for love or for money........

Water Cooler
#21

I love money?

#22

Hmm, I think I am doing finance randomly. I got some job offers in college, and just picked one.

#23

I get a thrill from buying mispriced assets and making money from it. I also have a BS in applied mathematics and very interested in quantative finance as well.

#24

People who say their passionate about investing is almost 100% a lie. If all you do is trade on who can access information the quickest and try to guess where the price of a stock is going to go whether based on fundamentals or technical analysis, you are contributing nothing to society. Now if you’re a firm doing a few deals a year looking to recap/buyout or help an owner/founder grow his/her business (could be a variety of stages) and ultimately create jobs and impact the community…I can see someone being passionate about that…making a lot of money on it…and beating the markets on the reg. Private equity people (with purpose…and money) :smiley:

#25

I did.

Evidently not.

#26

^You know how to build bombs. Barriers don’t apply to you.

#27

so you have to know you are benefiting society to be legitamately passionate? Nope!

Open your mind. You don’t need to feel like you contribute to society to feel whole… thats just how we are supposed to feel.

Personally, while I want society and everyone around me to be well and if someone needs my help, I will help… but helping others just doesn’t feel as good to me as the rush of personal growth or accomplishment. I would rather base a career around accomplishement. That does not make me souless. It does make me selfish … but selfishness is NOT bad for society because in all my selfishness I realize if those around me are not well, that is bad for me… so I am responsible person… out of selfishness.

#28

Kmeriwether, what are your top 5 ideas?

#29

^The old greed is good.

#30

***vague****

…like investment ideas, ideas for the future of mankind, …what I having for lunch today???

#31

yea, well I derived it organically when I was a personal trainer… benefiting society galore… bored to tears

#32

Good point.

#33

You are a charterholder, so I know you are trained. You had to study and put effort into being qualified for the job (bachelor’s degree, grad degree?, licensing, experience, etc.). Are you saying that you received a job offer before even being qualified or interested in the field? Are you implying that you are so awesome that you only needed qualification after your amazing intellect was “discovered” by someone?

Hey you! Yes, you the magician. I see you’re good with presentation magic. How would you like to come work for us? We need some special magic for our investment returns. They’ve disappeared lately and we need you to make them reappear. Are you interested?

I guess you could say that you’ve led a charmed life.

At least ohai says that he received offers while in college. I.E., he was training to be in finance. I will bet that ohai was not a liberal arts major, but a business major (maaaybe econ). I’ll even bet that ohai’s job is not due to random chance. I’ll bet that while in college, he showed interest and participated in interviews, recruiting, etc.

For what it’s worth, I studied nuclear engineering know how bombs are made. I don’t think it helped me to get my current job.

#34

No.

I’m saying that I was hired based on my ability to program computers and develop applications with graphics. PIMCO had had a developer who did about ⅔ of a project, then left. I was hired to finish his software.

It was only after that I was hired to finish the software that I started working in finance per se: I started analyzing mortgage-backed securities.

Sheer serendipity: I left a job in which I was programming the cameras that monitor the freeways in Orange County, CA to join PIMCO.

#35

for the love of money

#36

That sounds like a great leap.

My argument is that you had to overcome some barriers to acheive your role. You needed appropriate skills to get the first role at PIMCO and then probably needed to demonstrate continued interest and skill in staying there while transitioning to a new role, especially in a competitive environment.

The “random chance” arguments, to me, sound like someone is saying that they were apathetic and unprepared. I find that hard to believe.

Congrats on your role though. You are the man.

#37

I figured. Only someone that’s worked there would have edited my post to capitalize the letters.

#38

hacksaw.

#39

Ok, fair enough. While my specific job is random, it is already from a relatively narrow choice of finance, consulting, operations, or maybe closely related graduate school.

#40