Morning Coffee: How to find joy aged 39 at Goldman Sachs. The ex-Centerview associate stuck at Burning Man
Given that Goldman Sachs is facing a £1m lawsuit in London brought by its 55-year-old former head of recruiting who claims his time there was so grinding that he developed mental health issues (something GS denies culpability for), it's probably pleasing to the firm that another HR person - and mother of five - says she's doing just fine there.
39-year-old Shekhinah Bass doesn't work in recruiting or in London, but is the firm's New York-based head of talent strategy. After 17 years at Goldman, she says she's discovered the art of having a good life while performing a demanding corporate job.
“You need to take time to recharge and do things that bring you joy,” Bass declares. “There have been times when I haven’t created that space, and it can be really draining — but setting those boundaries is where you’ll see yourself excel.”
How, then, do you create the time for those things? Bass says it's all about "timeboxing" and doing deep focus work early in the morning, which for her is between 8am and 10am. Every week, she creates a schedule in her calendar in which each task has an allotted amount of time. She works on it until that allotted time is over, and then moves on after assessing its progress.
While this technique might seem unsuitable for fans of spontaneity or of working until a task is complete, it's good for Bass. “It’s helped me save hours in my workday, and find more time to be present in important moments for my family, whether that’s dinner time or a school performance in the afternoon,” she reflects.
Separately, as 64,000 people are evacuated from the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert, unexpected absences from the office are revealing who attended the event last weekend.
They are now known to include supreme court lawyer Neal Katyal, whose photo below has been the source of some hilarity on social media.
Less unexpectedly, perhaps they also include former Centerview associate, reality TV star and Instagram darling Mark Moran.
Dressed in Thomas Jefferson/Steam Punk/Versaille fusion, Moran has provide a helpful stream of satirical commentary on the true state of affairs for technology and finance professionals stuck at the festival, where he claims to have been networking in an orgy tent and eating steak despite the alleged shortage of food.
While Katyal described a "harrowing six-mile hike at midnight" to escape the festival on Saturday evening, Moran flew out only last might and was making videos about becoming a shaman until the bitter end.
Meanwhile...
Law firms are more tempestuous and incestuous than banks. - Neel Sachdev left Kirkland Ellis in London for Paul Weiss after his Kirkland rival hired Paul Weiss London head Alvaro Membrillera on a package worth more than $10m a year. (Financial News)
Charlie Munger makes $70k a year from a $1k investment he made 60 years ago. (Business Insider)
Mayur Kamat, the head of product at Binance, is leaving. (Bloomberg)
BNP Paribas is hiring in the US. “We are staffing up some of our teams in the US and developing in areas where we were less meaningfully present including ECM." (Financial News)
32 year-old Jonathan Luke, a technology investment banker at Stifel is accused of shouting gay slurs at 30 year-old Barnaby Gush, a lawyer, after a drunken summer party near St Paul's last year. Gush fractured Luke's jaw and claims it was in self defence. (Daily Express)
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