[dba7dba]

Wall Street is NOT building up America but is instead weakening America by causing a Great Brain Drain from every other vital industry. It is a cancer that's eating away America. Because America is losing the brightest kids who could've really shined and played vital leadership roles in other industries, I feel American industries are falling behind.

Some quotes from the article that you should remember:

1. "so many kids who could seemingly do anything choose to work 120-hour weeks"

2. "something like a third of Ivy League graduates going to Wall Street"

3. "They're not just getting finance-minded kids but they're getting the smartest kids from all fields."

4. "give us two years of your lives, don't see your friends, chain yourself to your desk, but we will give you this glorious life where you're making many times what you could ever imagine."

These are kids really really smart, socially adjusted (enough to be accepted by Ivy League), and hard working. If they entered science/medicine/engineering/etc, they would've added great positive impact. Probably not immediately but eventually years down the line. And now they are abandoning these vital industries that actually produce something for an industry that is basically pushing papers around and printing money in the process.

Seriously, WHY would anyone choose to enter a field where you have to work up the ladder (or spend years in grad school and in poverty life) and possibly live in some small towns with a hope of making a few million a year salary ONLY near the end of your career, when you can enter Wall Street and live in NYC (great city but really only for the super rich) and start making 6-7 figure salary/bonus almost from the beginning?

Other major economies do not have Wall Street equivalent and so their top engineering/science graduates don't join finance but instead actually enter the vital industries. And these smart kids actually produce something that is tangible. I think we are already seeing the effect of this trend showing its result slowly.

I know we live in free economy society and all that but I think we need to find a way to 'regulate' how the wall street recruits.

Lastly, I believe the ratio of liberal-arts majors entering Wall Street is way lower than the article seems to suggest. From what I hear, overwhleming majority of the graduates entering Wall Street after graduation are science/math/engineering majors.

[rayiner]

Ivy-league grads go into finance because it's an industry that really values their particular pedigree, and is willing to pay for it. Engineering, on the other hand, really doesn't. Engineering companies aren't paying $200k bonuses to kids just a few years out of an Ivy-league school. Indeed, it's pretty hard to set yourself apart, as an engineer, in a way that allows you to earn even twice as much as another engineer of a comparable level of experience.

Thus, the complaint that Ivy-league grads flock to banks is confused. If the banks are correct that Ivy-league grads are the best and the brightest, to the point where it's justifiable to almost not recruit at all outside a small set of "target schools," then the young kids are quite justified in going into an industry that appreciates their qualifications in a way science and engineering don't. On the other hand, if the banks are wrong about ivy-league grads being so much better than everyone else, then nothing much is lost that they go into banking!

[gertef]

> If the banks are correct that Ivy-league grads are the best and the brightest,

They aren't. Ivy League grads have "high-status branding" that the banks use to get faux credibility when signing big deals.

[rayiner]

In that case, why lament they're going to finance instead of stem?

[james1071]

Most bank jobs are basically selling and banks recruit people who they think well get one with their client base.

[dba7dba]

> Ivy-league grads go into finance because it's an industry that really values their particular pedigree, and is willing to pay for it.

OTHER industries value the Ivy-league grads just as much. It's just that the budget doesn't allow paying at the rate to compete with Wall Street. That's the problem.

[rayiner]

Google and Facebook generate more than $1 million of revenue per employee, quite comparable to Goldman and substantially above Morgan Stanley. The money is there, at least in tech, just more of it goes to shareholders and less to compensating employees.

Why do banks pay out so much more of their revenues out in compensation? Because investment banks are service businesses and not product businesses. Their product is their professionals, and they create brand by composing entry level classes mostly with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton, and Columbia graduates. They place tremendous weight on this criterion. Other industries, say tech companies, are much more willing to hire from the top public schools, people with foreign degrees, or even people with no degree.

[nostrademons]

Top Google engineers can make millions in stock grants. Even if you're not the best of the best, get promoted a couple times and you get a very respectable salary and stock grants that (in this market) add up very quickly. I know at least a couple mid/late-20s engineers that are like "Yeah, I'll stick it out for another 5-10 years and then move to Portland or Seattle and retire."

[mahyarm]

I hear stories of people in google never getting a promotion in 7 years as a software engineer. Or getting frustrated with promotions because everyone is overqualified for their position with PhDs and so on for positions such as a sales manager and so on. How does one become a top google engineer in their mid/late 20?

[nostrademons]

It happens. I think the longest I knew was someone who was there 11 years without being promoted. I also know folks who are promoted reliably every 2 years, all the way up from SWE 3 to Distinguished Engineer. My personal story was in the middle...I was promoted while at Google, but I didn't particularly want to climb the corporate ladder in a big company.

As for tactics - they aren't actually all that different from what you'd need to manage a successful startup. Get yourself put on a big, important project, and execute successfully on it. How do you get yourself on a big important project? Make yourself an expert within a department in one area, so that when that project is looking for people, they really need to have you. For me that area was Javascript, although I also picked up a lot about all aspects of the search stack from working on a bunch of projects (this is the "success begets success" phenomena: if you're an expert in one area, you can leverage that to get your pick of projects, which you can use to become an expert in more areas). It also helps to have a good relationship with your manager, and to pick a manager who is "plugged in" to Google's priorities and aware of the top priorities and opportunities around.

[gaius]

... Because apart from medicine, no other field pays a market rate. What's the salary at Boeing or Lockheed or a life sciences company or a research lab? It's all creamed off by management, the talent never sees it.

Wall Street does not overpay technical people. It pays fairly. Everyone else underpays.

[idsmct]

I'm from the UK and going to be doing an internship at an investment bank this summer, I do Comp Sci at university. Here are some of my thoughts and motivations.

Banks recruit ALOT of people and have offices across the country, they are very accommodating to your needs.

Applying for a bank seems much less intimidating than applying to a big tech company. The view is that only the very best even have a shot at interviewing at a company like Google/Amazon/Facebook, this puts people off.

Banks are at every school actively recruiting.

Banks host events like hackathons and advertise them. Amazon also do this in our area to be fair to them, but that one is usually after the academic year. Banks host theirs round about November time, and competing can allow you to skip portions of the interview process.

The offices are stunning and the entire place (Canary Wharf) has a feeling of being important when you're a kid in jeans who has never had a real job, and lots of important looking people are walking about in their expensive suits.

They pay very very well.

One other motivation that is personal to me but slightly different. I don't really want to work in banking. I want to run my own business, but I'm not ready to do that yet. I feel if I work at a company like Google that I'll never want to leave, and that's not how I want my life to be. So a bank is a great option. It's good money, I'll learn a lot, and it's a respected name, and I will never be so happy with my field of work as to never want to leave.

[dba7dba]

When I say other economies, I meant places like China/Japan/SKorea. Their top science/engineering graduates have NO choice but to enter science/engineering fields. I think a lot of it is due to language/culture.

Please stop bringing up Google/Amazon/Facebook. These are not the true engines of a nation's economy. The true engines imo are companies like GM/Boeing/Tesla who design and make things at cheap enough cost to be competitive. And these companies are losing top prospects to Wall Street.

You are wrong about people working at Google not wanting to leave. Many of those people want to and do leave to start something on their own. But again, I don't really care about such 'high' tech companies. I'm worried about other industries like medicine/science/engineering in America losing the competitive edge due to top young prospects joining in Wall Street instead.

[idsmct]

Tesla are recruiting quite well and have their pick of a lot of the best graduates. They only employ 6000 people though, so their recruitment won't be huge.

I can only talk about this from a UK perspective because that's where I have experience in this. Most companies like that do not actively recruit, they don't come to my university and talk to me. They don't host student events. And often, even when they do come talk to me, they send HR people. I'm not interested in HR people, I'm interested in technology. I want a technologist to come talk to me, I want a decent conversation and want to feel like I'd fit in if I went to work there. A HR person is fine to come along, introduce themselves and give a talk about the culture etc, but I want some tech insight.

Banks recruit very pro-actively and very early. They do this much better than any other company. They'll be at 2/3 events in my university. If I send them an email it will most likely be replied to within 30 minutes. They do everything to make students comfortable with them.

And yes, people at Google might want to leave. But I'm concerned that I wouldn't, and that's a risk I don't want to take.

[twic]

> the entire place (Canary Wharf) has a feeling of being important

Heh. To those of us who work in the City, the Wharf feels like Siberia - somewhere you get exiled to if things don't go well for you.

[chimeracoder]

> when you can enter Wall Street and live in NYC (great city but really only for the super rich)

This is a common misconception, but not true. It's not true on an absolute scale (many people in NYC survive on what are modest salaries elsewhere) or on a COLA-adjusted scale (NYC has a salary-adjusted lower cost-of-living than many other "cheaper" cities).

> and start making 6-7 figure salary/bonus almost from the beginning?

Even when you factor end-of-year bonuses into the equation, an entry-level I-banking job pays about as much as Google or Facebook would pay an engineer right out of school. The hours are also a lot longer than at Google (not to mention less flexible).

It takes a long time to work your way up to even half of seven figures, and that's if you get there (the vast majority burn out, change professions, or have their careers stagnate).

[dba7dba]

> Even when you factor end-of-year bonuses into the equation, an entry-level I-banking job pays about as much as Google or Facebook would pay an engineer.

Problem is programmers entering Google/Facebook are most often programmers who studied CS in college. Many graduates entering Wall Street are science(physics,math,chemistry) and engineering (non-CS engineering) majors.

I wouldn't mind not having enough programmers working for google/facebook but I do mind losing science/engineering graduates to finance jobs when instead they could be learning the ropes in other vital industries.

[wil421]

>These are kids really really smart, socially adjusted (enough to be accepted by Ivy League), and hard working. If they entered science/medicine/engineering/etc, they would've added great positive impact.

IMHO I believe the kids the banks are stealing from science/medicine/engineering/etc, are not kids that would truly follow those paths. Personally once I found IT I didnt want to leave and nothing was going to deter me from it. Not even a big salary from another industry (I'd take a fat IT salary though).

Sometimes these kids are so smart they just choose a smart degree with no hopes of pursing a career in that field. I lived next to a very smart and talented guy getting his MBA at Emory. He was some sort of risk accessor for a company but imagine my surprise when I learned he had a Mechanical Engineering BS, he told me he never wanted to do Engineering he thought it was a good degree to have instead of a straight Business Major.

[dba7dba]

I want to point out IT is not the true engine of America's economy. The true engines to me are companies like Boeing/GM/Tesla/SpaceX who make things that other economies want to pay money for.

[austinz]

Exports include services as well as tangible goods.

[wil421]

You name companies that all have export bans on parts or all of their high tech stuff.

[zodiac]

IT companies makes things other economies want to pay money for too...

[genericresponse]

I don't want to spend a lot of time working on each point within your post. However I do think you discount the value that finance brings. Access to capital and efficient distribution of capital are tremendously powerful. Describing what finance does as just pushing paper is like describing the startup community as just writing useless code.

[dba7dba]

I agree finance matters. I do. But not to the point where they can and do sweep up a third of Ivy League graduates. Would you honestly say Wall Street is vital enough that they deserve a third of Ivy League graduates?

[dba7dba]

And I want to make it clear I don't consider Facebook/Google/Twitter as vital as GM/Boeing/Tesla/SpaceX.

I don't care if Facebook/Google/Twitter don't end up with top brains. But I am concerned GM/Boeing/Tesla/SpaceX are not getting the top brains as much as they should.

[zhemao]

Why do you think those particular companies deserve a larger share of good employees.

Boeing hasn't been innovative in a while now. They make most of their money off of sales of their older models and defense contracts.

GM isn't doing so well these days and has moved most of their manufacturing overseas. Not exactly a win for the American economy. Consumer automobiles isn't exactly a growth industry right now.

Tesla and SpaceX are promising, but still small. I don't think they have that much trouble hiring. Due to their reputation and high compensation levels, they can easily compete with Wall Street for the best and brightest engineering minds.

So the question remains, why these particular companies? Are you really just talking about old-school heavy industry companies in general? Why not other sectors, like electronics, medicine, and IT?

[aianus]

GM, Boeing, Tesla, none of these companies would exist without the financial industry. There would be no such thing as large enterprise because no one person or institution can take on that much risk other than the government and we've seen what happens with centrally planned economies.

So, yeah, finance is more vital than any other business.

[gambogi]

This is a pretty broken argument. Those companies also wouldn't exist without the steel industry, or the construction industry, or the electronics industry, etc. etc.

[ForHackernews]

"with a hope of making a few million a year salary ONLY near the end of your career"

Hardly anyone will ever make even a "few" million dollars/year salary.

Honestly, this is an unrealistic dream and if that's your aspiration, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

You might as well decide you want to be President or a platinum-selling music star.

[Houshalter]

I don't know. If you want to increase the number of skilled workers, wouldn't it be easier just to raise immigration quotas on them?

[ac1294]

> These are kids really really smart, socially adjusted (enough to be accepted by Ivy League), and hard working. If they entered science/medicine/engineering/etc, they would've added great positive impact.

I agree that students may be able to have a stronger impact as a doctor, scientist, etc. But this is more a criticism of K-12 education, not the wall street industry! I've never heard of a high schooler thinking "should I grow up and be a doctor, or should I be an investment banker?" What I have heard is "I'm smart but not very good at math, so I'll major in business." We do NOT have many students choosing investment banking over STEM during their junior year of college in the midst of recruiting. These decisions are being made during senior year of high school when they're thinking about what to major in.

> And now they are abandoning these vital industries that actually produce something for an industry that is basically pushing papers around and printing money in the process.

Basically pushing papers around and printing money? Are you kidding me? If investment banks are so useless, why would essentially all large corporations (including Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.) hire investment banks to assist in raising debt and equity or to facilitate mergers and acquisitions? By suggesting that investment banks are "printing money," you've shown that you aren't well-informed on the industry.

If your criticism is coming from the recent financial crisis, then sure, the investment banks due deserve some of the blame. But anybody who says investment banks are exclusively responsible and refuses to point out the mistakes by credit rating agencies, insurance companies, the federal government, and even US citizens needs to find an objective source and study the events leading up to the crisis.

> I know we live in free economy society and all that but I think we need to find a way to 'regulate' how the wall street recruits.

Is someone being harmed? Given that the students entering investment banks are fairly intelligent and coming out of prestigious universities, they are also intelligent enough to find another job if they don't like working at the bank. All of these banks also have well-structured internship programs, giving the students an opportunity to test the experience. Yes, the lifestyle can be very difficult for two years. But it's a trade-off; students work very hard in exchange for a high salary and great exit opportunities.

> Lastly, I believe the ratio of liberal-arts majors entering Wall Street is way lower than the article seems to suggest. From what I hear, overwhleming majority of the graduates entering Wall Street after graduation are science/math/engineering majors.

That is certainly not the case. STEM may be a majority of the graduates entering fields like high-frequency trading, but STEM is a very small minority of the students entering investment banks. And investment banks are much larger (in terms of # employees) than HFT. I'm not defending high-frequency trading -- I agree it's billions of dollars being spent on something that's socially unproductive. But it's inaccurate to make a blanket statement about "wall street" and apply it to any finance-related career.

[dba7dba]

> But this is more a criticism of K-12 education, not the wall street industry!

No matter if K-12 system is doing its job or not, Ivy League should not be sweeping up a their of Ivy League graduates.

> By suggesting that investment banks are "printing money," you've shown that you aren't well-informed on the industry.

Yes I apologize. I was just venting my frustration. But are the finance companies THAT important that they deserve a THIRD of graduates from Ivy League graduates? And what's the point of working with debts if your company can't compete on the global scene because your products are not as good as others'?

> Is someone being harmed?

I think so. I think the health America's economy and competitive is being harmed by Wall Street sweeping up a third of Ivy League graduates, not in a speed one can see easily but slowly happening for sure.

> But it's inaccurate to make a blanket statement about "wall street" and apply it to any finance-related career.

Again, I'm sorry if I seemed to be making blanket statement about all finance-related careers. But Wall Street (and finance industry in general) should not be sweeping up a THIRD of Ivy League graduates.

[walshemj]

Well other professions need to pay more then - unless you think rigidly planned economies are good idea?

"ah yes comrade brin" for you we have a nice job as third assistant boiler maintenance operative.

[gertef]

Amusingly, Comrade Brin's job in Soviet Russia was... as a central planner (economist)

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-04-26-sergeys-...

[dba7dba]

I'm sure managers and recruiters in other professions would love to pay more. But they can't. Or they can't compete against Wall Street.

[walshemj]

To quote Christine Keeler "well they would say that wouldn't they"

So you believe anything anyone with a vested interest tells you?