My dad's opinion on Finance vs Tech

you can exit to tech in a finance role (maybe strategy/ops) after an analyst stint, which is basically the equivalent of a back office job for a tech company. a finance position at a tech company is not a path to entrepreneurship, and you will always be considered second class to engineering or product oriented employees. not to mention an IB analyst stint teaches you zero skills on how to be an effective operator or manager, so I would not count on going from IB > billionaire entrepreneur.

The way your father described the tech industry is shared by many, but it's actually a bit out of date / inaccurate. Having been in the industry for a few years, here are some things I see differently:

• Maybe not as bad as some other sectors, but corporate bureaucracy is a thing in the tech industry as well. The company- or org-level goals are not easily re-prioritized by bottom-up creativity. Smart, creative ideas need a lot of support to even be initiated. Most likely, such ideas will be shut down by the management the moment they decide that the priorities aren't aligned perfectly.
• Startups and other smaller companies do enjoy more flexible work culture, where the rules are indeed less strict and bent more easily. On the flip side, every individual carries a lot more responsibility and needs to be a jack of all trades. However, you kind of lose the good WLB in this environment, unfortunately.
• Meta has this interesting culture where you're supposed to "move fast" (an actual company motto). It's known for its bad WLB within the tech industry, though it used to pay better than the competitors to compensate for that. But given the recent stock crash and layoffs, I don't know if it really pays that well anymore.

My father used to want me to become a lawyer or a doctor and didn't initially appreciate my interest in the tech industry. It was before the era of Google, and people used to think that the tech industry doesn't pay well, it's difficult to get a position once you lose your job, and so on. But it was clear over time that I had an aptitude for math and programming, so by the time I was out of high school, my father stopped asking me to pursue the career paths I didn't want.

The tech industry may look glorious and all, but it's getting pretty saturated. In the end, your success depends more on your skills and interests than the industry, so I'd think it's more important to focus on building strong skills, considering your natural talents. It's easier to change the industry later than trying to acquire new skills. (I moved from tech to finance myself and was able to leverage the same skills.)

Intern in ER

He always pushes me to recruit for Meta and work on the Metaverse, or join a tech company and become a Steve Jobs entrepreneur. He says the best way to become a billionaire these days is to be a tech entrepreneur, he doesn't see a lot of banker billionaires

That's the most generic pov about tech around everywhere and I'm highly skeptical about its accuracy.

Yeah if you know you want tech in college you should just shoot for an APM program immediately, or learn to code, or get a sales role

Investment bankers run the economy though 🥱

Intern in ER

This isn't one of those other 'IB vs CS' posts.

When you have to qualify your statement like that then you should probably reconsider it

Your dad's idea of tech is completely unfounded and not how tech operates right now.

Tons of corporate bureaucracy in tech and just like any other CORPORATE job, requires you to follow the rules. Your dad is confusing early stage startups and cutting edge research that 99.99% of people in tech will never touch with the tech industry as a whole.

If I was your dad's son and your brother, I would recommend you to go in tech and forbid you from any finance academic studies which are a joke. At some point even finance itself is a joke and NO I am not proud of Bernanke getting the NOBEL. If you ultimately consider into finance field, ANYONE would be happy to hire you with your programming skills than any finance stunt. IF you are really good in programming, any VC fund would be ready to pump money into you, even if you are mediocre like SBF. You want to learn about finance and how to manage your money, then do the CFA for fun and you won't miss anything from bachelors/masters, I assure you. 

With love, your unknown brother. 

Also tech has its own strong bureaucracies and political stuff, just as much as anywhere else. Behind the Oat Milk and Allbirds, a lot of tech people are highly competitive and cutthroat. It’s all just business, the bottom line is what matters.

For perspective, I just heard a popular channel answer a question of how to help a struggling coworker. The first point was to ask if this person should even be helped? Tons of followed for that channel, and they’re honestly right. Tech isn’t this amazing land of freedom.

The only freedom is creating your own place in this world and taking risk.

"He always pushes me to recruit for Meta and work on the Metaverse, or join a tech company and become a Steve Jobs entrepreneur."

🤮 🤮 🤮

Yeah, maybe if you want your RSU's to go to $0 while constantly being in fear of losing your job. Meta has become a complete joke now. So glad I never applied there

I don't think being a billionaire is a feasible goal for most people including bankers. Most will exit long before they get anywhere near the level where you could exit into a CFO-type role at a solid company. I'm just an incoming first-year trader but I'd say you should be entrepreneurial on your own first. I've been self studying python, statistics, derivatives pricing, and paper trading on thinkorswim. I think you should focus on learning a wide array of monetizable skills which are applicable to a lot of different spaces and not focus on a specific role just yet. If you're a creative mind, I think programming and trading would be great for you if you are interested in tech or markets because there are so many different creative ways to express your market views through financial instruments. Also, about working at Meta, they have pretty bad WLB and working for Zuckerberg probably isn't the best choice after the last two earnings reports and general macro/market trends (near term at least). 

The fact that your dad referenced a tech company that has lost 70% of its value this year tells you that his view is solely predicated on how great things were in a segment that was in a bubble.  He probably would've told you the exact same advice in 1999 and would've pushed you towards prop trading credit derivatives in 2006.

I don't understand this tech vs IB thing? It's a complete dichotomy. I can't code (I can do print("hello world") and that's about it) and do all these computer stuff all day... I'd be terrible in tech. I enjoy the pitching, the analysis, etc., of banking. I'm also an Economics student with an interest in macroeconomics, and there's nothing that's more interesting than seeing what you've learned be applied into practice with new bonds, for example. There's so many reasons to choose banking over tech and it's down to skillset and personal interests.

your dad is correct

My opinion is that boomers miss the point that u can exit to tech after an analyst stint

why would you want to do an IB stint if you want to be a software engineer? you'll only lose time and your experience won't count for anything. will lose your sharpness of mind with age as well. 2y is not much, but still. and will probably scare off tech companies cause they won't view you as a software engineer anymore.

so what you're talking about is probably not tech, but finance/stategy at a tech company. finance at a tech company is back office and has low pay and no career progression. strategy in tech is more likely from either tech or consulting rather than banking. banking is much less relevant.

at the end of the day though, it's all about who you are. are you enjoying coding or accounting more? are you a risk taker who wants to bet his life success on building a random business or a risk averse person who would rather take a big stable stream of income without risk? these are the questions.

Good thing for me then that your dads opinion don’t mean ugatz to me!

Let your dad react to this thread

No offense but I'm assuming your Dad is a doctor because typically people in medicine have no understanding of how the world actually works outside of healthcare (from a med background myself) but that's a pretty uneducated take he said. It sounds like someone from the outside looking in who doesn't understand what each industry actually entails.

Firstly the industries are a lot more similar than what he makes out, it really isn't that binary. Take an average career outcome in each industry:

• Work in tech and join a FAANG, job hop a few times but most likely max out at L6/7 earning high six figures. Assuming you invest well you'll have a nice retirement and will be very well off. 
• Work in finance and join an IB out of college, maybe join PE/HF or whatever or maybe stay in IB, realistically an average case will max out at Director maybe might scrape MD level in IB, similar level in adjacent finance fields, earning high six, shot at low 7 figures. Again assuming you invest well you'll have a nice retirement and will be very well off. Will work more than if you did tech though and if you burnout you might earn a bit less in corporate job somewhere.

As you can see those career outcomes are virtually identical. It really isn't as binary as your dad or people on this forum like to make it out to be - the outcomes are very similar so just choose which one you enjoy the most and are actually passionate about. There's no point being depressed your whole life working a job you don't even like because some people on an online forum said you will earn 10% more in a different career etc.

If you decide to work for Meta you'll never be a billionaire as well, just putting that out there - going to work for Meta now is like going to work for IBM 20 years ago. To be a billionaire in tech you have to create your own startup from the ground up which is effectively the same as creating your own fund in finance. Also saying "he doesn't see any banker billionaires", ?? yes perhaps in actual IB there are few but there are tons of billionaires from PE, HF etc. Exactly the same as saying you don't see any billionaires who are joining FAANG right now, you see them in startups where they are taking on risk.

The only, and I mean ONLY, way to become a billionaire (or even get rich in the traditional sense) is to exploit opportunity. Back when stockbrokers were banking commission without regulations, that was the opportunity. Back when the internet started going mainstream, websites like broadcast.com were the opportunity. Back when travel virtually stopped due to fear (happened a couple of times in the 2000s) and motels nosedived in value, one can say that was the opportunity.

A job can make you filthy rich- if coupled with opportunity. If coupled with significant stock in a promising company. If coupled with relationships that will create asymmetric benefits in the future.

I don't know what the opportunity is right now. Tech? Finance? Supercharger Stations? If I knew, I'd be working on it right now. That's what makes people rich-- the god-given blessing to spot an opportunity, act on it, and be lucky enough for things to go right. Working for any mature company won't make you a billionaire, but taking on opportunities with potential for asymmetric returns on low risk may get you close.