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Amazon pay is shit. I was laughed out of the room for asking for a salary that some analysts make in finance. People get paid so much more in finance than any

by mruts 7y ago

Amazon pay is shit. I was laughed out of the room for asking for a salary that some analysts make in finance. People get paid so much more in finance than any other industry that I wonder why tech people aren’t more interested in those jobs. Also the work is more exciting and challenging. And it’s better for the world, though I suspect I’ll get a lot of downvotes for that one.

ssully 7y ago
Can you elaborate on why you think it's better for the world? I ask from a position of honest ignorance.
- mruts 7y ago
  Finance, fundamentally, is about managing risk and allocating money from the people who have it to the people that don't. Without finance and without banks, almost nothing we have today would even exist. There are people with ideas, and there are people with money. Without finance, neither would be able to meet. But when money and ideas meet, something magical and great happens: innovation and progress.
jedberg 7y ago
I once got offered a job in finance that was double my Netflix salary. I didn't take it because: 1) I'd have to live in NYC 2) I'd have to use their super locked down Windows machine. 3) I would only be allowed to talk to people in my department, and would never even be allowed to associate with the people making the trading algorithms, even though the job was to build them an infrastructure for back-testing their algorithms. 4) Their company had the opposite of transparency -- everything was so locked down it would be nearly impossible to be successful at the job, which was by it's nature very cross-sectional. At some point the money just doesn't matter that much anymore. Once you have enough to cover all your needs and few wants a year, more money has a quickly diminishing return. Other than the vast amounts of money, I didn't see anything interesting about working finance.
- twic 7y ago
  Not every financial firm is that paranoid. Many are, though - i got offered a job in London that your description would fit perfectly! Still, i ended up working at a firm that's the polar opposite of that. I'll also disagree with you about money. Once you have enough to cover all your needs and few wants a year, more money starts to get interesting, because then it goes directly into building financial independence. That's the money that will pay for you to retire, start a business of your own, take a sabattical, move to a low-paid job you love, etc.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    > Once you have enough to cover all your needs and few wants a year, more money starts to get interesting, because then it goes directly into building financial independence. I agree with you in theory, but even if you made $200,000 more a year than you need, how many years will you have to work at a crappy high paying job to save up enough to do any of those things? The only way to build that kind of wealth is either getting lucky on some stock options, being rich to start, or being young enough where $100,000 will carry you for a couple of years.
    - mruts 7y ago
      If you put 200,000 per year at a 10% discount rate (interest rate) in the bank, the fair value after 30 years is 1.8m. In other words, a rational person should take 1.8m now vs 200,000 a year for 30 years (at 10%). And this 10% is very very generous, if you're arbitraging between the risk free rate and the equity rate it looks a lot fucking better. I make around 23% YoY on my investments taking a leveraged high volatility strategy and let me tell you, at that kind of return, saving a little returns a big ass dividend. In short, saving a lot can net you huge money, enough to change your life.
    - twic 7y ago
      If you can invest with a return of 3% above inflation, 200k/yr buys you 6k/yr/yr of income, so five years would buy you 30k/yr. I lived on roughly that when i was a graduate student. In any case, i'm not suggesting you take a crappy job to get that money - my first point was that there are quite enjoyable jobs which will provide it!
Tehchops 7y ago
>I wonder why tech people aren’t more interested in those jobs. For all the hobgoblins and stories of bad-faith intent by big tech companies, they are still far more progressive than financial companies when it comes to things like hours, working arrangements, tenure, schooling, organizational hierarchy etc... Find me a finance job that lets me work 100% remote and doesn't care I didn't attend $prestigiousCollege and... I'd suspect it'd end up being a tech company instead :-)
- mruts 7y ago
  I don't know about remote (No finance firms I know of would allow that), but I haven't even graduated from college and I make good good money working as a quant at a bank. Maybe you don't want to wear a suit and tie each day (I do and I think it makes me looking fresh as fuck), but finance hasn't been a backwater in a while. Maybe there's no slide and free haircuts, but there's something better: cash money baby.
  - Tehchops 7y ago
    Even if you hadn’t called it out specifically, you’re checking every box for “new finance bro”. Strangely always devolves into a length measuring contest around things like clothes and income. Even stranger is how quiet that space gets when the firm hits a couple of red quarters. Nothing like underperformance to remind the plebes where they sit in the hierarchy of “sweet cash money” versus partners and investors ;-) (Also if you know a tech company that will install a slide and a barber at my house, could you PM me their name? First I’ve heard of that)

by mruts 7y ago

ssully 7y ago

Can you elaborate on why you think it's better for the world? I ask from a position of honest ignorance.

mruts 7y ago
Finance, fundamentally, is about managing risk and allocating money from the people who have it to the people that don't. Without finance and without banks, almost nothing we have today would even exist. There are people with ideas, and there are people with money. Without finance, neither would be able to meet. But when money and ideas meet, something magical and great happens: innovation and progress.

jedberg 7y ago

I once got offered a job in finance that was double my Netflix salary. I didn't take it because: 1) I'd have to live in NYC 2) I'd have to use their super locked down Windows machine. 3) I would only be allowed to talk to people in my department, and would never even be allowed to associate with the people making the trading algorithms, even though the job was to build them an infrastructure for back-testing their algorithms. 4) Their company had the opposite of transparency -- everything was so locked down it would be nearly impossible to be successful at the job, which was by it's nature very cross-sectional. At some point the money just doesn't matter that much anymore. Once you have enough to cover all your needs and few wants a year, more money has a quickly diminishing return. Other than the vast amounts of money, I didn't see anything interesting about working finance.

twic 7y ago
Not every financial firm is that paranoid. Many are, though - i got offered a job in London that your description would fit perfectly! Still, i ended up working at a firm that's the polar opposite of that. I'll also disagree with you about money. Once you have enough to cover all your needs and few wants a year, more money starts to get interesting, because then it goes directly into building financial independence. That's the money that will pay for you to retire, start a business of your own, take a sabattical, move to a low-paid job you love, etc.
- jedberg 7y ago
  > Once you have enough to cover all your needs and few wants a year, more money starts to get interesting, because then it goes directly into building financial independence. I agree with you in theory, but even if you made $200,000 more a year than you need, how many years will you have to work at a crappy high paying job to save up enough to do any of those things? The only way to build that kind of wealth is either getting lucky on some stock options, being rich to start, or being young enough where $100,000 will carry you for a couple of years.
  - mruts 7y ago
    If you put 200,000 per year at a 10% discount rate (interest rate) in the bank, the fair value after 30 years is 1.8m. In other words, a rational person should take 1.8m now vs 200,000 a year for 30 years (at 10%). And this 10% is very very generous, if you're arbitraging between the risk free rate and the equity rate it looks a lot fucking better. I make around 23% YoY on my investments taking a leveraged high volatility strategy and let me tell you, at that kind of return, saving a little returns a big ass dividend. In short, saving a lot can net you huge money, enough to change your life.
  - twic 7y ago
    If you can invest with a return of 3% above inflation, 200k/yr buys you 6k/yr/yr of income, so five years would buy you 30k/yr. I lived on roughly that when i was a graduate student. In any case, i'm not suggesting you take a crappy job to get that money - my first point was that there are quite enjoyable jobs which will provide it!

Tehchops 7y ago

>I wonder why tech people aren’t more interested in those jobs. For all the hobgoblins and stories of bad-faith intent by big tech companies, they are still far more progressive than financial companies when it comes to things like hours, working arrangements, tenure, schooling, organizational hierarchy etc... Find me a finance job that lets me work 100% remote and doesn't care I didn't attend $prestigiousCollege and... I'd suspect it'd end up being a tech company instead :-)

mruts 7y ago
I don't know about remote (No finance firms I know of would allow that), but I haven't even graduated from college and I make good good money working as a quant at a bank. Maybe you don't want to wear a suit and tie each day (I do and I think it makes me looking fresh as fuck), but finance hasn't been a backwater in a while. Maybe there's no slide and free haircuts, but there's something better: cash money baby.
- Tehchops 7y ago
  Even if you hadn’t called it out specifically, you’re checking every box for “new finance bro”. Strangely always devolves into a length measuring contest around things like clothes and income. Even stranger is how quiet that space gets when the firm hits a couple of red quarters. Nothing like underperformance to remind the plebes where they sit in the hierarchy of “sweet cash money” versus partners and investors ;-) (Also if you know a tech company that will install a slide and a barber at my house, could you PM me their name? First I’ve heard of that)