<p>@kellybkk: exactly how am I “pounding the table vociferously”? You seem to be the one who is prone to histrionics. I have calmly stated my opinion. How I arrived at it is none of your business. And this is not a court.</p>
<p>Again, as I said to kunderam, there are many people who share my views (for their own personal and valid reasons). Why don’t you interrogate them for a while?</p>
<p>Thanks for “schooling” 50 yos about life. </p>
<p>Some of us know what it takes to come up with the ideas to create a business and how to put it into action. We are amused by the idolation of those who simply serve as the financiers and who aren’t actually producing goods and services that make these companies reality. We are also amused how you think the only “good jobs” are on Wall St. It’s naive and laughable.</p>
<p>I think a lot of posters, like emprex who thought we professionals didn’t understand the context of this kid from a non-target school, would be brought back into the myth that financiers are somehow superior because they can shuffle other people’s fake money around. A lot of students on here are still swayed by certain industries or universities. They haven’t yet worked with dolts from these places. They haven’t yet had to clean up their messes or pay for their ignorance.</p>
<p>It just takes experience to lose the rose colored vision of the meatheads who control our money. Until you have it, keep the lectures in your brain. You’re kind of embarrassing yourselves.</p>
<p>You cant discredit everyone for the problems of a few. Every field has its flaws;which do you intend for you kids to be in? Healthcare,where they cheat people out of their money, and hide cures for disease because it benefits them to have sick people. Tech companies which have people in china work for pennies?</p>
<p>Look at the headlines for a week or so and report back if you see pure honesty and integrity in other professions, especially the ones which serve and entertain us. Education (teachers having sex with their underage students is particularly charming), the clergy (child molestation and heinous coverup by higher-ups), law enforcement (brutality, racism, planting or stealing evidence like drugs, inventing traffic violations), professional sports (doping, brawling, illegal gambling, throwing games, murder, suicide), acting (drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, crude speech), construction/contracting (taking the money and running, cheating or robbing the elderly)…</p>
<p>It takes all kinds to run a world. Not everyone can be the entrepreneur and not everyone can finance the enterprise. Putting down an entire industry seems like something a young person would do–not a supposedly mature adult. Yet the contrary is seen here.</p>
<p>TheGFG, I never said other industries were perfect. It’s human nature to have failings, but it’s a widespread culture. Some successful folks got out when they saw that no one knew what they were doing anymore - then the whole system collapsed in 07. </p>
<p>I think the mature observation is to see systemic problems and not get caught up in, “This guy had honors and is a great father etc…”. Many mature adults have criticized the American auto industry as a collective because, rightfully so, the products they started turning out were sub-par and they paid dearly for it, costing many jobs of good people along the way. They still had great engineers and passionate, good employees.</p>
<p>Many have criticized the healthcare industry, and rightfully so, because we live in the wealthiest country in the world yet force people to suffer and die unnecessarily. Does that mean everybody involved is bad? Of course not, but on Wall Street the product they collectively delivered collapsed our economy. That shows something went very wrong at the core, like with the auto industry before our money saved them from both of their mistakes.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m glad the guy got a job. He rolled the dice and it worked great for him.</p>
<p>^agreed. And also, the motivations of people who go into various fields are different. People generally go into teaching because they care about kids. People who go into healthcare want to help people get and stay well. People generally go into finance to make money. </p>
<p>Having said that, I hope the SDSU guy makes it in his chosen field and brings to it the honesty and lack of pretense that got him in the door.</p>
<p>But you are making my point, applejack There are major systemic problems in every industry, yet our kids have to work in something. Should they enter the “pure” and ever so patriotic tech field, only to see their job outsourced to India to when their company needs to cut costs? Should they enter the “noble” and altruistic field of medicine and pharmaceuticals, which is currently the kind of place where the only appropriate cancer drug for people with like my mother will bankrupt them at $3,000 per month after insurance? Should they design or merchandize clothing, and indirectly promote eating disorders in models and other females? </p>
<p>The comments made about the financial industry were not measured. We all should recognize that the vast majority of its employees had nothing to do with the collapse of the economy or the defrauding of innocent Americans. People love to talk about “moving money around,” as if there weren’t any real or honest work in that. They make it sound like someone completes an electronic transfer in a minute and just takes their cut off the top. In reality, when companies are bought and sold and bonds are offered–and these are essential functions of a free economy–analysts have to study reams of documents and figures, they have to assess industry and market trends, governmental regulations and much more to make sure they set prices that will accurately reflect the true current and potential value of the company–precisely so no one is defrauded.</p>
<p>Gee, how noble teachers are. So none of them go into teaching because they get far better benefits than are available in the private sectore, they only have to work 185 or so days per year, and they can party their way through college taking easy classes and earn only a C average and still get a job? And those doctors are sure starving too, and none of them did it for family honor or prestige?</p>
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<p>It would appear that you have missed the point. Nobody has said that the only good jobs are the ones on Wall Street (besides, there are plenty of finance jobs outside of Wall Street). Nowhere did anyone suggest that finance jobs are superior to any others; quite the opposite, the point is that finance jobs are not inferior to any others.</p>
<p>Our economy would die if there were nobody to finance the inventors of society, just as it would die if there were no inventors to finance.</p>
<p>And as for the kid’s cover letter, it’s worth noting that everything I’ve heard about finance recruiting is that cover letters typically just get a cursory glance to make sure the kid applied to the right company and didn’t make a fool of himself. It is damn impressive for him to write a cover letter that went viral for positive reasons.</p>
<p>Apparently, it went viral because people do share these sorts of things- and it reached the news. I wouldn’t be so quick to assume it got leaked becasue it is superior. In fact, there is mention that lesser letters also circulate because they are “amusing.” We’re just seeing one example and making something more out of it than any facts yet deserve. </p>
<p>And, if the kid does get the job (or another,) remember, he’s already got some internship experience- likely in CA, just as likely it was with a small ML branch- but that changes this, for me.</p>
<p>Anyway, I have to wonder about this: if the kid were so special that the original firm wanted him, why did the letter get out into the public? Wouldn’t the original firm have kept it internal?</p>
<p>You know the phrase-- “Life should be that easy.”</p>
<p>LOL. This is like the polar opposite from that other kid from NYU who was a total braggart in his cover letter. Humility at it’s finest. Trying to imagine some kid in a department store suit bringing a load of laundry into an Investment Bank. “Yup, that’s an intern alright.” Unfortunately for him, I think they just want a laugh with him. Would like to know if he at least scores a summer internship.</p>
<p>Understand why its considered exceptional. Read this one from a year ago…
[Epic</a> Wall Street Cover Letter Goes Viral | NowPublic News Coverage](<a href=“http://www.nowpublic.com/strange/epic-wall-street-cover-letter-goes-viral-2889833.html]Epic”>http://www.nowpublic.com/strange/epic-wall-street-cover-letter-goes-viral-2889833.html)</p>
<p>Wow. The thread I started in this topic at the exact same time that Dave started this one several days ago is far less entertaining!! <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1448196-wall-street-internship-cover-letter-priceless.html?[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1448196-wall-street-internship-cover-letter-priceless.html?</a></p>
<p>*** eta*** the link you posted, vsp123, is posted in post #43</p>
<p>[Matthew</a> Ross: The student ‘with no special skills’ who sent ‘best cover letter ever’ to Wall Street bosses (and he didn’t tell them he’s a three-sport star athlete) | Mail Online](<a href=“Matthew Ross: The student 'with no special skills' who sent 'best cover letter ever' to Wall Street bosses (and he didn't tell them he's a three-sport star athlete) | Daily Mail Online”>Matthew Ross: The student 'with no special skills' who sent 'best cover letter ever' to Wall Street bosses (and he didn't tell them he's a three-sport star athlete) | Daily Mail Online)</p>
<p>thanks for the link. Very interesting</p>
<p>I didn’t get any rise out of this… This sounds like any of the friends I have. Then again, I don’t go to an elitist school and I’m not friends with arrogant *******s. This letter is honest, something I expect in all people. That’s probably why this letter didn’t strike me as out of the ordinary at all. Anyone on here that thinks this kind of letter is so surprising may need to rethink the friends they have and the people they associate with.</p>
<p>It’s sad that our society is so messed up that something honest like this is out of the ordinary.</p>
<p>I thought it was funny, but I didn’t think it jumped out at me and just "WOW"ed me. He was smart to mention though that they had met before, regardless of where it was. That instantly gets the readers attention. I mean if I had met someone the previous summer and they took the initiative to email me x months later about a job, I’d be slightly impressed. Anyway, that’s my take on it. Didn’t wow me but he approached the whole situation in the correct way.</p>
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<p>I suspect you’re defending your child’s career choice rather than making any truly rational argument. I’m not making your point at all. Of course there’s honest work in moving money around, even if much of it is fake and only exists on paper, but just as lawyers are servants to the real economic producers, financiers should be servants to the same. They shouldn’t be controlling everything because they’re fundamentally detached numbers crunchers.</p>
<p>The industry and its workers are more than adequately compensated to figure out how to do their jobs correctly without devastating our global system (obviously they failed at the analyses they were doing in your example so they should lose their jobs). But they didn’t. They’re big boys who can handle a little well-deserved criticism when my tax dollars kept them from having to go create something.</p>
<p>And if that’s what you honestly think of teachers, the only word that can come to mind is uninformed. Every teacher I know works days and nights (the latter uncompensated). They coach or tutor or get other jobs in the summers because they’re paid to raise the next generation (and sometimes give their lives trying to protect the next generation) at a fraction of the value that fresh grads with no experience are paid on Wall Street.</p>
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<p>haha nice</p>
<p>/10char</p>
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<p>I disagree on quite a fundamental level. Corporate lawyers work for companies while banks and investors work with companies. Think about the mission of a for-profit enterprise: regardless of its core competency, a company’s job is to seek profit. In order to seek profit, companies of today need both lawyers and financiers, but the two play completely different roles. Financiers - either banks giving loans or investors (banks or people, doesn’t matter) - give companies money, allowing companies to hold the cash needed to innovate and expand. </p>
<p>Financiers must be judicious about which companies to invest money - make too many bad investments, and suddenly the financier cannot finance anything anymore since it has no money anymore.</p>
<p>Lawyers are hired by companies either as outside contractors or as employees themselves, and the only risk they take on is that they may not receive all of the money they were promised if the company were to fail. They will not lose money. Banks and other financiers take substantial risk when they decide to give companies money. If the company fails, there is no guarantee that the financiers will recoup their initial investment. So, loans bear interest in order to soften the blow when a limited number of loan recipients fail to repay, and investors control a part of the company in order to have a fair say in how the company is managed - again, controlling risk. </p>
<p>You seem to be talking not about banks that invest in companies and take major risks in that sense, but rather about banks trading imaginary goods - for example, futures markets. However, even futures markets, in which nothing is actually bought or sold, have a place in society, as they bring stability to commodities markets by allowing companies to predict costs and revenues before they happen.</p>
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<p>The one thing that all dramatic economic downturns have in common is that they are completely unexpected. In hindsight, it seems silly to think that we could give out millions of risky mortgages with the expectation that if homeowners defaulted, the homes would be worth more than they were previously. It also seems wholly irresponsible to swap these risky mortgages with other institutions. Nobody thought that the real estate boom of the 2000s was a bubble; however, once demand for housing subsided and prices began to fall, the financial dominoes started to fall, eventually leading to an inevitable credit crunch. But when the belief of nearly everyone across every industry, every government entity and every business believed that the housing bubble was not, in fact a bubble, the decisions that were made appeared quite prudent. </p>
<p>In the 1930s, some doctors would prescribe tobacco smoking to their patients for ailments such as throat discomfort. Today, that kind of prescription is unthinkable… but should the doctors have been fired? </p>
<p>And when you talk about your tax dollars being spent, don’t forget that the GM bailout allowed them to continue making a LOT of somethings, even though the market dictated that GM should fail.</p>
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<p>You miss the point. The point is that while most teachers are very dedicated and poorly compensated, some are not. Some do go into teaching because it offers a summer vacation, frequent time off, relatively short working hours and generally excellent benefits.</p>
<p>If you become a teacher, you may be laid off, but that is probably due to your tenure rather than your performance. If you become an investment banker on Wall Street, you have two years of job security, and if you are a bottom performer (I’ve heard of anywhere between 10% and 30%), you lose your job. In addition, you may earn $100,000 in your first year, but the experience of most of my friends who are bankers is that the $100,000 annual compensation (salary + bonus) can be translated to about $21.00 an hour, as they averaged 90 hour weeks with zero weeks off. A teacher at $21.00 an hour, working 10 hours a day for the 180 days of school each year (I say 10 to add buffer for nights, weekends and summer) would make $37,800, which is less than 35 states’ average starting salary for teachers.</p>
<p>It’s easy to lampoon investment bankers for being worthless bloodsuckers because there are far fewer bankers than teachers, doctors, lawyers, small business owners, accountants, etc. Many people don’t know any investment bankers, and why would they? But the reality is that bankers are people too, and they are held to the same standards as everyone else in every other industry.</p>