What happened to WSO? Blatant racism & low quality posts
Have been using WSO for years, starting back when I was in college, and I remember that the forum was generally very high quality and helpful. Nowadays, it’s full of trolls, people complaining about DEI, and people talking about whatever kind of Asian whose presence offended them that day. Pretty sad to see how far downhill the forum has slid in terms of quality.
It stems from one main idea: fear of losing jobs (or making job markets more competitive) and the shift of elite economic status to east and south asians.
You can clearly see how the brunt of racism both on this site and others online shifted from other minorities in the US to the state it is now. I think we all remember the twitter post about a dinner full of Asians from Harvard/Stanford and the amount of vitriol it received online from conservatives (Many of whom said the ivy leagues were being “invaded” by Asians - even though most were born in the US, and blaming it on AA - when we all know that Asian populations in elite schools would skyrocket without AA - let’s be real).
When you have immigrants from India/China/Japan/Korea come in and get high paying jobs, of course it’ll lead to fear and insecurity. Now what I don’t understand is racism against Asians born and raised in the states - this is completely illogical. However, being against competing against Asians that are not from the US is somewhat understandable, but unfortunately for the far right, this will not change for a variety of reasons.
As a Chinese American, seeing the reactions to that post on X was disgusting. I agree with your post, looks spot on, but would add that Asians incl East, South, Central, etc, are less than 5% of the population which makes the whole “job replacement” bs ridiculous xd.
It's at about 7% now. The whole idea of job replacement is absurd, because for the most part that's never been the case, that immigrants would replace workers. It's been a common thread in America since the dawn of immigration. The Irish, the Italians, the Mexicans, the central Americans, and now the Asians, all coming to steal your job. It's always a fear driven response to change.
There is a litany of evidence showing that immigrants consistently boost job growth and grow the economy. Peer reviewed meta analysis's on the subject are very common.
I think there is some nuance to the vitrol from the referenced Twitter post.
The way I saw it, the post wasn't anger at successful Asian people. Don't think really many people have a problem with that.
Instead, I think it was an eye-rolling moment for a certain aspect of Asian culture that is super focused and almost obsessed with credentialism that comes with Ivy League degrees. The poster, also seemingly obsessed with credentialism, noted that everyone at the table had an Ivy League. The fact that the poster cares so much was the cringe that people were reacting to.....not the fact that this was a table of successful Asian people.
Accurate.
That may have been the original intent of the post, but I saw multiple reshares / reactions to the reshares that were clearly anti-Asian vs the more nuanced message you’ve described
Asians are the best employees. But I don't see as many being heads of firms, departments, or showing up on Bloomberg. I do believe that there's just an obsessive inclination towards academic excellence which is highly relevant for junior positions, but past that point, leadership or soft qualities start to get more important so they stop being as overrepresented.
I like balanced teams with a good mix of ethnicity, education, and gender. The work isn’t that hard, so if plenty of people can do it, you might as well build a team where you pick up one or two things from each other’s perspective. At a past firm I was in the same team with a Chinese guy and learned a shit ton about Chinese culture. This learning is effortless because it's just casual talk, but it's highly educational and it's part of those "soft skills" you learn so you can understand better people from other backgrounds/build emotional intelligence, which doesn't really happens in a team where all 10 talk about Tiger Woods' swing all day.
Who’s the head of nvidia? Microsoft? Google?
You’re just racist dumbass
Is this a troll post? Look at any investment bank, megafund, large hedge fund, the vast majority have or have had Chinese/Indian men as CEO/other top exec role or as head of a department
Immigration historically has been a way to provide the American elite and middle class who are primarily white with a permanent underclass of low cost labor. Initially, it was slavery, then the Chinese with railroads, black sharecroppers in the South, etc. Nowadays, it's hispanics and still black people. Immigration from Asia has turned the table upside down and now these class of immigrants are vying for high-status, high-paying jobs, and whites are feeling the pressure of competition for the first time in this country's history.
The American middle class voted against low skill immigration pretty solidly.
I think it’s what happens when your forum’s demographic is focused on primarily growing college student users and makes an anonymous posting function.
It’s to easy to get away with lying or spreading misinformation. I miss the days when there was no anonymous posting tbh (irony because I’m posting this anonymously)
I always see this "It's anonymous, of course people will say XYZ" But I can't buy it, because the most insane irrational and upsetting things I've ever seen on social media have all come from Facebook where everyone has their jobs, coworkers, and friends added.
It’s an anonymous online forum in 2025.
I think that says it all.
This is the answer. Internet + anonymity = asshole has been the formula since like BBS days. Though key differences today are 1) a much larger user base and audience, and 2) kids who grew up on some of these platforms and have no idea how to interact with others.
Oh completely. Some kids going through recruitment nowadays have absolutely no social skills. I genuinely think virtual school made their personalities atrophy.
That, and getting your information from TikTok can lead you to believe some pretty outrageous things.
Other's have hit on a lot of the good points, but I'd like to point out one more. During my time in college, most people there were pretty independent thinkers. Generally, they were skeptical of the things they read and tried to check sources. Every year since covid, juniors have deteriorated in terms of their ability to think critically about the sources they're reading and to actually criticize the points others make. I don't mean to say this to blame young people, as I have kids and I know how tough going through covid was on them developmentally and socially, and how the education system got turned upside-down from it, along with the amount of social media addiction being basically baked in from youth.
I'm really concerned for younger people nowadays, because they're increasingly neurotic and decreasingly conscientious. They aren't able to critically analyze things for what they are, and take terrible takes as gospel from the right and left wing extremists on social media.
I do hope there's a solution to this. Again, not blaming young people. I blame leaders and parents for failing to see what is happening and blaming young people instead of realizing that they're in a crisis.
As the other top poster said, there is a clear and apparent fear factor at hand here. Fear has been such a driving force since covid, as has anger. Young people haven't been given the tools to deal with this, nor have they had the same social conditioning as older people to know reality from BS. It's deeply saddening and upsetting that we've failed to set up younger folk for this era of extreme uncertainty with a lack of tools or guidance.
Excellent point, I think social media is a major problem for people getting stuck in their echo chambers. In terms of covid i think during online classes people lost out on the opportunity to be part of a group where people would naturally have differing opinions (on random topics in english class or whatever). Im curiou on what the effect is on kids who went through online school during elementary/ kindergarten.
Its also weird how the "them vs us" mentality has become so prominent. It has always existed, but at the fringes of society- now you see it everywhere; its kind of scary how a sizable amount of people can't empathize with the other side on a human level. I wonder if the social pendulum is going to swing back to a healthier place or if we are just gonna keep spiraling lol.
My youngest was going into Kindergarten/sort of pre-K when covid hit, and my eldest was going through elementary. I'll say it's had pretty bad affects on their socialization. They aren't extremists, but my wife and I have had to work incredibly hard to ensure they're properly socialized. They've turned out great now, after 5 years, because we put in the work. Unfortunately, most parents I meet nowadays are absolutely horrible. A lot of older parents raising kids, and they're so focused on work and their own lives that they let the iPads raise their kids. In seeing this, I've become a big advocate for having kids before you've spent too long establishing your life, because every parent I've met who's had an established life, social routine, and committed career tend to be absolutely horrible parents because they refuse to sacrifice their free time and careers for their kids, and I can see that these kids are often more attached to teachers, babysitters, and attentive parents of other kids than their own parents.
The them vs us has become too present. I'm seeing it in my own life. Everything is too "black and white" with no nuance, no area for real discussion, and no meaningful effort to bridge the gap. Realistically, I don't know how the cycle breaks. Gen A is far too isolated from each other, and those essential "third places" continue to deteriorate. I would highly suggest reading bowling alone, as it does an amazing job at covering this growing dynamic.
The majority of the current user base sucks. Sorry but that's the short answer. The consistent complaining, racism, low quality posts, and general lack of gratitude has driven most of the good, quality, long-time users off the site.
1 in 100 posts is thought provoking, 1 in 50 posts is well written and engaging, and 1 in 10 users are tolerable human beings.
There are still some really great folks on here, some of whom I have personally referred to different jobs or tried to help progress their career, where possible. I don't want to imply that there aren't some really sharp and driven folks, in a variety of levels in their career, because they absolutely still exist. However, they are now the minority.
I mean Trump was re-elected lol.
You didn’t think that kind of thinking would pervade an anonymous online forum that caters to finance professionals?
I know college educated bankers who still believe that Biden stole the election, but the two elections Trump won were somehow totally clean, so just imagine what a selfish young male student could be convinced to believe.
It's a lot like reddit. I hate that platform now. Not a single braincell to share amongst most people. And it isn't just people on the right(I am a Democrat who voted against Trump 3 times for emphasis). There are a LOT of really dumb people on the left who read just the headlines and don't think too hard about things. In general, there are too many dumb, emotional people out there who avoid thinking because thinking is hard.
I've found this to be the case in hiring too. I'm not a pure fundamental L/S, so our interviews don't go over case pitches, but I have one friend who's a pod PM, and he says the number of students or bankers(or hell even bankers + pe guys) that come into the stock pitch and throw out Google is fucking insane. The thesis's are always the same. There's no independent thought or looking for real differentiated ideas or thesis's.
Our education system is so fucked. Whenever I talk to my kid's teachers, they give my kids high praise, not because they're some standout students, but because they have basic reading and writing skills. Parents nowadays are so absorbed with their own lives that they can't see the massive crisis in the youth, and won't do anything about it but then turn around and attack books and teachers for "Poisoning their children's minds" when children should be allowed to be curious about things in the real world. That's how they learn things. And when I talk to professors, they say back in the 2000s and 2010s they would assign 2-3 books a semester for reading, and nowadays if they assign one people will grone and complain and not read it. I don't blame young people for this, they've never been challenged in schools before so now they that they're being expected to, well, do things for themselves, of course they hate it. And guess what? Parents support this shitty behaviour.
Your point on hiring resonated with me. I'm at an L/S pod and did the graduate programme many years ago, and have been hiring for my pod for a while. The decay in critical thinking, engaging thoughtfully with data and facts, is mind-blowing. The top end of candidates/kids I speak to are genuinely spectacular, I think my current shop's graduate pipeline is getting better, talking to one of the incoming analysts who's already asking all the right questions, engages critically with some of the stuff I mention, etc...but the bulk of talent applying is getting worse, on the grad side (see P72 Academy posts) and from the sellside.
The number of IB/ER/PE guys interviewing who have no actual pitch, just read something Brett C put up and are forcing a variant perception that doesn't make sense and is too speculative, is concerning. They often can't think about where their assumptions could be challenged or draw strange conclusions from data/historical trends; there's no actual "thinking".
I don't think this is a political issue. Some of the takes I hear from progressives/leftists make my brain hurt, given the flawed premises/assumptions they take - I think people just don't read anymore. That's the key trait I look for in analysts now. Does this person read? Do they learn new things and engage with material? With that being said, the amount of "PE/IB" guys voting for a guy that is rampantly against globalism, despite working in the field that arguably relies on globalism the most, was funny to see.
I'm against DEI hiring too, but I'm not sure that paving the way for communitarian and isolationist politics is the way forward for a high finance career.
Politically speaking, being an independent, critical thinker is the only way to remain sane.
Critical thinking skills have been atrophying among young people; many of them can barely write and communicate effectively.
Genuinely worried about future generations…
I've said it since I joined this site 5 years ago, and I'll repeat it:
The vast majority of people who use WSO are either students or don't actually work in "high finance"; they do corpdev or work for some random firm in the Midwest. You'll find that some people are just making jokes, whilst others are genuinely nativist/racist or w/e...but the main demographic using WSO will capture a lot of these types.
Someone else mentioned that quality even in IB is going down (I've been yelling about this for years, given I've had to interview many of these guys...still hiring btw) and the inability to think rationally and critically is decaying even in the "skilled" section of the population.
Anyway, the Overton Window is shifting further to the right, whether you're "legal" or not, never really mattered to a particular part of the American population...and I'm not even talking about the average Trump voter here, given they're not a monolith.
Definitely feel like I used to get more thoughtful responses to my posts in general. If I post a question now, I don't get very much useful advice, and I've tapered down posting here.
WSO advertising to students have massively downgraded the quality of the posts. They come in and chat all this BS and think the reason they are employed jerking off in their dorm is because of DEI. Its fine if WSO wants to increase its MAU but they should quarantine these accounts to their own forums so we dont all their shit comments ruining otherwise high quality posts and discussions.
they already ban anyone who rightfully complains about you human locusts
wtf are you even on about
Too many opinionated kids and trolls, not enough older heads.
Sum Ting Wong
I’ve noticed the same thing lately. It used to be a place where you could actually learn something useful and have solid discussions, but now half the threads just feel like noise or people venting. It makes it harder to find the good content that’s still there. Hopefully the mods step in a bit more, otherwise a lot of long-time users might just tune out.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the same. Used to be a solid place for industry insight, now too many low-effort or toxic posts. Wish moderation could bring back the old quality discussions.
nah fam you were just too sheltered. anywhere except in nyc. high finance is racist af.
why would the ethnic group in power give you the power to control their financial system lmao
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