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So. This is funny. I actually work at Goldman, work in the system he talks about, and have been doing so for 5 years. You can get numbed by the experience of wo

So. This is funny. I actually work at Goldman, work in the system he talks about, and have been doing so for 5 years. You can get numbed by the experience of working here, but you don't have to be. I've become friendly with some of the best hackers I know, and for us, finance always takes a backseat to writing amazing code. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail, but we try to never say, "Meh. Good enough." Wall Street is like any other business. Don't over-glorify working for Google and not Goldman: tech companies are in it for money too; so are startups. At least on Wall Street people tell you they're doing it for the money. It's easier to detach that way and remember that what you're doing is just a job.

YiddishPolice 16y ago
"Wall Street is like any other business. Don't over-glorify working for Google and not Goldman: tech companies are in it for money too; so are startups. At least on Wall Street people tell you they're doing it for the money. It's easier to detach that way and remember that what you're doing is just a job." You may try to justify what you do that way, but it's just cognitive dissonance. "Wall street people" tend to make money in rent seeking ways, destroying or merely transferring real value. At least at Google you could be creating value, growing the economy in sustainable ways, and increasing real GDP.
jrockway 16y ago
I also work at a bank, but don't like people who think it's just a job. They make my life more difficult and make it harder for the bank to make money. Our department doesn't hire people like that. (Also, pretty much nothing in the article applies to most banks these days. Sure, someone may have a burger-eating contest from time to time, but it's not like it's work-sanctioned. It's just a bunch of dudes with too much testosterone. There are bonuses, but it's silly to count on them for anything. Ask for the amount of money you want as your base pay -- they'll probably give it to you. Then enjoy the 20% or whatever as a fun extra.)
- ericd 16y ago
  It's very much not silly to count on the bonuses. 20% extra? Try 100-300% or more in most of the positions on the trading floor. As you rise in the ranks, it's much, much more. The bonus at every level above Analyst is easily larger than the base, which, as Antonio says, is generally not that impressive. This is true at every big bank on Wall St. Among my friends, we represented every large investment bank in NYC and many of the smaller hedge funds, so I'm sure it's representative. Not sure how compensation is in the IT depts. at those banks, though, if that's what you're talking about. IT is probably not representative of why people go to work on Wall St, though, since it's viewed as a cost center in most banks, and it's not what Antonio is talking about in the post.
  - martin 16y ago
    I worked in IT at GS for a couple years. 15-20% was about right for bonuses there, on average. In 2006, I got almost a 50% bonus, but that was an exceptionally good year.
- bryanh 16y ago
  You can have the attitude of "just a job" and still be a valuable asset to a company. To some people, work is "just work" and sometimes the "just a job" mentality is an extension of that. If you ask me, its called life balance. It's just a job. It's just school. It's just money. That's just life.
jamesseda 16y ago
My understanding is GS is company that wants to "beat the market" meaning someone else in the market is loosing. And Google's goal is to make the worlds information available to everyone and show them ads. Google seems more like a everyone wins company.
- unshift 16y ago
  for every dollar of ads google sells, that's a dollar their competitors don't get. they are as cut throat as anybody else, they just do a better job of making computer people feel good about it. ask their sales department if they're an "everyone wins" company.
  - jamesseda 16y ago
    If G-mail didn't exist I would use yahoo. G-mail is much better for me though. I win and Google wins. Yahoo looses. If GS gets in front of Citi on a trade by 2 seconds GS wins and Citi looses, no one else is involved. Unless those two seconds of "efficiency" help someone?
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      You are assuming all trades are determined by priority, which is false. If GS got there first, but Citi cuts in line by offering a better price, the customer also wins.
- rchi 16y ago
  The following is from a talk at the New York Public Library. ERIC SCHMIDT: But in fairness to those people[finance people], had they come to Silicon Valley in 1999 they would have received a far greater payoff during our little bubble. So who are we to criticize the Wall Street folks for having their bubble? It was just a bigger bubble. WALTER ISAACSON: Do you think though that Google creates something that’s more real than somebody on Wall Street creating a financial instrument? ERIC SCHMIDT: To be honest, not really. When I walked into the company, I said, “People pay you for this thing, these little ads?” http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/events/live_2009_11_03_capitalism_transcript.pdf http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/events/live_2009_11_...
TheSOB88 16y ago
Anything that takes up half of your waking hours shouldn't be "just" anything.
- VolatileVoid 16y ago
  Really? Quality, not quantity. An hour with my wife is more meaningful to me than half my day at work. No job will make up for that, unless I'm changing the world. So yes. It's just a job. Your (not you specifically, but anyone) startup is just a job.
  - JoelSutherland 16y ago
    So because your wife give you a 100 happiness factor(tm), you are now indifferent when choosing between jobs that give you a 20 or 80 happiness factor? Or are you saying that your meaningfulness bar is so high that no job can possibly clear it? What if you and your wife worked together? For the most part, we get to choose our lives. I reject the idea that time spent working can't be meaningful.
    - forensic 16y ago
      Or maybe he's saying that access to his wife is dependent on the Goldman Sachs job. If he loses the 20-factor-job he loses the 100-factor-wife.
      - VolatileVoid 16y ago
        Definitely not. :) I'm just saying that - to me - a job is just a means to some end. That end (for me) is providing for my family adequately. That I happen to enjoy what I do is an extra bonus. I'm just saying not to lose sight of why we do what we do. If you start placing too much importance on a job, you let your job define you. IMHO, it's much more empowering to remember that your job is just a tool like any other.
        xyzzyb 16y ago
JoelSutherland 16y ago
I'd prefer working where I don't need to detach. That's an option too.
ashishb4u 16y ago
totally agree, its just a job. even if you work with the most hacker-friendly company, you'll eventually rant out the same way someday. Maybe the post should be "Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than a day job" (oh thats a cliche!)
- Psyonic 16y ago
  That's the message I get from this site, day after day. Some days I almost feel ashamed to say I have a day job here.
  - greg_holsclaw 16y ago
    Yep, we should all be crafting personal projects that double as severely frugal boot strapped startups of one. :)
noname123 16y ago
That's cool. I'm surprised you say that finance always takes a backseat to writing amazing code, though. In my experience, traders don't want cool new snazzy Google Wave. They want Excel. They don't want cool new Web 2.0 streaming quotes/risk calculations/portfolio calculations, they want VBA macros in Excel. Even if you are working in actual trading/strategy area and write up your backtester with Python. They want your P/L in Excel. To implement the strategy though, they want it in C++. Wall Street: Excel for life!
- VolatileVoid 16y ago
  Don't confuse "amazing code" with "snazzy technology" (although we do some pretty snazzy stuff). Also not sure about other places, but Excel usage is frowned upon here, at least on the trading desks that I support.
  - ezl 16y ago
    Rare and refreshing. Too many hours of my life have been spent hacking broken Excel spreadsheets with recorded macros.
  - noname123 16y ago
    Want to get into details as to what kind of "snazzy technology" or "amazing code" you guys are involved in? You don't have to give me corporate espionage secrets, just vague general topic. Is it a flashy OMS/EMS/reporting/risk/quotes front-end? What kind of technical problems do you guys encounter? In terms of concurrency, security, message processing, bandwidth/latency? What kind of business problems do you guys encounter? In terms of smart-routing, risk calculations and compliance. Just curious what programmers in GS are generally involved in.
- alforreca 16y ago
  Yes. Old = good. New = bad. Tech in finance is about efficiency. Everything else does not matter. The GUIs are usually atrocious. Traders don't care, as long as they make money. Excel is abused beyond belief and there is a whole cottage industry around Excel plug-ins. A good VBA programmer can command a salary as large as a C++ hot-shot. Sad.
Psyonic 16y ago
You don't have to worry about them over-glorifying Google either. The general attitude on this site is that you're either working on your own startup (by far the best option), working for an early-stage startup (ok, but still second best, since its not your own thing), or you're basically wasting your time (working for "the man"). I find it offensive, actually, but so it goes.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Again, everybody likes to justify their own decisions. And the more they secretly suspect the other possibility might actually be better, the more they feel the need to poop on it. I don't feel the need to loudly proclaim how much it must suck to be a garbageman, but I do feel the need to loudly proclaim that I sure am glad I'm not earning six hundred thousand dollars a year at a big hedge fund.
  - Psyonic 16y ago
    Fair enough. I wouldn't mind except reading it so often gives me anxiety about my decisions. This site can be like Cosmo for nerds... I can't stop reading it, but its not uncommon that I walk away feeling 10 pounds fatter.

YiddishPolice 16y ago

"Wall Street is like any other business. Don't over-glorify working for Google and not Goldman: tech companies are in it for money too; so are startups. At least on Wall Street people tell you they're doing it for the money. It's easier to detach that way and remember that what you're doing is just a job." You may try to justify what you do that way, but it's just cognitive dissonance. "Wall street people" tend to make money in rent seeking ways, destroying or merely transferring real value. At least at Google you could be creating value, growing the economy in sustainable ways, and increasing real GDP.

jrockway 16y ago

I also work at a bank, but don't like people who think it's just a job. They make my life more difficult and make it harder for the bank to make money. Our department doesn't hire people like that. (Also, pretty much nothing in the article applies to most banks these days. Sure, someone may have a burger-eating contest from time to time, but it's not like it's work-sanctioned. It's just a bunch of dudes with too much testosterone. There are bonuses, but it's silly to count on them for anything. Ask for the amount of money you want as your base pay -- they'll probably give it to you. Then enjoy the 20% or whatever as a fun extra.)

ericd 16y ago
It's very much not silly to count on the bonuses. 20% extra? Try 100-300% or more in most of the positions on the trading floor. As you rise in the ranks, it's much, much more. The bonus at every level above Analyst is easily larger than the base, which, as Antonio says, is generally not that impressive. This is true at every big bank on Wall St. Among my friends, we represented every large investment bank in NYC and many of the smaller hedge funds, so I'm sure it's representative. Not sure how compensation is in the IT depts. at those banks, though, if that's what you're talking about. IT is probably not representative of why people go to work on Wall St, though, since it's viewed as a cost center in most banks, and it's not what Antonio is talking about in the post.
- martin 16y ago
  I worked in IT at GS for a couple years. 15-20% was about right for bonuses there, on average. In 2006, I got almost a 50% bonus, but that was an exceptionally good year.
bryanh 16y ago
You can have the attitude of "just a job" and still be a valuable asset to a company. To some people, work is "just work" and sometimes the "just a job" mentality is an extension of that. If you ask me, its called life balance. It's just a job. It's just school. It's just money. That's just life.

jamesseda 16y ago

My understanding is GS is company that wants to "beat the market" meaning someone else in the market is loosing. And Google's goal is to make the worlds information available to everyone and show them ads. Google seems more like a everyone wins company.

unshift 16y ago
for every dollar of ads google sells, that's a dollar their competitors don't get. they are as cut throat as anybody else, they just do a better job of making computer people feel good about it. ask their sales department if they're an "everyone wins" company.
- jamesseda 16y ago
  If G-mail didn't exist I would use yahoo. G-mail is much better for me though. I win and Google wins. Yahoo looses. If GS gets in front of Citi on a trade by 2 seconds GS wins and Citi looses, no one else is involved. Unless those two seconds of "efficiency" help someone?
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    You are assuming all trades are determined by priority, which is false. If GS got there first, but Citi cuts in line by offering a better price, the customer also wins.
rchi 16y ago
The following is from a talk at the New York Public Library. ERIC SCHMIDT: But in fairness to those people[finance people], had they come to Silicon Valley in 1999 they would have received a far greater payoff during our little bubble. So who are we to criticize the Wall Street folks for having their bubble? It was just a bigger bubble. WALTER ISAACSON: Do you think though that Google creates something that’s more real than somebody on Wall Street creating a financial instrument? ERIC SCHMIDT: To be honest, not really. When I walked into the company, I said, “People pay you for this thing, these little ads?” http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/events/live_2009_11_03_capitalism_transcript.pdf http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/events/live_2009_11_...

TheSOB88 16y ago

Anything that takes up half of your waking hours shouldn't be "just" anything.

VolatileVoid 16y ago
Really? Quality, not quantity. An hour with my wife is more meaningful to me than half my day at work. No job will make up for that, unless I'm changing the world. So yes. It's just a job. Your (not you specifically, but anyone) startup is just a job.
- JoelSutherland 16y ago
  So because your wife give you a 100 happiness factor(tm), you are now indifferent when choosing between jobs that give you a 20 or 80 happiness factor? Or are you saying that your meaningfulness bar is so high that no job can possibly clear it? What if you and your wife worked together? For the most part, we get to choose our lives. I reject the idea that time spent working can't be meaningful.
  - forensic 16y ago
    Or maybe he's saying that access to his wife is dependent on the Goldman Sachs job. If he loses the 20-factor-job he loses the 100-factor-wife.
    - VolatileVoid 16y ago
      Definitely not. :) I'm just saying that - to me - a job is just a means to some end. That end (for me) is providing for my family adequately. That I happen to enjoy what I do is an extra bonus. I'm just saying not to lose sight of why we do what we do. If you start placing too much importance on a job, you let your job define you. IMHO, it's much more empowering to remember that your job is just a tool like any other.
      - xyzzyb 16y ago

JoelSutherland 16y ago

I'd prefer working where I don't need to detach. That's an option too.

ashishb4u 16y ago

totally agree, its just a job. even if you work with the most hacker-friendly company, you'll eventually rant out the same way someday. Maybe the post should be "Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than a day job" (oh thats a cliche!)

Psyonic 16y ago
That's the message I get from this site, day after day. Some days I almost feel ashamed to say I have a day job here.
- greg_holsclaw 16y ago
  Yep, we should all be crafting personal projects that double as severely frugal boot strapped startups of one. :)

noname123 16y ago

That's cool. I'm surprised you say that finance always takes a backseat to writing amazing code, though. In my experience, traders don't want cool new snazzy Google Wave. They want Excel. They don't want cool new Web 2.0 streaming quotes/risk calculations/portfolio calculations, they want VBA macros in Excel. Even if you are working in actual trading/strategy area and write up your backtester with Python. They want your P/L in Excel. To implement the strategy though, they want it in C++. Wall Street: Excel for life!

VolatileVoid 16y ago
Don't confuse "amazing code" with "snazzy technology" (although we do some pretty snazzy stuff). Also not sure about other places, but Excel usage is frowned upon here, at least on the trading desks that I support.
- ezl 16y ago
  Rare and refreshing. Too many hours of my life have been spent hacking broken Excel spreadsheets with recorded macros.
- noname123 16y ago
  Want to get into details as to what kind of "snazzy technology" or "amazing code" you guys are involved in? You don't have to give me corporate espionage secrets, just vague general topic. Is it a flashy OMS/EMS/reporting/risk/quotes front-end? What kind of technical problems do you guys encounter? In terms of concurrency, security, message processing, bandwidth/latency? What kind of business problems do you guys encounter? In terms of smart-routing, risk calculations and compliance. Just curious what programmers in GS are generally involved in.
alforreca 16y ago
Yes. Old = good. New = bad. Tech in finance is about efficiency. Everything else does not matter. The GUIs are usually atrocious. Traders don't care, as long as they make money. Excel is abused beyond belief and there is a whole cottage industry around Excel plug-ins. A good VBA programmer can command a salary as large as a C++ hot-shot. Sad.

Psyonic 16y ago

You don't have to worry about them over-glorifying Google either. The general attitude on this site is that you're either working on your own startup (by far the best option), working for an early-stage startup (ok, but still second best, since its not your own thing), or you're basically wasting your time (working for "the man"). I find it offensive, actually, but so it goes.

hugh3 16y ago
Again, everybody likes to justify their own decisions. And the more they secretly suspect the other possibility might actually be better, the more they feel the need to poop on it. I don't feel the need to loudly proclaim how much it must suck to be a garbageman, but I do feel the need to loudly proclaim that I sure am glad I'm not earning six hundred thousand dollars a year at a big hedge fund.
- Psyonic 16y ago
  Fair enough. I wouldn't mind except reading it so often gives me anxiety about my decisions. This site can be like Cosmo for nerds... I can't stop reading it, but its not uncommon that I walk away feeling 10 pounds fatter.