A former Goldman partner reflects on being 'challenging to work with'
Courtesy of Goldman Sachs
- Former Goldman partner Fred Baba shared the goodbye note he sent colleagues.
- He left Goldman in 2023 to join Jane Street as a trader. He shared the note on LinkedIn.
- His letter offered candid advice for senior leaders and young professionals alike.
When Frederick Baba left Goldman Sachs after nearly a decade, he didn't send the typical farewell note on his way out the door.
The former Goldman partner — who left the bank to join the secretive quant-trading firm Jane Street in late 2023 — published a surprisingly candid reflection on LinkedIn this week, revealing that colleagues once considered him "challenging to work with." He shared the goodbye note he originally sent to Goldman staff to mark two years since leaving the firm.
Baba — one of Business Insider's Rising Stars of Wall Street in 2020 — wrote that he believed colleagues had viewed him as difficult for years, and conceded they may have had a point.
He fixated on driving concrete results, he said — "I was obsessive about commercial outcomes, I had a lot of opinions about things" — and pushed his views so forcefully that he could come off as polarizing. "I focused more on winning arguments than getting people to come along with me," he continued.
At Goldman, Baba drew wider attention for a 2020 email he wrote about the experience of being Black following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. In late 2022, he reached the upper echelons of the firm when the then-managing director on the systematic market making team was promoted to the rank of partner. That authority came with unintended consequences.
"As I became more senior, I became effective at getting people to do as I say," he reminisced, "but I noticed a chilling effect on outside ideas, making it harder to know if I was actually right."
A central theme running through the letter was the idea that leaders should make disagreement easy and safe. As he put it: "Present your arguments gently, make it easy for people to disagree with you, and actively seek feedback and opposing viewpoints."
Advice for future leaders
The note included thoughts for senior leaders and junior analysts alike. Baba said Goldman taught him how to rally people behind ideas and develop others to take on larger roles.
He encouraged current managers to do the same: "To the current leaders: Cascade information, give feedback, and teach them to drive. An early manager at GS would often say that he couldn't move up if there was no one else to do the job he was currently doing. The teams I've worked on have performed at the highest levels when the people leading them delegated and elevated effectively."
He urged newcomers to high finance to evaluate their careers over one-, three-, and five-year timeframes. And landing a promotion, he noted, rarely happens by chance. He said he checked in regularly with senior stakeholders, sought broad feedback, and made sure the results of his work aligned with their expectations.
Baba also quoted a line from a 2003 Jay-Z song, beginning with a recording by Biggie, saying: "The key to staying on top of things is to treat everything like it's your first project. Like it's your first day working as an intern."
He closed with reflections on the reputation he hoped to leave behind.
"We don't get to choose how people remember or speak about us," he wrote. "People often talk about leaving a legacy, but ultimately how we're remembered and spoken of is a separate thing to who we choose to be, how we show up, and how we treat others."