How does it feel?
Just wondering how it feel to be in an industry that will be obsolete and automated in 30 or so years.
The future jobs will be mainly engineering and tech so without any STEM education, you guys with business, finance, law or other useless majors will have to find a job that wont be fucked in 30 years. (Only thing thing I could think of is the army so good luck.) None of you guys will be earning hundreds of thousands in a few years lmao.
Also that whole argument about finance being "relationship driven" is hilarious. Maybe for the top guys its relationship driven but for everyone else in the middle or bottom is gonna get fucked by automation leaving only the very top guys.
All I could say is good luck.
Nice
Lol don't know why you're pretending it's a joke when its true
Thanks for making this post lmao, feels good knowing that all these losers on here bragging about "prestige" and who think they're hot shit because they work late are gonna be out of a job soon
We are fucked!
Ikr
Holy fuck is there a thread about automation 3 times every week?
Wanted to warn anyone thinking of going into finance undergrad that they'd be fucked
OP sounds jealous
Jealous of working in a job that will disappear in 20 or so years? Yeah for sure
Haha automating corporate finance.. You google guys need to get out and get some fresh air.
It literally took 10+ years to automate cashiers and even then they couldn’t do it well. 30 years to automate a highly human field seems unreasonable but sure.
Alright so how long in your eyes do you think it would take to automate banking?
Sounds like someone couldn't land an internship...
Sounds like you'll be out of a job in a decade or two.
This is what people said 30 years ago. This is also what people will be saying 30 years from now.
Automation 30 years ago was people saying "Oh I bet we'll have robots doing everything in the future" and then nothing happening.
Automation today has robots writing music, driving cars, flying planes, performing white collar work at a fraction of the cost, etc. You can't compare 30 years ago to today because as we know it, automation is going to be better at humans in everything.
Look up any articles online about automation before your embarrass yourself.
sounds like recruiting didn't go too well
Nah I'm making bank working at Google knowing my job will exist in 30 years
i mean congrats? but what's the point in this post exactly?
If you're still coding when you're 55 then congrats on failing at life.
So you’re making long term futuristic assumptions about a role you know nothing about?
Stop lying. You do not work at google. Your post history clearly indicates that you wanted to pursue banking then switched focus to RE. You are wildly full of shit and only posted this to make yourself huff and puff about how banking is stupid even though you're secretly mad that you didn't break into banking and/or RE.
How do you automate away investment bankers? Investment banking is the process of raising capital, which is a fundamentally relational business. It's one of the few career paths that I struggle to see an automation solution for.
Even so, why would anyone today care that their jobs will be automated away when they are around retirement age?
It's not only investment banking that's about relationship building and face to face interaction. Consulting, law, PE, REDev and multiple others I'm not thinking of require human relations to function which wont ever be automated.
I doubt investment banking will be fully automated even around 50 or so years from now. Consultants and lawyers will most definitely not be automated in 50 years.
Automating analyst and associate positions is extremely easy, will most likely happen in a decade or so. This leaves only the top guys at a bank which essentially cuts down the entire industry. Same with consulting, law or other business roles. Don't even ask me how audit is still a thing, can't wait for the Big 4 to clean house and fire all their auditors lmao.
theaccountingmajor
Just when you thought you’d found a poster on your side.
Ok, let's start with the elephant in the room. With sour grapes, you're making proclamations about how everyone today (who is reading this) is going to have their finance jobs automated away (so haha to them). Well, anyone in the industry or entering the industry today, on your timescale of 10-30 years, is not in danger of having his job automated away. In 10 years, anyone (here today reading this) still in the business is not going to be at the analyst/associate level preparing pitchbooks, and especially not in 30 years. So your commentary does not apply to anyone here. They will be the senior people cutting the analysts and pocketing the savings.
Secondly, there is a crazy amount of nuance and gray area when it comes to industries and specific companies. There will come a time in the future where an AI will have the brain function and perhaps even the sentience similar to that of a human being that will allow it to think like a person. But that's not happening in 10 years (or probably even 30 years). You're not going to be able to use brute force to code a financial program to prepare complex financial analysis without the input of a human anytime soon. Well, you could create that program, but it would suck for the forseeable future.
As an aside, there is so much nuance in the financial services industry at large that you couldn't even program an underwriting program to make automated decisions about a single-family mortgage without human help because there is too much gray area and too many complexities in individual borrower cases. And that's for a simple residential loan. In IB, et al you're talking about the most complex businesses in the world.
I build and maintain the algos for a quant shop, so the jokes on you. We've taken in $1B this year in my strategies and beat the market by ~50bps net.
I've seen some coding bootcamps and data analytics bootcamp programs at schools like Berkely & GWU, where you learn full stack development in the former and everything up to a little machine learning in the latter. Worth it for hedge funds/buyside in general? It's 24 weeks and costs just ~10k so thinking it could be worthwhile either way, just to have stronger computer skills, which will without a doubt be useful somehwere.
A little deleveraging will clean the valley of all that don’t add value (~90%). Wall Street has bank rolled the whole thing lol. It’s been a fun ride!
While I agree that finance, business and law are completely fcking useless degrees, corporate finance/investment banking will not be automated away. Who the hell would raise capital with an automated bot lmao. It’s like getting on a plane without a pilot.
Automated planes could easily be a thing. Planes today are mostly flown on autopilot for 95% of the flight so your comparison doesn't make any sense. Automated planes could easily be perfected in the next 10 or so years. Goes to show how out of touch people on WSO are with tech.
Ok bud, you get on that plane then.
What do you do at Google exactly? Coding? That's much more prone to automation than many of the jobs held by people on this forum (fundraising, asset allocation decision making, operations and management, etc...). Not only is it prone to automation but every 8 year old kid and kids all over the world are learning coding, globalization which is already impacting your industry will only have more of an impact in the future and some 15 y/o in India will take jobs from coders for probably 10-15% of the pay.
Brilliant post. +1.
“Coding”.. It can be done by any kid in an Indian back office for 1/10th the pay. Talk about vulnerable to being automated away...
Plus tech guys get no pvssy..They drink soylent and jerk off.
If your coding is being outsourced, chances are you're a shitty programmer so you deserve to be fired. You really think some Indian kid in BFE is gonna produce code at the same level as a Google SWE? People who know what they're doing don't have to worry about outsourcing, trust me.
LOL never thought I'd hear someone say coding is more prone to automation than playing around with excel and powerpoint for 14 hours a day.
You are being so silly right now.
Coding is actually more prone to automation than being an excel jockey. Because of the structred nature of programing it is easier to automate than excel work which is insanely variable.
This is by far the dumbest post I have read on WSO.
Just remember, if you shut your mouth, you will immediately stop sounding like a fool.
So you're telling me, analysts and associates who do nothing but excel, powerpoint and pitch books can't be automated by software?
Put your money where your mouth is and do it. Become a billionaire by automating away investment bankers.
please stop, youre making all of us at tech companies sound like morons
According to your profile, you work in corporate strategy so either you're a liar or you work in the strategy department of a tech company. Either way, you don't work in tech so your opinion is invalid. Also, corporate strategy will go around the same time as investment banking and consulting so good luck.
You sound about 13 years old.. there is literally NO way you're either a software engineer or at Google.
But on a more serious note, (robotic) process automation is a booming business in the banking sector. Banks are hounding us (that work in ML / AI / DS) down on a daily basis, so there's def. enough work to be done.
One problem with automation (IMO), is that not all laws are black-or-white - many are open for interpretation. A lot of accounting (on a higher level) involves going out to clients, and actually verifying / doing a judgement call on how things are, and if they're in accordance to their books and statements. In other words, lots of fuzzy grey areas.
But some things are pretty easy to automate, and will become automated. I foresee that creating pitch decks, reports, etc. will become more or less fully automated in the next decade. (By automated, I mean that analysts are not manually needed for the task)
Exactly what I was saying. Analysts and associates are going to be cut really quickly because fiddling around with excel and earning 120k a year is for sure not going to fly in 10 or so years.
Once they're cut, you're only left with a very small amount of people at the top thus killing off the industry.
So funny how people on this board think because they're untouchable to automation. An analyst or associate literally provides no values except for Powerpoint slides and demand six figures which is laughable in this new age. Finance, consulting and even law are going to be cut down immensely only leaving a few people at the top to deal with relationship building while the rest are pretty much screwed.
Amazing how this guy has the time to respond to every single post...
Amazing what you have time for when you're not working 100 hours a week.
Also have yet to see anyone respond to my arguments so looks like things are going well for me.
Based on your post history, it looks like you were looking for a job in finance but recruiting probably did not go as well as you had hoped. I don't believe you work at Google, but if you do, you probably work in a corporate finance or biz dev role. Even so, I don't believe your job will be automated though you would be subject to the same automation you anticipate eliminates the jobs of others on this forum that hold a role similar to yours.
If you'd like to talk about how to transition from your current job to finance in the event you're dissatisfied, there are lots of resources here. This forum has welcomed back prodigal sons (and daughters) before.
I'm not looking for a route back into finance, my posts about finance are just me asking questions about the industry to gain insight and to make comparisons to the tech world.
Anyways to get down to business, per your question above, you asked: "How will those with a STEM education be protected from the same advancement in automation that decimates the finance industry?"
Well, let's take a look at the corporate world first of all. I'm going to be covering investment banking, consulting and law and explain them in each section for ease of the reader.
Investment banking has a hierarchy of analyst -> associate -> VP -> director -> MD. From what I understand, analysts and associates handle the grunt work, VPs oversee the analysts and associates and sometimes talk to clients and directors and MDs land clients. The role of an analyst or associate can easily be replaced by software in 15 or so years. Without a grunt level workforce to operate on, VPs could easily have their numbers slashed which leaves only the upper echelons of an investment bank. This leaves the MDs, Directors and a few VPs. Investment banks will no longer hire on-campus thus killing of the industry for undergrads. I have no idea how they will get new talent but they sure as hell won't be paying 100k for each 30 new analysts each year.
Management Consulting has a hierarchy similar to investment banking with business analysts doing the grunt work and partners landing clients. Anyone who doesn't interact with a client in consulting (IE: anyone in analyst or low-level associate roles) could be eliminated entirely. Engagement managers will be slashed (like VPs) and principals and partners will remain (like directors and MDs). Consulting will be cut down entirely in the undergrad level leaving only the upper guys landing clients, same deal as investment banking.
Law is simple, you have two levels, associate and partner. Partners mainly land clients, associates do all the grunt work. Once again the same thing, just like consulting and IB, associate level roles could easily be eliminated (unless they're in litigation). Most lawyers are transactional and most legal transactional work could either be automated or supplemented by new legal sites like LegalZoom for example. This would effectively leave a couple associates and the partners of a firm. Law schools pump out a ton of grads who are already having issues finding work this will only be amplified when big law firms start to cut down their numbers effectively forcing law grads to pursue jobs elsewhere.
As for software engineering, most of what I do on a day-to-day basis could not be automated. Coding as a whole cannot be automated until we reach technological singularity which will happen in over a century from now. Stuff like writing bug reports could be automated but that would be great for me as I prefer coding than writing reports. Tech is not a field that could be automated in this century nor are core engineering disciplines. We are also given a relaxed environment because a huge part of being a software engineer is coming up with new ideas to innovate our products. Being in an office environment is known to stub creativity hence the reason for our laid-back looks.
My colleagues who work as electrical or mechanical engineers at Google do a job that a robot can't do until we reach technological singularity as well. Same deal in software, any engineer needs to be creative and come up with new solutions. STEM jobs are safe from automation because we don't start as analysts making powerpoint slides, we simply start out as an engineer and engineers as a requirement need to be able to come up with ideas and then follow through with them. In the corporate world, you follow a set path for each client whereas in the tech world, you're making a product and you could do anything you want with said product.
I don't want to make this too long so I'll cut it here. I'm looking forward to seeing your response
That is a lot of research for someone who’s been focused on coding.
Btw, when do you start at Google? Want to make sure I bookmark my calendar so I’m ready for the automated economy to come online....
You're telling me very soon there will be a general purpose advanced AI that can take high level human inputs and (unsupervised) produce high level outputs for banking/consulting/law but it's not good enough to take high level human inputs and produce code for software engineering?
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrL93-lAb0-/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igsh…
Cute, but still haven't heard anyone rebut what I've said.
Also, I'm dying at at the dude who wrote "They ain't wrong and Y'all know it doe", shows he's way smarter than all the people pointing and laughing but providing no information to their claims.
Even your own top users are agreeing with me. heister your local multi-millionaire and automation company entrepreneur has said that IB will most likely disappear in 30 years but don't take my word for it.
I'm wondering how you are so certain about what the future's jobs are going to look like
I saind tasks will be automated. I never said the job would be automated. You are taking my words and interperting them in your own way. Just becuase you have a stem job doesn't mean you are safe from automation. Also the goal of automation isn't to remove jobs it is to grow them. You can employ everyone by gving them a spoon and having them dig a canal with it. Doesn't make it an effective use of labor. Automation and machines increase the level of human productivity, the goal isn't to "fire everyone" it is to extract the most output from people to allow the excess work capacity to produce additional value somwhere else in hte economy.
How can you automate investment banking? Are you just going to get computer and Excel to form all the pitch books?
I don’t really think highly of finance as an industry (nothing I’ve done has been “difficult” per say) but I do find it incredible that this kid is so certain that roles he has never once performed are automatable. Too much context / client input / customizabiltiy necessary for a computer to easily generate a financial model using spreadsheets with fucked up formatting, human conversation and industry research and trends, for example. Maybe someday but sheesh, we still have people delivering my mail.
Also one year ago this kid was looking for help landing a job “in a few years” so he’s absolutely still in college and full of shit.
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/sell-side-and-promotions-in-toro…
Exactly, and I have some time the next couple days and may choose to rebut the longer comment, but most of my main points/examples will be the infinite nuances encountered in a transaction. I can get on board with his sentiment of there being inefficiencies in the finance industry, but I think there are other threats besides automation.
Yeah any automation will be the dumb annoying shit that will make banking a better lifestyle (or just free you up to do more idea decks lololol).
How does it feel to treat me like you do? When you've laid your hands upon me and told me who you are I thought I was mistaken, I thought I heard your words Tell me how do I feel Tell me now, how do I feel Those who came before me lived through their vocations From the past until completion, they'll turn away no more And still I find it so hard to say what I need to say But I'm quite sure that you'll tell me just how I should feel today I see a ship in the harbor I can and shall obey But if it wasn't for your misfortune, I'd be a heavenly person today And I thought I was mistaken, and I thought I heard you speak Tell me, how do I feel Tell me now, how should I feel Now I stand here waiting I thought I told you to leave me when I walked down to the beach Tell me how does it feel, when your heart grows cold, grows cold, cold
If any of us are still working in 30 years, then we're doing something wrong.
Thank you @bakerbanker, very cool!
What I find striking is the extent to which OP demands that people rebut his point, but has provided little in substantive thinking about how or who will automate these positions aside from just some platitudes and fear mongering. The onus is not on this forum to prove why careers that have existed for this long will suddenly go away because a random poster said so.
I'm always very wary of people who make claims like this about technology. There's a sense in which they're just fraudulent and love using buzzwords, like the folks who say that a disease will be cured in X years, or that the singularity is upon is soon or that quantum computing is "around the corner". We've been living in the relatively stagnant world for some time technologically (in the physical world) and at some point the onus shifts on these prophets to tell us how their claims are going to be realized instead of providing bromides and banalities about the potential of new technologies. I'd argue that globalization and regulation are bigger threats to anyone's job than automation.
Anyway, automation always comes down to costs for corporations. Although entry-level analysts may not provide a lot in the way of knowledge, they are still cheap on a per-hour basis compared to whatever alternative exists. Your entire premise rests on an idea of the "future" that is indefinite and isn't currently being built en masse.
By the time your (vague) timeline of this inevitable "automation" pans out, everyone on this board will be in a position of seniority far removed from these entry-level roles. Even if your scenario of broad automation proves true, it won't be relevant to us since it would affect only 20-year-olds in 2050. Paul Tudor Jones started his career at a job that no longer exists (or exists in a completely different form), as did Ray Dalio, and as did many others in firms that no longer exist either. Things change, but individuals who add value always survive and thrive.
Your responses are also very hostile and reek of insecurity. Some who choose to study corporate finance and go into IB do so because they enjoy the process of valuing companies, investing, or working on transactional work. Not everyone has an interest in the hot new thing (i.e. software eng/comp sci). Given your post history, it seems you failed to accomplish breaking into any finance role and are justifying your failures by ranting.
On the topic of Google and SWEs, I largely agree that your job cannot be automated. But, there are plenty of hungry immigrants from Asia that, with a loosening of immigration laws, can come here and compete down your wages and those of others entering the field (if corporations feel they are too paying too much). Businesses are still ruthless, even in sectors like technology, and they're getting more lobbying power. Not to mention the new generation of domestic competition that will emerge as most young students learn coding sooner. If you want to make a claim that Google is the cream of the crop and thus will be unaffected, fine. But most graduates aren't working at Google, either.
Lastly, technology (broadly defined) and humans are better served as complements and not as substitutes. Any great startup that makes bankers more productive will be more successful than the one seeking to "disrupt" the sector by trying to automate everything.
Unfortunately, they are right. There is no automation on the horizon for the average IB banker.
Of course, you can automate almost every step until the actual relationship, dealmaking. But juniors in banks act like a farming ground for senior bankers, so they would still keep them around. Don't underestimate the politics in automation. Audit can be 100% automated today but client companies don't have the infrastructure yet because of politics.
That being said, most of you folks here think wrong about automation. Automation won't mean that a robot will do your job, it will mean that your job will be not needed. When there is a way for companies to leverage their ( or someone else's) data to find out the best course of action for them, they won't need to pay your fat fees to do so. All you need is the proper interfaces to communicate. Unfortunately for human society, fat greasy, greedy bankers won't give out their power so easily so that change will come much later when the cost of not implementing such machine to machine interfaces is too big.
This is incorrect for many reasons, including many covered by others above. Sorry you didn't get an offer BUDDY.
Ill turn the question around to you OP, what are you gonna do in 5 years when everyone in SE Asia/Africa learns to code and that shit starts getting outsourced?
Yes, a great deal of the research analysis, valuations, financial modeling and the various repetitious facets of putting together pitchbooks, can be automated. Just as there are probably a myriad of forms and standard boilerplate language that exists where you can have basic templates for contracts and agreements and regulatory filings, then just flesh them out as need be individually. Messenger chats and cognitive agents are already in use and increasing, in regards to remote IT support, employee service centers, HR and general help desk functionalities for in-house users/staff as well as for customers and clients.
But you can’t simply can’t automate things in the vein of:
Bottom line, automation won’t likely ever fully automate certain sectors like banking. Automation, AI, Machine Learning and such will complement, supplement and streamline what people already do. However, people will always have to teach, monitor, supervise, oversee, tweak, edit, provide input and correction and maintain the non-human elements of business.
Add to that, it’s terribly presumptuous to assume that advanced technologies of any sort always speak to job disruption/displacement. Intelligent automation revenues may rise, but likely employment could and will increase along with it.
Real talk to the guys who know the industry, will investment banking ever be 100% automated or is that going to happen in a century or so?
I'm one of those people not worried about automation for the foreseeable future because it's mostly complementary to jobs. But I also think an AI "brain" will eventually be created that will be able to think like humans. Not sure if that's in 30 years or 300 years, but when that does eventually happen, nearly all jobs will be gonzo. But that's really the only time I see IB going away.
Looked at your post history and you literally said a few months ago "my plan is to also stay in banking. I just had some questions regarding how career bankers worked." You don't work at Google, you're just a dude sitting at his computer who applied to some online postings and never heard back.
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