10 ms·

Goldman Sachs Recasts Its Reputation to Woo Tech Talent

34 points by carlchenet 12y ago

chrisbennet 12y ago
I would think that the applicant pool would be limited to those who hadn't heard of (what they did to) Sergey Aleynikov. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov .
- carlchenet 12y ago
  really interesting link thans, I always knew Erlang was a dangerous language ;)
- icebraining 12y ago
  Why? I don't intended to copy my code from my employer's machines to personal servers just before I leave, do you?
  - gadders 12y ago
    All emails in Banks are monitored for people sending code now. I personally know of people that have been sacked for sending code to a personal email address.
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    Nope, but if I did, I would expect my employer to use civil means to deal with it. Not launch a multi-year, multi-jurisdiction criminal vendetta against me. The incident certainly gives me pause about working for them...
  - byEngineer 12y ago
    Good. Because if you do by any chance you will spend many, many years in prison. You like that part too, right?
    - gd1 12y ago
      I don't think he cares, because as he says, he's not about to accept a job offer for $1.15 million at a rival firm then copy encrypted code out before he leaves.
    - melling 12y ago
      The guy was making $400k/year and taking his software to another firm where he was going to make well over $1m a year. Perhaps there was a good reason the company was so aggressive?
      - byEngineer 12y ago
        of course, great! Go work for them! Some people just love to be treated badly and that's why companies like GS still exist. Why to be treated nice and have higher salary when you can be treated like shit, earn 90k in NYC and end up in jail for many years for copying files around. Just join them!
        melling 12y ago
        When you take something that's not yours, it's called stealing, and this will get you in trouble with many companies. A good company will not want you to bring your code because they might be libel. For example, Netscape had to rewrite their browser when UIUC threatened to sue them for using the Mosaic code. It's not just a Wall Street issue.
        dreamweapon 12y ago
        Except that Goldman didn't just "threaten to sue" Alyenikov. They called their pals down at the prosecutor's office, fed them a profusely exaggerated description of what he did -- and had him thrown in jail.
      - dreamweapon 12y ago
        The guy was ... taking his software to another firm where he was going to make well over $1m a year. That's the takeaway Goldman would like you to have -- that he was "making off with the crown jewels." Unfortunately, it was basically a concoction: turns out the code he took was quite innocuous, and offered no special business advantage. Yet out of either incompetence or vindictiveness, Goldman proffered the line that he had taken the "crown jewels". And that he should be hauled to jail, and have his reputation ruined and his marriage destroyed for it.
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    The point is that he was overzealously prosecuted for it. You might want to do some reading about the case; it was really quite awful and unfair, what happened to him.
  - chrisbennet 12y ago
    A little background from reading "Flash Boys": Goldman uses open source code but then strips off the open source license and replaces it with their own - thus changing open source code into "proprietary" Goldman Sacks code. Sergey was not allowed to submit his open source code fixes back to the o.s. repositories because once G.S. violates the O.S. copy write, it is now magically "proprietary". In order to keep his fixes he was sending himself code that contained modified/improved/fixed open source - along with actual G.S. proprietary code. G.S. system was a "ball of rubber bands". Sergey was going to a new job where he would make a completely different system and had no use for Goldman's code. The cop investigating this was unfamiliar with software For example; he thought that Sergey's use of (the source control app) "subversion" was obviously something um subversive. He basically believed everything that G.S. told him. This (from another source) describes some of these items: http://cryptonomics.org/2013/09/08/goldman-sachs-v-russian-programmer/ http://cryptonomics.org/2013/09/08/goldman-sachs-v-russian-p...
    - icebraining 12y ago
      What the cop believed sounds irrelevant; he went to court and was convicted (and the later acquittance was on a technicality). The question of G.S. violating the OSS copyright is also not clear; usually, you can only violate copyright if you distribute software without a license. I'm not sure if removing the license on internal copies is legal, but no OS license I know of - not even the GPL - required them to share the changes back. I don't see any wrongdoing by GS part vis-a-vis OSS licenses, and as an employee, it wasn't his choice to make. Do I think the law is harsh? Yes. Would I do the same as GS? Certainly not. But as far as I'm concerned, he's conduct was in clear violation of the trust put on him as an employee (as he admitted), and it wouldn't influence my decision to join GS.
CmonDev 12y ago
Graduates are very attractive to them - no need to pay a proper bonus. If you are in states opting for a large tech company instead is a no-brainer IMHO.
- pmorici 12y ago
  If someone is making the decision based on pay I'm fairly certain that Goldman Sachs, and financial firms in general pay better than most tech companies in SV. Heck 4 of the bigger companies in tech have all but admitted that they are guilty of colluding to keep salaries artificially low. http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-appeal-settlement-rejection-in-wage-fixing-case/ http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-appeal-settlement-reje...
  - JDiculous 12y ago
    Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure starting salaries at GS and other banks are around $80-90k + a small bonus (10-20%?). Not bad, but definitely less than Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and other major tech companies. So if you're a software engineer going for the money, GS isn't really the place to be.
    - 3EAFC164D817 12y ago
      > So if you're a software engineer going for the money, GS isn't really the place to be. Over the long term, financial services wins. The compensation curve is much steeper than most tech firms.
      - lern_too_spel 12y ago
        GS in particular pays crap wages according to salar.ly.
        massmana 12y ago
        That's because you're looking at the wrong job title. For experienced engineers look at Vice President and Senior Vice President.
mcv 12y ago
Sounds like the article is only really about Wallstreet's reputation. What about Goldman Sachs' own specific reputation for screwing their own customers? I mean, suppose I want to be proud of what I do? Then what place is there for me in Goldman Sachs?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Could you provide more info on Goldman screwing their customers? Among traders their general reputation is pretty good.
  - raheemm 12y ago
    "Why I'm Leaving Goldman Sachs" - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-g... How Goldman screwed its IPO clients - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/nocera-rigging-the-ipo-game.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/nocera-rigg...
uniclaude 12y ago
Something that must also be quite important for graduates is that when working for Amazon or Google, you are among the most important type of employees for the company. What you do really matters to the business, and you can hope to be rewarded in consequence. Some might get the impression that when working for GS, as long as you're not a trader or such, you'll only be writing code next to the millionaires making money with it.
- jevgeni 12y ago
  Speaking from the trenches here. Banking, especially non-consumer banking (i.e. IB, prop trading operations, etc) is divided intro three tiers: front, middle and back office. Front office are the people directly dealing with "clients" (or better "counterparties") and get shitloads of money and an aura of being business savvy and knowing where it's at. Basically it's sales, trading and some higher-tier management. Contrary to what one might think based on the "Wall Street" films, these people don't need to be smart or sophisticated. I know quite a bit of traders, who only finished high school. Mid office are the people who do the actual nitty-gritty work, that one would actually associate with a working banking institution: research, risk oversight (in Europe mostly known as risk control), legal, compliance, marketing, accounting, ALM, etc. They usually earn OK, but nowhere near what front office makes. Back office are the people who are there for the infrastructure. Transaction banking, for example (i.e. making sure that your transactions are settled correctly, that money is wired to direct recipients, etc.) Tech is in most banks a back office thing (especially if we are not talking about algo trading). They earn shit. I'm involved in quant finance, so I hoped, that I would see a culture shift after 2008-2013 from get-rich-quick-with-other-peoples-money schemes to a more serious business culture, but that is not the case. I honestly don't believe that Goldie can change its culture so quickly.
  - 3EAFC164D817 12y ago
    > Speaking from the trenches here. [...] Tech is in most banks a back office thing (especially if we are not talking about algo trading). They earn shit. You are in the wrong trench, my friend. High performing developers and systems folks are extraordinarily well compensated at the higher end banks and hedge funds. When people change jobs, it's usually for another job in financial services, largely because most technology companies cannot even begin to touch the total compensation for such a person.
alecco 12y ago
I've heard the financial industry is still quite top-down on decisions and software architecture. A do-what-they-told-you kind of environment, where technical people are seen as nerds and laughed at behind their backs.
- jevgeni 12y ago
  You've mostly heard correctly. With the difference, that most tech people who are officially hired as techs by banks aren't very good. Good tech people are usually recruited by rebellious front and mid office desks.
- gadders 12y ago
  Depends on the system. If it's a brand new one there will usually be a set of global firm standards that should be followe (i.e. Oracle, Linux, Java or whatever) but you can follow a process to get an exception. It's not great but as banks have 3,000+ systems of various types they need to keep some control of the technology stacks in use. IT is still back office, but in the last couple of jobs where I have dealt with the Front Office directly no-one laughs at you. They can't do their job without technology.
nns 12y ago
Earlier this year Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein spoke to Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, on technology and the financial industry. http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2014-06-03/blankfein-bloomberg-on-role-of-tech-in-business http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2014-06-03/blankfein-bloo...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jaydub 12y ago
Here are my unsolicited 2 cents on why not to work on Wall Street: Solve real problems. Don't be a second class citizen (e.g. if the firm is financial, software engineers aren't going to be CEO and that says something). Make sure you have upside. Don't work in a job where your function is to maintain some legacy system and if it breaks its as if you lost the firm millions but if its running smoothly no one cares.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  That is good advice in any industry and is not any more prevalent on Wall Street than it is anywhere else in tech.
- mlrtime 12y ago
  You should replace 'Wall Street' with bulge bracket firm. There are a lot of financial tech companies where engineers make much more than traders, vps or sales and are not treated as second class citizens.
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  A lot of startups aren't exactly solving "real problems" either, you know. And startupland has its own stratification, hierarchies, and pretensions -- not too mention great unwashed masses of second-class citizens: those who came to the party late and missed their chance at a meaningful equity stake and/or a fluffy job title, etc. Don't work in a job where your function is to maintain some legacy system and if it breaks its as if you lost the firm millions but if its running smoothly no one cares. Good advice. But at the end of the day, a lot of these ad exchanges, dating apps, half-baked recommender systems etc that most startup engineers get to work on just aren't all that different, in spirit, than the sprawling back-office order processing systems that most financial programmers get to work on (save for the comparatively minor fact that that they might be in badly-written PHP or JS as opposed to badly-written Perl or C). There are plenty of pour souls in both camps, toiling away in the bowels of other people's messes -- while those responsible for creating those messes have long since made their millions, and moved on to greener pastures.
scott00 12y ago
The two stats from this article that scream "avoid a tech career at Goldman" to me: - total tech employees: 25% (8k/32k) - total software engineers among new partner class: 7.7% (6/78)
- gadders 12y ago
  This is true, but I'd also say that even if part of the 25% you can still get a £100k+ salary.
piokoch 12y ago
I could not belive my eyes when I have learned about GS Collections library for Java [https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections]. Very nice piece of open source code with a very good documentation. I had to double check if I am looking at the right place...
ajones 12y ago
When I left college, I joined a big bank and eventually made the jump to a startup. Here's why: - I spent my first of two years as an applications developer and didn't push more than 20 lines of code into production. My days were wasted with planning meetings and release management. I spent more time in excel spreadsheets than anything else. - In my second year, I worked on a new product. Things seemed much more interesting, but something was still missing. I cover a lot of that in my blog post about my transition from a big bank to a startup. https://atjonesblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/my-transition-to-startup-life/ https://atjonesblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/my-transition-t... - In the article, it is mentioned that Goldman works on problems in machine learning, data mining, and cloud computing. I'm sure this is 100% accurate, but what they fail to mention is these interesting projects are usually strictly for PhDs or engineers with decades of experience. - As a technologist in a bank, you're a second-class citizen. The executives may say things like, "we're not a bank, we're a tech company!", but I saw no actions to back up the statements. Majority of the recognition goes to the bankers, ignoring the infrastructure laid by the tech and operations side of the business. After all that, I'd say I had a decent experience, but I don't think I would have missed much by jumping straight into a tech company.
- gedrap 12y ago
  >>> As a technologist in a bank, you're a second-class citizen I believe that's the case in the majority of companies, where software is not the primary product.
mempko 12y ago
"They were fighting against perceptions of Wall Street as boring and regulation-bound " I really don't think this is the perception people have of Wall Street that is keeping them from working there... Part of me feels that I would be destroying lives of millions of people when the next crash inevitably comes...
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  And how do you feel about exploiting service workers? Blowing up foreigners? Exploiting sick people? Selling people's demographics? Automating low skilled workers out of the workforce? It is pretty easy to find the dark side of any profit generating job in software.

34 points by carlchenet 12y ago

I would think that the applicant pool would be limited to those who hadn't heard of (what they did to) Sergey Aleynikov. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov .

carlchenet 12y ago
really interesting link thans, I always knew Erlang was a dangerous language ;)
icebraining 12y ago
Why? I don't intended to copy my code from my employer's machines to personal servers just before I leave, do you?
- gadders 12y ago
  All emails in Banks are monitored for people sending code now. I personally know of people that have been sacked for sending code to a personal email address.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  Nope, but if I did, I would expect my employer to use civil means to deal with it. Not launch a multi-year, multi-jurisdiction criminal vendetta against me. The incident certainly gives me pause about working for them...
- byEngineer 12y ago
  Good. Because if you do by any chance you will spend many, many years in prison. You like that part too, right?
  - gd1 12y ago
    I don't think he cares, because as he says, he's not about to accept a job offer for $1.15 million at a rival firm then copy encrypted code out before he leaves.
  - melling 12y ago
    The guy was making $400k/year and taking his software to another firm where he was going to make well over $1m a year. Perhaps there was a good reason the company was so aggressive?
    - byEngineer 12y ago
      of course, great! Go work for them! Some people just love to be treated badly and that's why companies like GS still exist. Why to be treated nice and have higher salary when you can be treated like shit, earn 90k in NYC and end up in jail for many years for copying files around. Just join them!
      - melling 12y ago
        When you take something that's not yours, it's called stealing, and this will get you in trouble with many companies. A good company will not want you to bring your code because they might be libel. For example, Netscape had to rewrite their browser when UIUC threatened to sue them for using the Mosaic code. It's not just a Wall Street issue.
        dreamweapon 12y ago
        Except that Goldman didn't just "threaten to sue" Alyenikov. They called their pals down at the prosecutor's office, fed them a profusely exaggerated description of what he did -- and had him thrown in jail.
    - dreamweapon 12y ago
      The guy was ... taking his software to another firm where he was going to make well over $1m a year. That's the takeaway Goldman would like you to have -- that he was "making off with the crown jewels." Unfortunately, it was basically a concoction: turns out the code he took was quite innocuous, and offered no special business advantage. Yet out of either incompetence or vindictiveness, Goldman proffered the line that he had taken the "crown jewels". And that he should be hauled to jail, and have his reputation ruined and his marriage destroyed for it.
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  The point is that he was overzealously prosecuted for it. You might want to do some reading about the case; it was really quite awful and unfair, what happened to him.
- chrisbennet 12y ago
  A little background from reading "Flash Boys": Goldman uses open source code but then strips off the open source license and replaces it with their own - thus changing open source code into "proprietary" Goldman Sacks code. Sergey was not allowed to submit his open source code fixes back to the o.s. repositories because once G.S. violates the O.S. copy write, it is now magically "proprietary". In order to keep his fixes he was sending himself code that contained modified/improved/fixed open source - along with actual G.S. proprietary code. G.S. system was a "ball of rubber bands". Sergey was going to a new job where he would make a completely different system and had no use for Goldman's code. The cop investigating this was unfamiliar with software For example; he thought that Sergey's use of (the source control app) "subversion" was obviously something um subversive. He basically believed everything that G.S. told him. This (from another source) describes some of these items: http://cryptonomics.org/2013/09/08/goldman-sachs-v-russian-programmer/ http://cryptonomics.org/2013/09/08/goldman-sachs-v-russian-p...
  - icebraining 12y ago
    What the cop believed sounds irrelevant; he went to court and was convicted (and the later acquittance was on a technicality). The question of G.S. violating the OSS copyright is also not clear; usually, you can only violate copyright if you distribute software without a license. I'm not sure if removing the license on internal copies is legal, but no OS license I know of - not even the GPL - required them to share the changes back. I don't see any wrongdoing by GS part vis-a-vis OSS licenses, and as an employee, it wasn't his choice to make. Do I think the law is harsh? Yes. Would I do the same as GS? Certainly not. But as far as I'm concerned, he's conduct was in clear violation of the trust put on him as an employee (as he admitted), and it wouldn't influence my decision to join GS.

CmonDev 12y ago

Graduates are very attractive to them - no need to pay a proper bonus. If you are in states opting for a large tech company instead is a no-brainer IMHO.

pmorici 12y ago
If someone is making the decision based on pay I'm fairly certain that Goldman Sachs, and financial firms in general pay better than most tech companies in SV. Heck 4 of the bigger companies in tech have all but admitted that they are guilty of colluding to keep salaries artificially low. http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-appeal-settlement-rejection-in-wage-fixing-case/ http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-appeal-settlement-reje...
- JDiculous 12y ago
  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure starting salaries at GS and other banks are around $80-90k + a small bonus (10-20%?). Not bad, but definitely less than Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and other major tech companies. So if you're a software engineer going for the money, GS isn't really the place to be.
  - 3EAFC164D817 12y ago
    > So if you're a software engineer going for the money, GS isn't really the place to be. Over the long term, financial services wins. The compensation curve is much steeper than most tech firms.
    - lern_too_spel 12y ago
      GS in particular pays crap wages according to salar.ly.
      - massmana 12y ago
        That's because you're looking at the wrong job title. For experienced engineers look at Vice President and Senior Vice President.

mcv 12y ago

Sounds like the article is only really about Wallstreet's reputation. What about Goldman Sachs' own specific reputation for screwing their own customers? I mean, suppose I want to be proud of what I do? Then what place is there for me in Goldman Sachs?

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Could you provide more info on Goldman screwing their customers? Among traders their general reputation is pretty good.
- raheemm 12y ago
  "Why I'm Leaving Goldman Sachs" - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-g... How Goldman screwed its IPO clients - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/nocera-rigging-the-ipo-game.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/nocera-rigg...

uniclaude 12y ago

Something that must also be quite important for graduates is that when working for Amazon or Google, you are among the most important type of employees for the company. What you do really matters to the business, and you can hope to be rewarded in consequence. Some might get the impression that when working for GS, as long as you're not a trader or such, you'll only be writing code next to the millionaires making money with it.

jevgeni 12y ago
Speaking from the trenches here. Banking, especially non-consumer banking (i.e. IB, prop trading operations, etc) is divided intro three tiers: front, middle and back office. Front office are the people directly dealing with "clients" (or better "counterparties") and get shitloads of money and an aura of being business savvy and knowing where it's at. Basically it's sales, trading and some higher-tier management. Contrary to what one might think based on the "Wall Street" films, these people don't need to be smart or sophisticated. I know quite a bit of traders, who only finished high school. Mid office are the people who do the actual nitty-gritty work, that one would actually associate with a working banking institution: research, risk oversight (in Europe mostly known as risk control), legal, compliance, marketing, accounting, ALM, etc. They usually earn OK, but nowhere near what front office makes. Back office are the people who are there for the infrastructure. Transaction banking, for example (i.e. making sure that your transactions are settled correctly, that money is wired to direct recipients, etc.) Tech is in most banks a back office thing (especially if we are not talking about algo trading). They earn shit. I'm involved in quant finance, so I hoped, that I would see a culture shift after 2008-2013 from get-rich-quick-with-other-peoples-money schemes to a more serious business culture, but that is not the case. I honestly don't believe that Goldie can change its culture so quickly.
- 3EAFC164D817 12y ago
  > Speaking from the trenches here. [...] Tech is in most banks a back office thing (especially if we are not talking about algo trading). They earn shit. You are in the wrong trench, my friend. High performing developers and systems folks are extraordinarily well compensated at the higher end banks and hedge funds. When people change jobs, it's usually for another job in financial services, largely because most technology companies cannot even begin to touch the total compensation for such a person.

alecco 12y ago

I've heard the financial industry is still quite top-down on decisions and software architecture. A do-what-they-told-you kind of environment, where technical people are seen as nerds and laughed at behind their backs.

jevgeni 12y ago
You've mostly heard correctly. With the difference, that most tech people who are officially hired as techs by banks aren't very good. Good tech people are usually recruited by rebellious front and mid office desks.
gadders 12y ago
Depends on the system. If it's a brand new one there will usually be a set of global firm standards that should be followe (i.e. Oracle, Linux, Java or whatever) but you can follow a process to get an exception. It's not great but as banks have 3,000+ systems of various types they need to keep some control of the technology stacks in use. IT is still back office, but in the last couple of jobs where I have dealt with the Front Office directly no-one laughs at you. They can't do their job without technology.

nns 12y ago

Earlier this year Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein spoke to Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, on technology and the financial industry. http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2014-06-03/blankfein-bloomberg-on-role-of-tech-in-business http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2014-06-03/blankfein-bloo...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jaydub 12y ago

Here are my unsolicited 2 cents on why not to work on Wall Street: Solve real problems. Don't be a second class citizen (e.g. if the firm is financial, software engineers aren't going to be CEO and that says something). Make sure you have upside. Don't work in a job where your function is to maintain some legacy system and if it breaks its as if you lost the firm millions but if its running smoothly no one cares.

kasey_junk 12y ago
That is good advice in any industry and is not any more prevalent on Wall Street than it is anywhere else in tech.
mlrtime 12y ago
You should replace 'Wall Street' with bulge bracket firm. There are a lot of financial tech companies where engineers make much more than traders, vps or sales and are not treated as second class citizens.
dreamweapon 12y ago
A lot of startups aren't exactly solving "real problems" either, you know. And startupland has its own stratification, hierarchies, and pretensions -- not too mention great unwashed masses of second-class citizens: those who came to the party late and missed their chance at a meaningful equity stake and/or a fluffy job title, etc. Don't work in a job where your function is to maintain some legacy system and if it breaks its as if you lost the firm millions but if its running smoothly no one cares. Good advice. But at the end of the day, a lot of these ad exchanges, dating apps, half-baked recommender systems etc that most startup engineers get to work on just aren't all that different, in spirit, than the sprawling back-office order processing systems that most financial programmers get to work on (save for the comparatively minor fact that that they might be in badly-written PHP or JS as opposed to badly-written Perl or C). There are plenty of pour souls in both camps, toiling away in the bowels of other people's messes -- while those responsible for creating those messes have long since made their millions, and moved on to greener pastures.

scott00 12y ago

The two stats from this article that scream "avoid a tech career at Goldman" to me: - total tech employees: 25% (8k/32k) - total software engineers among new partner class: 7.7% (6/78)

gadders 12y ago
This is true, but I'd also say that even if part of the 25% you can still get a £100k+ salary.

piokoch 12y ago

I could not belive my eyes when I have learned about GS Collections library for Java [https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections]. Very nice piece of open source code with a very good documentation. I had to double check if I am looking at the right place...

ajones 12y ago

When I left college, I joined a big bank and eventually made the jump to a startup. Here's why: - I spent my first of two years as an applications developer and didn't push more than 20 lines of code into production. My days were wasted with planning meetings and release management. I spent more time in excel spreadsheets than anything else. - In my second year, I worked on a new product. Things seemed much more interesting, but something was still missing. I cover a lot of that in my blog post about my transition from a big bank to a startup. https://atjonesblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/my-transition-to-startup-life/ https://atjonesblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/my-transition-t... - In the article, it is mentioned that Goldman works on problems in machine learning, data mining, and cloud computing. I'm sure this is 100% accurate, but what they fail to mention is these interesting projects are usually strictly for PhDs or engineers with decades of experience. - As a technologist in a bank, you're a second-class citizen. The executives may say things like, "we're not a bank, we're a tech company!", but I saw no actions to back up the statements. Majority of the recognition goes to the bankers, ignoring the infrastructure laid by the tech and operations side of the business. After all that, I'd say I had a decent experience, but I don't think I would have missed much by jumping straight into a tech company.

gedrap 12y ago
>>> As a technologist in a bank, you're a second-class citizen I believe that's the case in the majority of companies, where software is not the primary product.

mempko 12y ago

"They were fighting against perceptions of Wall Street as boring and regulation-bound " I really don't think this is the perception people have of Wall Street that is keeping them from working there... Part of me feels that I would be destroying lives of millions of people when the next crash inevitably comes...

kasey_junk 12y ago
And how do you feel about exploiting service workers? Blowing up foreigners? Exploiting sick people? Selling people's demographics? Automating low skilled workers out of the workforce? It is pretty easy to find the dark side of any profit generating job in software.