To all those guys who took the conservative banking jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: To all those guys who took the conservative banking jobs

#41

Post by adrianwaj » Tue, Sep 16, 2008, 5:18 PM UTC

sdpurtill wrote: post #36

after hearing feedback from everyone on hacker news and other places, i’ve decided to pull this post as it was misinformed and inflammatory. sorry if i made you mad!

It wasn't that bad. I liked it because it was genuine. It's like being at uni and seeing all the kids taking corporate finance with $ signs in their eyes, impervious to their surroundings, as though nothing else mattered anymore, they'd found their raison d'être and were busy submitting those graduate applications to every corporate finance firm possible. Such individuals are the ones you probably were thinking about in your post.

Re: To all those guys who took the conservative banking jobs

#42

Post by fallentimes » Tue, Sep 16, 2008, 5:30 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #38

fallentimes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Sam, but right now I'm really really glad I left my finance job to do a startup.

Well of course you are -- right now. But what happens when the finance shock ripples through the rest of the economy, and tech investments dry up? Or when tech purchases stop? Or when job losses in banking, real estate, construction and sales (coupled with high energy costs) lead to overall drops in consumption, which in turn leads to drops in advertising budgets? It's still way too early to be whistling past the gra…

For me personally I have a couple side business so I'd be OK.

But even if our startup whittled and died tomorrow; I've acquired more skills in 3 months working at ticketbumblerstumbler than I did in two years working at my old job.

Our burn rate is less than 3k a month; we're not whistling past anything.

Re: To all those guys who took the conservative banking jobs

#43

Post by patrickdh » Tue, Sep 16, 2008, 6:57 PM UTC

Any chance we get an enlightened rewrite of the article that will serve to correct misconceptions that all startupers can’t distinguish between finance and banking. It won’t make me love my banker anymore today. He's sitting on his fat ass conservative banking job riding the credit crunch!!

Re: To all those guys who took the conservative banking jobs

#44

Post by jwilliams » Tue, Sep 16, 2008, 8:10 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #19

jwilliams wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is really ignorant. It's the same mentality that thinks the valley is impervious to bubbles and inflation. Yup - More than that - he thinks his limited value system applies to everyone. Maybe he's never considered people do those jobs because they like them, because they are good at it, because it's dynamic, because it's lucrative, because they think it's an essential part of our society? You know, similar r…

Sure it's dynamic and lucrative, but I think the last few months have shown that shilling securitized high risk mortgages is anything but an essential part of society.

You can point at the current financial crisis, but there is absolutely no doubt that financial services are a fundamental part of society.

The current crisis owes a lot to greed, poor governance and ignorance (not only of the bankers, but the stockholders, pension funds, etc, etc, etc - i.e. everyone)... Even so, this isn't unique to the financial industry.