Monkey Business (26 page)

In practice, what this meant was that there was generally complete unanimity on every analyst’s review. If the first associate
to speak gave a glowing review, then all the other reviews that followed would glow like kryptonite. If the first associate
to speak trashed the analyst, forget about it. Resurrection was unlikely, and the offending analyst could end up with $30,000
less than his more fortunate counterparts. The tide, once it began to ebb or flow, was difficult to stem. The associates at
the review session all wanted to be on the same helicopter out of Ho Chi Minh City, whether it was headed deeper into the
jungle or back to the DMZ. That’s how we’d been trained.

The other problem with the analyst review sessions was that they inevitably degenerated into outlets for the months of frustration
that we ourselves had suffered at the hands of our vice presidents, senior vice presidents, and managing directors. They’d
spanked, whipped, and bludgeoned us and we had to pass those beatings along to help clear our anger. If our right of passage
was going to be difficult, we were surely going to make the analysts’ right of passage that much more miserable. The biannual
review sessions were the only opportunity that we had to inflict that abuse in front of an audience. Beating
the dog was a much more satisfying exercise with people watching. Our mothers would not have been proud.

As we sat in these reviews, there was an unspoken concern in the back of all of our minds. We all recognized that the reviews
were bullshit. We knew that the reviews didn’t do a good of job rewarding the analysts who deserved to be rewarded and canning
the ones who didn’t. We knew that an analyst’s reviews depended on what kind of a day the associates who had worked with that
analyst were having. We also knew that if Franken, the senior banker taking notes on each analyst, had an itch on his ass
when a good comment was being made about one of the analysts, then that analyst could be shit out of luck because Franken
wouldn’t write it down. We also knew that a roomful of vice presidents, senior vice presidents, and managing directors were
reviewing us the same way that we were reviewing the analysts. We knew that the process wasn’t any more equitable for us than
it was for the analysts. We knew that for us the stakes were higher because the bonuses that were on the line were that much
bigger. There was that much more to worry about.

At DLJ, the culmination of reviews came in early February each year with the announcement of bonuses. DLJ was late in the
process. Bankers at Goldman and Morgan got their bonus numbers in late December. Most of the other investment banks gave out
their numbers in January. Not DLJ. DLJ waited to see what kind of bonuses the other banks were giving out, and then they figured
out how much they’d have to pay to keep the golden rats from jumping. The upshot was that there was a six-week period every
year between late December and early February during which we began hearing stirrings through
the grapevine about what the other banks were paying out. As the six weeks passed, we worked ourselves into an increasing
state of agitation. Work slowed to a crawl. Bonuses were all we thought, talked, and cared about. We could have been diagnosed
with a terminal case of rancid halitosis and it wouldn’t have mattered. We’d spent twelve months busting our humps and kissing
the ass of the institution with the expectation that we’d be well compensated. If our counterparts at the other banks ended
up making more than us, we figured that we might as well be kissing ass there. After all, at the end of the day it wasn’t
like a DLJ ass was any tastier than a Morgan Stanley ass.

Every associate who knew an associate at another investment bank became a potential source of intelligence. Rumor ran rampant.
We would all get on the phone and begin calling people whom we hadn’t spoken to since business school.

“Hey, man, it’s Johnny Rolfe calling. Do you guys have your nums yet?”

“Yeah, we got them.”

“What’s the range?”

“Eighty thousand on the low end, $110,000 on the high end.”

“Shit, that’s not bad.”

“What have you heard?”

“I heard that Goldman was $90,000 to $130,000. They’re the best so far. Bankers Trust came in $70,000 to $100,000. Cheap bastards.”

That was the extent of the conversation. No formalities. No “Hi, how have things been since business school?” The nature of
the call was clear, the need for information
was accepted. The ritual was embraced by associates at every bank. We were on a mission.

As soon as one of us got a new data point, it was instantaneously disseminated among our classmates. It was like magic, we
could smell the money. We approached the information-gathering task on comparable company bonuses with more zeal than any
of us had ever mustered for a deal. This was our bank account that we were talking about. There could be no secrets. We knew
that if the investment banking department had an unusually profitable year the bonuses might go up modestly, and if the year
really sucked they might drop a bit. In general, though, the size of our bonuses was much less affected by the bank’s profitability
than it was for the more senior bankers. What really mattered was how well we were paid in relation to our peers at other
banks.

DLJ had always had a reputation for paying top dollar. For a second-year associate that could mean an incremental $30,000
in the bonus over what associates at the other banks were getting. The only other bank that consistently had payouts equal
to DLJ was Goldman, so the first numbers that we always tried to get were the Goldman numbers. Those set the hurdle for us.
Some banks like PaineWebber ended up at the bottom of the payout scale every year. Troob and I were never able to figure out
what the associates at those places used as their yardstick. As far as we were concerned, if our payout from DLJ wasn’t one
of the top three on the Street, then we might as well be working for Dairy Queen. We didn’t have any other way to measure
our success. It wasn’t the money. We needed the bragging rights.

After six weeks of obsessive focus on what we were
going to get paid, it was inevitable that when we actually got the number it would be a letdown. Regardless of what the bonus
number was, if fireworks didn’t go off with a brass band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” in the background it would seem
like our obsession had been misplaced. We’d spent close to two months puffing up like peacocks to convince ourselves that
we actually deserved a cash bonus that, a year and a half out of business school, would take our total compensation for the
year close to $200,000. By the time judgment day rolled around we were damned sure that if we only ended with total comp for
the year of $180,000, we were getting raped. We weren’t about to take that shit lying down.

Jim Firestone, the head of my group, called me on the phone.

“John, why don’t you come down to my office for a couple of minutes. We need to talk about your bonus.”

I walked down the hall toward Firestone’s office. What awaited me? Would it be fame and fortune? Humiliation and ruin? I’d
soon find out.

As I entered Firestone’s office he motioned me toward the sofa. So be it. Firestone handed me a piece of paper. It was a memo
addressed to me from Steven Tolls and Brock LeBlank, the chairman and vice chairman of the Banking Group. At the top, it said
“Annual bonus and compensation.”

Firestone began to speak. “John, we’ve been extraordinarily pleased with your performance this year. The firm has also had
a great year. Your bonus reflects all of that….”

I didn’t hear a single word he was saying. I began to
scan the memo, frantically looking for numbers. They were not hard to find; they were in the first paragraph.

We are pleased to inform you that you have been awarded a cash bonus of $125,000…you also received $19,000 in special incentives
for your role in lead-managed IPOs…together with your salary…your total compensation…is $209,000.

There it was. That was it. The anticipation was over. The number was pretty good, as good as Goldman’s numbers. I’d just made
over ten times as much money as I’d made in my last year of full-time work in advertising before going to business school.
The more successful managing directors whom I was working for would, in turn, make ten times as much as I had. That was a
steep income curve. That was what awaited me if I could just tough it out. I couldn’t be happy just yet, though. I didn’t
know what my classmates had made. Even though I’d just made $209,000, there was a possibility that my classmates had all made
$215,000. If that was the case, then I was either a guinea pig, an idiot, or chopped liver.

Firestone, meanwhile, was still droning on in the background. He was reading excerpts from some of the written reviews that
the vice presidents and managing directors whom I’d worked with had submitted. He was a thorough guy and wanted me to hear
the whole story.

“…John’s a real team player, a valuable asset to the Communications and Entertainment group.”

“…he shows great maturity. He can always be relied on to get the job done.”

“…I really enjoy working with John. The clients all speak highly of him.”

“…John shows great promise as a banker. He has the potential to be a real star.”

I wasn’t listening. All the excerpts that Firestone was reading to me were generic. I began to suspect that the vice presidents,
senior vice presidents, and managing directors each had a drawer full of Xerox copies of their associate review sheets, fully
prepared except for the “name” slot. They each probably had three different sheets; “Good,” “Average,” and “Crap,” which they
affixed names to each year when reviews came due.

Firestone was just finishing up.

“John, you’re at the top of your class this year and your bonus reflects that. You’re almost in a league of your own. It’s
very important that you don’t discuss your compensation with any of your classmates. That information is nobody’s business
but yours and we expect it to stay that way.”

I stood up to go. I was thinking about what Firestone had just said, the part about not discussing my compensation with any
of my classmates. I’d been expecting something like that. I’d been warned by others. Their rationale was transparent. That
information was power and if none of us told each other how we’d been compensated, then they could tell each of us whatever
they wanted to and we’d all be happy clams. They could pay each of us the same amount and then tell each of us that we were
at the top of the class. Our egos would remain
intact and there’d be no dissension. We were too smart for that, though. We had a plan.

My classmates and I had devised a plan to circumvent the call for secrecy. We all felt a little gun-shy about telling each
other what our actual bonus numbers were, so we had come up with a system beforehand that would protect our anonymity while
still giving us the strategic advantage of full disclosure. We’d all agreed to meet in a conference room, write our bonus
numbers down on a piece of paper, and throw them into a hat. One of us would then take all the pieces of paper, write down
the numbers from highest to lowest, and distribute copies of the list to everybody. That way, we’d all know where we really
panned out in the hierarchy among our classmates. If anybody thought that they’d gotten fucked, they could bitch and moan
about it to the higher powers. They could make their dissatisfaction known. The balance of power would shift from them to
us. We’d hold the cards.

I got back to my office and called Slick.

“Hey, Slick, it’s Rolfe. I got my nums, how about you?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em. When are we meeting?”

“That’s what I’m calling to find out. Round up the troops. Let’s get this over with.”

“OK.”

Ten minutes later, Slick called me back. “Rolfe, you’re not gonna believe this.”

“What?”

“Everybody’s bailing on us. Nobody wants to do it anymore.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“I don’t know. Nobody’s being straight with me. They’ve all got bullshit excuses.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Each of us had been told that we were at the top of the class. We all
had a pretty good idea that we were being given a line of crap, but nobody really wanted to find out that they weren’t, in
fact, the best. Investment banking had a way of attracting arrogant fuckers like us, and that was our Achilles’ heel. The
big boys knew that. They knew us better than we knew ourselves. We were screwed.

“Slick, what was your total comp number, man? Did it have a two in front of it?”

“Yeah, it did.”

“Did they tell you that you were at the top of the class?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

“You don’t figure that we’re really the best, do you?”

“No way. They must have told everybody the same thing. I’m gonna call Wings. He’s still in for figuring out where we stand.
I’ll find out what he got.”

I called Wings. His number had a two in front of it also. They’d told him that he was at the top of the class. There was a
pattern. It was no coincidence. They’d played us like a shopworn fiddle. We were hopeless amateurs. My phone rang. It was
Gator.

“Rolfe, I’ve got a high-yield pitch that needs doing. I’m gonna need to see a draft by tomorrow morning because the pitch
is on Thursday. Why don’t you come up to my office so that we can talk about exactly what we’re gonna need for this thing.”

Fuck. That meant that an all-nighter lay ahead. Reality
hit me like an acute case of Montezuma’s revenge. The evanescent joy of my big payday exhaled its final gasp and was no more.
I’d worked for a year, obsessed for six weeks, and enjoyed the fruits of my labors for ten minutes. Now it was back into the
dark underbelly of my investment banking existence. I remembered that I was nothing but unwanted garbage. I took a deep breath
and headed for Gator’s office.