Lloyd Blankfein vs. Jamie Dimon: Whose Approval Rating is Higher?
Greg Smith lobbed a verbal Molotov cocktail in The New York Times against his former firm, Goldman Sachs, and reaction to his resignationmight lead you to believe a lot of people inside the firmagree with his negative assessment of CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Mmmmm...not so fast.
According to Glassdoor.com, Blankfein has the best approval rating on Wall Street, as judged by his own workers--a whopping 94 percent.
This is based on 525 reviews by purported Goldman Sachs employees.
I say "purported", because Glassdoor functions on something of an honor system. Identities are kept secret.
It is conceivable that Blankfein got his entire family to sign in under a few hundred aliases from hundreds of different computers to say nice things about him, though that’s unlikely.
Glassdoor says Blankfein's approval rating has been on the rise, up from 84 percent in the third quarter of last year. At 94 percent now, it is higher than the rating for Citigroup's stress-tested-out CEO, Vikram Pandit (59 percent--hey, it's over 50!).
And in a bit of a shocker, Blankfein is also more popularthan JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, who only has an 86 percent approval rating.
Still, all three men are doing better than the President.
Goldman employees give the company an overall rating of 3.8 on a scale of 1 to 5, compared to 3.1 for JPMorgan Chase and 2.9 for Citi.
These numbers are big. Glassdoor says of the more than 150,000 companies rated on its site, the average CEO approval rating is 62 percent, and the average company rating is 3.1.
Some of the comments about Goldman on Glassdoor show a lot of love, though not everyone is a fan:
“Competitive pay, good industry experience, smart people, fast paced, brand recognition, long term career goal/pay satisfaction, interaction with employees across the globe.”
“Politics and the consensus principle are often hugely detrimental to innovation; the innovation process takes extremely long because of this; not recommended for innovators and/or impatient people.”
“Solid place to work.”
"Hard work is recognized by managers. GS is a meritocracy, in which you are given a lot of responsibility once you have proven yourself.”
"A great place to start your career, you will get to learn a lot...Not a place to work when markets are down."
"The firm is starting to lose its luster, so it's harder to justify treating your people poorly for the sake of reputation.”
Finally, this comment is from an unnamed "Goldman Sachs Executive Director" (anyone we know?): “The 'prestige' factor for both the Firm and the industry is clearly not where it was 5-10 year ago, but it's still one of the top places to work.”
Ok, not even that last person sounded like he or she wanted to quit. Maybe Greg Smith is wrong, and Goldman is a great place to work. Or maybe he's right. Maybe the culture at Goldman has changed, and most employees are fine with that.
Maybe that's why he had to leave.
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