From the Mailbag: When Was I The Happiest in My Life?
Just as I was pondering an end-of-year post, I received the following email from one of my readers:
For quite a long time, I have followed your blog. It has become a habit for me
to read your articles for Wallstreet and tech issues. I can almost feel your
enthusiasm radiating from my screen. There is a question that I want to ask
you.When were you happiest in your life?
Suffice it to say, this question sparks a wide range of thoughts and spawns even more questions. Like is “happiest” in this context work happiness, personal happiness or overall happiness? And is it possible to separate them? Also, for me happiness is very phase-dependent, as the things that made me most happy when I was 22 are different than those things that get me going at 42. The introduction of a partner, a best friend and a wife over 20 years ago changed the prism through which I view happiness, as well as the birth of my children 10 years and 7 years ago. This makes the assessment of happiness even more complicated. For starters, I will answer the question in three ways: personal happiness derived from self, personal happiness derived from others, and professional happiness. After doing this, I will seek to pinpoint the time in my life when I was happiest.
Personal happiness derived from self
That one is easy: age 27, right after graduating from business school. Ages 24-27 was a time of intense self-reflection, grappling with the transition from college to the work world and then on to being a true professional. Further, I had never been a dedicated student in my earlier years, pretty much freeloading on my ability and organizational skills to achieve at a high level in the absence of real effort. So the time I left my full-time banking job to consult and attend Columbia full-time was filled with excitement, opportunity and angst. What did I want to do? Who did I want to be? How did I envision my life 3, 5, 10 years forward? What about work/life balance? All of these thoughts permeated my thinking, leading me to make decisions that ultimately set the course of my post-grad school life. Decisions that, in retrospect, were pretty good and about which I am very proud. I actually put forth real effort in grad school, thoroughly getting into my classes and enjoying my professors, my peers and the curriculum. And this showed in my performance and what I was able to take away from coursework that influences me to this day. I cannot say the same for undergrad. It was not the school’s fault. It was my own laziness and immaturity. I chose to go into Sales & Trading and not banking as I was drawn to the math of the markets, the meritocratic culture and the fact that objective results were the driver of the domain, a culture not driven by how many hours you spend at the office but how well you perform.
So upon graduation from Columbia and with my derivatives job in hand, I had a sense of achievement and confidence that I had never felt before. I had taken a chance (by getting off the Wall Street bandwagon and going to school at my own behest), worked hard (both by working part-time and attending school full-time, and achieving at a high level) and was now ready to move my life forward in a confident, directed, proactive way. I was never more proud of myself than I was at that moment in time.
Personal happiness derived from others
That one is also pretty easy: age 31, right before the birth of my first child. I might have said when I first met my wife at a bar in Ann Arbor at age 21, or sometime during our courtship, or even the day we got married. But there was something so special, so deep and so other-worldly about the time just before our son Andrew was born that stands out. My wife and I had been together 10 years by then (married for four of them). We were very, very comfortable with each other. We knew each other’s rhythms, we could finish each other’s sentences, there was an already well-established “shared brain” that existed between us reflecting the maturity and intimacy of our relationship. All that early-relationship uncertainty, craziness and volatility had long since left, leaving in its place confident love, passion and deep friendship. Good stuff. And now there was the imminent addition of a third member to our unit, and our lives would never be the same again. A person that was part of her, part of me, and both of us. As her body changed during pregnancy and as she got more beautiful by the day, the feelings of love, warmth, and permanence in our relationship wrapped me up like warm velvet.
In many ways this was the happiest time of my life, a time that can never be reclaimed by any event because of its uniqueness in time and space. It was what it was. And what it was will never leave my brain or my heart as long as I live.
Personal happiness derived from work
Now this is really hard. There are two distinct times that stand out. The first is when I was 30 and a derivatives pro at Citibank. I had recently gotten a few industries to cover: health care and Media & Telecom. I had been given health care about six months earlier and had just gotten M&T, and was really coming into my own as a senior transactor. I had worked for the ultimate mentor for the first three years of my derivatives career, learning by his side, and then had the chance to do some stuff on my own. And false modesty aside, I did pretty damn well. I turned health care into a true partnership between banking and Sales & Trading, advising clients on comprehensive liability management strategies in tandem with the banking team. It was a potent combination and quite simply, we rocked it. I also began to chip away at some big, legacy M&T clients that were in need of help but simply hadn’t looked at us as trusted advisers. And now some of them did. And we did some excellent monetization transactions as well as buyback-related hedging strategies. I really began to see how I could cover the client base and make money in a way that hadn’t been done previously. I was making it happen. And at the end of the year I got paid well for the work I had done. It was a dizzying year with a payoff to match. It was so unreal to me. And I was very proud.
The second time is when I was 34. It was my first full year at Deutsche building the Strategic Equity Transactions Group. I had made some key hires over my first year and now, in 2000, it was time to make some serious wood. We had gone from almost nothing in 1998 (I wasn’t there yet; and DB basically razed the BT derivatives team in the wake of that acquisition) to a nice business during my first eight months on the job and the table was set for me and my team to deliver. We had planted lots of seeds in 1999, both transaction-specific as well as relationship-building that would lead to IOUs when deals needed to get done. The stars and planets aligned in 2000, and between a handful of mega-monetization transactions as well as several billion-dollar buyback hedging transactions we just killed it. The degree of our success was not expected, and the tight bond we developed with the trading desk helped create a culture that was both highly efficient and fun. I had built the team, mentored the team and gotten great people who delivered big, and as the catalyst for this effort I was also very, very proud.
The economic disparity between the two situations is stark: in the Citibank situation I took home less than 1/10th of what I got paid at Deutsche. The value of the deals done were simply much, much smaller. But if I had to pick when I was truly happiest, it is when I got my bonus after my breakout year at Citibank. It really wasn’t about the money. The money was the symbol of what really mattered: I had arrived.
Conclusion
So when was I the happiest? It depends. But if I absolutely, positively had to choose when I was the happiest in my life, I’d probably have to say right now. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot and accomplished a lot over the years. I’ve got a family whom I adore. I’ve got the greatest friends a person could have. I’ve got my health (knock on wood). I’ve made a little money. I’ve been both extremely fortunate and helped make some of that good fortune through hard work, persistence and sheer stubbornness. And notwithstanding my not-so-cheery view of the world at the moment, I do have confidence in our ability to come together as people and to make the world better for our children. So with that in mind, best to all of you for a happy and healthy 2008. And may the upcoming year be the happiest in your life and those of your loved ones.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Paul Kedrosky
EMAIL: groksoup@yahoo.com
DATE: 01/04/2008 03:20:00 AM
Sensational post, Roger. Ruminative, honest, specific, and deliciously idiosyncratic. I love ya, man.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: John Furrier
EMAIL: johnfurrier@gmail.com
URL: http://furrier.org
DATE: 01/04/2008 03:31:48 AM
nice post.. enjoying life is a good thing… nice investment list you got there…know most of those guys
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dustin
EMAIL: dustinlaverick+informationarbitrage@gmail.com
URL:
DATE: 01/04/2008 08:51:12 AM
Hi Roger,
Very interesting post. It’s nice to see the personal impacts of the professional things this blog tends to focus on.
I was curious about one thing you said:
“I chose to go into Sales & Trading and not banking as I was drawn to the math of the markets, the meritocratic culture and the fact that objective results were the driver of the domain, a culture not driven by how many hours you spend at the office but how well you perform.”
Being in the technology industry, rather than banking, I was wondering if you could say a little more about the tradeoffs between the banking and sales & trading work/lifestyles.
Thanks!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Priya
EMAIL: priya.ganapati@thestreet.com
URL: http://pganapati.blogspot.com
DATE: 01/04/2008 05:34:18 PM
Such a lovely post Roger! It’s honest, specific, insightful and offers something for everyone else to learn from. It’s exactly what I have come to expect from you whenever I chat with you!
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2 years ago
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