vague about what the work was, because the work was of different varieties, but it was all some variety of research. Like "Watch the financial news and see if there's day trading opportunities?" or "Are there any new companies doing IPOs this week that we should invest in?" or "Read these 10 startup business plans and tell the partners which ONE they should look at more closely" or "Come with us to this party this medical device company we invested in pre IPO is throwing, to celebrate their IPO. Don't drink, don't do the cocaine, don't bother the strippers (that's what the partners are there to do), your job is to stay sober, talk to people and "find opportunities" for us." or "Go to this startup pitch and see tell us if it's a company you think we should look into." or "Go out and check out some of these different start ups, take a look at their operations, meet their executives, tell us if you think WE should talk to their executives." There was also "Here's a new entity we're thinking of setting up, to do X thing. Read through the plan and think about ways to isolate risk and maximize profit."

I was there for about 14 months, and I did all of the above.

If you've seen "Enron: The smartest guys in the room." you're gonna have a good idea of the kind of culture I'm talking about.

In the end, I got let go because I "missed too many opportunities, so we can't keep you aboard. You understand." I think they could also tell I was really unhappy. I was NOT one of the golden boy analysts who went on to become junior partners. I never got rich. Now I do IT consulting and software development. I'm much happier.

In fact, this experience really turned me into much more of an angry socialist than I might have been otherwise. The fact that our society not only lets those guys get away with being who they are and doing what they do... but rewards them for it? Some of the BIGGEST rewards around? That's a major failing of us as a culture and as a civilization.