by John Rolfe
I called up Brock LeBlank the following day. His secretary said he wasn’t in. Maybe he just didn’t want to take my call. I left him a voice mail. I told him, “Brock, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I’ve thought about my decision and continue to believe that I’ll be happiest if I take this new job. Thanks for your support. I hope to keep in touch. Good luck.” I never heard from Brock again.
I called Nussbaum and told him I’d made up my mind. I told him that I was leaving for sure.
“I’ve got to go to a meeting,” he said. “Good luck.”
Finally, I called the Widow. “Hey, Greg, it’s Pete. I’m going to take the job.”
The Widow said, “You’re making a big mistake.”
“I think that things will work out,” I told him.
“They won’t,” he said. “I hope your dad has money.” The Widow had dug his stinger deep into my mind. Fuck him.
The phone rang one last time. It was someone from personnel. “Hey, Peter,” he said. “Say your good-byes to everyone and get your stuff together. There’s a lot of proprietary information lying around here and we can’t have you around it. Your computer’s been shut off, your ID card has been deactivated, and I’ve sent boxes down for your files. Good luck. Bye.”
I called Rolfe and told him that I was getting booted. In forty-eight hours I had announced my resignation, spoken to the head of the bank, and been put through the wringer with the top guys in my department. They had tried to persuade me to stay. They had tried to scare the bejesus out of me. Then, they abandoned the ship and told me to get the hell out. It was that quick. I had been hired in a seventy-two-hour time frame and was out the door in forty-eight. On to something new.
“You’re bailing on me,” Rolfe said. “How can you do that?”
“I just can’t take it anymore,” I told him. “There’s gotta be more to life than this crap.”
That was it. I was free. Really, really free. Rolfe was pissed, but I could deal with that. He got pissed a lot and he usually just needed to kick and scream a little before he came around. He made me suffer a little bit, though, before he forgave me. He made me feel like I’d abandoned my only brother in the orphanage.
You’re damn right I was pissed. When Troobie first called me and told me he was leaving I was ripshit. My boy was leaving. Leaving me hanging. We’d clawed our way up the bloody beaches of Iwo Jima together and now, when I needed him most, he wasn’t going to be there. There’d be no one to watch my back.
Troobie’s decision to leave was more than just me losing my buddy, the guy whom I could always rely on to go down to Shenanigans with me at 2 A.M. to grope naked ladies. I mean, I couldn’t go down there alone. I’d feel like a frigging pervert, and none of my other boys were as reliable in the search for diversion as Troobie.
Troob’s decision to leave was significant because as long as none of the associates in our class had left we’d been able to convince ourselves that at least part of the dream was still alive. Regardless of what went on around us, regardless of the depths of our despair, regardless of the degree to which everything we were doing seemed counter to what we’d hoped for, our unwillingness to break ranks kept us all sane. We bitched and moaned. We told each other that we were jerkoffs with no lives. But there was no way that we could all be idiots. And if we weren’t all idiots, and none of us had left, then there had to be a reason to believe. We couldn’t all be stupid enough to stay locked into a no-win situation.
That all changed when Troobie walked out. The doubts became real. Maybe we were idiots after all. Maybe it really wouldn’t ever get better. Maybe we were doomed to a life of perpetual pitching, making copies, and endless rounds of word processing. Maybe there really was something better out there that the rest of us were missing out on. But then maybe Troobie was wrong. I was confused.
Troob called me every day from his new job. After the first week, he told me that one of the partners at his fund had yelled at him when he found him in the office at 8:30 P.M. one night. “You’re not a banker anymore,” the guy told him. “We’re paying you to think, not to stay here all night.”
Troob said that it took him a few weeks to remember how to use his brain. He didn’t make pitch books anymore. He didn’t have to bribe a bunch of guys at the copy center. He spent all day thinking about companies and whether it made sense to invest money in them. He was the guy on the other side of the table now, the guy with the money. He was looking for the right answer, not just the answer that he thought the guy upstairs wanted to hear. He was making decisions, not chugalugging the last remaining vestiges of his pride. He’d gone from happy to angry. Now he was happy again.
It didn’t take long for me to make the decision that I had to get out, too. Even after the initial excitement of leaving DLJ had died down for Troobie, he was still jazzed up about his new job. It wasn’t just that he was glad to be gone. He actually looked forward to going in to work every day. I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d felt like that. I wanted to feel that excitement again. I wanted to walk into work in the morning with a big smile on my face.
I got the names of a bunch of headhunters who specialized in the financial services industry. I put all their names into a spreadsheet and began to call each one. I took a lot of notes. I met with most of them and learned what each of them specialized in. I told them why I wanted to quit banking and what I wanted to do. They all told me that I was a smart guy with a good résumé and finding a new position shouldn’t be difficult. Every once in a while one of them would call me up and tell me about the latest position they were trying to fill. Most of it was garbage. I got more and more frustrated.
Then, one day in early December, I got a call from Slick. He’d talked to Troob earlier that morning and Troob had mentioned that he’d heard about a small hedge fund that was looking to add somebody. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Slick was interested in but he knew that I was looking. He gave me a phone number. Troob, who had abandoned me in mid-battle, was throwing out a lifeline. If I held on tight enough maybe he could help pull me out.
I dialed the number Slick had given me. A guy answered. I told him that I had heard that his fund was looking to add somebody. He said, “Come on over and meet us. Tell us why we should hire you.” I did.
The guys I met with had $100 million. They were looking to add another guy. That guy was me. They wanted somebody who could think, somebody who could help them make money.
They told me that they were worried that I might have been brainwashed by DLJ. They weren’t sure if I still remembered how to reason. I told them that it might take a couple of weeks but I would remember how to use my mind again. We had a deal.
All that was left to do was quit.
I walked into each of my managing directors’ offices and told them that I was quitting. I told them that I couldn’t take it anymore, that I didn’t want to be a banker, that I wanted to do something different. They told me that I was a nice guy and a good associate. They asked me if there was anything they could do to get me to stay. I thought about revenge. I thought that maybe if they allowed me to first pour boiling oil over them and then stretch them out on a rack for a couple of weeks I might start to feel better. Maybe then I’d want to stay.
“No, there’s nothing you can do,” I told them.
Later that day I got a call from Brock LeBlank. “I hear you’re leaving,” he said. “I want you to come up and talk to me.”
I called Troobie at work. I knew that he had talked to Brock when he was leaving. “What’s Brock gonna say?” I asked him.
“He’ll tell you that you’re making a big mistake. He’ll tell you that you’re a superstar and that you can excel at DLJ. He’ll tell you that all the guys up in Greenwich with big houses are bankers. He’ll tell you that hedge fund managers are a dime a dozen. He’s not a bad guy, but he doesn’t understand that the place has changed and that there’s a big difference between being on the top and being on the bottom. Remember: greed, fear,
and abandon.”
“OK, I gotta go.”
I walked up to Brock’s office. He was on the phone. He made me sit and wait for ten minutes. Maybe he thought that by making me feel small I’d want to stay.
Brock started, “So I hear that you want to leave us.”
“Yeah, Brock,” I said, “I got a job with a hedge fund.”
“You’re making a big mistake, John. You’ll never find another job where you get as much responsibility as you’ve got here. You get to travel all over the world. Heads of the world’s largest corporations will look to you for advice. No other job is going to give you that. Hedge fund managers are a dime a dozen.”
That’s funny, I thought, I never feel very important when I’m doing my job here. The only thing a leader of industry has ever looked to me for is to pass him a pitch book. I feel small. I feel like a gnat.
“You know, John,” Brock continued, “ten years from now you could be sitting in this chair.” He motioned to the chair he was sitting in. “You’re one of our superstars. I mean that. You could excel here at DLJ.”
I started to laugh. Where the hell was he going to be in ten years? How was I going to get his chair? Maybe he’d be supervising the new addition to his house in Greenwich to ensure that it was bigger than the house next door that the hedge fund manager had just bought.
When I walked out the doors of the DLJ building for the final time later that week I felt no remorse. It was two years and nine months after I’d walked through the doors for the very first time as a summer associate. My buddy Troob had been gone for about six months. DLJ had taken their pound of flesh, but I was off to something new.
The dues we paid took their toll on us. We felt ten years older. Our rite of passage may not have been complete according to the Investment Banker’s Code, but we had cut it short. Maybe the dues-paying part of any job doesn’t stop until you decide to take a stand and stop it. Maybe we weren’t up to the task. Either way, we were out. The beginning of something good was finally stirring inside us again. Maybe there was another dream out there that we could chase. There was hope yet.
Epilogue
What’s the use in running if you’re not on the right road?
—German proverb
Rolfe and I saw each other a lot after we left DLJ. Our old buddies back in the DLJ purgatory were still spending every waking hour tied to the job, so we didn’t get to see too much of them. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, though.
A couple of months went by and we decided to round up some of the old crew. The plan called for a 7:00 P.M. rendezvous down in Little Italy with me, Rolfe, Slick, Big Man, Wings, and Tubby. Well, 7:00 came and 7:00 went and the only ones at the reunion dinner were Rolfe and I.
Slick rolled in about half an hour late, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. It was obvious that he had something he wanted to tell us.
“What’s up, you smug bastard?” Rolfe asked him.
“I’m leaving, man. I’m done,” Slick replied.
Rolfe and I looked at each other. We knew what he meant. He was leaving DLJ. We were shocked. Honestly, truly shocked. Slick and Wings were the last guys that we ever thought would leave. They’d always bitched and moaned as loud as the rest of us but we had figured them for lifers. We thought that the cache of being investment bankers was enough to keep them happy.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him.
“Risk arb. There’s a group of guys over at Attica Capital who are doing merger arb and special situations investing. It’s mostly equities. I think it’ll be good.”
Rolfe was laughing. “You’re unbelievable! We never thought you’d leave. Troobie and I figured you were in for life.”
“You guys don’t know shit,” Slick said. “I want a life too. I’ve been looking around for months.”
“Well, get ready, man,” I started out, “’cause you’re gonna have to talk to Brock. He’s going to tell you…”
“I know,” Slick said, “Rolfe already told me about the houses in Greenwich speech, the song and dance about being an indispensable associate, and all the rest of that horse shit. I’m ready for it. I’m gone.”
A waiter stopped by the table. “You gentlemen ready to order yet?”
I looked over at Slick. “What about the rest of the guys? They coming or not?”
“No way, man,” Slick said. “Big Man’s getting his clock cleaned by the Widow and Tubby’s tap dancing all over a merchant banking deal like Fred Astaire in an MGM musical. I don’t think that either of them’ll hit their balls out of the bunker in time to meet us here. I’m not sure about Wings, I think he’s flying back in from Mexico City later tonight. Maybe he’ll show up eventually. Let’s go ahead and order.”
Slick turned to the waiter. “I’ll have the artichoke heart appetizer and the shrimp scampi. Also, I’ll have the apple pie for dessert, OK? Thanks.”
Rolfe and I stared at each other, dumbfounded. There was absolutely no question that we were thinking the same thing: Slick had not ordered his customary penne bolognese, tira misu, and two small bottles of San Pelegrino sparkling water. Things were changing indeed.
By 10:00 P.M. Wings had shown up, but Big Man and Tubby were nowhere to be found. When Slick told Wings that he was leaving, I thought Wings was going to cry.
“What?” Wings said. “You’re leaving me, man? Who will I eat dinner with every night? Tubby’s always too busy and Big Man’s already out searching for the escape hatch. He’ll be gone within a couple of months. Ahhh, shit. This sucks.”
It was like watching two lovers part. Wings was brokenhearted.
By 11:00 P.M. Wings had to leave. He told us, “I’d like to stay, but tomorrow I have to get up at five A.M. to catch a flight to Dallas. Another deal, another dollar. Good luck, Slick. I’ll talk to you later. Troobie and Rolfe, nice to see you guys, and if I don’t see you sooner, I’ll see you at Troobie’s wedding. I gotta go. I’m tired as shit.”
Wings was always on the run, but I think he liked it that way.
“So,” Rolfe ventured to Slick after Wings took off, “do you figure that they’ll miss you as much as they missed Troobie and I when we left?”
Slick looked at Rolfe like he was a three-eyed hyena. “Are you kidding? They’ll slot a couple of lateral hires from some second-tier bank in on my deals. Maybe they’ll even pull some gung-ho first-year into one of them. He’ll probably bust his ass and put me to shame. Don’t get any demented ideas about how much they missed you guys when you left, either. It wasn’t like that.”
Rolfe looked confused and concerned. “You mean, it didn’t create any turmoil when we left? We didn’t leave a legacy? They didn’t miss us at all?”
Slick laughed. “Don’t fool yourself, man. It was like taking a teaspoon of sand off the beaches in Rio. Nobody missed a beat. We’re all commodities. Completely replaceable.”
I thought about it. Slick was right. DLJ and most of the other investment banks are big places. Everyone in the institution is readily replaceable. We exited, and immediately a new, fresh-faced young banker replaced us and nobody missed a beat.
Rolfe, Slick, and I all sat back in our chairs and were quiet. The wine and the pasta had taken its toll. We were all full, tipsy, and talked out. The silence was welcomed. I looked at Rolfe. Rolfe looked at Slick. Slick looked at me.
“You know what?” Rolfe asked.
“What?” Slick and I replied.
“I hope we know what the fuck we’re doing.”
“So do I,” I said. “So do I.”
When we originally entered the investment banking world we thought that we were standing on the edge of a desert. We believed there was an oasis on the other side of the blistering sand, and if we were willing to withstand the heat we would eventually be given the opportunity to drink from a magical spring. What we learned, though, was that investment banking wasn’t really a desert. It wasn’t what we thought it would be. Investment banking was a lot more like a jungle.
We learned
that there wasn’t a straight shot across an arid landscape to reach the promised land. Instead, we found ourselves in a big, confusing place with lots of tall trees, ferocious tigers, and big hairy jumping spiders that looked like they wanted to bite us. The signs in the jungle were all pointing in different directions and we had no idea which way to go.
Eventually, though, we looked up into the canopy. High above in the lush foliage there were branches laden down with bananas, mangoes, and plantains. We liked what we saw. So we learned, first, to climb, and then to swing on vines in order to grab the fruit. We swung from vine to vine, all day and all night, and filled our arms with the tasty morsels. At first we had a good time swinging around, but eventually we began to feel like we were moving in circles. Every day we saw the same vines and the same trees. Every day we had the same dung beetles crawling up our legs and the same annoying baboons swinging behind us barking orders. Ultimately, we realized that while we had an armload of fruit, we had no time to eat it and nothing much else. The more we swung, the more the jungle seemed to expand. Our arms were tired.
And so, we decided to get out. We cut down a rubber tree and made ourselves a dugout canoe. We made some paddles out of warthog horns. We navigated our canoe down the river and out of the jungle. We broke free.
