What To Expect When You're Expecting To Make Partner At Goldman Sachs

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After two long years of a highly uncomfortable process called "cross-ruffing," today is the day a small group of Goldman Sachs employees' lives will be forever altered. In addition to the physical change that will result from the new partner status-- their genitals will now a emit a light similar to that of a glowing orb, visible through dress pants-- here's what else the young princes and princesses of West Street can expect:

  • A call from on high.
  • Sandwiches in a conference room.
  • The ability to get anyone you want on the phone without having to resort to groveling.
  • A new expectation-- because of the bags of money-- that you'll be available to the firm, which can track your movements via the GPS installed in your golden scrot, at any time.

One of the senior management team telephones you to give you the happy news. The almost universal feeling, according to a number of people who have received such a call, is one of relief...So, you’ve achieved your dream and been made a partner. Now what? A party, of course. The 1976 partners’ dinner was held in the Hunt Room at the 21 Club on 52nd Street in New York, which is decorated with elk heads, guns and trophies. Times, however, have changed. In 2008, it was “half a day with some sandwiches and warm bottles of water on site”...One banker, who used to work at a rival bank, said it took him weeks to get a meeting with the chief executive, despite reporting directly to him. Things changed when he became a partner at Goldman Sachs: “Within half an hour of emailing our chief executive, I had an answer.”

You may think you have worked hard to be made partner but you ain’t seen nothing yet. One Goldman banker said that the firm demands such commitment that partners effectively have to make a choice of two of the following: work, family, friends or outside interests. One partner said it was worse than that. He left the bank to join a rival because he couldn’t stay at Goldman and attend to the needs of his family. Of his new employer, he said: “It was like the Cub Scouts compared to the Special Forces.”

Joining The Goldman Club [Financial News]

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Goldman Sachs To Offer More Would-Be Partners Opportunity To Go David Tepper On An Executive's Ass This Year

Each year, after a long and very comprehensive background check, a lucky group of Goldman employees are abducted from their desks, blindfolded, gagged, and led by candlelight through a dark hallway and into a subterranean conference room. Standing on the table before them are Lloyd Blankfein, Gary Cohn and the rest of the management committee, who ask if they are prepared to pledge their devotion to the firm above all else. Those who agree have their nether regions dipped in a vat of gold, genuflect before Cohn's groin, and, at the stroke of midnight, are inducted into the Brotherhood of the Sach. While there are many ways that becoming a member of the club will change one's life, the most important one involves the partaking of astronomical profits on payday. As a result, when people are not invited to join the group, they tend to get very upset. For instance, hedge fund manager David Tepper, who became a billionaire many times over after leaving the firm, was still so upset about the snub twenty years later that he bought and bulldozed the house of the guy who passed him over. Others probably wouldn't have even gone to the trouble of buying the place first, and operated the wrecking ball themselves. Which is why we say in full seriousness that the Partnership Committee might want to watch its back. Goldman Sachs has begun vetting potential new partners and is expected to appoint a smaller number of bankers to its upper echelons this year, according to senior executives involved in the process... The nomination process for new partners ended during the summer. The internal vetting process began earlier this month and is expected to last until mid-November when the new class of partners will be announced. The vetting process is known within the bank as “cross-ruffing”, in reference to a manoeuvre from the card game bridge and typically sees a team of partners deployed to every division to talk to employees who know the candidates. [FT, related]