The fallout is still raining down in the financial and general media in response to the very public resignation of Greg Smith from Goldman Sachs. Smith's ”take this job and shove it” letter, published yesterday in the New York Times, bemoaned a corporate culture based on greed and disregard for its customers. (One of the most vivid–and quoted–observation was how Goldman employees routinely referred to their clients as “muppets.”)
And although you could argue that it's pretty disingenuous for Smith to have taken this long to figure out that a publicly held Wall Street investment firm's first priority is to make money, give him props for sheer cojones. Hope he has a lucrative book-and-movie deal in the wings because it's doubtful he'll ever work in investment banking again.
Still, it's evident from the reaction that Smith's comments have hit a nerve. If there's a single take-away thought from the whole thing, I think it involves whether it's professionally ethical to put a corporation's profit goals above the needs of the customer.
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