Jobless Claims Near Four-Year Low
 
The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell to its lowest level since April 2008.

Separately, the economy’s fourth quarter expansion was unrevised at 3.0%, while corporate profits moderated from the previous quarter.

 
The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell to its lowest level since April 2008, showing the labor market is continuing its steady improvement this year.

Separately, the U.S. economy’s fourth quarter expansion was unrevised at 3.0%, while corporate profits moderated from the previous quarter.

Initial jobless claims fell by 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 359,000 in the week ended March 24, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast that claims would increase by 2,000.

The prior week’s figure was revised to 364,000 from a previously reported 348,000. Labor made its annual adjustment to seasonal factors this week, causing revisions to claims data back to 2007. As a result, recent weeks’ figures were adjusted up.

The four-week moving average of claims, which smoothes out week-to-week volatility, decreased by 3,500 to 365,000.

For several weeks, new claims have hovered near levels last seen before the onset of the recent financial crisis. Since October, new benefit applications have remained below 400,000. When claims fall below that mark, economists say the economy typically adds jobs.

And that’s been happening in recent months. Nonfarm payrolls grew by 227,000 in February and the economy has added an average 245,000 jobs over the past three months. The March payroll report is due out next week.

Still, the unemployment rate remained high last month at 8.3% and may decline only gradually.

On Wednesday, a Business Roundtable survey of 128 U.S. chief executives found that 42% expect to increase payrolls at their firms in the next six months, but the pace of hiring is expected to be more modest than sales growth.

Listen up! Times are changing. Technology is accomplishing what it set out to do.

What took 100 people to do in ‘95, took 50 to do in 2000, is taking 5 to do in 2012.

So firms require less hands to ‘man the ship’

“Where is the hiring Tracey? You state you have 70 Jobs that you have your team working on placing, where are they?”

Firms are looking for Field Tested Architects that can conceptualize strategic directions for a given technology Platform (This is predominantly in the Small IB’s and Hedge fund space -They are the ones hiring). Said Architects are not only asked to be strategic, but work intimately with Senior Business Leaders to address their needs, present and promote platform evolution to Business groups, draw consensus from peer Technology Silo’s, Manage (matrix as well as direct) resources to test and implement change, and map out continuing 1 and 3 year road plans.

WHY?

Firms have been in a ‘RUN THE BUSINESS’ dogma since late 2009. Now with the economy coming back as well as the push from Senior Executives to ‘Do MORE with LESS’, Evolution of Platforms is the agenda of the next 2 years. Particularly evolution that focuses on CONSOLIDATION, CAPACITY MANAGEMENT, PERFORMANCE, LATENCY, VIRTUALIZATION of platforms.

These next 2 years are going to be instrumental to the careers Wall St.’s next wave of Executives!

Here is some food for thought,

If you are not sure or ready from a Technical, Management, or Business Relationship standpoint, now is the time to take a career that will position your skill sets to do so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your career path should require deep thought. ‘This is Chess, NOT Checkers’

The hottest initiatives I am seeing on my doorstep are:

* Security (application & system hardening)

* Data (reference, BI, Market Data)

* Network (Voice, Data, Firewalls)

* Systems (Linux, Windows{Desktop})

* Process & Procedure Management

Do be PROACTIVE about your career!

Or

Stay in your current role, where you think its safe and see in 2 years how being REACTIVE vs PROACTIVE contributed to the downward spiral of your career.

Look how it worked out for the
MVS, MainFrame, AIX, DB2, C++, Solaris, Desktop Admin’s, etc of the early 2000’s?????

Think about what I’m saying.

Thank you for your Time and Efforts,
 
Tracey Greene
TechExec Inc.
Senior Vice President, Financial Risk & Compliance & Technology Division
O:           (914)-235-5901
E:           Tracey.Greene@TechExeconline.com
Blog:      http://tracey-greene.tumblr.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/WallStRecruiter/
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/WallStreetRecruiter

WOW! Think about who wrote this piece on Goldman…. Makes you think if you work there, huh?

Thank you for your Time and Efforts, 
Tracey Greene
TechExec Inc.
Senior Vice President, Financial Risk & Compliance & Technology Division
O:           (914)-235-5901
E:           Tracey.Greene@TechExeconline.com
Blog:      http://tracey-greene.tumblr.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/WallStRecruiter/
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/WallStreetRecruiter

New York Times.

March 14, 2012 

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm - first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London - I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.
I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader?

a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit.

b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients - some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t - to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them.

c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

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.
When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.
My proudest moments in life - getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics - have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.
I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm - or the trust of its clients - for very much longer.

-Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa