In 1987 I joined a relatively small cadre of mid-career hires at JP Morgan. I and my new colleagues were needed because we had experience in putting up large high tech buildings and Morgan had just begun their headquarters project at 60 Wall Street. In those days the employees of the bank numbered between 12-14,000 and virtually all of them had come up through the internal training program. Understanding how the firm worked for a new arrival in those days was difficult. There seemed to be interminable rites of passage until you were deemed trustworthy. Once that happened, things became more fluid.

 

In the early 90’s there was a massive culture shock. Meetings were held and everyone was informed that they no longer had “a job for life”. We would remain employed only if there was a fit between the needs of the organization and the skills we had to offer. Lunch was no longer free – literally, although it still remained cheaper than going outside to the local deli. We all understood, many for the first time, that we were employed at will.

We live in a world where the means of exchange (money) has become vastly more important than what we exchange (goods and services). We have moved from a time when money or profit was one of several metrics by which a company could be judged to the only metric and more recently in many cases, to becoming the product of a company – buy our stock because we make money. How did we get here?