[neplus]

Matt's said before that he reached a certain point at GS where he was expected to get more involved in sales, as opposed to just the structuring side of his desk, and felt he was quite bad at it.

Probably quite a bit of self depreciation on Matt's part though given that when he decided to quit his boss essentially said, "Why don't you just, you know, take some time off to think about it?"

I'd say someone with Matt's background and general mannerisms - even at GS where eccentricity and raw intellect, for lack of better descriptors, are traditionally valued - would be a significant outlier.

I worked at GS and I think the only people that fit the Levine mold were in weird structuring desks, like Matt was. In particular, PFI had quite a few characters that remind me of Matt. Ali Meli, who left GS recently and was written up by Bloomberg, comes to mind. Clearly intellectually above others with weird, interesting perspectives on things. Also given leash to go dream up and do weird and interesting things.

I don't think people like Matt actually have much value add in most areas of a modern investment bank, unfortunately. As Matt says: banking is boring now. I don't see how someone like Matt would succeed is traditional banking - or a flow trading desk - over the "average" GS employee who studied finance at Wharton or whatever. Most areas of banking strike me as having become very commoditized or routinized and outliers are viewed as more apt to cause tail risk than anything.

[SaffronTools]

You have to be smart to trade flow derivatives. Not only is it necessary to understand the product and pricing tools, but also you have less time to examine any given trade than your customer does, you have to deal with weird correlations and dispersions that were forced upon you by customers, your social skills and sixth/"I'm getting played" sense are just as much a part of your toolkit as are your math skills, and you aren't given too much leeway with mark-to-market p&l.

You probably noticed at GS that a risk desk won't put an employee in front of a book just because he got good grades at UPenn.

[airstrike]

Thanks for the insight. My perspective is from the M&A side which can be a little bit different / less boring (or at least I like to tell myself so)