Goldman Sachs‘ latest cost-cutting initiative, internally nicknamed “Project Voyage,” will ask select managers to move from central hubs like the bank’s downtown New York City office to emerging locations like Salt Lake City and Dallas — or leave the company.
According to a Bloomberg report, the investment bank is shipping its managers to growing locales to help develop talent pipelines in regions where the company is growing, thanks to the efforts of mainly junior-ranking employees.
Moving managers to Dallas and Salt Lake City could also allow Goldman to capitalize on office space. The cost of renting a commercial office building in Manhattan was about $80 per square foot, compared to around $26 per square foot for Salt Lake City and Dallas.
Meanwhile, Goldman is building a $500 million campus in Dallas in 2028 and is on track to increase its current headcount of 4,600 employees in the area to 5,000 by the time the office opens.
Living and working outside of NYC also provides employees more value to their paychecks — NYC’s cost of living is 130% higher than the national average, with a median rent of $7,749 per month, per Payscale. Meanwhile, Salt Lake City’s overall cost of living is 10% higher than average, with a median rent of $1,944 per month, and Dallas’ cost of living is 2% higher, with a median rent of $1,497 per month.
As part of Project Voyage, Goldman Sachs is gearing to cut around 3% to 5% of its 46,500-person workforce in the coming months. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Goldman will make cuts in the spring this year, instead of in September as the bank has done in recent years.
According to Business Insider, Goldman divisional heads are currently determining who to cut and relocate. Some jobs that are lost through cuts this spring will be backfilled with roles outside of New York in lower-cost locales like Dallas.
In the long term, Goldman seeks to reduce expenses by $1.3 billion overall by laying off some employees and moving others to lower-cost locations. The bank first voiced the objective at its first-ever investor day in 2020, per Bloomberg.
Project Voyage began in the fourth quarter of 2024 as a multi-year initiative to save the company money, per BI. The layoff and relocation plan affects multiple divisions across the bank, including global banking and markets, engineering, marketing, and operations.
According to the WSJ, the layoffs will focus on decreasing the number of vice presidents at Goldman. VPs, a group between associates and managing directors, are a large and costly part of the bank, with their ranks ballooning out far enough in recent years that VPs have been reporting to other VPs instead of managing directors, per BI.
Glassdoor data shows that a Goldman VP can cost the bank up to $325,000 in base pay per year. Third-year VPs can earn over $1 million in salary and bonuses, a Goldman headhunter told eFinancialCareers.