A Note to Andy - Farewell

@AndyLouis" 

A decade ago in my college years, coming from an engineering background at a solid target university, I truly needed as much advise as I could in order to jump right into a career in finance after graduation. WSO became a resource of extreme value. I learned where to get technical guides which led to my first internship in IB and after realizing my true interest was on the trading side, I learned helpful tips on how to transition appropriately. I had no mentors, I had no family in the industry everything was learned organically and with some help from some people on here. I have since tried to pay back the community in which has been so helpful to me by answering as many questions as I can, using my PM to offer specific advise on firms or jobs I have real experience with.

WSO has since become something totally different and actually quite dangerous for young people seeking genuine guidance. Sure, there are still some great people on here willing to help wherever possible, especially in the PE, RE, and HF topics but this is no longer the norm here. Instead this has become a place where unexperienced students and prospective monkey's spread misinformation with zero experience dominate the forums and steer people in wrong directions. The amount of firm and industry specific misinformation that is posted on here has become absurd and it appears the mod's don't really mind. There's a time for funny trolling, which is great and has always been a hilarious part of WSO. Arguing with interns and students about firm's that I have actually worked at, is just a disservice to those who are interview prepping for these firms.

So long and best of luck to all the chimps.

-GR

8 Comments
 

You’re right. This place is becoming like all other social media platforms and culture today. Everything is dramatized, sensationalized and generalized. There is no nuance or detailed discussion. Lies are more abundant than truths. This is the direction society is going in general (I realize this statement is dramatic the irony lmao) - the moral fabric is disintegrating.

 

As a “prospect” who knew 0 about the industry before coming on this site (literally thought all finance professionals were like bank tellers or mortgage loan officers) this site has been of tremendous value. The forums along with the guides have given me so much especially given the fact I don’t have the Greenwich -> private high school -> HYSP background. 

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Really sorry to hear this.  One of the struggles we've had in the last ~6 months (besides the nightmare migration to Drupal 8) has been our inability to continue certifying users without the users reaching out to us proactively.  Before, we could privately associate emails with a LinkedIn account and Certify if the user was indeed a professional. 

Now with some of the API limitations LinkedIn has introduced, it makes it much harder (almost impossible to do manually for our small team).

This has resulted in a gradual shift in more non-certified users...that being said, we have continued to invest to bring in more mentors and tell their stories through Q&As, podcasts, etc to try and feature higher quality content and highlight paths that are different to the typical "path" that is often idolized on WSO.

The goal is for this featured content to provide more nuance, more honest discussions about the balance of career, transitions and life in general.

I'd love to hear suggesstions on how you think we can make it better?

Either way, thank you for all of the advice you've given over the years!

Patrick

 

I wouldn’t worry about it, users come and go, sure the site was great when blackhat and simple as were more active, but people’s lives change, interest is lost, and if I’m being honest (remember this is a burner account, I haven’t been active on my real one in a while) it’s really fucking exhausting answering the same questions every few weeks/months. Eventually, some of us probably just said “fuck it Im out, all of my posts are searchable, the advice is there to those who want to find it”

just trying to live like Hunter S Thompson
 

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