Lehman Brothers

The last 4 months have been a crazy whirlwind. I was an employee of Lehman Brothers during it's demise. For those who know, that weekend went fast, without a single doubt, each of us expected a normal resolution; maybe a industry consortium bailout, maybe the Fed will extend a loan, maybe a last minute buyer. None of us expected a bankruptcy filing. That Monday felt like being shell shocked. Everything you worked for, all your hard work, gone, abandoned. All those meetings about tiny little minutia's of detail. All that time, coming up with the perfect design, the clean integration, the cleanest build file, the good interface - puff.

Some of the guys have worked their whole lives at the Firm. Think about it, you spend the last 20 years of your life building something. Sometimes you work late, sometimes even on weekends. You meet tough deadlines, you build out the system, you have projects, and Jira items, and future ideas for improvements, and then one Sunday evening, it all disappears in a single 20 second news-clip.

What can I say about that Monday, a lot of guys were afraid. Single earners, mortgage, kids, car payments, private school, dance lessons, ... It was never a problem before, the Firm was known for it's bonuses. The irony of having more money, is that your expenses rise proportionately. Some of the guys were hit very hard. A lot of the bonus is paid in Lehman Stock, part of the 401K is in Lehman, the firm also promoted personal investing in the stock. All in all, if you were with the firm for 20 years, you have a major percent of your worth tied with the company, and then it's gone.

The next few weeks gyrated between moments of team comradery and private lonely introspection. Every person came to work on time and stayed for the full day. Most of the guys, myself included, kept to the Lehman dress code of full business attire. I think it was a out of respect for the Firm, or perhaps, just routine.

Barclays purchase of the firm provided a rare glimmer of hope, a possibility of normality. It wasn't so much as having your job saved, which is of course very important, as a possibility of saving what you've built. Someone using what you've worked so hard to create. As time dragged on, it became clear that Barclays had no intention of taking our system, so, a glimmer of hope slowly changed into despair with a dash of anger. Barclays, of course, wound up laying off most of us. The system I've worked on was trashed.

Today, I am at another company, assigned the task of comparing Lehman system's to my new employer systems. This is how Barclay's employees must have felt when they found out their company was buying Lehman. It's us or them. And, so I do what is requested of me. I criticize and destroy the very systems I promoted, just a few months ago.

I have the deepest respect for the Firm. I have never worked for a company like that. They really tried to create something more then the sum of themselves. I shall miss it.