Wall Street's Nightmare: Working For Nothing (Except Your Salary)
Wall Street's work has ground to a halt. Employees are huddled around fiery trash barrels, discussing their much-diminished bonus pools. CEOs are ordering lowly executives to keep their money woes quiet. It's worse than we thought: they're getting nothing.
Except for their hefty salaries, that is. This isn't fucking charity, you know. But bonus-wise, enough Wall Streeters are getting nada that they've coined a fun nickname for them, "The Zeros." Who are these unfortunate lepers of finance?
While Zeros are turning up in the ranks of back-office employees and midtier bankers and traders who typically earn $250,000 to $500,000, their bosses way up the compensation ladder are still expected to notch handsome paydays in the millions.
It's so dire that the head of one executive search firm tells the New York Times, "I would not want to be head of compensation at a Wall Street firm right now." I dunno. Get paid several hundred thousand dollars a year in order to tell bankers they're not getting shit? Sounds like America's greatest job.
