For this section of my book report on “Liar’s Poker” by Michael Lewis, I will be focusing on the fourth and fifth chapters of the book. I chose to pair these two chapters together because once again, I felt that they discussed the culture of Solomon Brothers, and are easily relatable to what we have discussed in class regarding culture.
Chapter four, which is entitled “Adult Education,” talks about what the author has learned so far in his training group at Solomon Brothers. The group of trainees regularly has employees of the firm come in as guest speakers. These speakers are all members of higher management, and their main goal in speaking with the group of trainees is to show them what the culture at Solomon Brothers is really like. Since these guest speakers are all very high-ranking individuals within the company, they are all rude, ignorant, and conceited by nature. During these presentations, they make sure they really push these characteristics so the trainees know exactly how they need to act in order to survive as a bond trader at Solomon. One speaker distinguished between a bond trader and a bond salesman, by saying that salesmen are ruled by the traders, and that bond salesmen compare in no way to bond traders. As the author was listening to this presentation, he accepted the fact that he was destined to be a bond salesman, because he felt that he did not have the rough and tough personality that bond traders needed. This thought was solidified when a newly hired bond trader came to speak to them in the final weeks of training. Richard O’Grady told of an experience where he needed to obtain a sheet of bond prices for a client from another employee within the company. When O’Grady asked nicely for what he needed, the trader told him that he was busy and told O’Grady to go pound sand. After this reaction, O’Grady responded by hovering over the employee and screaming at him for the papers he needed (this screaming included a copious amount of swearing). Surely enough, the employee gave O’Grady the papers he needed not two minutes after O’Grady took the aggressive route. Again, the author realized that he could never act like this, and knew he was going to have to settle for the bond salesman position.
I think this chapter is a nice compliment to what we discussed about culture in class. Obviously, culture is a huge part of any company. Likewise, the company wants to hire individuals that it feels will be a perfect match for the culture that the company has already established. In this chapter, this is why the company sent some executives of the company to talk to the new trainees. These executives have been with the company the longest, and know the culture better than any other. If there was anyone who could show how cut-throat and crude the culture within Solomon Brothers is, it was one of the company’s executives. Also, I think this chapter shows the process of deselction that we previously discussed in class. Deselection is the process of removing oneself from the employment selection process because the individual does not blend well with the culture of the position or company. Once the author saw the personality comparison between bond traders and salesmen, he immediately knew that he did not fit the job description, and deselected himself from the bond trader recruitment and focused instead on the bond salesman recruitment.
Chapter 5 discusses the creation of a mortgage bond department within the company. Bob Dall, a partner of Solomon Brothers, was the lead advocate in the creation of this department. He felt the creation of a mortgage bond department would greatly benefit the company because he predicted that there was going to be a drastic increase in the demand for mortgage bonds. Not long after the formation of the department, Bob Dall was replaced by Lewie Ranieri, who was considered more energetic and popular within the company. In the beginning stages of the department, not much trading took place, which resulted in minimal profits. This department was also highly discriminatory when it came to recruiting employees. Almost all of the employees in this department were Italian or Jewish, and Ranieri worked hard to keep it that way. As a result, tensions arose between the mortgage bond department and other departments within the company. As a result, the mortgage bond department no longer targeted Wall Street as its enemy, but Solomon Bothers itself.
Again, this chapter coincides well with the subject of company culture. The company as a whole has a very snobbish culture, where everyone thinks they are better than everyone else. This new department is no exception. This department took the snobbish culture of Solomon Brothers to a new level, and actually targeted the company as its enemy. It is understandable that Lewie wanted his new department to be up-to-speed with the company’s culture, but he took it one step too far by stating that the company is the enemy of his department.
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