The economic downturn, packaged with some awful lending practices, has cast a pall over Wall Street workers.
Then there are the missing employees.
According to this story in the New York Times, many bankers are disappearing without a trace, leaving those who remain wondering, ‘Where’s my lunch partner?’
Thousands are losing their jobs as hard-pressed banks cut deep. But while layoffs are nothing new in the financial industry (they come with almost every downturn), this round seems different: it is eerily quiet.
So quiet, in fact, that people refer to these cuts as stealth layoffs. Some bosses hardly say a word after people are fired. At Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, for example, the first clue that someone is gone can be e-mail messages that are returned to senders from a former colleague’s inactivated corporate address.
While the financial markets have found a bit of a footing lately, banks are pushing ahead with plans for some of the deepest job reductions in years. Since last summer, banks worldwide have announced plans to cut 65,000 employees.
At Bank of America, fired employees are not allowed back to their desk and don’t get a chance to say goodbye. Then there’s this tidbit from the halls of Lehman Brothers:
Some Lehman Brothers investment bankers found out their jobs were in peril when they saw cardboard boxes and dumpster bins in the hallways in March.
