My mom is one of the smartest people alive in her profession, which honestly sounds ridiculous to say, but if we listed out her academic achievements, titles and practical things she did in her career in finance it’d be staggeringly long. In fact if you bank today something she created (with others of course, but as she would say “success has many fathers and failure is a bastard”) forms the basis of a good amount of transactions going on.
She eventually reached a point where there was one equivalent of her at major banks, and so she moved two times in the 90s (making people upset at the place she left)and eventually the bank she was at bought a bank she previously worked at and they canned her entire division letting the purchased bank take over that area.
She’s a wonderful person, but she’s not often wrong and that grates on people especially in a place where everyone’s ego is suitably high related to their compensation (right or wrong, personally I think wrong and she gets super mad when I say how pointless I view most of what wall street does).
Irony of ironies, it really had little to do with her but more about “institutional banking” being viewed as old and stodgy and costing profit margins, and everyone equivalent to her went along or was fired.., and the banking meltdown happened. I am in no way insinuating she could have stopped it alone, but her and her cohort and their underlings managing their teams all could have but it was conform or get out.
Other than the founder of a company, she performed such an important task, and was paid handsomely but nowhere near others at her level in different roles, some guy got a 100 mil!! bonus one year. All that and she was still let go so to speak (she does all non profit charity work now).
So I agree some people really are indispensable... but you’re only the rock of Gibraltar if you own your own company.
FWIW I never had any idea how much she made until recently, she would probably be more commonly regarded as a boglehead (she’s been in Vanguard since the mid 80s, along with most of her colleagues which REALLY tells you something about wallst)... and I got help buying a place and the rest she is donating (I think she may leave me money to pay for grandkids schooling, since I am not an Ivy leaguer -the only one in my family to my eternal shame-) but she truly would have done the work for far less, though she would never accept below market cuz who really would, and I wonder how many people that are so vital to businesses fall into that category. Want to be paid market rate or maybe top for it but it’s not fundamentally about the money. She had fuck you money by 40 and worked until 49.
This is why I own my own company (along with being an academic fuck up) and I do that and work a 9-5 until I can do my own thing full time.