As you may have heard, many of your colleagues in the financial services industry will be laid off in the coming months, if they haven’t been already. Wall Street is in the process of cutting 200,000 positions, and those who aren’t escorted into a room with an HR representative and a box of tissues should consider themselves lucky, particularly if they need money to live, have a family to support, and/or like their jobs. For others, however, being told they have 20 minutes to box up their things, walk out the door and not come back unless they want to tussle with security turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to them. These would be people who’ve either been suppressing a nagging voice telling them to go after a passion that doesn’t involve working on Wall Street or for whom the appeal simply lies in not spending the majority of their day fantasizing about life that doesn’t so closely resemble hell. Among those who fall into the latter category, coming into the office has gotten so bad that if you gave them the option to leave their current situation to take a 95% pay cut and run the risk of death by stabbing, they’d go jump at the opportunity. Wyatt Laikind knows what we’re talking about. Continue reading »