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It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

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Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#251

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #196
hamstercat wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in another financial-related company and "IT is a cost not a revenue center" was thrown around as often as possible. Raise, promotion, formation, a computer made in this decade, anything really would get us that answer. Not only from my boss, but from the IT's top director in various meetings and one-on-one. I used to find it highly frustrating and unfair given that the company would cease to exists wi…

The old "We are a tech company, we just happen to do retail/advertising/communication/movies/hospitality/transportation/payments better than you idiots" seems to be working pretty well for Amazon/Google/Facebook/Netflix/AirBnB/Uber/Lyft/Stripe.

[deleted]

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#252

Post by bzbarsky »

freehunter wrote: post #50
debt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say the same about largest media company in the world. It's shocking that people don't know it's Facebook. And in their case not just in the world, but the largest media company in history by a very wide margin. People don't see any connection between William Randolph Hearst and Mark Zuckerberg; Facebook really has the best PR team.

Well the difference is that Facebook is an aggregator and doesn't actually publish or write any of their own content. They're a media company, sure, but they're not directly comparable to newspapers or cable news outlets.

In a world in which any piece of content you want to exist does exist because someone is written it (and we're a lot closer to that world now than in Hearst's day), power lies not in production of content but in control over which content actually gets seen.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#253

Post by dbbk »

freehunter wrote: post #50
debt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say the same about largest media company in the world. It's shocking that people don't know it's Facebook. And in their case not just in the world, but the largest media company in history by a very wide margin. People don't see any connection between William Randolph Hearst and Mark Zuckerberg; Facebook really has the best PR team.

Well the difference is that Facebook is an aggregator and doesn't actually publish or write any of their own content. They're a media company, sure, but they're not directly comparable to newspapers or cable news outlets.

They do though, Facebook Watch is them funding original content.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#254

Post by reaperducer »

gumby wrote: post #233
reaperducer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule was made because radio waves (broadcast) is a finite resource, and so there are a limited number of players who can compete. The internet can, theoretically, have an unlimited number of competitors, so it's not regulated the same way.

Sure, that mattered in the 1930s but does it really matter any more?

Are there suddenly unlimited over-the-air frequencies available to broadcasters?

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#255

Post by joncrane »

johan_larson wrote: post #170
andrewchoi wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marty Chavez was, but got promoted: > Prior to assuming his current role, Mr. Chavez was Chief Information Officer, responsible for the Technology Division Profile on him from a few years back: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/business/dealbook/goldman...

Well, that's something at least. They have a CIO. And someone with a tech background can make it to the inner circle. Still, the CIO is not counted among the top executives.

Why are you assuming that someone with the title "CIO" has a tech background?

I worked at a place where the CIO was a lawyer who knew the business really well, but no real tech in his background.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#256

Post by pmart123 »

I think another interesting paradigm is breaking up companies by:

1. embracing technology early 2. chasing technology 3. last movers

Recent examples of last movers that still have been extremely successful have been TJMaxx and Costco, both functioning with very little e-commerce presence. Why does this make some intuitive sense? The first mover has to break ground and if they are successful in applying innovative technologies, they reap the benefits. Meanwhile, several companies chase this innovator, building out similar systems, but these companies are unable to catch the leader, yet still spend a ton in R&D to develop the technology or spend too much acquiring it. Eventually, third-party software is built, commoditizing much of the associated costs. At this point, being the last mover is actually beneficial since the last mover can make the same technological shift without the associated costs that the chasers faced. In 2018, every company pretty much needs cloud instances, notifications, websites, etc. just like companies in the 1970s needed switchboard operators, fax machines, etc. I think its more a question of what companies quickly adapt fundamental new ways to think about an industry than whether the company employs a bunch of developers.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#257

Post by FireBeyond »

tadfisher wrote: post #204
FireBeyond wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple, and the rest of the movers and shakers Yeah, a bank that announce that 1% of their customers had their account involuntarily closed with 30 days notice is sure to build trust in the new world order. https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/14/simple-account-closures/

Simple engineer here, not representing the company's views necessarily but relaying my own opinions. That situation was indeed a load of bullshit, but the other side of that coin is that we were doing something that has never had to happen in the history of modern banking, probably because it's insane. You see, normally when a bank is acquired by another bank, the acquirer gets the acquiree's FED terminals, ACH numbe…

I do appreciate your response, and it certainly sounds like you were between a rock and a hard place.

The end user experience, not so great.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#258

Post by johan_larson »

joncrane wrote: post #255
johan_larson wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's something at least. They have a CIO. And someone with a tech background can make it to the inner circle. Still, the CIO is not counted among the top executives.

Why are you assuming that someone with the title "CIO" has a tech background? I worked at a place where the CIO was a lawyer who knew the business really well, but no real tech in his background.

Because it is in accord with my experience and my general sense that people should know what they are doing in the areas they are are given responsibility over. That generally requires experience, and at high level probably extensive experience. It's hard to see how a lawyer with no real tech experience can make good choices in the area of technology.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#259

Post by gumby »

reaperducer wrote: post #254
gumby wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that mattered in the 1930s but does it really matter any more?

Are there suddenly unlimited over-the-air frequencies available to broadcasters?

No, but there are so many channels of info these days OTA broadcast is a minor part of it. In addition the economics of the business lead to increasing amounds of network content rather than expensive locally generated content on the airwaves. And in fact OTA is much less common than watching local channels mixed in with otehr channels on cable, so again the local channels aer drowned out.

Looking up the stats a couple of weeks ago during a different HN discussion I was shocked how popular TV still is across all demographics, but local content was a plummeting percentage of the total.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#260

Post by ro_sharp »

dgellow wrote: post #188
tryitnow wrote: post #44

This sounds like marketing baloney. I would bet most of that "engineering" headcount is actually just analytical headcount. not a bad thing, but it's not what we used to call engineering. This is part of an ongoing trend to describe everything as some form of "engineering." Honestly, if I'm going to Goldman for M&A - I want a human relationship. That relationship may be buttressed by research and analysis using "big…

To be honest Software Engineering looks like child play when compared to actual engineering work. Imagine the left-pad incident in a different engineering domain.

It's a bit disingenuous to draw parallels between 24x7 electronic trading operations and javascript web cowboys.
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