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 {{a|myth|{{image|Ironmountain1|jpg|}}}}{{d|Employment derivatives|/ɪmˈplɔɪmənt dɪˈrɪvətɪvz/|n|}}Financial instruments designed to manage the risk of employment variability. First developed in the early part of this millennium by derivatives pioneer and perennial boiler of pots, {{author|Hunter Barkley}}.
 ====Genesis====
-{{Drop|W|hen midway through}} his annual rant about the meaningless of life as viewed through the lens of his income, Hunter Barkley had an epiphany. For sure, his own pay packet was a material, unhedged contingency in his life. The perpetual disappointment that it rained upon his sorry existence had, he knew, little to do with how good he was at it (work, or existence for that matter). He knew, too, that his experience was common to the great dreary sweep of humankind that crawled blearily across the clanking gears of global industry.
+{{Drop|W|hen midway through}} his annual rant about the meaningless of life as viewed through the lens of his income, Hunter Barkley had an epiphany. He knew his own pay packet was a material, unhedged contingency in his life: the perpetual disappointment it rained upon his sorry existence had little to do with his own acumen. He knew, too, that this experience was common to the great dreary sweep of humankind as it clambered it's bleary across the indifferent clanking gears of global industry.
-That was not his revelation, but this: just as that great collected horde of mortgaged servants were severally at the whim of wanton Gods, so too, necessarily, were the employers who stood the other side of the trade. Firms were long what their servants were short. Only at a ''far greater scale''. Businesses — particularly ''boring'' businesses — bobbed ineptly at the mercy of hysteria’s fickle tides when they flood the market.
+That was not his revelation, but this: just as that great collected horde of mortgaged servants were at the several whims of wanton Gods, so too were their employers. They must  be: after all, they were the other side of the same trade.
-An employer of turgid multitudes — a good-sized bank, for example — was in a constant war to prevent its pedestrian operations personnel from being lured away by exciting but stupid enterprises enraptured by the latest techno-craze. Just the effort to stem the outflow might cost a bank ''billions'' of dollars.<ref>The maths was like so: assume 40,000 people at an average total compensation of about $300,000, with a ratio of discretionary to fixed of between 20% and 50%</ref> As the inflated expectations in the new sector foundered, the bank would find itself spoilt for choice and its wage bill would collapse.
+Firms were long what their servants were short —only at a ''far greater scale''. Businesses — particularly ''boring'' businesses — bobbed ineptly at the mercy of hysteria’s fickle ebb and flow.
-In any case, this employment cost volatility bore little relation to the bank’s own performance, none at all to its employees’. It was a simple measure of that background market euphoria. Different types of firm were “long” or “short” this babbling hysteria, which he labelled ''π'',<ref>From the Greek παράνοια, (''paranoia''). It was also pleasing that π conveys circularity, running on a hamster wheel and so on, all of which Barkley recognised to be fundamental properties of the employment relationship.</ref>  at different points in the hype cycle.
+A worker had a single measure of this risk. Her master had literally thousands. An employer of turgid multitudes — a good-sized bank, for example — was in a constant war to prevent pedestrian, but vital, operations personnel from being lured away.
-At its onset, “[[Trad fi|trad-fi]]”, “bricks-and-mortar” firms are [[Short|''short'']], and delusional start-ups, [[Long|''long'']] ''π''. Eventually, the lunacy levels off. As reality sets in and employment relations [[Mean reversion|revert to mean]], the ''π'' curve flattens and then eventually inverts. If one could only match off long and short exposures, Barkley realised, firms on either side of the bid could hedge their exposure to π.
+The foe upon this reckoning were the waves of exciting but stupid enterprises propelled at any time by the belief that [[this time is different|things were different]]. Why they believed this scarcely mattered, but it often had to do with technology.<ref>inventions like the internet, web commerce, credit derivatives, distributed ledgers, large language models are examples. </ref>
-In one of those cruel ironies to whose martial cadence our lives keep time, Barkley was laid off and, shortly afterwards, imprisoned for manipulating [[LIBOR]], before he could figure out a way of monetising his idea.
+At the height of any such craze, merely stemming the stampede could cost a bank ''billions'' of dollars.<ref>The maths was like so: assume 40,000 people at an average total compensation of about $300,000, with a ratio of discretionary to fixed of between 20% and 50%</ref> As the inflated expectations in the new sector foundered, the bank would find itself spoilt for excellent choice but committed to absurd remuneration packages for those it had managed to retain. Its usual approach to rectification — tactical redundancy — was expensive and tended to dent morale, even among those who got to stay.
+In any case, this employment cost volatility bore little relation to the bank’s own performance, none at all to its employees’. It was a simple measure of that background market euphoria.
+''Why couldn't you hedge away this voltility?'' Barkley’s experience trading [[interest rate swap]]s provided a perfect analogy.
+Different types of firm were “long” or “short” this babbling hysteria, which he labelled ''π'',<ref>From the Greek παράνοια, (''paranoia''). It was also pleasing that π conveys circularity, running on a hamster wheel and so on, all of which Barkley recognised to be fundamental properties of the employment relationship.</ref>  at different points in the hype cycle.
+At its onset, “[[Trad fi|trad-fi]]”, “bricks-and-mortar” firms are [[Short|''short'']], and delusional start-ups, [[Long|''long'']] ''π''. Eventually, the lunacy levels off. As reality sets in and employment relations [[Mean reversion|revert to mean]], the ''π'' curve flattens and then eventually inverts.
+If one could only match off long and short exposures, Barkley realised, firms on either side of the bid could hedge their exposure to π.
+In one of those cruel ironies to whose martial cadence our lives keep time, before he could figure out a way of monetising his idea Barkley was laid off and, shortly afterwards, imprisoned for manipulating [[LIBOR]].
 ==== A chance encounter ====
-{{Drop|B|arkley’s fortunes would}} change following a chance encounter in an upscale cocktail bar in West London. As she neared her [[Schwarzschild radius of alcohol consumption|gin horizon]], HR manager Anita Dochter, was bellyaching to her old pal and erstwhile colleague [[Cass Mälstrom]], about the unstaunchable stream of defections from her firm, a sleepy mid-market broker headquartered in Peterborough.
+{{Drop|B|arkley’s fortunes would}} change following a chance encounter in an upscale cocktail bar in West London.
+{{Drop|A|s she neared}} her [[Schwarzschild radius of alcohol consumption|gin horizon]], HR manager Anita Dochter embarked upon a long and elliptical disquisition to her old pal and erstwhile colleague [[Cass Mälstrom]]. She was agitated about the unstaunchable stream of defections from her firm, a sleepy mid-market broker headquartered in Peterborough.
+At the time Wickliffe Hampton was haemorrhaging hundreds of compliance and onboarding staff each month to venture capital-funded dot-com start-ups. Mälstrom herself was an example: not three months earlier she had been enticed from a project stream lead role in the firm’s client money compliance change management programme and was now [[Co-head|Co-deputy CIO]] of legaltech darling [[lexrifyly]].
-At the time the firm was haemorrhaging hundreds of compliance and onboarding staff each month to venture capital-funded dot-com start-ups. Mälstrom herself had been plucked from the firm’s client money compliance programme to be [[Co-head|Co-deputy CIO]] of legaltech darling [[lexrifyly]] not three months earlier. [[lexrifyly]] had no product to speak of, no business model, customers or plan but was flush with stupid amounts of cash, a great [[Microsoft PowerPoint|deck]] and an unshakable conviction in goosing its burn rate by overpaying for bums it didn’t need on seats it didn’t yet have.
+[[lexrifyly]] had no product to speak of, no business model, customers or plan but was flush with stupid amounts of cash, a great [[Microsoft PowerPoint|deck]] and an unshakable conviction in goosing its burn rate by overpaying for bums it didn’t need on seats it didn’t yet have.
 “But,” complained Dochter, “we actually ''need'' our people. They actually do productive things for us. You know: [[MIS]] reports. Operational [[deep dive]]s. [[Netting]] audits. But unless we pay ''your'' stupid rates for them, which we cannot afford to do —” at this point, she fell off her stool briefly — “and give them free fruit, unlimited working from home and a soft play area — they won’t stay with us. But, ''you'',” she hissed, clambering back up and jabbing [[Cass Mälstrom|Mälstrom]] on the lapel, “right now, ''you'' don’t need ''any goddamn'' staff: you just need to show your investors you are clever, imaginative and on point doing fashionably insane things. That does not take actual staff. So stop taking ours.”