Wall Street shrinks headcount as dealmaking and trading slump

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I think we&#x27;re in for a bloodbath for white collar work the rest of this year. Trends I&#x27;ve been seeing:<p>1. The end of startup runway.<p>It&#x27;s been about a year since VC money pulled back and there were a lot of startups that only had 12 to 18 months or runway left. I&#x27;m starting to see them go out of business in waves.<p>2. Late followers starting layoffs.<p>People I know at big corporate giants like insurance companies, retail chains, etc. are starting to get laid off. This took much longer than the big tech layoffs but seem to be starting in earnest.<p>3. Severance packages and savings running out.<p>This hasn&#x27;t really happened yet for most people I know but will in the next 6 months.

&gt; With the reductions in headcount, severance costs drove up expenses across the six largest US banks. Expenses tied to personnel and compensation jumped 6% to $95.5 billion.<p>It&#x27;s almost like… the bankers were paid too much?<p>Wait wait wait… the folks involved with moving money around decided that they&#x27;re not worth as much as they&#x27;ve been compensated?<p>You mean to tell me moving money around professionally isn&#x27;t as valuable to society as maybe the last 40 years postulated it was????

Seems to pale in comparison to the number of tech layoffs ( ~220k in 2023)

Replace the lot with ai. They want to replace us anyway, without paying royalties mind you, so they might just as well start with themselves.

Most of the people who are going to be let go are pretty talented and hopefully fairly flexible. They&#x27;ll find work, maybe not at the salaries that they were getting before, but this has happened many times before.

Hi former Wall Street employees the planet could really use your help. Tech, Capital, and Web3 may be in a slump at the moment but industrial, environmental and infrastructure can&#x27;t find enough people. The pay isn&#x27;t as sexy and you may have to relocate to unsophisticated parts of the country. But if you&#x27;ve noticed, the Earth is heating up dramatically and this is a problem that can&#x27;t be solved with a spreadsheet.