Power Corrupts

They say that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nowhere have I seen the truth of this maxim confirmed so utterly as in the saga (ongoing) of Jimmy the Kid.

Jimmy used to be such a nice young boy. Friendly, willing, open, and keen; hardworking and honest; your typical freshly-scrubbed graduate. True, he was not overly blessed with intelligence, but let’s face it, intelligence is a highly overrated commodity. It’s certainly no prerequisite for success, and left to his own devices, Jimmy would have been successful. He would have settled into a career of undistinguished but happy mediocrity at some middling investment bank, with all the trappings: wife, kids, two cars, a cat and a dog. Membership at the country club and vacations in Europe.

But he was promoted before his time, and that was his ruin.

It’s no secret that the finance industry is in a bubble. All around Wall Street there are 20-some year olds with no qualifications beyond bespoke suits and limitless self-confidence, raking in the big bucks. The flow of easy money means that anyone who is not actually comatose is guaranteed a multi-million dollar pay check; you just have to be in the game and success is assured. Never before have so many Ferraris been bought by so many people for so little work.

A few of these prodigies recognize that they’re just lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and they live their lives accordingly. But the vast majority are not so introspective. Most Wall Street employees feel divinely entitled to the richesse that accrues to them; it’s only what they deserve, after all.

Jimmy is at the extreme end of this spectrum. He considers his early promotion to be incontrovertible proof of his exceptional talent. And since he must have been doing something right to get promoted, he sees no need to change. To his incompetence he has added arrogance, stubbornness, and an utter lack of self-awareness.

Yes, the experiment of promoting Jimmy the Kid to management has exceeded my wildest expectations.