[vostok]

I feel sad that you think this about finance. I believe I've done a lot of good for the world and have gotten the opportunity to work with some very smart people along the way.

I first started working in finance because it was one of the few industries that paid engineers a fair salary without trying to trick us with monopoly money.

Of course, the world has changed and now tech companies are doing the same.

[chii]

> I believe I've done a lot of good for the world

I genuinely want to know what you think the good you did for the world is in investment/trading. I really don't believe that the amount of money the financial industry is making is commensurate with its value provided to society.

[vostok]

> I genuinely want to know what you think the good you did for the world is in investment/trading.

My job has literally been to ensure that, out of every invested dollar, more money goes to the investment and less money goes to traders and other intermediaries.

It may not sound like a big deal, but this is literally billions of dollars a year that are invested in productive industries instead of going to someone's bonus or, worse yet, just vanishing due to lack of care.

> I really don't believe that the amount of money the financial industry is making is commensurate with its value provided to society.

I don't know if it's because I'm uninformed, but I would agree with you. It's not really clear to me why investment bankers earn such huge fees. I suspect that it's because they're basically able to pay their friends with shareholders' money. I don't remember where I first heard this idea, but I can't help but think that it rings true.

My hope is that some day we'll be able to do to banking what we've done for trading.

[lucozade]

> It's not really clear to me why investment bankers earn such huge fees

You can think of investment bankers as salespeople. They sell very high value products in very competitive markets.

Whether you think that salespeople do an important job and/or a job that should be paid commensurate with the value of the product is a matter of opinion.Having spent a lot of time with salespeople when I was last in a startup, I have a lot of respect for folk who could do a job that I would most definitely, spectacularly fail at. YMMV.

[vostok]

> You can think of investment bankers as salespeople.

I agree. That's exactly how I think of bankers.

You actually have the same problem come up with other sales people too. If I'm buying a $100 million product from you, I'm probably buying it with other people's money.

I don't care that $5 million of that is going towards the sales person's bonus, taking me out to dinner, etc. I'd rather pay $100 million and have you buy me a $1000 steak dinner than pay $95 million and not even get a birthday card. Of course I want my HBS classmate to handle my account.

[qwrusz]

Do you not having savings you put into a retirement account? 401(k)? Who do you think the clients of the investment/trading firms are? Do you keep your money under the mattress?

> I really don't believe that the amount of money the financial industry is making is commensurate with its value provided to society.

I am not going to argue with your beliefs here, but just want to point out the amount of money someone gets paid or how much money an industry makes is not determined by "its value provided to society" as what would that even mean?

I live in LA, the entertainment industry here also seems to make a relatively large amount of money.

While the financial services industry is quite large and made up of many different types of companies, it is not a government public service or anything like that, where does "value to society" come from? Who gets to decide it?

Edit: I just want to add that we are using Hacker News which is part of YCombinator - YC is an investment company and part of the finance industry too.

[retube]

You are satisfying a market demand. There are millions of companies who need to risk manage their interest rate, FX and commodity expodures. Banks offer a service to their customers and charge for that, just like any other. How is that not providing value?

[sgnelson]

let's at least be honest here, very few people think "I believe I've done a lot of bad for the world..."

It's how our brains are wired to work. It's how we sleep at night.

edited to add: which is to say, you may have; I don't know you or what you do. But I think the point I made is important when discussing such things.