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3/2/2014
High Status, High Income, Dead. 4 senior bankers have killed themselves in the last week. As a Bloomberg article says, Though the reasons are not clear in either case, the coincident deaths will feed the discussion of excessive stress levels in the financial industry, not just for the young interns working 100-hour weeks but also for accomplished executives. Stress-related resignations, heart attacks and suicides may be par for the course in a high-octane, risky businesses, but the public does not really want finance to be one of these: Its money is at stake. That sounds callous but it’s what all employers, including yours, are ultimately concerned about. If you are self-employed then you are likely to be even less caring about your own wellbeing than the average money-focused, gimlet-eyed employer. Enough now. These men were amongst the most high-status, intelligent and wealthy people in society and they killed themselves. If they can find themselves locked into a despairing panic state then any of us can. I don’t think it’s possible to say these 6 things too often:
There are a great many techniques that will help you manage your time and your attitude towards work but working a consistent 50 hour week is just not sustainable. Don’t swallow the rhetoric about Hard Working Taxpayers. With unemployment down, why is productivity also down? Economists are baffled but for a small fee I'll tell them why this is: Everyone is outrageously hacked off, largely for excellent reasons. Don’t wait until you want to jump out of a window before you address it.
14/3/2012
Gordon Gekko Gets Real The New York Times has published a resignation piece from Greg Smith, the executive director and head of Goldman Sachs’ United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. A man who’s responsible for selling things to more than half the world has had enough.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman- sachs.html?pagewanted=2&_r=4&hp ‘These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.’ The 1987 film Wall Street was an excoriating satire on short-termism and greed which attracted generations of people with psychopathic tendencies into Finance. Browse this report into the issue. It takes a long time for the zeitgeist to change, and we’re entrenched in a culture that reward disgraceful behaviours with huge wads of cash, and tells the rest of us that money is the only measure of success. It’s a message that’s quickly filtered down through every section of society from celebs and industry to medicine, charity and council estate gangsters. ‘My sense is that the majority of the people in finance have an urge to prove themselves. And banks offer a platform where they can do so. I feel there’s a particular kind of insecurity to many bankers, a form of neediness and a deep desire to compensate. Love? Many people in banking try to project an image of perfection, and banks play to that, trying to make you look perfect and feel invulnerable. It’s very easy to get hooked to that life, to become addicted to work and the money.’ 1 There’s never ending research on people who are poor and very little on people who are very rich, but increasing anecdote suggests that people in high earning jobs have serious problems with exhaustion, addiction, terror of failure and entrenched self-loathing. Which seems a sane response to being prepared to rip someone’s face off as part of your job. Now that a hyper-successful super-achiever has spoken out about his disgust at a system that encourages people to see themselves and other people as things, perhaps the message will filter down. Gordon Gekko got rich not through talent but through illegal insider trading. And when he got out of prison no one was there to greet him. 1. Luyendijk J. Ex-mergers and acquisitions banker: ‘There’s no time for friends’. The Joris Luyendijk banking blog. The Guardian. 2012 January |
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work Archives
March 2020
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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