Goldman CEO Wants His Bankers Back at Work

If you are a midlevel investment banker taking advantage of a quiet summer weekday to have a long leisurely lunch at a Hamptons restaurant, and you see the chief executive officer of your bank sitting two tables away, what is the move? My instinct is definitely along the lines of “put on a hat and sunglasses, scuttle to the bathroom with your head down, climb out the window, catch the next helicopter back to the office and never eat lunch again,” but I can see arguments the other way. A key attribute of successful financiers is boldness; you’ve got to act like whatever you are doing is the right and only way to do it. Why not strut right up to the CEO and say, “Hey, good to see you here, try the burrata”? I mean, he’s in the restaurant too, right? You are just two masters of the universe enjoying lunch in the Hamptons; your being in the same restaurant proves that you have the same good taste and control over your schedule and work-hard-play-hard approach that he has. He is in the restaurant because he is powerful, and you are in the restaurant because you are powerful; you are, briefly, on equal footing, and you should make sure he knows it.1

But, no, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO David Solomon, it seems as if my original instinct is the right one: