71–80 of 127 posts
I'm genuinely curious -- what do these recruits actually do while working these massive hours? Is there really 80-120 hours of desk-based work to be done, or does office politics or fraternizing play a role in those hourly figures?
Wall Street is NOT building up America but is instead weakening America by causing a Great Brain Drain from every other vital industry. It is a cancer that's eating away America. Because America is losing the brightest kids who could've really shined and played vital leadership roles in other industries, I feel American industries are falling behind. Some quotes from the article that you should remember: 1. "so many…
Ivy-league grads go into finance because it's an industry that really values their particular pedigree, and is willing to pay for it. Engineering, on the other hand, really doesn't. Engineering companies aren't paying $200k bonuses to kids just a few years out of an Ivy-league school. Indeed, it's pretty hard to set yourself apart, as an engineer, in a way that allows you to earn even twice as much as another enginee…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work at a law firm specializing in IPO. I had the same thought in mind when I joined. Hiring more people does help but there will still not be 40 hour work weeks. In many instances, some people in the team has built up the knowledge on a particular part of the deal that it is difficult to outsource since it would be much faster for the person to complete the work themselves. Hiring more people also means that the i…
Thanks for the info! Is the demand for detailed knowledge 16 hours at a time, or is it more like being "on call" for when a client suddenly gets a wild idea and wants numbers to be run for it?
In my short time at a small consulting firm (Management / C level), this was also the case.
Many times my long hours were due to "deliverables" (PowerPoints, documents, etc.) being in a choke point based on an Analyst, Consultant, etc.
E.g., waiting on numbers to finish a presentation.
However, much of the time, their is ALWAYS something to do, and much of it is very much face-time (butts in seats = working).
>The banks care less about their qualifications than their work ethic. Being a Rhodes Scholar doesn't make much of a difference when you're a young banker. More of it is being willing to stay at the office for 120 hours a week. This is very, very true. In my experience, investment banking is by no means a particularly difficult thing to do, given enough capital to play around with. Quants aside, the concepts that are…
It is a far cry from the serious, dedicated abstract thought demanded by fields such as software engineering/machine learning/data science etc. 99% of software work is straightforward too. Here's a form for entering data. Here's a report for formatting data someone else entered. Every website is just these two concepts that have been around since the 60s. Don't kid yourself that a "full stack developer" or a "rocksta…
>The banks care less about their qualifications than their work ethic. Being a Rhodes Scholar doesn't make much of a difference when you're a young banker. More of it is being willing to stay at the office for 120 hours a week. This is very, very true. In my experience, investment banking is by no means a particularly difficult thing to do, given enough capital to play around with. Quants aside, the concepts that are…
> However, what large financial institutions need are people who are extremely assiduous to small details, have a work ethic in which 7am-11pm hours creating powerpoints are no big deal (and have good sounding qualifications to impress investors). The problem is Wall Street is sweeping up a THIRD of Ivy league graduates. This no doubt causes harm to US economy. Can you imagine what a young really bright scientist/eng…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>These are kids really really smart, socially adjusted (enough to be accepted by Ivy League), and hard working. If they entered science/medicine/engineering/etc, they would've added great positive impact. IMHO I believe the kids the banks are stealing from science/medicine/engineering/etc, are not kids that would truly follow those paths. Personally once I found IT I didnt want to leave and nothing was going to deter…
I want to point out IT is not the true engine of America's economy. The true engines to me are companies like Boeing/GM/Tesla/SpaceX who make things that other economies want to pay money for.
Wall Street is NOT building up America but is instead weakening America by causing a Great Brain Drain from every other vital industry. It is a cancer that's eating away America. Because America is losing the brightest kids who could've really shined and played vital leadership roles in other industries, I feel American industries are falling behind. Some quotes from the article that you should remember: 1. "so many…
Wall Street does not overpay technical people. It pays fairly. Everyone else underpays.
>The banks care less about their qualifications than their work ethic. Being a Rhodes Scholar doesn't make much of a difference when you're a young banker. More of it is being willing to stay at the office for 120 hours a week. This is very, very true. In my experience, investment banking is by no means a particularly difficult thing to do, given enough capital to play around with. Quants aside, the concepts that are…
> Quants aside, the concepts that are used (take, for example, "mezzanine capital") are mostly buzzwords used to give a professional air to really very simple processes/ideas. This is incredibly accurate. Aside from the guys who come out of MIT and Caltech to do quantitative analysis, almost everything on Wall Street is smoke and mirrors hiding what are incredibly simple ideas. Even a lot of the ostensibly esoteric a…
Because Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and Farmville are complex ideas?
Nearly every good idea looks "simple" in hindsight. That's what makes it a good idea.