Cant say I agree. I worked for various European and US IB's pre 08, then have for the better part of the last decade been a client of them. IMO GS's culture has always struck me as a lot of self anointed hubris and resembles attitudes found on /r/iamverysmart, which when viewed from the outside it makes one laugh. All US IB's these days are largely just commodity balance sheets. None of them have any tangible edge over each other in the bigger picture.

I've worked with several ex-GS people, all of whom were convinced they were the smartest person in the room, none of whom were even close. Some of the 'GS do it this way' ideas were so terrible we wondered if part of Goldman's strategy was to seed their competition with them as part of a sabotage effort.

I’ve made the same observation. The point is, though, if they were any good they wouldn’t be ex-GS people.

> IMO GS's culture has always struck me as a lot of self anointed hubris and resembles attitudes found on /r/iamverysmart

Having gone to a GS recruitment event, that was basically what I came away with. I’m sure they’re doing technically interesting things, but I honestly cannot sort it from the bullshit.

...and yet it was always extremely difficult to get a job there, and they paid the best. ...that's literally how you attract the best talent.

...so you, they were arrogant. Maybe some portion of that was earned?

They were talented but the talents were theft, fraud, and self-dealing, not capital allocation.

I can assure you not much in high finance is "earned".

If you didn’t work there you didn’t see how the machine works. It was genuinely world class: they’re pulling right from the top to make you the best you can be, and the best get rewarded.

Totally anecdotal:

I know a few people (5-7?) from both high school and undergrad who went to work at Goldman Sachs. 2 in NYC, at least one in both of London and HK. All of them were pretty middle of the road in terms of academic achievement, smarts, leadership etc. The smartest people I know from back then are mostly working at NGOs or academia.

The one thing that all the GS people had in common is that they cared a lot about having a high salary. The kind of guys who like to buy expensive champagne at the club, is embarrassed if they don't make it to Bali for spring break. That kind of thing. Absolutely no moral judgement on my part, this is just what I noticed.

(1) Black-Litterman is literally the only useful thing to come out of GS ever.

(2) LTCM employed a Nobel winning economist too. Was that "brain trust" the source of PnL, or was it cheap leverage?

Fun fact on LTCM and GS and 1998: according to Lowenstein's account, the GS banker who came to diligence LTCM during the fed-forced bailout was seen furtively reviewing a laptop in a corner. The next day, all the positions recorded in that laptop moved sharply against LTCM... surely this was a coincidence. Great culture they have over there at Vampire Squid, Inc.

True, the culture at GS is/was by far the best.

Did you mean to type “most corrupt” instead?