Goldman Severance: A Restructuring Without a Formula
David Solomon launched Project Voyage in the fourth quarter of 2024 as a three-year program to remove approximately $1.3 billion in operating costs by 2027. The program runs on three levers simultaneously. First, relocation: Goldman is moving roles from New York City to Dallas and Salt Lake City, and managers were given a blunt March 2025 ultimatum in Bloomberg and Fortune's coverage: "move or leave." Second, rolling performance-based layoffs, replacing the long-standing annual Strategic Resource Assessment with continuous cuts targeted at VPs with poor reviews. Third, artificial intelligence and offshoring, particularly to Bengaluru, eliminating roles that no longer require US-based execution.
The cumulative effect by mid-2026: roughly 5,000 cuts across Q4 2024, March 2025, and January 2026 waves, on a base of approximately 46,500 employees at year-end 2024. The bank booked these reductions despite record profitability. Q4 2024 earnings were $4.11 billion, the highest in the bank's history at the time. Solomon's public framing has been that Goldman has "too many VPs," and that the bank's competitive position requires a leaner cost structure than the post-pandemic build-out left behind.
For affected employees, the structural reality is unique among major US banks. Unlike JPMorgan (structured 2-weeks-per-year, 52-week cap), Citi (Project Bora Bora plus a publicly filed CAP continued-vesting clause), BofA (the silent shrink avoiding WARN), and Wells Fargo (8-week minimum, 2-weeks-per-year, 52-week cap, 60-day garden leave), Goldman does not publish a severance plan exhibit on SEC EDGAR. Packages are discretionary, not formulaic. That changes the entire negotiation posture.
The Short Answer
Goldman has no SEC-filed grade-tier severance plan. The most reliable employee-reported framework (from Fortune's January 2023 coverage of the mass-cut event, eFinancialCareers reporting, SimpleSeverance, and Glassdoor) describes a tiered structure that scales sharply with title:
- Analyst / Associate: 4-8 weeks of pay
- VP: 3-6 months
- Director / MD: 6-12+ months
- Partner: discretionary, typically 12+ months with deferred-compensation negotiation
The standard NYC mechanism layers two phases. First, approximately 60 days of continued "active employment" at full base salary with active benefits, effectively a notice / garden-leave period. Then a base-pay severance window of roughly 5 weeks, extended for years of service. The total NY norm reported by eFinancialCareers is two to three months of total pay (active period plus severance) for analyst and associate cuts, scaling up materially for VP and above.
What is NOT included by default: bonuses. The single biggest grievance from the January 2023 mass-cut event was that affected employees lost their full prior-year bonus accrual. Goldman's standard package excludes bonus payment unless individually negotiated, which is the single most common ask in published employee reports.
What is also gone: PTO carryover, which Goldman eliminated in spring 2022. Vacation balance is forfeited on layoff date if not used beforehand.
Project Voyage: The Three-Year, $1.3B Cost-Out
Bloomberg and Fortune surfaced the program's existence in Q4 2024 coverage. The three operating levers:
Relocation to Dallas and Salt Lake City. Goldman is shifting roles out of high-cost NYC to lower-cost regional centers. Affected employees face a binary choice: relocate (often with limited family-impact flexibility) or exit. The March 2025 ultimatum framed this directly. For employees with NY-anchored personal lives, the relocation ask functions as a soft layoff.
Rolling performance-based layoffs. The annual Strategic Resource Assessment, which had cut approximately 3-5% of staff each year for over a decade, is being replaced with continuous performance-tagged exits. The shift removes the predictable annual cull rhythm and creates ongoing uncertainty across the year.
AI and offshoring to Bengaluru. Specific roles in operations, engineering, and analytical support are being moved offshore or eliminated entirely via AI tooling. The bank has not published headcount targets for this lever publicly, but ProspectRock Partners and PYMNTS analyses estimate substantial cuts in NY and other US locations during 2026.
The cumulative target is approximately $1.3 billion in operating cost removal by 2027. Goldman's annual operating expense base is roughly $34 billion, so the program represents about 4% of total operating costs (material but not transformative). The strategic intent is to defend the efficiency ratio against the bank's revenue-volatility profile (heavily dependent on investment banking and trading volume).
The Dallas / SLC Ultimatum Is The Distinctive 2026 Angle
In March 2025, Solomon told managers that they could "move to Dallas or Salt Lake City, or leave." Bloomberg's coverage included the direct quote. The choice is structurally important for severance because it creates a category of employees (those who refused relocation) whose departures should be classified as involuntary terminations triggering full severance, not voluntary resignations.
The legal distinction matters. Voluntary resignation typically forfeits severance and any unvested deferred compensation. Involuntary termination, including "constructive discharge" where the working conditions become so adverse that resignation is reasonable, preserves severance and triggers continued-vesting questions for unvested equity.
For affected employees who refuse the relocation, the negotiation playbook is straightforward: secure written documentation that the departure is treated as an involuntary termination for severance purposes, then layer the standard Goldman negotiation asks (bonus inclusion, garden leave extension, unvested deferred-equity carve-out) on top.
The Discretionary Package Structure
Goldman's lack of a public severance plan filing is unusual among large US banks. CVS Health publishes its non-store severance plan on SEC EDGAR (CVS Q3 2023 Ex. 10.1). Citi publishes its CAP and Deferred Cash award agreements on EDGAR. Goldman's equivalent documentation is internal.
For affected employees, the practical implication is that the negotiation range is wider: both ceiling and floor. Packages by level (from employee reports across Fortune, eFinancialCareers, SimpleSeverance, and Glassdoor):
Analyst and Associate. 4-8 weeks of base pay severance plus the standard 60-day active period. Effectively 2-3 months total. Minimal individual negotiation leverage at this tier; most cuts at this level are formulaic in practice even though they are nominally discretionary.
Vice President. 3-6 months total package value. This is where the discretionary nature starts to matter. Garden leave extension, bonus proration, and outplacement upgrades become real items.
Director and Managing Director. 6-12+ months total package value. Garden leave of 3-6 months is common at this tier; longer is achievable. Unvested PSU and RSU continued-vesting carve-outs are the largest single financial item to negotiate. Goldman defers 30-50% of MD bonuses in equity, often vesting over 4 years, so an MD with 2-3 years of unvested awards is looking at potentially millions in deferred comp at risk.
Partner. Fully discretionary, typically 12+ months with individually negotiated deferred-comp treatment. Partners exiting from the bank carry both Partner Equity Awards and tax-advantaged deferred compensation structures that require specialist counsel to navigate.
The 2023-2026 Layoff Cycle
The cumulative footprint of named events:
- January 2023: ~3,200 cuts (~6-6.5% of workforce), the largest single cut since 2008. Concentrated in investment banking, global markets, and the Marcus consumer-banking division as Goldman retreated from retail. NY WARN filed January 9 and amended April 4, 2023, totaling approximately 2,921 NY positions running through September 30, 2023 (Reuters, NPR, CNN, Washington Post)
- May-June 2023: ~250 cuts in a third-round event including approximately 125 managing directors. This was the first MD-targeted cut in the cycle, tied to the deal-making slump (CNBC, Fortune)
- October 2023: ~450 cuts in the annual performance cull (~1% of workforce). Concurrent with reorganization folding Marcus into Asset and Wealth Management and accelerating GreenSky divestiture (Banking Dive)
- Q4 2024: ~1,500 cuts in the annual SRA targeting 3-4% of the ~46,500 global workforce. Spokesperson called it "normal, standard, customary" (Bloomberg, PYMNTS)
- Q4 2024: Project Voyage launched publicly as the multi-year $1.3B cost-out program
- March 2025: ~1,395 cuts in the SRA targeting VPs with poor reviews (Solomon's "too many VPs" framing). Came alongside record $4.11B Q4 2024 profit (TheStreet, Outlook Business)
- March 2025: 343 NY WARN filed for NYC HQ positions effective June 22, 2025 (NY DOL WARN, WARN Tracker)
- March 2025: Dallas / SLC relocation ultimatum announced (Bloomberg, Fortune)
- January 2026: ~400 initial cuts in the Project Voyage AI-driven restructuring; estimated 1,000-3,000+ over the full year. Impact concentrated in investment banking, global markets, and VP-level operations / admin / IT (ProspectRock Partners, PYMNTS)
WARN Tracker shows 33 separate Goldman WARN notices covering 5,893 workers since November 2008.
The Bonus Exclusion Problem
The single largest financial gap in a standard Goldman severance package is the bonus exclusion. Banker compensation at Goldman is structured with low base salary relative to total compensation: an analyst on $110,000 base typically earns $200,000-$230,000 total in a normal year; an MD on $500,000 base might earn $1.5-3M total. The bonus is the majority of the compensation.
The standard Goldman severance does not include bonus by default. Affected employees lose the prior calendar year's bonus accrual entirely if separated before the payout date (typically late January or February). For a Q4-cut employee, this is often the single largest dollar item missing from the offer, substantially more than the cash severance itself.
The negotiation ask is bonus proration based on time worked in the accrual year. Goldman has granted this on individual cases per published employee reports, particularly for MDs and revenue producers with documented year-end performance. The clean argument is that the bonus accrual reflects work already performed, not future services. Affected employees should make this ask explicitly and document it in the separation agreement.
Garden Leave Is THE Lever for VP+
For employees at VP and above, garden leave duration is the single highest-value negotiation item. The mechanics:
During garden leave, the employee remains on full payroll with active benefits. Equity vesting continues on schedule (unlike during a severance pay window, where vesting typically stops). Bonus accrual continues for the period during which the employee is on payroll. Health and welfare benefits remain active. Non-compete clocks typically run concurrently with garden leave, so extending garden leave often reduces post-employment non-compete duration.
The reported standard is 30-90 days for VP+ (Fortune, SimpleSeverance). The negotiated range extends to 3-12 months for senior staff with documented contribution and credible alternative-employment risk. For revenue producers, the case is straightforward: garden leave for the protective non-solicit window is structurally aligned with Goldman's own interest.
The ask is concrete: "Extend my garden leave to [X] months." Easier to land than incremental cash severance, more valuable in total compensation terms because of the equity-vesting continuation, and cleaner administratively.
Negotiation Angles for Goldman Employees
Five angles work in practice for the current cycle:
Reclassify relocation-refusal as involuntary. Critical for the Dallas / SLC ultimatum cohort. Document in writing that departure is treated as involuntary termination, not voluntary resignation.
Bonus proration. The single highest-value ask for any employee separated before the prior-year bonus payout. Make it explicit, in writing.
Garden leave extension. The single best lever for VP+. Pushes total compensation forward and aligns with non-compete clocks.
Unvested PSU / RSU continued vesting. Compensation Committee has discretion. Achievable for MDs and Partners with material unvested balances. Less common but real.
Chen-Oster disparate-impact lens. Sanford Heisler Sharp settled the gender-discrimination class action against Goldman for $215M covering 2,800 women and continues to investigate Goldman layoffs for disparate impact. Protected-class affected employees should consider this lens before signing any release that includes ADEA and Title VII waivers. The federal EEOC guidance on ADEA waivers requires 21-day consideration windows (45 days for group layoffs) plus a 7-day revocation window. That statutory time is real. The federal WARN Act overview is the authoritative source on the 60-day notice obligation that triggered the March 2025 NYC filing.
For peer-bank context, see the JPMorgan Chase severance breakdown, the Citi severance breakdown, the BofA silent-shrink breakdown, and the Wells Fargo asset-cap-lift breakdown. Each major US bank has a structurally different severance posture.
The Bottom Line
Goldman severance in 2026 is the most discretionary among major US bank packages, governed by no publicly filed plan and structurally tied to title and individual circumstance rather than a formula. Project Voyage's three-year $1.3B cost-out continues through 2027, with the Dallas / SLC relocation lever, rolling performance-based cuts replacing the annual SRA, and AI / Bengaluru offshoring all running simultaneously. For affected employees, the negotiation playbook revolves around the bonus exclusion gap, the garden-leave extension lever for VP+, the involuntary-termination classification for relocation refusers, and the Chen-Oster disparate-impact lens for protected-class members.
The discretionary structure cuts both ways. The ceiling is higher than at peer banks where formulas cap exposure. Partners and MDs can negotiate packages that vastly exceed what JPMorgan or Wells would pay at the same level. The floor is also lower for analysts and associates, who get less from the discretionary process than the structured formulas at peers would produce. Goldman is, structurally, a bank where individual negotiation matters more than at any of its competitors.
This article is a guide, not legal advice. Goldman's discretionary packages, lack of public plan documentation, and substantial deferred-compensation positions for senior staff create individual circumstances that vary widely. If you hold material unvested PSUs or RSUs, are at VP or above, are in the Dallas / SLC relocation cohort, or have any protected-class concern about your termination, consult a qualified employment attorney before signing.
Use the SeveranceCalc estimator to model the level-based ranges as a starting point for the conversation with HR.