Wall Street Financier: Notes from High Altitude©
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
This email from a reader is quite a common situation in the workplace. Let’s hear it from him now: “Hello Max, My name is Josh. I am a banker working in a Tier 1 firm and had been at my former job for almost three years. I was fired unexpectedly …
I was reading Dealbreaker’s (via Bloomberg) account of a firing episode at Hampton Creek and ruminating if there any grounds to sue the boss in that case. I don’t know the firm or its boss, Josh Tetrick, but in brief, allegedly three people were fired while they were told they …
I read the book Superbosses: How exceptional people master the flow of talent to see what other people write about bosses. Superbosses is written by Sydney Finkelstein, a Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. If you haven’t read the book, a summary is available at …
Recently I saw some online comments with side-by-side pictures of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos then (1997) vs. now (2017), then being before alpha male and now on alpha male stats. What a difference aging powerfully makes ! Aging for some CEOs is a blessing, as life turns them from unremarkable, …
Those of you working on Wall Street are aware of upcoming battle of the giants between Berkshire Hathway’s Buffet and Elliott Management’s Singer over the future of now bankrupt Texas utility company TXU. A iconic buyout era remnant, TXU has since defaulted is is now known as Energy Future. (Reuters) …
What are you doing this summer ? I’ll tell you what Roland Smith, ex-CEO of Office Depot is doing, According to the WSJ (“For CEOs, High Pay, Higher Anxiety”- Vanessa Fuhrmans, Joann S. Lublin), he is taking a 13,000 mile motorcycle trip with his son from Key West to Alaska …
I got this email from a reader with an interesting situation percolating into the current amped up Silicon Valley environment with women screaming sexual harassment left and right. Max, My name is Anil, I am 30ish and I am so lucky to have found your blog. I’m pretty sure you’re …
We know that grit makes all the difference in the world for success (kudos to Angela Duckworth for that) but if you’re in a disruptive avant garde industry like activist hedge funds, you better check your pugnaciousness. I was called the Pitbull of Wall Street like I’m walking around with a …
It’s the time for another one of my readers to shine: “Max, I am a [redacted] industry analyst for one of the largest investment firms. Sometime ago while doing a visit at a large company we cover, I was the leading analyst conducting our due diligence visit. As I started …
Do you know your fallacies [list of informal fallacies] ? People are often lead by irrational mind tricks and trips employed by high charging individuals. Heuristics, faking social proofs, high flying stories backed by other stories, mocking people, and so forth are tactics used to win and gain support. Bernard Madoff …
