
Morgan Stanley is cutting about 1,500 jobs - HenryKissinger
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/09/business/morgan-stanley-job-cuts-wall-street/index.html
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hiram112
USCIS should immediately deny the vast majority of H1Bs Morgan Stanley is
obviously abusing, and should make it a policy to do the same for any company
announcing layoffs.

'Analysts' making $75k in Manhattan does not appear to me as a legitimate use
of the program - that these low paid positions absolutely could not be filled
with American citizens is bullshit. More likely they couldn't find educated US
citizens willing to work 60 hours a week for $80k in NYC, with the threat of
being tossed from the country if they didn't.

I'd say any visa worker being paid less than what a typical VP makes in the
same Morgan Stanley office should be revoked, and fines should be paid.
Finance companies tend to be the worst of these abusers, and every visa they
fraudulently use means a great engineer is disallowed from working for a US
company which has a valid need for real talent.

[https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Morgan+stanley&job=&city=&...](https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Morgan+stanley&job=&city=&year=2019)

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Ozzie_osman
"Morgan Stanley plans to take a charge of approximately $150 million to $200
million because of the layoffs, a person familiar with the matter said."

At 150M / 1500 jobs, does that mean each employee cut costs $100K? If so, is
that severence pay or something else? I'm also curious what the distribution
would look like. Is it like most people get almost nothing but some big cats
get golden parachutes?

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thematt
I doubt this includes executives with golden parachutes. They typically don't
do those in bulk like this. This is more likely severance pay, immediately
vesting RSU/options, any outstanding benefits owed, and any increased
fees/taxes owed because of the layoffs.

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withaplomb
Wishing good luck to those affected.

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earthtolazlo
I’m a developer at Morgan Stanley. The layoffs were largely targeted at
technology and operations in New York and London, including a significant
chunk of middle management. Word is that there could be more in January/March
targeting lower level people and contractors. There will of course be more
layoffs to come every December for people who are too old or are make too much
money. Needless to say, I’m heading for the exits.

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cityzen
"We remain committed to controlling our expenses," CEO James Gorman said at
the time.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman pay rises 7 percent to $29 million (2018)

Sure thing there, Jimmy. Remain committed to cutting your expenses. I feel bad
you have to live on a measly $2 million dollars a month.

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jjeaff
I guess if he can figure out how to cut 1500 jobs without affecting the bottom
line, that saves the company $150m a year (assuming $100k average salaries)
and so a few more million in CEO salary seems like a drop in the bucket.

But I'm guessing you could find someone else able to cut 1,500 jobs for a
little bit less than $29 million a year.

What it really comes down to is sort of like the old "nobody ever got fired
for choosing IBM". A board of directors has no incentive to take a risk on an
unknown leader when they can hire a "brand name" one for a mere $29m.

Same reason a company pays millions of dollars for a simple rebranding logo
update or why Google pays $500k for top engineering talent. There are plenty
of cheaper options out there that might be just as good or even better. But
when the new company logo is a flop, you want to be able to say you hired the
best. Not, "Well we saved a ton of money by using 99designs."

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cityzen
Good points. I feel very fortunate that I have never had to work at one of
these megacorps (banks, tech, etc) where you're just a number on a balance
sheet. It hits me in the gut thinking about 1500 people being fired over a
bank pretending to be worried about the future.

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jorblumesea
Seems odd the cuts included tech jobs, given the increased pervasiveness of
tech in finance.

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flatiron
Just means they hire contractors for those jobs now. No way 1,500 did a
cumulative sum of 0 work.

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chank
It's likely a mix. Some jobs will get put onto other people, Some jobs will
just go away and never come back. When they feel pain they'll fill the role
with a contractor or cheaper person.

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cutler
Just out of interest, what is the main tech used in finance these days? Still
a mix of Python, Java and C#?

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gentaro
I worked at JP Morgan a couple years back, they were in the process of
migrating a ton of their legacy systems to their own terrible proprietary
Python offshoot.

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jjeaff
Why in the world would a finance company need to fork python rather than just
a custom framework or something?

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sys_64738
Nothing doing. The Street cut big in Fall 1998 and look what happened next.
Source: I worked on Wall St back then.

