Every two years, purported vampire squid Goldman Sachs (GS) rifles through a list of its most vampiric and squidlike employees and decides which of them will be chosen to join its elite class of “partners,” the Goldmanites who make the most money and have an inside edge for the firm’s top jobs. Partnership means joining an elite class of Wall Streeter, but there’s one wrinkle: every partnership round also involves revocation of underperformers’ top-squid status.
Sixty Goldman employees could lose their “partner” stamp “this year to make way for new blood,“ The New York Times reports. (Emphasis added.) The loss of the coveted position potentially means missing out on millions in bonuses, but such tragedy is relative, since the de-partnered retain base salaries of around $200,000 a year.
The entire process of relieving Goldman employees of their partnerhood is so opaque that few people besides those that lose their titles even know that it has happened. The Times does offer one potential method for telling who’s still partner and who’s not: “Goldman insiders are already speculating that de-partnered executives who decide to stay will have to give up their window view.”
