It is certainly a positive development that scientists and engineers receive more respect these days. But my two kids are already too far down the path to high finance. Too late to change course.
Having worked in finance for most of my career, I think Rivera is spot on. Everyone is so obsessed with prestige here, that there really seems to be an HYPS os bust type of mentality. Now, obviously, the most important aspect for hiring is social skills that come across from interviews. HYPS is a significant plus-- but good social skills are a necessity. Plenty of state school, non ivy kids make it-- but they come off as very charming and very charismatic in interviews (along with their stellar GPA’s). In short, HYPS makes it significantly easier, but you still need a life outside of the classroom, internship experience and a gregarious personality.
Investment banking is suicidal, thanks but no thanks. I found this in the news on yahoo recently, very sad.
It is very sad. I can’t imagine what his parents are going through.
D1’s roommate worked such hours at JP Morgan. She would come home after midnight, sleep for few hours and be back at work. The only day she was home was on Sun, and she was working. She quit after 2 years, took a job at a start up company, and going back to school for her MBA.
D1 worked very long hours the first year, sometimes called me up sobbing. I had to tell her to speak up when she was overwhelmed. She was lucky to have a very nice boss who was supportive. He got her offshore and near shore help with presentations. But every once in a while she would still get competing demands from senior people on her desk. It took her a year to streamline their templates and organize their workflow so she didn’t have to work on weekends. Now into her 4th year, she can usually leave work by 7 or 8. Her problem now is she is a bit restless at her job.
It’s hard for me to imagine why all this is really necessary. Slavery with pay in the 21st century. The job cannot be done without the sadism factor? Well, I guess if you’re one of the ones on top and want to make sure you don’t want to lose a cent of your billions for even a nanosecond, then I guess you’re able to rationalize your slave-driving. I guess it’s a crisis in your mind if GS or JPM outdoes you by a fraction today.
I certainly would like scientists, engineers and teachers to receive more respect than they get these days (speaking as one who is currently none of these), but I don’t expect American society to change any time soon.
Post #125, I’ve just heard on cnbc that hege fund Paulson is donating lots of money to Harvard to beef up its engineering department. Steve Ballmer gave money to beef up computer science at Harvard.
I want the biotech guys to be successful, I know I will need some drugs eventually.
My D just started her internship at Morgan Stanley this past Monday. After reading the suicide articl, I immediately called her to check on her. I guess I am over worried…
I thought that was your dream for your kids, though, hzhao - to go to THE most prestigious schools possible and land a plum job. Could it be it’s not all it’s cracked up to be?
@Pizzagirl , you never know. I did tell her that if she is not happy with Wall Street, she has plenty of time to change her career path.
IB kinda is what it is - certain individuals thrive and others don’t make the cut. There are certainly many tradeoffs involved but everyone should be well aware what they are in for prior to signing up, it’s not a “typical” lifestyle. All the “smart” kids today seem to be going to tech to make millions even more quickly.
Most don’t hit the tech stock options jackpot. However, the pay may be good enough that if someone lives frugally (like a college student), s/he may be able to grow wealth the slower, old fashioned way.
I wasn’t implying that they “do” I meant to imply that they were “trying”. That said, pay is still comparatively pretty good at a lot of tech companies these days due to the low unemployment rate in tech-dominated regions. Of course, this can change pretty rapidly in a downdraft…
Post #131, you be surprised at how many people I know that hit jack pot options. May be more than 50-60%. And the percentage that hit it big as in greater than $10 million is about 10%.
Also in that article this young man that committed suicide has Wharton degree but also a minor/major in computer Science. He could quit and become a software engineer.
Whatever you do stay alive is more important than making money. Students should always remember that.
That is often after many tries. Far fewer than 50-60% of small startups make it big enough (going public or being acquired with the result of a stock option jackpot), and (because they are small) most people are not working at such companies anyway. Also, it seems that most posters here idolize GAFAM as the “top” computer companies to work at, but these are already established companies with publicly traded stock, so any stock-based incentives, while possibly becoming nice bonuses if the stock rises, would not be jackpot level.
Not talking to the whole start up in general but rather the people I know and worked with. Some start ups are craps, pardon my French, but some has potential but that doesn’t mean slam dunk either. Some of my friends did a few startups too. For today’s money, you don’t have to do startup to make millions. The tech evaluation now is in the 10 billion dollar vs 1 billion dollar back in 2000. Much easier to be millionaire now.
Non-startups often do not produce much stock-based compensation. Usually, they hire the most people when they are doing well (when their stock price is high), and people leave (voluntarily or not) when they are doing poorly (when the stock price is low). So unless the established publicly traded company just keeps growing and growing, there is still no guarantee of a nice bonus from stock-based compensation.
Non-startup get less stock options but not zero. This year alone, Amazon went up 40% and Netflix doubled.
See this is what someone was telling me, and I was having a hard time coming to grips with it. She was saying everybody out there was talking about their stock options, their money, their possessions- all these stereotypes you frequently find associated with wall street types on the other coast. I don’t think of engineers behaving that way, as a primary motivation. .Granted only some CS people are really engineers, but still.
Then she was saying her company was basically being filled with Ivy leaguers and the like.
So I guess its; true, all those people who can are on to the next golden meal ticket. But can they really innovate?
(How she got job: She applied. They hired her. )
As to start-ups, the failure rate is closer to 90%. When oldest D, several years ago, started to talk about some of her peer developing apps, and the treasure that awaited those successful ones–drilling on the actual numbers, it appears Las Vegas gaming has better odds, as most apps do not even have the ability to reimburse their start-up costs…e.g. your neighbors lawn always looks greener than your own.