some type of adult girl

antoine-roquentin:

When advising on how much to pay for an acquisition, whether and how to begin a hostile takeover or when to bluff during a sale process, what often matter most are things that are impossible to convey via a tiny video-chat rectangle: emotional nuances, body language and subtle social cues. That’s why Wall Street bankers and traders need to get vaccinated if they aren’t already and return to their offices as soon as possible, even as the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges.

In the early 1990s, I watched Harvey Miller, a bankruptcy guru at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, go toe-to-toe in a conference room overlooking Central Park with my boss at Lazard, David Supino, as they divvied up the carcass of the disastrous leveraged buyouts of Federated Department Stores and Allied Stores. The yelling! The robust intellectual debate! The alpha male mind games! The subtle power dynamics of who pounded the table when and who ate off whose plate. Yet their jousting enabled the business — and many others — to get back on its feet.

I learned by studying Mr. Rohatyn, the mergers and acquisitions legend, as he roamed the narrow, threadbare halls of the 32nd floor of 1 Rockefeller Plaza. He wielded his absolute power through a wink or a nod to lesser Lazard partners or ignoring some of them with a stony stare. I learned to watch for those signals closely, as he advised Martin Davis, the head of Paramount Communications, in the sale of Paramount to Viacom’s Sumner Redstone in the early 1990s, a deal that transformed the Hollywood landscape.

By watching my mentors press an advantage or bluff an opponent, I absorbed their deal-making wisdom. There is simply no way that an endless series of video chats could have replaced the lessons I learned darting in and out of the offices of these men and women in Rockefeller Center or at 270 Park Avenue as I was making my way up the investment-banking ladder. (Let’s face it: You can’t suck up on a Zoom call.)

remember, our society is structured around this fucked up game of charades being compensated at a greater rate than the work everybody else does and ensuring the ego stroking, the bullshit artistry, the con man tricks, and the bluster are the most essential part of our economy’s continued functioning

(via averyterrible)