[eXpat]

Wall Street Workers Still Get Bonuses, Many Unhappy, Poll Finds
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- About 79 percent of Wall Street employees responding to an online poll this month said they received a bonus for 2008, more than the 66 percent who expected to get a reward in October, according to eFinancialCareers.Com.

Of the people who said they received a bonus, 46 percent said it was higher than last year, eFinancialCareers, a unit of Dice Holdings Inc., said in an e-mailed statement. About 900 U.S. users of the financial jobs Web site responded to the survey conducted Jan. 7-12. In October, 1,300 people responded, and 36 percent said than that they anticipated a higher bonus.

Wall Street’s system of paying year-end bonuses to reward workers is under criticism after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression led to record losses and forced the government to pump taxpayer money into banks. Still, 46 percent of people responding to the poll said they were dissatisfied with their bonus.
...
Most of the people who said they were unhappy with their bonus, 89 percent, had five years or less experience, the survey found.

[Specop_007]

Theres 100% certainly in the next 6 months I will either be laid off or rebadged (sold to another company). Its roughly 50/50 either way.

Let me pause a moment to shed a tear for them.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'T')heres 100% certainly in the next 6 months I will either be laid off or rebadged (sold to another company). Its roughly 50/50 either way.

Let me pause a moment to shed a tear for them.

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'T')heres 100% certainly in the next 6 months I will either be laid off or rebadged (sold to another company). Its roughly 50/50 either way.

Let me pause a moment to shed a tear for them.

[Sixstrings]

Another good article on this, from CFO Magazine no less:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ll the major investment banks are now either out of business or part of bank holding companies, which historically have paid far fewer and lower bonuses..

If financial services managers were unhappy with their bonuses this year, watch out for an explosion of rage 12 months from now.

"It just goes to show you how highly they think of themselves," Douglas, who was general counsel to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the savings-and-loan-crisis 20 years ago, told CFO.com.
A big reason for the culture of entitlement is likely that there are so many young people on Wall Street.

[vtsnowedin]

I have to wonder which over paid execs thought it was appropriate to pay out any bonuses when the average account holder or shareholder lost fourty percent of their porfoilio value this year? And what pool of profits did they cut these checks from? If they skimmed another fee off of already losing accounts to pay bonuses would that not be fradulent and illegal?

[xerces]

I think people here are seriously over-estimating the kind of bonuses the average financial workers are getting in NYC. 16 billion dollars averages out to 112K for every employee at analyst level or above.

But this number is heavily skewed towards the top due to the distribution of bankers. For every 3 analysts there is an associate. For every 4-5 associates there is 1 Vice President and so on.

Analysts are getting 50-60K base with ~20K bonus.

Associates are netting 70-90K base with ~40K bonus.

Vice presidents are getting 100-120 base with 300-400K bonus.

Executive Directors are getting something like 200K base and 1-10 million dollar bonuses.



So for the average financial services guy, he is most likely an analyst (~70% of the population).

They would be working 100+ hours every week to make like 80K this year. That's around $15/hr, not exactly high flying wages...

[Tyler_JC]

Xerces, you are just a patsy for the Capitalist overlords.

How dare you point out the math!

You're entirely right though. The overwhelming share of that money is going to less than 1% of the financial industry. Several of the top hedge fund managers received more than $100 million in bonuses last year. That's a pretty large chunk of the bonus money right there.

When it's time to cut bonuses, who do you think will seeing the cutting block?

The rank-and-file financial analysts, of course!