Jealousy and envy

the people who joined you as an analyst or associate sometimes at the most prestigious firms, progressively leave or are made to leave. Employment musical chairs that can be a bit of a “Hunger Games” type of competition.

Thus, jealousy, backbiting, intrigue, ass-kissing and even sabotage are everyday events at the global investment banks. It often isn’t just even watching your back, beware of frontal attacks, too, plus office-wide cutbacks.

Having been in the industry for 36 years until I retired in 2022, it was amusing when I became senior to watch the machinations of some juniors who did not realize how blatantly obvious yet ineffective they were at internal politics.

I got rid of some of them as it was a great opportunity to be rid of substandard performers or worse, and often, the most political and negative were the stupidest ones that somehow made it into the analyst or associate pool. The key is many of them eventually were kicked out and stayed out. Though they are the most dangerous ones if they manage to stay, and many of them manage to do so, especially at the bigger and more bureaucratic firms.

For the better performers who overplayed the game, I often spoke to them as their senior to advise them to tone it down and not ruin their own reputation given their promise.

That brings me to advice I was given when I was a VP at Salomon Brothers in Hong Kong in 1994 from the head of investment banking of Asia. I was having a very good year, was the leading revenue generator in Asia that year and was told not to worry about pay, bonus and promotion at the end of the year even though I had just joined a few months earlier.

He added, don’t worry about what others are paid if you are paid well. There will be years when you will be overpaid and others when you are underpaid, the key is overall, are you being paid and treated fairly. Don’t waste your time and energy on others. In other words, if it is good for you, don’t obsess on others. Am happy he gave me that advice, and I followed it.

Alas, nearly nobody follows that. We are all not willing to share our total compensation (salary and bonus) with others. Below MD level, everybody shares, so they literally know where they stand and the gratitude, recrimination, envy and intrigue get into high gear around this time of the year as most bonuses are communicated in February and paid at the end of the month in most firms.

When I was invited to give a speech to the graduating scholars of Ateneo in 2015, one of my themes was jealousy. My point was to be as hardworking and successful as you can, but realize there will always be someone more successful than you. Then rather than be bitter, take pride in your accomplishments and keep striving to improve and never give up on that.

My example was when I got a new boss at Merrill Lynch in the late 1990s, I brown-nosed and said he must be very proud to be made head of investment banking for Asia, and his answer amused me as he was a Harvard undergrad and a Stanford MBA. He said he felt like a failure, and his entire Harvard class felt the same way. When I asked why he said, “We are from the Harvard class Bill Gates dropped out of.” That got a big laugh. I went on to elaborate and added Bill Gates is jealous of Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs is dead.

Another corollary is how you react to the success of others, especially competitors. Every time I did a noteworthy deal, most of my competitors in the Philippines would backbite and intrigue. In Hong Kong and New York, most at least at the leading firms, tried to do better than me. And often did. Then I tried to do better in response.

For countries and firms, I have found that to be an accurate indicator of relative success. Do most act bitter or try to do better? If more try to do better, that for me is a good sign of outperformance for a firm or country. For investing in countries or working for or investing in investment banks, it has been the most reliable indicator to me.

Recently, when I gently corrected a former business gossip columnist on an error in one of his Facebook posts (he no longer has a column in a newspaper), he went defensive and ballistic, and went on a three-day rant instead of correcting what was clearly wrong and moving on.

He also brought up lots of unrelated points and canards in a bizarre attempt to goad me and perhaps assuage his fragile ego. Or perhaps that is his preferred way of responding, by doing the equivalent of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.

As I told him, which is related to this topic of jealousy in response to one of his feeble attempts to goad me — the success of others does not diminish mine, and the failures of others does not increase my success.

But the best advice I can share on jealousy and success is my favorite quote from “The Greatest” Muhammed Ali — “It is not the mountain ahead that wears you out, it is the pebble in your shoe.”

I have succeeded most when I had the wisdom and maturity to follow Ali’s advice, and often failed when I did not.