[rayiner]

Wall Street has a few features that make it very attractive to ambitious young people:

1) The money. The potential to make $500k-1m/year before 30. The odds of getting to that stage aren't high, because of the culling at each step, but are probably better than making comparable money through a start-up exit.

2) Substantive responsibility. It depends on what precisely you do, but my brother is a year in and has a ton of autonomy and responsibility in his particular area. You can get this in Silicon Valley, but most of corporate America will not let a 24 year old do anything important.

3) Exit options and signaling. If you want to be a venture capitalist, the highest-probability route is through an NYC bulge-bracket bank. A stint at Goldman/Morgan Stanley/etc almost guarantees admission to a top business school, and from there a wide range of careers in corporate finance/development.

The only salient aspect of the article is the bit about risk: it is true that the folks on Wall Street generally aren't risk takers. They often make big bets, but with other peoples' money, and in any case if they are not successful there's a soft landing for them at Harvard or Wharton.