Once 2001 came around, the whole of Wall Street started laying people off left and right post the understanding that internet/tech downturn in 2000 was a bubble that burst. The market was not coming back. In fact, the economy was sliding into recession.
Come spring 2001, Morgan Stanley had a sweeping layoff across the board in all of its Institutional Investment Banking, Sales and Trading businesses. I watched in shock, when some of my colleagues were notified of their fate, and were asked to remove their personal belongings from their offices or cubicles that very day. Within hours and minutes after saying brief goodbyes, they were escorted out by security. I had never seen anything like it. This was only months after we all had received the largest bonus checks Wall Street had yet seen. I already knew through my strategic planning work that Wall Street was very short sighted hiring and firing people in boom and bust cycles. It was driven by the fact there was so little stability in earnings. It was always a boom bust cycle.
All those in FIG (the financial institutions coverage group in Investment Banking) who didn’t get let go, were herded into a large meeting room on another floor of our 1585 Broadway headquarters (the one you see on all the news programs with the electronic ticker-tapes running around the base of the building). One of the co-heads of FIG got up to address the nervous crowd. Most of us were all wondering: What happens now? Are we next? What about my career? My family? My life? Am I dead? Done? It was an awful feeling.
He broke the ice by trying to crack a joke, quoting a line from the then popular Survivor TV reality show, “Congratulations, you all have all made it to the next round.” I was horrified with the quote and how callous it came across. Like, Is this a game to you? Is this a big joke to management? Everyone else agreed in being appalled at the treatment. Like we were just beasts surviving this Wall Street jungle. The irony of which is he probably felt that way himself. Not knowing if he was next on the chopping block.
So now some few months later in August of 2001, I was travelling out to California with my boss – the head of the banks coverage group. We were calling on Wells Fargo’s CEO Dick Kovacevich as well as other California commercial banks’ CEOs and CFOs. The head of Morgan’s San Francisco regional office was joining with as well. They were big deal meetings, but my heart was focused elsewhere. I continued to hope for the Deutsche Bank offer to come through. I had been interviewing for it for now coming on a year. In fact that summer I had covertly travelled to London to conduct some of the interviews. But it had not come through yet. So I was starting mentally to drift into dreaming about my next gig.
Then a question snapped me from that dream into abject fear of losing my current job. My boss suggested one day on our trip, “Hey, why don’t we have a drink together after work?” Immediately a red flag went up inside me. Oh boy. He never heretofore had asked me to go “have a drink” together. Many dinners together, many golf outings, but never the notion of a “drink.” My mind immediately went to fear – wondering, am I on still on the “list” of the next round of layoffs? If I lose this job, will it jeopardize my prospects of getting the other one? My mind was racing. What am I going to do?
I was staying at the Mandarin Oriental hotel up on a high floor. In investment banking, we always stayed in the best hotels, flew first class, took clients to the best restaurants. But that day, some 40 stories up with commanding views of San Francisco bay and the iconic Transamerica pyramid building, but I was not enjoying the view.
Instead, I knelt down at the bedside and started crying out to God. Lord, have you taken me this far only for me to get laid-off? I had never been in a position of financial weakness in my business career up to that point in time. I was now 33 years old. I was now at the “Executive Director” (junior partner) level and handsomely paid – more in annual bonus than in salary. You could call it 7 figures. The thing of it was, I had always had a steady and ample paycheck since I was 14 working at Software Plus downtown Concord, MA. I had gone from opportunity to better opportunity. I had gone from promotion to promotion. I had made in to the rarified job of Investment Banking where only Ivy League business school grads tread. But what now?
As I prayed desperately for answers, I was led to a scripture in the bible. I don’t exactly remember how I got to it, but what stood out as clear as day to me was this:
Come out, come out, depart from there! Touch no unclean thing… You will not leave in haste. You will not leave in flight. For the Lord will go before you. And the God of Israel will be your rear-guard.
Isaiah 52:11-12
Wow. What an answer to prayer! I was greatly comforted by these words and my fears were dissipated. While I felt the Lord was saying He was taking me out of Morgan Stanley (which is what I wanted anyway), he was also telling me don’t worry about it. It won’t be in haste or flight. That He had me in his capable hands. The God of Israel!
Little did I understand at that point that this was God was calling his people out of the slavery and captivity of Babylon. That it has an eternal meaning and its a parallel passage in Revelation before the Lord’s return.
Come out of Babylon my people, so you will not share in her sins, nor receive any of her plagues
Revelation 18:4
That more than God taking me out of Morgan Stanley and into greener pastures at Deutsche Bank, God was essentially saying son, I am taking you out of Babylon. I wouldn’t get that full revelation until almost a decade later, circa 2009/10 through a great difficulty, struggle and suffering that God would use to transform me.