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While some certainly choose to leave finance for startups, I think they and far between. Who in their right mind chooses to give up a huge salary in favor of an

While some certainly choose to leave finance for startups, I think they and far between. Who in their right mind chooses to give up a huge salary in favor of an equivalently time intensive startup which pays 1/10 as well? > data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the number of employees aged 25 to 34 in the New York metropolitan area in finance and insurance fell to 109,187 as of the second quarter of 2013, down 19 percent from the second quarter of 2007. This definitely has nothing to do with the financial crisis which happened in the intervening years and the ensuing mass layoffs on Wall St.

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- morgante 13y ago
  > It turns out they're leaving finance and entering technology. Not quite. It shows that people are choosing to enter technology instead of finance—not that people who already chose finance are switching to technology. It's an important distinction to make. Personally, I'm not planning to enter finance due to the general level of stress—particularly to gain entry. Yet, at the same time, if I were already in finance, I would find it quite hard to leave.
- rayiner 13y ago
  1) That's a useless statistic without knowing what those folks were doing originally. It could be that the tech boom has resulted in more engineers getting MBA's. 2) The fact that they are leaving finance and entering technology does not mean they're becoming entrepreneurs and engineers. Going in-house in Google's M&A department would be counted as "entering technology" in these statistics, for example.
vanderZwan 13y ago
> Who in their right mind chooses to give up a huge salary in favor of an equivalently time intensive startup which pays 1/10 as well? If that one tenth the salary is enough to cover your monetary needs, then why pay the price for the other nine tenths?
- morgante 13y ago
  > If that one tenth the salary is enough to cover your monetary needs, then why pay the price for the other nine tenths? What price? I think startup hours are nearly as grueling as those in finance.
  - vanderZwan 13y ago
    There are more reasons for doing things than money. If a particular job does not satisfy them, when another one does, that is a price you pay (well, a trade-off with a net loss, so to speak). It's highly personal, I suppose, but a rhetorical question of "who in their right mind" assumes a lot about what a right mind is an isn't. Yet my response gets downvotes somehow.
    - tomp 13y ago
      I honestly believe that most startups are no better than banks, even in the "job satisfaction" category. Purpose of work is approximately equally meaningless, given that you're most likely working on "disrupting the industry of lightbulb changing" or yet another ad business. The work you do at a startup might be more interesting at the beginning, when the infrastructure is being set up, but it quickly gets repetitive yet someone (you) has to do it, and unless it's a very rapidly growing startup, you won't get promoted any time soon, in contrast to banks which usually have a well-known career path set up for you.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  It may be enough to cover your needs now, but most people want to be able to do things like support families and save for retirement. (Granted, 90 hours a week is terrible for family life.)
  - vanderZwan 13y ago
    And what part of my comment implied "covering monetary needs" does not include that?
rayiner 13y ago
I couldn't make it through the first few paragraphs of this article, which used the drop in the percentage of students at HBS/Wharton going into finance as an indicator that somehow these folks were going into tech because they were "fed up" with 90-hour work weeks. Comparing data from 2006 and 2007 to current data is meaningless. The banking industry has retrenched tremendously in the financial crisis. While the top banks are still very profitable, they are doing more with less, and laid off 500,000 people between 2008 and 2012: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/wall-street-layoffs_n_1452475.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/wall-street-layoffs....

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morgante 13y ago
> It turns out they're leaving finance and entering technology. Not quite. It shows that people are choosing to enter technology instead of finance—not that people who already chose finance are switching to technology. It's an important distinction to make. Personally, I'm not planning to enter finance due to the general level of stress—particularly to gain entry. Yet, at the same time, if I were already in finance, I would find it quite hard to leave.
rayiner 13y ago
1) That's a useless statistic without knowing what those folks were doing originally. It could be that the tech boom has resulted in more engineers getting MBA's. 2) The fact that they are leaving finance and entering technology does not mean they're becoming entrepreneurs and engineers. Going in-house in Google's M&A department would be counted as "entering technology" in these statistics, for example.

vanderZwan 13y ago

> Who in their right mind chooses to give up a huge salary in favor of an equivalently time intensive startup which pays 1/10 as well? If that one tenth the salary is enough to cover your monetary needs, then why pay the price for the other nine tenths?

morgante 13y ago
> If that one tenth the salary is enough to cover your monetary needs, then why pay the price for the other nine tenths? What price? I think startup hours are nearly as grueling as those in finance.
- vanderZwan 13y ago
  There are more reasons for doing things than money. If a particular job does not satisfy them, when another one does, that is a price you pay (well, a trade-off with a net loss, so to speak). It's highly personal, I suppose, but a rhetorical question of "who in their right mind" assumes a lot about what a right mind is an isn't. Yet my response gets downvotes somehow.
  - tomp 13y ago
    I honestly believe that most startups are no better than banks, even in the "job satisfaction" category. Purpose of work is approximately equally meaningless, given that you're most likely working on "disrupting the industry of lightbulb changing" or yet another ad business. The work you do at a startup might be more interesting at the beginning, when the infrastructure is being set up, but it quickly gets repetitive yet someone (you) has to do it, and unless it's a very rapidly growing startup, you won't get promoted any time soon, in contrast to banks which usually have a well-known career path set up for you.
enraged_camel 13y ago
It may be enough to cover your needs now, but most people want to be able to do things like support families and save for retirement. (Granted, 90 hours a week is terrible for family life.)
- vanderZwan 13y ago
  And what part of my comment implied "covering monetary needs" does not include that?

rayiner 13y ago

I couldn't make it through the first few paragraphs of this article, which used the drop in the percentage of students at HBS/Wharton going into finance as an indicator that somehow these folks were going into tech because they were "fed up" with 90-hour work weeks. Comparing data from 2006 and 2007 to current data is meaningless. The banking industry has retrenched tremendously in the financial crisis. While the top banks are still very profitable, they are doing more with less, and laid off 500,000 people between 2008 and 2012: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/wall-street-layoffs_n_1452475.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/wall-street-layoffs....