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How Wall Street takes advantage of very confused Ivy League graduates

washingtonpost.com

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Re: How Wall Street takes advantage of very confused Ivy League graduates

#11

Post by joncooper »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #6
plinkplonk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I worked in finance (as a proprietary trader) for 6-ish years, including several years as a VP at Deutsche Bank. - (I am a) hacker from a lower-class background who did not ride the academic achievement path" Very interesting. So how did you get to be a wall street trader,( without the academic credentials)?

I went to a large state school, and I have several friends who ended up at investment banks in NYC. You Don't have to be an ivy league rockstar to get in, just a decent education from a reputable school, show a work ethic and decent social skills. Banks hire tons of people every year, lots burn out after the first year or two (either because of the 12 hr days, or they didn't make the "up" in "up or out"), so the bank…

Yep, didn't mean to imply otherwise.

It does vary a lot between disciplines, though. There are a lot of successful people in support roles: technology, "back office" (operations, settlements, legal), human resources, etc., from many backgrounds.

Sales, research, trading, transactional M&A, wealth management and capital markets desks have a higher percentage of Ivy/prep school folks, especially for folks in the ~VP - younger MD range.

Re: try-hard-ism: For example, Goldman derivatives trading struck me at one point as being made up of the lacrosse team captains from each Ivy.

A lot of the older folks are "Brooklyn smart" whereas the younger folks are mostly "MIT smart" or "MBA smart".

I had an interview with a private equity firm who told me re: their analyst program: "We hire only 24 year olds who went to private school, then an Ivy, then did a two-year program at a top tier investment bank. We find that if everyone we hire is the same person, it's easy for them to work together, and for us to work with them. We took a risk one time and hired someone with a different profile once, and it didn't work out." (Basically verbatim.)

Re: How Wall Street takes advantage of very confused Ivy League graduates

#12

Post by joncooper »

rdouble wrote: post #8
plinkplonk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I worked in finance (as a proprietary trader) for 6-ish years, including several years as a VP at Deutsche Bank. - (I am a) hacker from a lower-class background who did not ride the academic achievement path" Very interesting. So how did you get to be a wall street trader,( without the academic credentials)?

Wall Street seems pretty meritocratic in the sense that they will try out anyone who seems promising and just fire them if they suck. (For anywhere besides Goldman Sachs and D.E. Shaw, that is.) I had an easier time getting interviews on Wall Street than in Silicon Valley. (but the Wall Street interviews were harder)

Depends on role. In sales / trading / research there is way more demand for jobs than supply, and a lot of talented unemployed people floating around out there.

For example, here in SF, one PM told me that he was going to interview one candidate per day for 30 days and then make a decision. For a junior trader / analyst position. Granted this is a C-list at best town for finance, but that struck me as indicative of a huge imbalance.

Re: How Wall Street takes advantage of very confused Ivy League graduates

#13

Post by joncooper »

rdouble wrote: post #8
plinkplonk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I worked in finance (as a proprietary trader) for 6-ish years, including several years as a VP at Deutsche Bank. - (I am a) hacker from a lower-class background who did not ride the academic achievement path" Very interesting. So how did you get to be a wall street trader,( without the academic credentials)?

Wall Street seems pretty meritocratic in the sense that they will try out anyone who seems promising and just fire them if they suck. (For anywhere besides Goldman Sachs and D.E. Shaw, that is.) I had an easier time getting interviews on Wall Street than in Silicon Valley. (but the Wall Street interviews were harder)

Both D.E. Shaw and Goldman are happy to interview you once you've authenticated by working at another firm first. And both of them are pretty fair once you get the interview IMO.

Re: How Wall Street takes advantage of very confused Ivy League graduates

#15

Post by rdouble »

joncooper wrote: post #12
rdouble wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wall Street seems pretty meritocratic in the sense that they will try out anyone who seems promising and just fire them if they suck. (For anywhere besides Goldman Sachs and D.E. Shaw, that is.) I had an easier time getting interviews on Wall Street than in Silicon Valley. (but the Wall Street interviews were harder)

Depends on role. In sales / trading / research there is way more demand for jobs than supply, and a lot of talented unemployed people floating around out there. For example, here in SF, one PM told me that he was going to interview one candidate per day for 30 days and then make a decision. For a junior trader / analyst position. Granted this is a C-list at best town for finance, but that struck me as indicative of a…

Maybe finance firms are just more together with interview scheduling. I realize your comment meant there are few positions in finance, but I've never known any startup sized companies to do something like that, even though everyone says they are desperate for talent. The interview process is usually super disorganized, and people just get called in if it's an employee's girlfriend's roommate or other arbitrary criteria. It's usually like 2-8 people interviewed in a month, not 30.

Re: How Wall Street takes advantage of very confused Ivy League graduates

#16

Post by publicus »

AznHisoka wrote: post #10

I have no problem with Wall Street recruiting the smartest. Naturally, people will go to where the money is, and the money usually resides in the industry that produces the most "value" to society. What I have a problem with is that Wall Street has already proven it doesn't provide as much value as it warrants (20% of GDP or so)... but we artificially pump it back up by bailing out firms. The fall was going to happen…

There is a reason Goldman claims to be doing God's work on Earth...

Re: How Wall Street takes advantage of very confused Ivy League graduates

#17

Post by sopooneo »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #7
ivansavz wrote: post #2

Seeing my analytically minded friends (physicists and mathematicians) go into banking and finance really pisses me off. I really hate the "it is just a job" mentality. You have your life before you. You can do anything you want. Instead they lure them in with the six-figure salaries. In fact I have made it my life mission to do something about it, because I feel that if we cut out the lifeblood (the new recruits) of…

You can do anything you want. But you can do anything you want better, with a big salary.

Not if earning the big salary takes so much time that you can't dedicate yourself to something else. Like being in the lab researching cancer.
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