Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#81

Post by dtby » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 3:56 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #76

yummyfajitas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to Southwest Airways. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines#Hedging_fuel Shuffling money around is also useful for making public what would otherwise be private information. Greece can profess to the world how solvent they are, but the swap market tells a different story.

I said "most of what they do" rather than "all of what they do" because some of it coincidentally helps others. The ratio of parasitic behavior to useful is unfortunately growing, and hasn't stopped just because it caused an economic meltdown.

I wonder how you square this with your past, as I understand, as an online poker pro?

As a former professional poker player myself, it never would occur to me to denigrate the work of financiers or suggest that what they were doing was immoral. I was able to morally justify my occupation to myself.. and, as such, it is orders of magnitude easier to justify theirs.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#82

Post by neilc » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 4:23 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #74

raganwald wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you didn't create the system and are just a part of it, if you don't take the job someone else will. Exactly why I moonlight as a crack dealer, with the odd stint pimping adolescents I meet at the bus terminal. Sorry for the lame attempt at the witty reply... I guess the point is that not doing something doesn't mean it won't happen, but it does mean you won't do it, and that matters to some people.

I have far fewer moral qualms about crack dealing than investment banking.

I know you're joking, but I don't see the moral concern about investment banking. You may not be making the world a better place (although that is very debatable), but you're not making it worse, either.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#83

Post by Kisil » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 4:24 PM UTC

omaranto wrote: post #55

rwmj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you start that bank job you should also think about whether what you're doing is moral and right. Whether by doing that job you're contributing to making the world a better place.

That's a good point, startups don't usually make the world a better place, but at least they generally don't seem to actively try to make it worse. And even if a startup were bad, it's very unlikely to be powerful enough to do damage on the scale a big financial institution could.

Your comment reminds me of this story: http://www.astatespacetraveler.com/have-you-ever-wondered-wh...

Broad strokes: Startups directly create new value, which by definition makes the world a better place, at least for someone. In contrast, the finance industry adds value indirectly by optimizing capital allocation. At best, finance increases efficiency, but it's very hard to measure whether it's helping or just exploiting the complex rules to skim off the top. In contrast, startups without a value proposition fail.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#84

Post by ig1 » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 4:27 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #51

swombat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting salary for typical IT roles (dev, etc) are about £35-45k p.a. in London depending on how well you negotiate. That's straight out of uni. It goes up rapidly as you go up the ladder. Within a couple of years, if you do well, you should be up to £65k or so, and probably start getting a bonus on top of it too (probably about £10-20k or so in IT). It's not that unusual for the salary to go up by about £10k per ye…

> It's cheap to get that salary, too. All you have to give up is your dreams. Don't forget the effect of compound interest: they want your soul as well, and you burn out more every year for as long as you stay. In my early career, a headhunter came after me to interview with his London bank client. I did a few quick sums at that point, and it's not nearly as attractive a package as it looks. I'm in Cambridge, UK, so…

It depends very much on which bank you're working for. American/Asian banks tend to be much more hard pushing in terms of hours of facetime you have to put in, but at many of the European banks 40 hour weeks are fairly average even for Front Office devs.

Cost of living wise london isn't that expensive once you take into account cost of commuting. I'm paying £1300/month for a large two bedroom flat within walking distance of the city.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#85

Post by kleiba » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 4:43 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #73

mmaunder wrote: post #41

I used to work for CSFB (now Credit Suisse) in London's Canary Wharf. It's the most I've earned in my entire career. Unless you've worked for an investment bank you have no idea how much money they have. It's like a giant gulf-of-mexico-style money gusher that doesn't quit. How do they make it? CSFB flies on the bleeding edge of what's legal and always have. I was there when Frank Quattrone was involved in the IPO of…

I don't think if I could live with myself if I worked at an investment bank. Most of what they do provides no benefit to humanity, in fact on the whole they're probably parasitic. Shuffling money around senselessly while taking a cut might be extremely profitable if you do enough of it, but it's just a drain on modern capitalism.

For a long time, I used to think along those lines, too. But then I seriously asked myself in what way I'm actually contributing to humanity - and I find it's not so much. And I'm working in research. But in the end, what I do is so marginal that it only really differs from what investment bankers contribute if you look at it through a strong microscope.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#86

Post by ig1 » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 4:46 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #49

phony_identity wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it pays cash and lots of it How much? Can you be more, uh, quantitative here?

Starting salary for typical IT roles (dev, etc) are about £35-45k p.a. in London depending on how well you negotiate. That's straight out of uni. It goes up rapidly as you go up the ladder. Within a couple of years, if you do well, you should be up to £65k or so, and probably start getting a bonus on top of it too (probably about £10-20k or so in IT). It's not that unusual for the salary to go up by about £10k per ye…

I'd expect the bonus to be higher, 10k bonus is what I'd expect a new grad to get a year out of uni. Although bonus varies a lot by bank, how close you are to the money, and if you get paid out of an "IT pool" or out of the "desk pool".

For base I think your figures are pretty accurate, although bases tend to max out at around £100k (in pure developer roles; developer management can go higher). A lot of senior devs become contractors, with day rates typically being in the £550-£750 range.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#87

Post by hooande » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 4:48 PM UTC

apsec112 wrote: post #65

hooande wrote: post #45

People can interpret a data set in so many ways. I don't know which people you put into the "technology" and "finance" categories. I just went with the people that Forbes put into the categories of "Finance" or "Investment" vs the people that they put into the categories of "Internet" or "Software". I ran some numbers on the data they provided and here's what I found: Finance/Investments: Total People: 81 Avg Net Wor…

Did you look at just the new rich (the people who have gotten rich over the past ten years), or all the rich? If the latter, you're including a lot of dot-com people who wouldn't have gotten nearly as rich if it weren't for the bubble.

I'd have to normalize the data for all kinds of bubbles in a variety of markets, not just the dotcom bubble. Plus, I couldn't see how to determine who was new rich based on the data.

In the light of morning, I'd like to amend my statement to "the expected value for a tech entrepreneur seems to be slightly higher", based on the definition of an expected value:

  81 / 400 x 181.77 = 36.80
  48 / 400 x 321.47 = 38.57

Given that the odds of making the list in finance are higher, it's still a better bet to start a technology startup.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#88

Post by hboon » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 4:55 PM UTC

mallipeddi wrote: post #53

phony_identity wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it pays cash and lots of it How much? Can you be more, uh, quantitative here?

You make around S$200k/yr within 4 years if you're in banking IT in Singapore. This is not even counting the bonuses they usually get. OTOH if you work work for a startup here, you get around S$80-90k/yr max. And if you're a non-IT person at a bank, the figures are just astronomical. Almost half of the people I met in university are now working for banks, and you'll find them either preparing for CFA exams over the w…

I'm in Singapore. Can you name a few startups here that pay like you think they do?

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#89

Post by richcollins » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 5:07 PM UTC

dtby wrote: post #81

mattmaroon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "most of what they do" rather than "all of what they do" because some of it coincidentally helps others. The ratio of parasitic behavior to useful is unfortunately growing, and hasn't stopped just because it caused an economic meltdown.

I wonder how you square this with your past, as I understand, as an online poker pro? As a former professional poker player myself, it never would occur to me to denigrate the work of financiers or suggest that what they were doing was immoral. I was able to morally justify my occupation to myself.. and, as such, it is orders of magnitude easier to justify theirs.

Online poker is a consentual exchange. Inflating the money supply and taking taxpayer bailouts is akin to coercive theft.

Re: Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

#90

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Jun 19, 2010, 5:12 PM UTC

Kisil wrote: post #83

omaranto wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, startups don't usually make the world a better place, but at least they generally don't seem to actively try to make it worse. And even if a startup were bad, it's very unlikely to be powerful enough to do damage on the scale a big financial institution could.

Your comment reminds me of this story: http://www.astatespacetraveler.com/have-you-ever-wondered-wh... Broad strokes: Startups directly create new value, which by definition makes the world a better place, at least for someone. In contrast, the finance industry adds value indirectly by optimizing capital allocation. At best, finance increases efficiency, but it's very hard to measure whether it's helping or just expl…

Only consumer product startups create new value, at least in the sense I think you are describing.

A B2B startup, much like finance, will only increase efficiency. If I build HRWeb (replace your human resources dept with the internets), all it does is makes a bunch of other companies more efficient.