It has been a terrible start to 2016, and it follows a brutal 2015.
It seems barely a week goes by without fresh news of job cuts at a top investment bank.
Morale is low, and junior bankers and traders who have just started in finance are asking themselves about the industry's long-term prospects.
Early this morning, London-based Goldman Sachs partner Joseph Mauro, head of fixed income, currencies, and commodities European hedge fund sales and cohead of European macro rates sales, sent a memo to associates at the firm addressing some of these concerns.
The fixed-income business at Goldman Sachs has seen job cuts. Goldman CFO Harvey Schwartz said in November that the bank had quietly been making cuts to the division, laying off more than 10% of staff since 2013.
The memo from Mauro addresses some of the recent departures from Goldman Sachs, and looks to put some of the industry's current travails in perspective.
Mauro, who started at Goldman Sachs in 1998 and rejoined the bank after cofounding a broadband internet company, also shares some of the advice he has received over his career.
We're told that the associates love it and they're passing it around internally. We've obtained a copy and included it below. All the images below are from the memo.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.