100x the money for 10% of the work. Gotta love entrepreneurship

Upsetting...

I'm exiting in June.  Banking is good for some things, but to really get a good $ per hour you have to be very senior and have done it for many years.  As an analyst your hourly rate won't be much higher than any other job.

Just because one guy had a great idea and made a bunch of dough on it does not mean that it's a better career.  Saying you want to be an entrepreneur is sort of like saying you want to be an inventor: if you don't already have an idea it's not something you just sit down and do.  More often than not, like in this case, people just get lucky and a side-project or hobby turns into something profitable.  

As for startups/technology vs. banking, the grass is always greener.  Go read uncov.com to see how most website startups turn out.  The people who are really succesful over the long haul—Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. ("I'm not talking about rich, I'm talking about wealth")—spent a long time working really hard (often with no hourly rate at all).

The only people who measure success based on their hourly wage are people who just got promoted to night manager at McDonalds.  I measure financial success in things like yachts and vacation homes, and there are few careers that give you a better shot at those kinds of things than banking (and related exit opps).  At the very least, compare dollars per year—the vast majority of technology workers spend most of their careers in middle management making less per year than a second year analyst.

theres also the issue of sustainability. that site can be brought out or die off and he won't have as big of a skillset to show for it.

High risk, high reward.  Relatively speaking, I would classify banking as a "low risk" career.  You could work for a hedge fund that makes billions or one that goes belly-up.  You could have a great idea like this kid, or you could be homeless b/c your ideas didn't pan out.  Jonathan Knee wrote about this in "The Accidential Investment Banker."

This doesn't really prove much. So out of all the websites, he happens to make 10 million.

Well out of all the wall street related jobs, a select few make a 100 million a year.

just out of curiosity...when you say you're exiting, do you mean that you're going to pe/etc? or are you really getting the hell out, and just going to a non-finance industry?

I don't think risk is the right word.  Probability or repeatability are more apt: 100x money, 10% Work, .001% chance of repeating this success.  This really isn't much different from reading an article about someone who won the lottery and saying "Hey, I wish I could do that..."

words of the wise