21–30 of 268 posts
It's probably all true, but the piece reads like an extended resume. If only I could get NY Times to let me rant about how ethical I am and what trillion-dollar clients I advised.
Many of the sentiments expressed by the author are shared by developers and other technical staff working in the finance industry. In places like London and New York, finance has, for a long time, managed to get the best technical staff by paying the highest wages even if the work is less interesting. This has been detrimental to other industries in the same regions. As morale declines in finance firms, however, this…
For a long time finance has been the place where the most interesting tech was going on (not to say there isn't a lot of boring bog standard stuff as well). It's an industry where many firms have had to develop their own network transport layers, database engines, languages, etc. Where machine learning and big data have been standard practice for over a decade. Where understanding complexity and concurrency theory ar…
So he thinks Goldman was honorable back when he was young and had no idea what was going on. Bullshit. I happen to know of some shady Goldman credit swaps from the 90s that my municipality has been trying to get out of. I'm sure there is plenty of other garbage that went on back then too. You don't hire a bunch of mostly young male type-A personalities and wave million dollar bonuses in their faces and not expect que…
This also characterises hackers and Silicon Valley. There are some really good people on Wall Street just as there are some real turds in Silicon Valley.
If you go back into Goldman Sachs's history it was a venerable firm with a storied past of forsaking short-term profit for the client, i.e. being long-term greedy instead of short-term greedy (quoting a GS executive from the 1970s). It started changing in the 1980s and completed its transformation after its IPO.
Values aren't a function of sex or ambition.
I know a lot of people who have left Goldman, etc. in the past few months, specifically for tech jobs. It's because 2011 bonuses were utter crap. (and it is toxic I'm sure, but the $ was the main thing)
If I may ask >specifically for tech jobs Which kind of tech jobs? For banks, or something unrelated?
It's probably all true, but the piece reads like an extended resume. If only I could get NY Times to let me rant about how ethical I am and what trillion-dollar clients I advised.
I agree with you but if you are at his level, you don't really need a resume anymore. Financial industry is all about who you know and from what I can see, he is very well connected.
Many of the sentiments expressed by the author are shared by developers and other technical staff working in the finance industry. In places like London and New York, finance has, for a long time, managed to get the best technical staff by paying the highest wages even if the work is less interesting. This has been detrimental to other industries in the same regions. As morale declines in finance firms, however, this…
For a long time finance has been the place where the most interesting tech was going on (not to say there isn't a lot of boring bog standard stuff as well). It's an industry where many firms have had to develop their own network transport layers, database engines, languages, etc. Where machine learning and big data have been standard practice for over a decade. Where understanding complexity and concurrency theory ar…
In most large finance companies though, it's also true that a lot of the less-exciting back office development work is being done by software developers who are overqualified for the roles but attracted by high wages.
I have ranted for a long time about the corruption at Goldman Sachs, mostly to deaf ears. :) This is the tip of the iceberg, as far as I am concerned. My bigger concern is how involved GS is with our government. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19gold.html?pagew... As it turns out, the human race is extremely intelligent and wherever there is an opportunity to make money (corrupt or not), people are probabl…
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If you disagree with me, that is cool - just leave a comment telling me why. If you think my comment is irrelevant for some reason, also let me know why.
Edit: More appropriately -- http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a long time finance has been the place where the most interesting tech was going on (not to say there isn't a lot of boring bog standard stuff as well). It's an industry where many firms have had to develop their own network transport layers, database engines, languages, etc. Where machine learning and big data have been standard practice for over a decade. Where understanding complexity and concurrency theory ar…
I'm wondering if any of that work has been made available, eg. as an open source project? There's a standard practice among tech/web companies to share innovation on the infrastructural level, but I cannot name one example of a bank innovating openly in that way. Perhaps they do publish academic papers about their innovations?
So he thinks Goldman was honorable back when he was young and had no idea what was going on. Bullshit. I happen to know of some shady Goldman credit swaps from the 90s that my municipality has been trying to get out of. I'm sure there is plenty of other garbage that went on back then too. You don't hire a bunch of mostly young male type-A personalities and wave million dollar bonuses in their faces and not expect que…
I was an esoteric derivatives trader at an investment bank making money off clueless clients. We actualy prided ourselves, as a prop desk, on not being client facing. I went in expecting to parse global markets for inefficiency while pioneering the frontiers of 21st century finance. As time went on I found that the firm was content with mediocrity (as it could survive by simply existing in its role) and had no time f…