Investment Banking (IB) is a sure shortcut to huge money – that is one thing everyone agrees on. My life happens to be full of graduates from “Double I” schools of India – as my bosses, peers, friends, siblings of friends, distant relatives etc. – and one thing you can gauge from the voices of people who are not investment bankers is that they would like to do that more than anything else in the world.

Personally speaking, I have never seen the thrill in the IB game, partly because of my ignorance and partly because of my belief that I am never going to be good with money matters (not that I don’t open my eyes wide in mock amazement when I hear figures of year end IB bonuses – amounts of money that I won’t probably earn in 10 years).

Liar’s Poker is a wonderful attempt at recreating the IB life – from a beginner to a seasoned I-Banker – and the story of the most successful I-Bank on Wall Street. The book also dwells fairly deep into the technical level details of the game, though certainly it is not to be treated as a “Trading Mortgage Bonds for Dummies” title!

What I understood from the book? Certainly, the work environment is not for the faint hearted (or should I say don’t carry your heart to your trading desk). When people in the same firm are out to screw you, there’s really no use of saying something like “watch your back” – as a full frontal attack is allowed and part of the rules. You’ve just got to hope your screwdriver works better than others and the screws at the top of your head are in place.

Bosses who pay themselves too much, and are taking the firm towards annihilation – I guess they are everywhere. Since the game is all about making millions in a flash, and everyone is trying to do the same thing, it should not come as a surprise if the boss pays himself like there’s no tomorrow. Unfortunately, if the same boss talks about virtues like loyalty, he would not find many listeners.

While the book traces the history of Salomon Brothers, I cannot help but compare it to my current workplace / domain of work. As a quick and dirty sequence of events:

A small firm doing exceedingly well in its area of work –> A brilliant new diversification idea –> Firm makes lot of money –> Merger / Acquisition (read as “people at top get rich quick”) –>Profit sharing absent for people at the bottom –> One bad season –> Panic –> Firm becomes talent seeding ground for competitors –> Too many players in the market –> Firm goes into consolidation mode –> Becomes just another player in the market as compared to holding several pioneering advantages earlier –> Business profitability heads south

Coming to the broader topics of “Evolution of Organizations” and Organizational Behavior (which are areas of my interest), there are too many of these stories floating around – and there is a certain sense of acceptance and inevitability of this kind of behavior whenever you talk of a startup. While the stock owners make very good money (and rightly so), people at the bottom (who have seen their careers grow with the firm and feel a sense of loyalty) are severely disillusioned. What I fail to understand is, if for a million dollars less in my kitty (out of several million dollars) I can make everyone feel an inclusive part of the growth and hold on to my prized talent pool for a longer period – why will I choose not to do that? And why will I choose to do that only in times of desperation when the hollowness in my heart is very apparent?

This is a question to several of the “leaders” I have seen so far. And hopefully, when I ask this question to myself one day, I will make the right choice.