Many Former Employers Leaving Door Open for ‘Dot-Com’ Defectors
You can come home again.
At least that’s what some of Wall Street’s largest investment banks, along with law firms and accounting firms, are telling professionals who’ve left to seek fortunes in the “dot-com” economy.
Many bankers, lawyers and accountants have left their corporate comforts in recent years, lured by the potential for riches and new challenges at Internet start-ups.
But in the last month or so, some are returning, driven in part by the stock market plunge that has cut the market value of many Net firms by half or more this year. Others have tired of their entrepreneurial experiment, disillusioned by life at smaller companies that sometimes are poorly managed and offer few long-term career possibilities--and little security.
“When you are living your life looking at a stock ticker going by, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Craig Wadler, 30, who returned to investment bank Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette in late April after leaving in August for Thousand Oaks-based HomeStore.com, an online real estate firm. “But the Internet bug was inside of me, and I had to see what it was all about.”
Wadler says his decision to return, which included a raise and a better title, was spurred in part because he missed investment banking and in part because of the birth of his son, Charley, on April 27.
“My wife and I decided that the stability of DLJ was great for the family,” Wadler said.
At Bear Stearns & Co. in Los Angeles, senior managing director Cary H. Thompson said he has received several calls and letters recently from former employees wanting their old jobs back.
“People say, ‘I took a chance, I thought it was a great thing, but my stock options are underwater and this company is out of cash in two months,’ ” Thompson said. “If they are any good, we’ll take them back. We need bodies.”
Bill Lessard, co-author of “NetSlaves: True Tales of Working the Web,” and a former investment banker at what was called the Union Bank of Switzerland, said he expects to see more bankers, in particular, returning to the corporate fold.
“I think there is going to be a lot of this boomeranging,” he said. “Everything in the world of investment banking is about money and conquest. If there is no conquest left, they are not going to be slumming it at a dot-com. They were putting up with that stuff because they saw an upside. Without a pop on IPOs, they will move on.”
Of course, there still are many people leaving established companies to join dot-coms. And some who chose dot-com careers in recent years are simply moving from one start-up to another, looking for a better job and higher payoff, said Robert W. Bellano, a high-tech recruiter with Cfour Partners in Santa Monica.
What’s more, the loss of unhappy employees may be a blessing for many start-up companies, allowing them to hire people more willing to embrace their culture and work to make the business a success.
(And for those who haven’t made the transition to dot-com life, a growing wave of layoffs at struggling young firms may well force the decision to return to jobs they once found less than satisfactory.)
In any case, headhunters agree there will be more boomerangers, especially as their old firms actively recruit them back with open arms and larger salaries.
Three weeks ago, Elizabeth Caldwell, 40, returned to J.P. Morgan in New York after spending two months with a dot-com she declined to name.
She became disillusioned by the long hours, (her first day she worked till midnight), and the lack of even “the smallest creature comforts.” She shared a cramped office with four people, and lacked suitable supplies and file space.
Caldwell began to question whether it was worth waiting for a much anticipated initial public offering, or IPO, that kept getting pushed back given market and business conditions.
“I said to myself, ‘Do I want to stick around and hope these stock options amount to something?’ ” she said. “While there was a lot of enthusiasm, there wasn’t much security.”
Caldwell, who was in human resources before she left, joined J.P. Morgan’s new Lab Morgan, to recruit dot-com and other financial executives.
Other recent boomerangers in Los Angeles include Mishele Miyakawa, who returned to Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette as an investment banker after leaving to join The Brain.com Inc., a start-up software company in Santa Monica.
Some boomerangers simply weren’t cut out for the entrepreneurial lifestyle, and are just using the recent market downturn--and resultant stock losses--as an convenient excuse to return to the fold, some of their peers say. Others have found they don’t like working with unseasoned young management teams--or the lack of corporate perks.
“I’d rather stay at the Four Seasons than a Howard Johnson and I would rather have a car pick me up than rent a car,” said one boomeranger who asked to remain anonymous.
One result of the exodus of people from investment banking firms to dot-coms in recent years has been a sweetening of the pot for the people who’ve stayed.
Many banking firms have boosted their offers for new employees this year, bringing average base salaries to at least $80,000. Most firms also are offering lucrative signing packages, with a bonus of $25,000 and a guaranteed first-year bonus of the same amount.
Executives at some firms, such as Salomon Smith Barney, are offering young talent more money for meals, and considering providing concierge service to handle chores such as picking up laundry. All major investment banks have adopted a year-round casual-dress policy.
But some who are returning say it isn’t for the new perks.
“I just discovered I really liked being a banker,” Wadler said. “I missed working with some of the smartest people I’d ever met.”
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Debora Vrana covers investment banking and the securities industry for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at debora.vrana@latimes.com or by mail at Business Section, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.
