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It's funny that just 2 or 3 years ago, bankers were rock stars. I lost the count of how many friends and acquaintances left Science & Engineering to try a caree
by Rod 18y ago
It's funny that just 2 or 3 years ago, bankers were rock stars. I lost the count of how many friends and acquaintances left Science & Engineering to try a career as investment bankers... and failed miserably.
Bankers deserve neither admiration (their job is not particularly noble), nor everyone's hatred (the economic crisis is not entirely their fault).
- jwilliams 18y agoTrue - But the same happened in the dotcom boom. There were some pretty terrible coders around. A lot of bad entrepreneurs lost people a lot of money on some bad ideas. I'd disagree that being a banker can't be noble... but you'd really need to meet/know a counterexample to argue that point to it's end conclusion - and that's not necessarily a simple thing to do at this point in history.
- Rod 18y agoThe one good thing about crises such as the dotcom boom and the current Wall Street meltdown is that they weed out the mercenaries. The coders who stayed in the business after the crash were the ones who did it for the passion, not for the buck. I would say the same applies to bankers, but I never met one banker who admitted to love his job. I have met traders who loved their jobs. But not bankers. Unless by "banker" we mean anyone who works at a bank, not just investment bankers... I would argue that bankers are not particularly noble, but I am not bashing them either. Guys like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen and others became rich because of their companies' IPOs, which were carried out by bankers. Not all is black & white, right?