101–110 of 325 posts
Try getting a new job without a prestigious job on your resume and then learn what the real trap is.
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I work in HFT and my experience is like yours: the most well known firms pay the least. Right now I'm at a very small prop firm as a partner and compensation is much greater than I would have gotten at Jane St, Citadel, etc. Generally people only seek at prestigious firms like Goldman early in their career and switch over to more obscure but lucrative opportunities: prop firms, pe, hf, etc.
Wait a second, am I missing out right now? I have an opportunity at Jane Street, but I haven't been exposed to any of the other small name firms. Where do I look to find the higher paying jobs?
In this vein, the tech industry screws its employees as far as their share of revenue-per-employee goes. Apple makes 10x per employee what Jane St. does, and I doubt the small firms achieve the difference.
The problem with prestige is that you, yourself, may not care about it, but those around it still do and still use it for social signaling. That affects the rationality of the decisions you make around your career in serious ways. I think one of the problems around targeting prestige vs. targeting excellence is that we know what it takes to do something prestigious, but excellence is hard to define, and generally com…
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Wait a second, am I missing out right now? I have an opportunity at Jane Street, but I haven't been exposed to any of the other small name firms. Where do I look to find the higher paying jobs?
One of the first things you might notice in some of the job ads for those firms: instead of "Compensation: competitive salary, 0.0x% equity," you'll start seeing phrases like "extremely high compensation." Then you'll start really feeling like you're not in Kansas. In this vein, the tech industry screws its employees as far as their share of revenue-per-employee goes. Apple makes 10x per employee what Jane St. does,…
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If it's so difficult to discern a difference between your company and Palantir, you've got a problem.
You seem very convinced that everyone shares the same moral framework you do. Just because you find your company’s work unobjectionable doesn’t mean everyone else does. I mean, there are Unabomber types out there who think all tech is inherently bad, how do you know the person you are hiring isn’t or won’t turn into one of those people?
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Yeah, tech has a starting salary advantage but FAANG just doesn't compare on the upside. What's the top 10% of FAANG outcomes (for Harvard grads) after 5 years? 500k, maybe? The jump to MD in finance makes 1M+ something like 10-20% of outcomes (for Harvard grads) after 10 years. I'd be very surprised if it were that common in tech (over the next 10 years, I know that it was better in the 2000s). I think quickest to M…
Top 10% of FAANG is, what, around 30K-40K in raw numbers? What's the top 10% in Big Finance? I'd bet it's far lower number compared to that. So it's not apples to apples comparison. If you compare what top 10,000 FAANG engineers make 10 years into their careers vs what top 10,000 finance folks make 10 years into theirs, I'm pretty sure FAANG will come out ahead.
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If it's so difficult to discern a difference between your company and Palantir, you've got a problem.
You seem very convinced that everyone shares the same moral framework you do. Just because you find your company’s work unobjectionable doesn’t mean everyone else does. I mean, there are Unabomber types out there who think all tech is inherently bad, how do you know the person you are hiring isn’t or won’t turn into one of those people?
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So you made a biased decision about a candidate based on where they worked rather than evaluate them on their ability to perform in the role relative to other candidates?
Anyone that worked at Palantir is potentially a mole.
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It is not uncommon for people in technology to be making $500k-$1m annually by 30, and the lifestyle is much better if you have outside commitments.
Consulting in particular really depends on the company. The big 4 will grind you to the bone, but boutiques often pay better and have much more reasonable expectations of time commitment. I don’t see consulting ever going back to the weekly travel model, and during the pandemic I work maybe 30 hours a week while pulling in the salary I do. Most of my work involves going to meetings, understanding complex business arc…