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Re Wall Street: It's unfortunate that some of our brightest are tempted into playing multi-million dollar poker, rather than focusing their energy on producing
by kenster07 13y ago
Re Wall Street: It's unfortunate that some of our brightest are tempted into playing multi-million dollar poker, rather than focusing their energy on producing any significant long-term value.
I believe software engineering wages will continue to rise over time, and will eventually reflect the true value the industry produces.
- walshemj 13y agoExperience from other branches of engineering compared to other equivalent professions over the last 100 years suggests otherwise.
- dylangs1030 13y agoI have no shame in admitting that I would rather use high-level mathematics and programming to play "multi-million dollar poker" on Wall Street than join half of the startups and big tech companies and have a boring job churning out insignificant apps at a desk. In fact, the way you phrased it, being a quant sounds really fun :) you don't want to play multi-million dollar poker? I mean, sure, meaning and existentialism and all that, but I bet it's at least somewhat exciting.
- kenster07 13y agoThat's the fundamental problem. The function of the finance system in a healthy economy is to ensure efficient allocation of capital. Playing poker has a neutral to negative effect on the system.
- dylangs1030 13y agoWell you're the one who used the word poker, so I guess it depends on your definition here...but the financial system somewhat revolves around poker. Valuations of companies are only important to investors because of the inherent gambling. If you purchase capital at a single valuation that never rises or falls, what's the point? Even an index fund pursues gradual increases over time. ...Or am I building a strawman here? Is this not where you were going?
- chris_mahan 13y agoWhich is why I work for a large bank, in toxic assets resolution, where the stakes are still in the billions of dollars.
- ryandrake 13y agoI think I'd rather use my tech skills to play multi-million dollar poker on Wall Street then create yet another beautiful, responsive, flexible, tweet-able, location-based, modular MVC library API component framework backbone architecture.js.
- Zimahl 13y agoAlso, who wouldn't want to play high-stakes poker with someone else's money!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dylangs1030 13y ago"It's beautiful! It's disruptive! It's agile and lean!" "What does it do?" "It revolutionizes the way you share pictures of your cats!" ...Yeah. Playing multi-million dollar poker on Wall Street sounds a lot sexier than the shiny startup veneer put on another photo sharing app.