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Friends Don't Let Geek Friends Work In Finance
theodp writes "If Vivek Wadhwa remade Pinocchio, instead of The Coachman luring naughty boys to Pleasure Island to engage in mischievous behavior and be transformed into donkeys, you might find Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein luring bright engineering grads to Wall Street to engage in mischievous behavior and be transformed into, well, asses. While the practice of poaching engineering talent slowed after the economy tanked in 2008, Wadhwa is dismayed to report that thanks to hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts, investment banks have recovered and gone back to their old, greedy ways, snagging engineering grads who might otherwise solve the world's problems, making them financial offers they can't refuse, and morphing them into quants, investment bankers and management consultants. 'Not only are the investment banks siphoning off hundreds of billions of dollars from our economy with financial gimmicks like CDOs,' writes Wadhwa, 'they are using our best engineering graduates [25% of MIT grads in '06] to help them do it. This is the talent that our country has invested so much resource in producing.' He concludes: 'Let's save the world by keeping our engineers out of finance. We need them to, instead, develop new types of medical devices, renewable energy sources, and ways for sustaining the environment and purifying water, and to start companies that help America keep its innovative edge.' Amen, but how 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the Engineering farm after they've seen Wall Street?"
Mama don't let your sons grow up to be bankers........
cd pub
more beer
Finance needs effective oversight, they need watching. If you solve that problem then your engineers won't be getting the offers they can't refuse.
I'd upgrade that to
As long as the government views the biggest firms as untouchables, and pick one or two as examples/targets, this will continue on for some time....
Letting a few of them fail in the last debacle would have been better for the economy
Five years out of school and working as an engineer, I make a mid five figure salary. Friends I went to school with who now work in finance make low six figures.
America is not interested in keeping its innovative edge.
Or perhaps because many of these businesses can only afford to pay these people so much because they corrupted the government and got bailouts and handouts? I also don't begrudge sports salaries because I don't make that much, I begrudge them because they can only exist due to the hundreds of millions of dollars corrupted government officials dole out to them to build their stadiums (in some cases, after referendums specifically on the funding were voted down). Take away the corruption, takes away the billions of dollars in unnecessary handouts to these companies, and suddenly the playing field becomes much closer to level for more productive professions.
If you want more engineers, make the field more attractive. If the industry sucks people are going to avoid it no matter how badly we need it.
And I took exception with the statement "This is the talent that our country has invested so much resource in producing." That makes it sound like we gave them loads of valuable training for free and then they wandered off and left us holding the bag. What a crock. Most of them graduated with smothering debt in order to get that education...so it seems that the greater part of the investment was their own. That debt just further drives them to an industry that will pay big.
Lately I have really been lamenting the fact that I chose to program computers for a living. I see how much money people in the finance industry make. They are in a higher income bracket, and yet they don't seem to be in a higher talent or workload bracket. Why shouldn't I be envious, and why shouldn't I leave my boss high and dry for a different job that pays twice as much?
We go through early life focusing on personal achievement, and one has to in order to succeed in the highly competitive application process to make it to MIT. You go through a intense regimine of MIT, where despite a number of classes where Teamwork is necessary you are still judged on your individual accomplishment aka Grades.
Is it so wrong then when an MIT graduate looks at the job opportunities arrayed in front of them, that they see 3 possibilities:
1) Start a new company/work at a startup, try to create something that will change the world. Payoff potentially astronomical, chance of success relatively slim. Ability for individual success to translate to financial success, medium.
2) Work for a big corporation, more than likely creating something which addresses the corporations needs, which may or may not help society. Payoff potential medium, chance of success high, ability for individual success to translate into financial success, low.
3) Enter the world of finance. Payoff potential high, chance of success mediuam, ability for individual success to translate into financial success, Very High.
Finance remains one of the few industries, where a contributer is able to directly monitor their value added and thus demand/receive incentives to match said value. What upside is there for me to go work for a GE, where even if some radical new design i create revolutionizes their jet engines and makes the company billions over the next 15 years, I'll get a decent paycheck, maybe some stock or options but in reality there is no real upside for my success.
Until society/companies puts emphasis on engineers and inventors in terms dollars, people will be less inclined to create/invent.
- An MIT '05 who works in finance.
I take strong exception to everyone in the financial sector being labeled a thief. I've worked for some excellent financial firms that have helped people to manage their finances and invest for the future. That there are amoral scumbags in the world is no shock, but just as most of the lawyers I've known are good people who try to do good in the world through their work (while their profession is tainted by the loudest minority), bankers and other fiduciaries provide an essential service which all too often does not receive the respect it deserves.
It is not. However, Vivek Wadhwa does have a point. As someone who went from a tech/engineering background into management consulting, I have reached a point where I wish I had remained in technology, and in building something tangible.
Yes, the salary is better and the incentives are great -- I get to travel, I get to work on a variety of problems (marketing, revenue management, even technology recommendations), and in my late 20s, I work with C-level executives. It's great exposure.
However, as I near my 30s, I have to ask -- have I done anything tangible? Have I built something that made a true difference to the world? I wish I had joined a tech company and worked on my programming capabilities, so that I can build something, even if in my spare time. I wish I had used my undergrad engineering degree in working on VLSI design or something. And with the 60-80 hour work weeks and travel Monday through Thursday, I wish I had enough time for personal interests or activities -- in a past life, I used to do a lot of rock and ice climbing; it's been 2 years since I did any. Open source contributions? Zilch. Even playing with Lego seems like a chore, because I've 3 million other things to do. And you know you've a problem when you start getting worried about play being a chore, since it takes time away from other "important stuff" -- i.e. building pointless decks and excel models.
The other problem with most of what you do in finance and management consulting is that your skills are limited in the outside world, and you are so busy with your work that you've little time to learn other things.
So, I've decided to go the entrepreneurial route. I may try and fail, but at least I would have tried. With a couple of my friends (both of whom, incidentally, are from i-banking and quite burnt out themselves), we've decided that it's about time that we started throwing ideas at the wall to see what would stick. I live in Boston, so we're working with college students in the Cambridge area who are interested in working with us for a little equity and cash, and trying to develop new and interesting products.
The first of which is slated to go live end of this month -- Deal Umpire -- and a couple of others being worked on. It has been an immensely fulfilling experience.
Building a 50 page deck that no one will ever look at beyond the first two pages, a complex excel model that you spent weekends developing that gets forgotten and locked away, or making recommendations that get ignored because the client will do as the client pleases anyway -- none of this comes close to the thrill of building something on your own, something tangible and worthwhile (now, arguably, there are definitely clients and engagements that are truly interesting, and the client genuinely cares about what you are building -- but those are rarer than you'd think),
We have investors eager to fund, but we do not want to take up their offers, because we are afraid that it will be back to building decks and models to do someone else's bidding. So, we're at it on our own.
If you are an engineer, you probably went into the profession because you like to build things, because you like to open things apart and learn, and because you like the fact that creativity and analysis can often team up in building some pretty awesome stuff. You will not find that in either of those two professions. Yes, you will have money and the perks, but if you don't kindle that spark of creating something, you will soon extinguish it for greed. And that is very, very unfortunate.
Thankfully, I've a very understanding wife who is a geek herself, and she has been very instrumental in helping me keep my act together. And just the thought of working on something fun and interesting goes a long way to rekindling creativity I'd thought long gone.