J-Source

Why one reporter left Bay Street for journalism: The Globe and Mail

After Greg Smith wrote last week's scathing New York Times op-ed outlining in detail why he left Goldman Sachs, there were a number of employees who took it upon themselves to explain why they left their morally bankrupt jobs. Tim Kiladze, now a business reporter at The Globe and Mail, was one of them. After Greg Smith wrote last week's scathing New York…

After Greg Smith wrote last week's scathing New York Times op-ed outlining in detail why he left Goldman Sachs, there were a number of employees who took it upon themselves to explain why they left their morally bankrupt jobs. Tim Kiladze, now a business reporter at The Globe and Mail, was one of them.

After Greg Smith wrote last week's scathing New York Times op-ed outlining in detail why he left Goldman Sachs, there were a number of employees who took it upon themselves to explain why they left their morally bankrupt jobs.

Tim Kiladze was one of them. Though, I'd wager he took a different path than some of these other executives will take. He left his Bay St. six-figure salary for a job that didn't pay nearly as well: a job in journalism. The Globe and Mail's business reporter describes the "rotten" culture on Bay that led him to put a price on happiness and leave the world of finance for the world of journalism. He writes

No longer do I arrive at my desk at the crack of dawn to mindlessly enter bond yields into a convoluted spreadsheet. No one tells me that my Banana Republic cardigan is too fashion-forward for the office. No longer does a superior tell me that I leave the desk to pee too many times during the day.

Though he notes that no industry is perfect (including journalism, I should add. If it were, this website would cease to exist.), there are issues inherent in Bay St. culture. 

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Most people in shiny office towers mean well. They really do. They love their kids, and they give loads of money to charity. The way they see it, every now and then they do something that is just a little offside, but it can’t be that bad.

What they don’t realize is that when everybody does just a little something wrong, it creates one hell of a mess. Rating agencies who bear some of the blame for the financial crisis relied on mathematical models that assumed widespread defaults weren’t possible. The analysts who trusted those models didn’t mean to nearly crash capitalism as we know it – they just took a shortcut.

Read Kiladze's full account of why he left Bay St. for The Globe and Mail here.