高盛高管辞职信全文：我为什么离开高盛？

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
我为什么离开高盛？

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Greg Smith曾是高盛执行董事，高盛的美国股票衍生业务在欧洲、中东和非洲的主管。

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
今天是我在高盛的最后一天。我在高盛工作了12年，最初在斯坦福读书时夏季来做实习生，然后在纽约工作了十年，现在在伦敦。我想我在这里工作了足够长时间，能够理解其文化发展轨迹，理解其员工和身份。说实话，现在的环境是我见过最有毒和最破坏性的高盛。

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
简单一点来讲就是，高盛的运行模式和赚钱理念把客户的利益放在次要位置，但高盛是世界规模最大、最有影响力的投行之一，它与全球金融的相关性太高，不能够这样做。从我大学毕业入职高盛至今，这家投行已经发生了转变，现在我不能够问心无愧的说我同意这家投行的立场。

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.
文化曾经是高盛取得成功的重要原因，这一点对公众来说似乎有点出乎意料。过去高盛的文化一直围绕着团队协作、正直、谦逊，以及永远为客户的利益考虑。文化是高盛之所以能成为一个伟大公司的秘诀，帮助我们在过去的143年一直赢得客户的信任。过去高盛的文化不仅仅围绕赚钱，因为这一点不足以使一个公司在这么长的时期里屹立不倒。高盛的人一直为公司感到骄傲，对自己所从事的事业充满信仰。然而，在过去很多年，我环顾四周，发觉曾经使我热爱这份工作的文化已不复存在，我不再为它感到骄傲，我不再对自己从事的事业充满信仰。

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.
但情况并不总是这样。十几年来，我面试并招募了一批批新人，悉心指导他们。我和另外9名同事被拍进一段招聘视频短片，在全球各大高校播放。2006年，我从数千名应聘者中挑选出80名学生同事进入夏季实习计划，训练他们买卖和交易。

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.
我知道，当我认识到自己不再能看着学生们的眼睛，告诉他们在这个地方工作有多棒，这时候就该离开了。

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.
当历史书中描述高盛时，它们可能会显示，高盛在首席执行官Lloyd C. Blankfein和总裁Gary D. Cohn的管理下，失去了对公司文化的掌控。我的确认为公司道德品行沦落是对高盛长期生存最大的威胁。

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.
在我的职业生涯中，我有幸为全球两大对冲基金、美国五大资产经理以及中东和亚洲的三个最具影响力的主权财富基金担任过咨询顾问。我的客户拥有的总资产基础超过了1万亿美元。我一直以来都以为客户提供对他们有利的建议为荣，即使有时候这意味着高盛能从中得到的利润相对较少。然而我的这一观点在高盛越来越缺少拥护，这也是现在对我来讲是时候离开的另一个原因。

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
高盛是如何走到成今天这个地步的？高盛对领导层的思维方式已经改变。曾几何时，领导意味着理念、树立榜样以及做正确的事，而现在，如果你能为高盛赚到足够的钱，你就能够得到升职，更具影响力。

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
哪三个方法能迅速在高盛当上领导？ 1)挥动公司的“斧子”，这是高盛内部的说法，指的是劝说自己的顾客投资股票或者其他我们自己极力避免购买的产品，因为它们看起来不可能有很高的利润。 2)“猎象”。在英语中，这个字面意思的实际意义是：让你的客户——他们之中有些人胸有城府，有些没有——进行一切能给高盛带来最高利润的交易。你可能觉得我守旧，但是我不愿意把我觉得有害的产品卖给客户。 3)为自己找到一个位子。坐在这个位子上，你的工作就是交易所有流动性差的含糊产品，这种产品有一个3个字母的首字母缩略语名称。

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.
如今，很多高盛领导人的做法让人觉得，高盛原来的文化已经不复存在。我出席衍生品销售会议，会上没有花哪怕一分钟时间来讨论如何帮助客户，而仅仅讨论我们如何能够从客户身上赚取最多的利润。如果您是一位来自火星的外星人并且参与到其中的一个会议，你会感觉到，客户的成功和进步完全不是会议的议题。