Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 147 posts

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#51

Post by Silhouette »

swombat wrote: post #49
phony_identity wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it pays cash and lots of it How much? Can you be more, uh, quantitative here?

Starting salary for typical IT roles (dev, etc) are about £35-45k p.a. in London depending on how well you negotiate. That's straight out of uni. It goes up rapidly as you go up the ladder. Within a couple of years, if you do well, you should be up to £65k or so, and probably start getting a bonus on top of it too (probably about £10-20k or so in IT). It's not that unusual for the salary to go up by about £10k per ye…

> It's cheap to get that salary, too. All you have to give up is your dreams.

Don't forget the effect of compound interest: they want your soul as well, and you burn out more every year for as long as you stay.

In my early career, a headhunter came after me to interview with his London bank client. I did a few quick sums at that point, and it's not nearly as attractive a package as it looks.

I'm in Cambridge, UK, so we have quite a few guys around here who get approached by the big London banks or who choose to interview there; a few of my friends did. Without exception, the ones who took the jobs get up early, commute down on overcrowded trains, work long hours during the day itself, and then commute home on overcrowded trains. By the time they've done that, they are so tired that they often don't want to do much on weekday evenings any more. The only thing that might improve the situation is moving to London, but that pushes your cost of living way up.

I don't earn as much money on my decent IT contracts as your £150k+bonus friend, and I've been working a bit longer. On the other hand, by the time you figure out an hourly rate including things like commuting time, I bet I'm not that far off. By the time you factor in the costs of commuting or getting London accommodation, I'm even closer. Oh, and I still have a life Monday-Friday.

I can understand people who go straight into that kind of environment for a couple of years after university, when you're young enough to take it and you're basically making an investment of 2-3 years of having no life in exchange for more comfort for the rest of your life. But I can't understand why anyone would want to stay there for much longer, even with all the financial reward: money is only worth anything if you have time to enjoy spending it.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#52

Post by robryan »

rwmj wrote: post #48
mmaunder wrote: post #41

I used to work for CSFB (now Credit Suisse) in London's Canary Wharf. It's the most I've earned in my entire career. Unless you've worked for an investment bank you have no idea how much money they have. It's like a giant gulf-of-mexico-style money gusher that doesn't quit. How do they make it? CSFB flies on the bleeding edge of what's legal and always have. I was there when Frank Quattrone was involved in the IPO of…

Before you start that bank job you should also think about whether what you're doing is moral and right. Whether by doing that job you're contributing to making the world a better place.

Also consider that you didn't create the system and are just a part of it, if you don't take the job someone else will. Depends what stage of your life your at, the money could be a primary concern or a secondary one with flexibility, personal interest and creating something valuable higher.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#53

Post by mallipeddi »

phony_identity wrote: post #47
mmaunder wrote: post #41

I used to work for CSFB (now Credit Suisse) in London's Canary Wharf. It's the most I've earned in my entire career. Unless you've worked for an investment bank you have no idea how much money they have. It's like a giant gulf-of-mexico-style money gusher that doesn't quit. How do they make it? CSFB flies on the bleeding edge of what's legal and always have. I was there when Frank Quattrone was involved in the IPO of…

But it pays cash and lots of it How much? Can you be more, uh, quantitative here?

You make around S$200k/yr within 4 years if you're in banking IT in Singapore. This is not even counting the bonuses they usually get. OTOH if you work work for a startup here, you get around S$80-90k/yr max. And if you're a non-IT person at a bank, the figures are just astronomical.

Almost half of the people I met in university are now working for banks, and you'll find them either preparing for CFA exams over the weekend or thinking about their MBA applications for next year. These include people with PhDs in Physics and who worked on cutting-edge stuff like quantum cryptography.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#54

Post by rbanffy »

leelin wrote: post #31
madair wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which leads to another big point about financiers...too many preppies heading to college for a quick buck on Wall St.

I don't blame the college kids. At least right now, our capitalist society deems their brains are better spent finding the next good $10M trade as opposed to helping ship Office 2010 or becoming grad students in math / physics / CS.

I don't consider shipping Office 2010 a lofty goal... Come on, we are trying to make the world a better place.

As someone currently doing two migrations from Outlook (I finally got approval to get rid of Windows on my corporate notebook and my wife is moving her Exchange-based mail to an IMAP server) I can say any shipment of Office 2010 prevented means at least one more happy person ;-)

As for the other options, making the next 10M trade or becoming a grad student, I think you should follow your heart.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#55

Post by omaranto »

rwmj wrote: post #48
mmaunder wrote: post #41

I used to work for CSFB (now Credit Suisse) in London's Canary Wharf. It's the most I've earned in my entire career. Unless you've worked for an investment bank you have no idea how much money they have. It's like a giant gulf-of-mexico-style money gusher that doesn't quit. How do they make it? CSFB flies on the bleeding edge of what's legal and always have. I was there when Frank Quattrone was involved in the IPO of…

Before you start that bank job you should also think about whether what you're doing is moral and right. Whether by doing that job you're contributing to making the world a better place.

That's a good point, startups don't usually make the world a better place, but at least they generally don't seem to actively try to make it worse. And even if a startup were bad, it's very unlikely to be powerful enough to do damage on the scale a big financial institution could.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#56

Post by rbanffy »

leelin wrote: post #38
nostrademons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, if I think startup X sucks, it's not that obvious how I can bet against them and get rich on their dismal failure." Compete with them. If you think startup X sucks, then enter the same market, gunning for the same customers, but serve them better. It's harder to do this than for a financier to short a stock, but that's because everything in finance is higher leverage than in business. The goal of an entreprene…

I don't follow. Say a startup comes along and I think the entire idea, space, and sector is doomed to failure. The whole market is a no-go. I can't get rich off the ones I decide will be failures, and it's possible for an entire sector to fail together in a correlated way. Say, Gmail crushes all web-based email startups, or iPhone crushes all startups based on the available 2007-era mobile platforms. At least in fina…

> Every dismal derivatives trade should have some winners on the other side.

Unless the market collapses. In that case, all you have are losers.

OTOH, markets collapse not because resources are destroyed, but because investors realize they never existed.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#58

Post by raganwald »

robryan wrote: post #52
rwmj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you start that bank job you should also think about whether what you're doing is moral and right. Whether by doing that job you're contributing to making the world a better place.

Also consider that you didn't create the system and are just a part of it, if you don't take the job someone else will. Depends what stage of your life your at, the money could be a primary concern or a secondary one with flexibility, personal interest and creating something valuable higher.

> you didn't create the system and are just a part of it, if you don't take the job someone else will.

Exactly why I moonlight as a crack dealer, with the odd stint pimping adolescents I meet at the bus terminal. Sorry for the lame attempt at the witty reply... I guess the point is that not doing something doesn't mean it won't happen, but it does mean you won't do it, and that matters to some people.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#59

Post by tomjen3 »

swombat wrote: post #49
phony_identity wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it pays cash and lots of it How much? Can you be more, uh, quantitative here?

Starting salary for typical IT roles (dev, etc) are about £35-45k p.a. in London depending on how well you negotiate. That's straight out of uni. It goes up rapidly as you go up the ladder. Within a couple of years, if you do well, you should be up to £65k or so, and probably start getting a bonus on top of it too (probably about £10-20k or so in IT). It's not that unusual for the salary to go up by about £10k per ye…

Given that, why would you even enter the IT side?

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#60

Post by [deleted] »

phony_identity wrote: post #47
mmaunder wrote: post #41

I used to work for CSFB (now Credit Suisse) in London's Canary Wharf. It's the most I've earned in my entire career. Unless you've worked for an investment bank you have no idea how much money they have. It's like a giant gulf-of-mexico-style money gusher that doesn't quit. How do they make it? CSFB flies on the bleeding edge of what's legal and always have. I was there when Frank Quattrone was involved in the IPO of…

But it pays cash and lots of it How much? Can you be more, uh, quantitative here?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN