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Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code for techs in fight for talent
- corporateslave2 9y agocompensation for engineers is still lower at Goldman than at tech firms, nice try Goldman.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yeswecatan 9y agosource?
- kchoudhu 9y agoWorked there for 7 years, can confirm.
- notyourwork 9y agoCan if I ask what makes you stay there? Also for perspective what type of role do you have their.
- jacquesm 9y ago> worked
- kchoudhu 9y agoStarted family, needed stable income and insurance, salary was still plenty to finance savings and a comfortable life in NYC. They also let me go remote without a second thought when I asked. I quit last year to look after my kids and do my own thing, although the decision was driven more by boredom than any desire for more pay.
- tenpies 9y agoMaybe a minority view but, pay me a suit salary because I actually want to wear a suit. I'm a professional, not your friend's tech-savvy kid.
- drcross 9y agoI think this is a minority view, I used to have to wear suits for work and its a pain making considerations for them.
- sbov 9y agoI've only ever done tshirt and jeans stuff. I couldn't imagine wearing a suit every day, but it might be fun to have a "dress up Fridays". Ideally, anyone could wear whatever they want whenever they want. In practice, it doesn't seem to work out this way, even at the tshirts and jeans companies.
- somethingwitty1 9y agoBunch of the teams I've worked with over the years have had "formal fridays". I can confirm it was a fun tradition.
- brad0 9y agoI thought I was the only one! What kind of company did you work for where this happened?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 9y agoIn this case a "suit salary" would be lower than a non-suit salary, so I don't get it.
- ptero 9y agoThat pendulum swings back and forth. Currently AI/tech is on top but I would not bet it will stay like this forever
- mvid 9y agoHow far back do you have to go for finance to beat tech in pay?
- philovivero 9y agoYesterday? When has tech ever beat finance in pay?
- corporateslave2 9y agoFor engineers it almost always does, unless you are the top .001% of talent.
- jen20 9y agoIn London at least this was not the case. Startup salaries today are often at the same level as bank internships. The US (particularly SF) is a very different market.
- user5994461 9y agoSF has no finance companies.
- throwu383 9y agoYou are comparing a bank to a startup which is an absurd comparison. Compare Goldman to Google and guess what Google wins (even in London). Banking salaries have been static for 10+ years. Bank internship salaries are designed to allure and impress but 5+ years in and the salary does not change. On another note there are some startups who can pay very very well in London but they do not advertise these salaries.
- khn1 9y agoWhat is your view (or anyone else reading this) on software dev QoL in the tech industry vs. non-tech firms in finance or energy/O&G? Are tech companies open to hiring from different industries, like the ones listed above?
- corporateslave2 9y agoI honestly think finance is overall a worse deal, I used to think it was the panacea of making money. There is the chance that you can make 600 - 800k in finance as a senior developer, but you need to either be incredibly intelligent or incredibly hard working, generally you need an ivy league degree. A year or so ago I received an offer from a well known quant hedge fund, I spoke to a google recruiter to see if they could match, to my surprise right there on the phone he told me they never get beat out and that they would beat the offer by 50k. The hours are much better in tech, you get treated better, and at Facebook/Google/Amazon/other big tech firm you have less variance in pay.
- user5994461 9y agoThat recruiter must have been pretty inexperienced to talk like that. You should seriously question your compensation if a recruiter is willing to top you up 50k without a second thought. Chances are you are severely underpaid.
- corporateslave2 9y agoIt was a google in house recruiter. The firm I had an offer from was known to hire highly vetted people
- throwu383 9y agoWhen you have another offer on the table the best move for the recruiter is to make the serious offer then and there and try take care of the situation to avoid any further bidding. They want you for as cheap as they can get you but if someone else is willing to pay more then almost always they can afford it.
- joshvm 9y agoThere are also a lot of fintech firms which pay more, and specifically advertise themselves as more 'hip' (e.g. Jane Street et al). Though I would imagine the good jobs are very hard to come by these days.
- kchoudhu 9y agoGS relaxing its tech dress code is the first sign of the of the end of the business cycle. The second is a management committee member taking up DJing. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/business/dealbook/goldman-sachs-david-solomon-dj-d-sol.html?smid=tw-dealbook&smtyp=cur https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/business/dealbook/goldman... Sell equities, buy treasuries.
- derekp7 9y agoThey could also try a policy of not arresting developers who contribute fixes back to GPL projects too.
- saganus 9y agoHow so? Do you have any links for this? it sounds pretty bad, but I guess there are certain nuances to it?
- naturalgradient 9y agoThe GP is likely referring to this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman... I am just now realising that this case is still ongoing. That's crazy. A DA literally made it his mission to get the verdict reinstated: 'On April 4th, 2016, almost nine months after Aleynikov was acquitted by the NY Supreme Court, the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance's office filed an appeal seeking to reinstate the guilty verdict' Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I would not be surprised if Goldman kept applying pressure behind the scenes to ruin him. Donation link to help fund appeal (his website): http://www.aleynikov.org http://www.aleynikov.org
- gruez 9y ago>'On April 4th, 2016, almost nine months after Aleynikov was acquitted by the NY Supreme Court, the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance's office filed an appeal seeking to reinstate the guilty verdict' how's this not double jeopardy?
- naturalgradient 9y agoBecause it's still the same case going through the motions. What I find more interesting is the following on the Manhattan DA's wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Vance_Jr.#2009_Manhattan_District_Attorney_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Vance_Jr.#2009_Manhattan... 'After Vance very publicly staged an accusation and spending 5 years and reportedly $10 million on prosecuting the Abacus Federal Savings Bank for larceny, the bank and its employees were found not guilty on all 80 charges. Despite its small size, the Chinese-American family-run bank was the only New York bank so charged during the Great Recession, despite Vance admitting that Citibank, among others, had behaved badly. The story is well told in Steve James' feature-length documentary, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 11, 2016.' n=2 is not much but there is at least initial indication of a pattern where this DA is very specifically seeking cases where he is in a much better position (more manpower, resources) than the prosecuted party to win. Going after the little guy. Nice.
- Cieplak 9y agoSerge Aleynikov, you're awesome and everyone here loves you. Thanks for all your hard work and open source contributions. https://github.com/saleyn https://github.com/saleyn
- avh02 9y agoman, provide some context so poor people like me don't flag your comment then feel stupid and unflag them. context: see other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777935
- gaius 9y agoI did a double-take at https://github.com/saleyn/secdb https://github.com/saleyn/secdb surely it can't be... (it's not)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoI worked on the American trading floor of a Swiss bank. After the crisis, Zürich decided to reign in us free-wheelers. So they came out with a new dress code [1]: "Among the 'dos' and 'don’ts' for women: 'Make sure to touch up hair regrowth regularly if you color your hair.' Men are commanded to, 'Schedule barber appointments every four weeks to maintain your haircut shape.' Neither sex is allowed to 'allow their underwear to appear,' wear short-sleeved shirts or, strangely, cuff links." We all bought ridiculously-coloured suits (the bankers, being bankers, went along); the rules were pared back. Goldman Sachs has always had an antiquated dress code for people who will never come within fifty feet of a client. [1] http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/797245 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/797245
- wink 9y agoNot associated with them, but this would finallz be a reason to buy one of those awesome suits: https://www.opposuits.com/suits.html https://www.opposuits.com/suits.html
- danbolt 9y agoI've noticed that men in their twenties can get a lot of comedic milegage out of those.
- sandstrom 9y agoThis one seems fitting; https://www.opposuits.com/suits/cashanova-money-suit.html https://www.opposuits.com/suits/cashanova-money-suit.html
- AlphaWeaver 9y agoI bought one and have been nothing but satisfied!
- superwayne 9y agoFunny enough, I do own one of their orange suits. The quality is really shitty, though, and they are cut for surprisingly tall and skinny people.
- viach 9y agoAllowing work remotely would work better, imo.
- kchoudhu 9y agoThey allow it. Just make sure your MD is behind you.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- duncans 9y agoOdd, I worked at Goldman Sachs in London in approx. 1999-2001 and visited the New York office a few times and remember it being the usual "smart/casual" (veering to very casual). When did it smarten up?
- nopzor 9y agoI visited their NYC offices in 2008. we were talking to them about some openstack/cloud stuff at the time. I went in jeans and a polo. My contact there emailed after saying the meeting went well, but to please wear a dress shirt and no jeans next time. And I wasn't even an employee! ;)
- dc2447 9y agoDefinitely ahead of their time, Openstack wasn't formed until 2010
- FabHK 9y agoDuring those years, London switched from suit (with tie) to suit (tie optional). I don't recall New York being much more casual, but it might have. Back then, in NY, they put a foosball table on the 26th floor (IIRC) of 85 Broad St for the quants ("Strats"), in an effort to compete as an employer with the first dot.com boom (foosball = cool, right). Once the tech bubble burst, the foosball table was gone pretty quickly though! :) The London head office was in a listed art deco building on Fleet Street, beautifully renovated with a great gym and waterfall, quickly dubbed the "NASDAQ 5000 memorial waterfall"... (It only hit 5000 again in 2015)
- kchoudhu 9y agoTech never did smarten up. I wore business casual every day to work from 2008 onward, no one ever said a damned thing. Did put on a tie when making presentations to the desk, though.
- jen20 9y agoTo throw my anecdote in here too, it was the same smart/casual dress code in the 2006 time frame that I was at GS (also in London).
- jventura 9y agoI know some people prefer money over morality and integrity, but personally, I am satisfied that these guys have to struggle to get people to work for them. In my ideal world, people would grow spines and would not work for these shady big companies.
- pg_is_a_butt 9y agouh, if they had a spine, why wouldn't they eliminate the big companies, thus protecting those among them who are unable to grow spines? we are meant to do this. we must destroy. reach your ideals. do it.
- obstacle1 9y agoConsider that your personal morals aren't the same thing as a One True Morality. Not to mention that Goldman isn't even paying top of market. So your statement about greed is completely misguided.
- closeparen 9y agoGoldman and its ilk may be responsible for the financial crisis, but the financial crisis was painful for ordinary people because Wall Street stopped performing its function in the economy. Business ground to a halt and companies laid off workers in large part because credit dried up. If these big shady companies are immoral because of that time their operations slowed, imagine what would happen if you got your wish.
- chrisbennet 9y agoGoogle "Goldman Sacks starvation" sometime.
- jjuhl 9y agoI never got the point of dress codes. When everyone dress (boringly) alike I tend to view them as mindless drones and my respect for them drops to near zero. Show up in some unusual or creative outfit however and I'm so much more willing to believe you are an intelligent and interresting human being.
- cpsempek 9y agoTotally agree. I mean, look at all these dull, uncreative, mindless drones http://www.uh.edu/engines/Solvay-1927.jpg http://www.uh.edu/engines/Solvay-1927.jpg.
- lucb1e 9y agoI feel like a black and white picture doesn't really contribute to the conversation. I assume it's meant as a joke but either way, I try to downvote when something doesn't contribute (as opposed to when I don't agree).
- hobo_mark 9y agoHello? It's not just a black and white picture, it's the 1927 Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics, the joke being that most of the "mindless drones in suits" in it won Nobel prizes.
- lucb1e 9y agoI figured they must be prominent people, but in that picture I don't see much. It won't be pink and purple but I can imagine tints of green and other colors that shake things up a bit.
- ivanhoe 9y agoWell, for one thing, Einstein never wore socks.
- gnopgnip 9y agoEveryone says that but overwhelmingly people in professional attire are treated better in social situations.
- ib_tech_gone 9y agoSo, if you want us "techs" to work on antiquated languages like Slang, then cut us some slack in our slacks. Tech is IB land is billions of dollars, yet, the actual end delivery, the systems, the codebases, the platforms are of a far lower quality than most outside could ever suspect. Bonus-driven development is partially to blame there though.
- 5706906c06c 9y agoBlackRock did the same.
- Nursie 9y agoHaving spent some time at one of the other big financial sector names recently (bigger than goldman)... Yeah dress codes for tech folk went out some time ago. Among the coders I spent time with, jeans and metal t-shirts were de-rigeur
- MrMorden 9y agoIf you want my attention, the thing to offer is an actual office with an actual door that closes. (Private, semiprivate, whatever—just not a thousand of my closest friends and a jet engine or two.)
- jvehent 9y agoSlowly getting there, but they still have to wear pants...
- backtoyoujim 9y agoI remember working in a bullpen among other young, enthusiastic, hard-working, poorly groomed males coding in the horror show that C++, CORBA, and Oracle could put on for a production environment during that first 90s dot.com build up. Meanwhile the president/CEO guy came wandering through the production gallows with our manager speaking about how next-round VCs were going to show up tomorrow for a looksee. I asked my manager if we should dress up for that. The CEO threw his hands out and said, "No, no, no! Wear that penguin shirt and flip flops and shit. We are a start-up."
- mmphosis 9y agohttp://static1.businessinsider.com/image/569010e4dd08956a188b463f-596-447/mr-robot-tk-body-image-1441135756.png http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/569010e4dd08956a188...
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoI'm still traumatized from working in banking tech. When I see a line of Java code I start to break out into cold sweats.
- gvd 9y agoWhat do you work on now?
- jedmeyers 9y agoThe important question, however, is do suits make a corporate comeback?
- marcoperaza 9y agoIf you view human beings as perfectly rational machines then dress codes make no sense, but that's not what we are. Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. It reminds you that your work is serious and that different standards apply to how you act and talk than in your casual personal life. If you dress to work the way you'd show up to a dive bar, then you're that much closer to behaving like you do at a dive bar. Economist Tyler Cowen makes another good argument for formal dress: it is a vehicle for social mobility.[1] In a society that values formal dress, you can signal your intent to move up the social hierarchy by how you dress yourself. If you want to become an elite, then dress like one and people will take you seriously. But when the elites adopt casual dress in their professional lives, what is left are much more subtle and hard-to-adopt class signifiers: manners of speaking, interests, childhood experiences, travel, etc. Yet another problem is that dressing "smart casual" is actually more difficult and expensive than wearing a suit. A suit is a great equalizer. A $2000 suit is not all that different than a $300 suit. And you can very easily get away with having only two or three suits. But smart casual is much more difficult, subtle, and expensive to pull off.[2] [1]http://www.businessinsider.com/wearing-casual-clothes-at-work-to-show-wealth-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/wearing-casual-clothes-at-wor... [2]http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/informal-dress-social-mobility-sicilian-perspective.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/inf...
- amelius 9y ago> Dressing formally puts you in a different frame of mind. Actually, it makes me feel like I'm talking to a sales person. It is as if dressing up is used to conceal something about the intentions or shortcomings of the person. I probably don't explain it in the right way, but that is more or less the feeling it evokes.
- ACow_Adonis 9y agoPretty much ditto. Well, maybe not ditto, but similar affect (and yes, I have suits I have to wear for public facing activities at work). There's this assumption of "universal reference" in social signals, so for me to be told that "wearing a suit puts you in a different frame of mind", as in one which makes you work/feel better about yourself is completely wrong...in the sense of what frame of mind it puts you in. For me, a suit is the uniform of the con-man, the salesman, the fraud, the bludger, the twit. You put on a suit because you want to fool people who can't think rationally and they're incapable of making judgments except by what you look like through signals of conspicuous consumption. Imagine being constantly told that you should dress in a uniform with such connotations to make yourself psychologically feel better/superior (especially compared to clothes that you have yourself chosen because they do make you feel better).
- blahfuk 9y agoJust pay more than your competitors! I'll dress in a fucking clown suit if you pay me the right price.
- praulv 9y agoAre salaries in IB tech on that level today? I doubt even a senior quant hedge fund / HFT firm developer makes anywhere near the quoted $400k.
- arcanus 9y agoI think 400 is likely attainable for the hedge funds, no idea about other fields. The HFT guys pay about 250 (total comp, e.g, salary and bonuses) for a newly minted PhD.
- praulv 9y agoNo way. £250K for a new Ph.D. with zero experience in industry? Even a low latency whiz kid with deep Linux kernel optimisation will just about maybe make £250K in a very good year.
- dboreham 9y ago"Must be an East Coast thing" I can't recall being in any work situation since the 80's where dressing up was even a good idea. I mean, wearing suit, tie etc would identify you as being non-technical and hence not worth listening to. Fascinating to hear that there are still workplaces with dress rules in 2017.
- sidlls 9y agoI don't think you understand who is thought to be "not worth listening to." This industry is filled with the software development equivalent of CAD technicians thinking they're engaged in deeply analytical work and are generally well respected simply because they can regurgitate some trite CS trivia. The reality is that the effects of the industry's arrogance have simply shifted form over the years. You think being able to dress in shorts and thongs at work is a measure of being respected ("recognition that the quality of our work isn't measured by how we dress") but that's simply not true. There are very few successful companies where more than a very small handful of technical people are listened to or respected.
- doener 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14768697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14768697
- jimmcslim 9y agoGoldman Sachs might get more traction with tech talent if they drop their proprietary in-house language and database; Slang and SecDB. See 'Confessions of a Slang coder at Goldman Sachs' [1], and 'The hidden weakness inside Goldman Sachs?' [2]. Of course, it is considered by some to be the secure sauce behind their secret source but I expect its a factor, especially if they are trying to hire from the Silicon Valley crowd. [1] http://news.efinancialcareers.com/au-en/282097/slang-goldman-sachs/ http://news.efinancialcareers.com/au-en/282097/slang-goldman... [2] http://news.efinancialcareers.com/au-en/274853/secdb-goldman-sachs-slang/ http://news.efinancialcareers.com/au-en/274853/secdb-goldman...
- fgandiya 9y agoOh cool... If only this happened six months ago when I had my interview. Then again, attire was the smallest problem of the interview. I remember reading Glassdoor to see what working for the company as a dev was like and most of them complained about how low the pay was compared to tech. Maybe they should pay more for a wider talent pool?
- Frogolocalypse 9y agoI like wearing a suit because i like looking good.
- stephengillie 9y agoI like wearing a dress shirt and wool pants because I like looking good. I'm not allowed to wear a tie (heavens forbid a coat) because I'll scare the other engineers and developers. At my last job, I wore a dress shirt (with a collar) and jeans one day, and my coworkers made me go home and change into a t-shirt and jeans. Seattle/Redmond area btw, it's incredibly relaxed here.
- Frogolocalypse 9y agoDude. The answer to that request is to laugh and say "if you think I'm going to rely on my personality to get laid, you're kidding yourself.". And then, just always dress well. There's never anything wrong with looking the best you can. There are far worse things to be known for.
- stephengillie 9y agoIt wasn't a request. It was teammates constantly asking where I was interviewing across the day. One team member made that same "joke" four times in a row, in the span of a few minutes.
- Frogolocalypse 9y agoThat seriously sucks.
- accountyaccount 9y agoI sometimes wonder if I dressed better if I would be further along in my career, but honestly I think it's just made it really easy for me to identify people who understand and value my work. There's this one guy high up in my company who I'm almost entirely convinced got his job because he wears nice suits and has an English accent. We have junior employees who know more about his area of speciality than he does.
- Max_Horstmann 9y ago"Oh and remember, next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day! So, y'know, if you want to, go ahead and uh, wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans."
- rajeshp1986 9y agoI have different opinion on this one. I will be very happy to wear suit if you pay me executive level salary and I don't mind even if I work as an individual contributor and write code. But if you tell me that it is an organizational policy and you have to be dressed smart because you might bump the CEO of the company or any future client in the elevator but we will still pay you a salary of 60-100k and sit a cube all day head down and keep working your ass then sorry to say that "Goldman sacs, go f yourself"
- mabbo 9y agoI once saw a press release about Goldman or one of these other big money firms and how they were going to build software "like a startup". In the photo that accompanied it were a group of guys wearing hoodies that had some lame slogan on it, trying to woo Silicon Valley talent to come to finance by showing how they were cool now. Under the hoodies were expensive shirts and ties. The picture had exactly the opposite effect of what it intended- it showed how fake and false the 'culture' they were portraying was.
- throwu383 9y agoThis was Goldman, particularly Marty Chavez who is otherwise a very smart character originating from from outside banking (Stanford Phd).