Lehman employees were also angry with their final CEO, Dick Fuld. At one point there was a now-debunked rumor that he got punched in the face at the company gym a few days after that bankruptcy.

Dick was a dick even for a big swinging dick on Wall Street and he spurned several last minute lifelines, so, at the time, people in the industry universally approved.

A fast, dramatic demise of a massive company leaves scars. Almost 15 years on, former Lehman lifers are still salty about what happened. Perceived mismanagement ("They squandered it!") and regulatory failure ("They bailed out our competitors but not us!").

The former are similar to the feelings of older engineers who worked at IBM, Intel, Palm, Yahoo, Nokia, etc during their heyday.