So are lavish perks and loose dress codes. With profits under pressure and the casual dot-com ethos discredited, bankers are being asked to start dressing like bankers again, and financial houses are yanking the Silicon Valley,style extras that they had been bestowing upon even their most junior employees to keep them from joining Internet start-ups. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have done away with their baskets of free fruit. Bear Stearns has said goodbye to “Bear bucks,” a $1,000 monthly allowance for food and car service; the car service for late-working employees has been scaled back, from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. On the clothes front, Lehman Brothers has announced that it will return to business-formal attire, and other firms are hinting about similar moves. A few weeks ago Bear employees received a memo from management reminding them to respect the dress code. “This is management jockeying for a moral position to say we are going back to formal,” says one disgruntled devotee of khaki pants. There are rumors that Morgan Stanley will soon follow suit. Says one Morgan employee, “I think the reason they did it was stupid , ‘the dot-coms are doing it; so should we’ , but the idea of going back is ridiculous.”
