Wallstreet Looking for Insecure Grads?
I stumbled across this article/interview of a man named Kevin Roose who wrote Young Money. He made some interesting points:
--He seems to have found people like Prestige over Pay
--IB has turned into more of a adulthood bootcamp (2 years and youre on to the next thing)
--Too many IB employees let risk take over their life, leading to decreased creativity in future careers.
Thought you guys might enjoy the read. What are your thoughts?
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/15/5720596/how-wall-street-recruits-so-many-i…
Oh, jeez -- Ezra Klein and Kevin Roose opining about finance culture. That's like asking two National Review readers to talk about welfare reform and taking their opinions as unbiased thought. I read Roose's book when it came out and while it wasn't as critical as I had expected ("Greedy capitalist scum exploiting young workers!"), his reporting was very biased indeed.
For one, he profiled eight analysts with varying degrees; there was a positive correlation between the amount of hardships an analyst faced and the amount of coverage they received in the book. For instance, one girl who worked in risk management at DB whose sole gripe was that the work wasn't what she expected it to be had her story take a back-seat to that of analysts who had six-figure loans to pay off or who were looking to high finance as a stepping stone within the class hierarchy after coming from lower class backgrounds.
One segment of the finance population that Roose failed to even consider was the kids who've been reading Michael Lewis in their free time since high school, the ones who read Bloomberg for fun and who find financial modeling to be the modern-day jigsaw puzzle. These kids exist, too, yet Roose took an extreme from this subgroup by showcasing kids at Harvard who invest a sizable sum of money (for your standard undergrad) to be in a selective fund.
Furthermore, Roose and Klein sing praises of "building" things and "creating impact" (more buzzwords) at tech companies and start-ups, and how this egalitarian culture ("ZOMG, jeans and flip-flops all day every day!") is the way to go. Honestly, aren't they just funneling kids from one direction to another through their own, politically tinted glasses, while labeling the finance direction as eternal purgatory and the Google/Silicon Valley direction as eternal happiness, even though the latter presents a larger, riskier bubble than the former ("bubble" and "risk" don't coincide well with the "insecure")?
They also mention TFA, yet TFA takes those same, insecure students Roose and Klein claim IB gobbles up. Not only do most people head to TFA because they can have part of their loans repaid (or something similar) but because they're also very uncertain about what to do in the future and know this can eat up 2 years of their time while they "figure it out."
@dcrowoar my points regarding your 4th paragraph:
I don't think Google/Silicon Valley makes finance out to be purgatory (at least not within firm) - the media does. Several finance professionals become a part of tech firms but later on in their careers. The main batch of undergrads getting hired are on the engineering side - but why would someone who wants to be an engineer and sure they want to code for life want to do finance? Therefore I think this whole Wall Street vs Silicon Valley talk is useless unless we are comparing business side roles to Wall Street roles (most business side roles require banking/consulting experience though so again the debate becomes useless at undergrad level).
The word 'risk' is used poorly in the media generally. Google isn't going anywhere (so I wouldn't say tech is in a bubble) and there will always be a role for you if you don't suck (at least within industry). Hence it is considered less risky then a bank being sued constantly and under tonnes of government regulation. ;) That said I doubt GS is going anywhere either.
The flip flop point basically says what you wear doesn't matter as much as what you produce but I think people (especially in finance) take this too literally. Generally at a tech firm you are creating from day 1 and have the freedom to change things if you think of a better way. This freedom doesn't really exist in banking in most areas but its more implementation focused (which is not always a bad thing either - just depends on the type of person in the end).
General comments about the article:
Prestige over pay. Is that a surprise? You get an offer from GS for say 50k or an offer from a small emerging boutique for 55k. All else equal most people would pick GS because of the long term value on your background (ESP post graduation).
The analyst stint is a 2 year bootcamp sure but it can set you up well for other careers including more 'creative' ones (or you can remain in banking). It pays the bills too. What's the harm?
I suppose my perspective is slightly different -- I go to a LAC, so future engineers are nonexistent. A lot of kids are interested in IB (specifically, TMT) and so look at Google as a potential "back-up" to those ambitions if GS TMT doesn't work out (although sometimes, the reverse is true).
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