Jamie Fiore Higgins was expecting twins when she had Goldman Sachs support her breastfeeding in 2008. An entire floor of Goldman Sachs was a lactation room with hospital-grade equipment, and nursing consultants available 24/7.
The reality was that Higgins’ boss, Mike, threatened that she might lose a desired promotion if she spent too many hours at the lactation center instead of her desk. Higgins, although heartbroken, was eager to succeed. “No breastfeeding,” she said through tears.
Higgins chose to store her breastmilk in the lactation center after having her fourth child in 2015. Goldman didn’t try to stop her, but her coworkers made their lack of support clear.
The first time she returned to her desk after using the lactation center, Higgins found a carton of milk placed on her computer. The second time, there was a stuffed animal cow. Another time when she went to breastfeed, Higgins heard the distinct sound of a “moo” coming from male coworkers.
“Jerry leaned back in his chair, his hands cupped on either side of his face as he called out in a deep voice, while Vito sat next to him and gestured like he was squeezing breasts,” Higgins writes in “Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs” (Simon & Schuster), out Aug. 30.
Higgins was a reluctant Wall Streeter, having graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1997 and hoping to become a social worker. But her Italian-American family in New Jersey nixed that, explaining they wanted a return on their investment after paying Higgins’ college tuition. “We didn’t take out loans to pay $35,000 a year for you to get a $20,000 job,” Higgins’ mother said.
She knew what she needed to do. Higgins passed the rigorous Goldman Sachs training program, and she became an analyst. She worked tirelessly the first year, doing so well Mike called her the “best . . . we have” and doubling the bonus she was promised to a staggering $80,000.
Between the money and her family’s insistence she stay on Wall Street, her career path was set. But that didn’t mean she understood Goldman or its employees. She was the hardworking daughter of hardworking immigrants who struggled financially, so Higgins was amazed by the “pure decadence” of the company’s required social gatherings: Cocaine was snorted in bathroom stalls and top-shelf liquors gulped greedily. Employees snacked on $200 seafood towers of lobster tails and king crabs, and wolfed down “filet mignon, New York strips, and double Porterhouses so big they hung off the sizzling plates.”
Plus, there was also sex. Higgins was first year and went to the office late at night looking for a report. Instead, she found a young female analyst kneeling in the printer room, and fell in love with her. Higgins was furious that she worked so hard for her New Jersey past, while Goldman employees treated her job like a gift. “They were able to literally d–k around while their country club parents held their safety nets,” she writes. “Here I was cramming for my pitch and they were having sex.”
Higgins witnessed a drunken division head lying on a couch, supported by his secretary, at the Goldman holiday party. Jerry, her coworker, danced with his assistant on the dance floor, his wedding ring shining as he squeezed her gyrating bottom.
Higgins found Goldman’s culture not just oversexed but misogynistic. Her first year, Jerry and Vito loudly put together an Excel spreadsheet rating the “f–kability” of the company’s newest female employees. “Let’s throw some quantitative analysis on this,” Jerry said. “Research needs to be done on these ladies. I want the following: tit size, leg length, and ass shape . .”
This behavior was never punished. Nearly 15 years later, one of Higgins’ new bosses was equally demeaning when searching for a new assistant.
“Nobody too old, too ugly, too flabby,” he announced to the laughing men on his team. “I want ’em young, high, and tight!”
’Here I was cramming for my pitch and they were having sex.’
Jamie Fiore Higgins (Goldman alum) on her sexy coworkers
Higgins was shocked by the behavior she saw at Goldman Sachs but she thrived there. Mike made his star employee “Higs” a manager, a VP, and eventually even a managing director (a position only 8% of Goldman employees reach). Her yearly bonus was over $1,000,000.
The 2006 promotion seemed to have a caveat. Higgins had stopped having children. “‘I need total devotion from you,’ Mike said. His large brown eyes were on my waist, like they were trying to send my womb a message.”
Meanwhile not everyone was supportive of Higgins’ initial promotion. “The only reason you got it is because of your vagina,” Vinny snarled.
This was a line Higgins heard often. “Most guys at Goldman assume that women who get promoted either filled a quota or screwed . . . someone.”
Goldman’s female employees shared a different story. One told Higgins she was quitting because all the meaningful work was given to the men in the office while another complained about being told she wasn’t “polished enough” though the office was filled with brutes telling dirty jokes. Most women shared stories of senior men staring at their breasts, offering unwanted shoulder massages, or suggesting they get a “room” for the night.
It wasn’t even easy being a successful female at Goldman Sachs. Higgins once took Eric, an employee at Goldman Sachs, off an account to have an affair with the client. He grabbed Eric by the throat then pressed her against a wall. Her toes were above the ground.
“If I could, I’d rip your f–king face off!” he thundered.
Alerting Mike to the situation, Higgins found her boss sympathetic — to a point. Mike said he’d talk to Eric but had no intention of firing him. Eric was a champion golfer who knew all the best courses around the world.
“I can’t afford to lose his golf connections,” Mike plainly told Higgins.
After years of professional success at Goldman Sachs, Higgins’ career was sidetracked with the arrival of a new boss, Justin, in the early 2010s. Bad behavior was not uncommon in Goldman’s offices. However, Justin, a drunken man, made a racial epithet against a black employee at a Chicago bar one night. Higgins, a loyal worker, was not able to take it. Back in New York, she registered what was supposed to be an anonymous complaint with HR but one which was quickly relayed back to Mike — and then Justin.
Higgins never again found a sympathetic ear at work. Even when she told Justin she needed time off after suffering a miscarriage, he didn’t care. “You were hardly pregnant, and it’s been three days already,” he said. “When my wife had a miscarriage, she was fine after a few days.”
When she complained that after nearly 20 years at Goldman she’d been given her first poor performance review (and her first reduction in bonus money) in 2015, Justin suggested she take down her kids’ pictures from her desk. “I need a commercial killer, Jamie, not a class mom,” he said.
When she later discovered her review included comments that she was too “motherly” and had incorporated the opinions of Jerry and Vito, Higgins realized what was happening.
“It was official: My career and reputation were being sabotaged.” While she had thrived at one of Wall Street’s biggest firms for almost two decades, she’d done it against the odds. Bosses like Justin were frequently bonding with their male peers at strip joints, on Vail skiing weekends or in Vegas bacchanals, but no women were allowed — not wives, and not even female Goldman employees.
“There was an intentionality behind this madness: to keep the strongest relationships with management and the largest clients, and therefore the influence, with these types of men. It maintained the old boys’ club and solidified its power,” Higgins writes.
Higgins realized the signs were there and decided to work for Goldman until she could get two more bonuses. After doing so in 2016, she quit to get more involved with her children’s lives.
The first morning she didn’t return to Wall Street, Higgins stayed home with four violently ill kids. It was gross, she thought — but not as gross as Goldman Sachs.
Read the full article here
