Saw this story somewhere online today:
http://nypost.com/2014/02/17/the-new-caste-of-wall-street-bankers-under-30-battle-for-supremacy/
Is that true or no? And what the hell is up with being told how to dress?
I guess from the background I came from, we were in the “check cashing business” and didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything else…
A lot of people talk about finance and making tons of money as a young person.
In reality, a lot of front end jobs have been reduced to simply prestige, like this quote:
“I basically didn’t have time to talk to people for two years,” one former analyst reflects. “And frankly, some of my friends were making the same exact amount of money I was in other industries. So a lot of nights, I sat there in the office trying to rationalize why I possibly decided to subject myself to this.”
From what I’ve seen, a lot of “front office” jobs remain incredibly competitive, and yet big bulge brackets like Credit Suisse, Barclays, UBS. etc… have discovered it to be really convienent to screw people on bonus at year-end, and then leave people with a slap, by basically saying “times are tough” AKA: HA, good luck finding another job then. This leaves the analysts / associates with no reward after working 80-100 hours a week and basically getting paid similarly with their friends in industry working 40-50 hours a week. I’ve seen a huge exodus in the past couple years of people who realized it just isn’t worth it at some roles/in certain “top name” firms.
You see Credit Suisse for example always making headlines at Dealbreaker on screwing people at bonus time. My contacts there tell me the morale is absolutely miserable. \
Isn’t this the same old song? A guy I was working with went to Audible (Amazon’s Audio Book) and now he’s back in finance. The grass is not always greener. I personally have gone to some tech networking things and the people are much more pretentious than finance ones. I could rewrite this article about the different types of people I met and how they all think they’re the best.
The Idea Guy < Making This Work After Hours < Just Quit To Make My StartUp < Worked At Place That Got Bought < Founded Place That Got Bought
These guys sit around and compare their dicks just as much and say things like “If it’s not worth quiting your job over it’s not a good idea” I just sat back and smiled while listening to what I thought were dumb ideas. Everything is so social! Yay! The only thing I hate more than not being a BSD is listening to Tech/Marketing people who use buzzwords thinking they sound intelligent.
They are the absolute WORST. “Mobile to mobile cloud based synergies.” Cool bro.
These are socially retarded engineers who dress hipster and stand around coffee shops stroking each others’ egos.
I know a guy who went GS to a prominent VC group, and now has some crap startup that has no significant revenue potential whatsoever. He has burned through personal savings well in excess of the cost of a top 5 MBA. He has zero tech skills.
I know some of them deserve to get rich, but it really bothers me that most of them will spend VC money on some dumb idea for 5 years, then jump ship for another dumb idea and repeat. Living well off of ideas that never succeed seems like stealing people’s money to me. With the valuations these days, VC money seems almost free. I doubt this can last forever.
Absolutely nothing new about it.
Despite some big differences from what I do (business valuation) and what they do, I see the same results as well regarding compensation expectations vs. actual.
Seems like I have a lot more to learn about the finance industry. AF definately helps me with that. Perhaps I’m not in a position to comment but I will say though, that I can’t be convinced to go out and buy cheaper dress shoes or clothes just because the ferragmos or whatever I wore back when I sold cars (for christ’s sake), is going to hurt some other man’s (and I use the term “man” loosely) feelings/prestige.
There is probably a large divergence in either direction when it comes to finance compensation expectations vs. reality, since compensation in finance is so variable in the first place. I find it is also true that you are generally oblivious to how much money the next guy makes. Your company might say, “sorry, your bonus is low because this is the market”, but then turn around and give someone else a large sum of money, and vice versa. This contributes to expectations that are not in line with reality.
I also think the article’s implicit conclusion, that quitting finance can make you happy, is a bit simplistic. Maybe you are happy at first, but this will change as you get older, your savings are not nearly what they could have been, and your life responsibilities increase. Consider also that the compensation/work balance in finance improves significantly after you have some experience. So the rules that apply to 25-year-olds might not be true after that age.
With that being said, in technology specifically, the success rate of people with good skills might not be truly observable from the general success rate of startups. There are essentially no barriers to entry that filter out incompetent company founders or people with bad ideas. So, we should expect most of these startups to fail. The problem is that incompetence or lack of good ideas are rarely observable in self evaluation.
While i love fashion, i have to say, it’s even worse in Japan. Practically every job there is an uniform, so if you are an ibanker, you may as well wear what people expect you to wear.
In a way, it makes your life easier because you don’t have to think about what to wear, you just have multiple of the same suits and shirts and then wear them everyday.
You can show off your fashion sense on your spare time… if you have any.
Usually I would say you are worth what the company down the street is willing to pay you. Unfortunately, the oversupply of labour has changed the landscape.
Hell yea, people are definitely leaving finance for tech. The grass is always greener on the otherside.
Last year, I had lunch with my friend, whose a developer at a cloud storage company, and his friend, who is an ex finance guy with a CS degree from MIT. My friend’s friend left a HFT job in new york to go back to tech; he said, while he makes a bit less money (he was a manager and prob made 160-180k all-in at 27yrs old), he gets unlimited vacation, free lunch and beer, and the best part – he doesn’t have to work with douches with huge egos.
But that guy was an exception, he actually had a hard skill and enjoyed being a developer. Ex-finance folks are going to tech because it’s popular, I doubt they will spend their entire weekend on Stackoverflow and Github.
Anyways, not to hijack this thread, but why are companies like Amazon, Travelzoo or Etsy considered tech? Aren’t Amazon’s core competencies low prices, variety, fast and efficient online shopping experience? Doesn’t it need to source the best products in volume with efficient logistics? If so, how is that so much different from Walmart? How is Etsy fundamentally different from an Overstock?
Most people in technology companies don’t really do technology work; they work in marketing, corporate finance, HR, and other departments, just like in any normal company. However, companies are categorized by the product that they provide to customers. To most people, Amazon is a website - their main service is an online interface through which people can buy crap. While a lot of shipping and logistics happens behind the scenes, customers do not see this and don’t care. Compare this with Walmart, which provides physical stores for customers to browse in and be captured in pictures for a certain website. There are probably other intrinsic differences as well; Amazon probably employs more engineers as a proportion of its staff compared to Walmart, for instance.
But I think you are right that these are just soft definitions. Walmart also operates an online store, for instance; it is just not their main public interface. There is clearly a line between Amazon and Walmart, but the exact point at which a company becomes a “technology” company depends on who you ask. Another example: Tesla Motors is arguably a technology company. This is due to some legitimate reasons - their business depends on their ability to develop new electric car technology, and some purely reputational reasons - they are based in Silicon Valley and they were founded and funded by people with histories in technology companies. Most people will not consider other car makers, like GM, to be technology companies.
This is often underestimated. Working with douches gets its toll on you.
+1
Ideas rule, execution is everything though. So, unfortunately you need a developer… but still… ideas > developer
Good call on Tesla vs GM, that should of been an obvious connection. What about fracking? It’s a new technology and it was disruptive.
Back to the topic on hand - Goldman ibankers or S&T guys don’t leave Wall Street to do Marketing or finance at a tech company. If a 25yr old trader moved from interest rate derivatives to a treasury analyst at Apple, I bet he or she would be the laughing stock of the team. As for product management, my brother in-law is a product manager at an internet traffic network provider and he is an MBA ex-developer. I think young people leave Wall Street for tech to build their fortune. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that; thats exactly why so many were taking the CFA back in the day. Now, people are selling themselves as product and marketing visionaries, instead of selling themselves as financial wizards like they would back in the day.
I was hoping to get some more feedback on the “what makes a technology company a technology company?” discussion. As I had this discussion with my friends the other day and would like to get some insights from industry analysts. One idea that came up was that technology companies these days was the focus on user experience achieved by technology.
Maybe in theory, but if you have a good idea and no developer then you’re SOL. If you don’t have a savings to drop on your prototype then you’re SOL. If you have a prototype and no access to VC you’re SOL.
Amazon is the leading cloud platforms company, making it a tech firm.
Unlike alot of people here, I actually enjoy funnance and believe it or not, I am not in funnance for the money.
Not like I’m in the sexiest of all spot in the finance world, but still I don’t really see myself doing anything other than looking at P&L statements, modelling in excel, reading loan documentation, talking to investors about block trades or talking with companies about convertible bonds offerings.
Sorry, give me a sexy job at Google that pays 1,5 times what I make and I swear I won’t take it.
^Hard to tell if you’re sarcastic or not.
he reminds me of this one kid on WSO who posted that he wouldn’t give up a job in finance even if someone offered him 1billion dollars. complete bullcrap . trying to show off and look cool