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Very interesting writeup, I appreciate you taking the time! Can I ask what exactly got you into this life? Was it just the drive to make big money and be one o

Very interesting writeup, I appreciate you taking the time! Can I ask what exactly got you into this life? Was it just the drive to make big money and be one of the "elites"? Family pressure?

crdb 11y ago
It's actually all pretty random. The relevant steps: - my European mother moved the family to London so we'd learn English, she looked up the best schools in the country and arranged an interview in each. I was good at music so the best one took me despite my lack of English speaking ability. I picked it up quickly enough to get good grades (at one point was 2nd in my GCSE English class, lol). - at UCAS time ("pick your uni"), my tutor (this being a good school) pressured me into applying to these Oxbridge universities I never heard of. I got something like 7 mock interviews from various teachers so accidentally aced the entrance interview. I was good at maths and my country likes engineers so I did engineering (another sort of random choice). - A prof was looking for someone to work in India for a few months, I applied, got it by virtue of being the only one out of 44 classmates who wanted to go. This gave me a taste for working out of comfort zone. - after graduation, a friend introduced me to a banker in a country I won't name with a very strict visa policy, where I might have worked illegaly on starting a bank. He didn't manage to start it so back I went at the expiry of my visa. - he sent me a link to the consulting firm's JD, I applied more out of automatism than anything, and my perfect English and prestigious university impressed them or something. I actually interviewed in a different office to the one I should have gone to. Anybody working in consulting in Switzerland needs to master both English and either French, Italian or German. Short supply of that + good uni I guess, so I got the job. - I applied to over 200 banks and financial institutions. The crisis made it hard. So many interviews. The trading job was one of the few that went to final stage (another one had a whopping 17 interviews). I was interested in global macro/FX so moved into that space internally mostly because nobody else from my intake was as interested. - some guy called me a cold winter asking me if I wanted to move to Australia, so I said yes, quit my trading job and tried to learn to code. Every step is, technically, random. Like an opportunity that came about and I just said yes to. Which is why it always cracks me up to see people meticulously crafting their careers and thinking they know where they'll be in 20 years.
lordnacho 11y ago
I went to Oxford as well. There's a sort of soft sell there at recruitment season: It's heavily implied that the most successful people go into Banking and Consulting. They don't say it out loud, it's just what everyone concludes after seeing all the PR. I caught up with a friend who did the same engineering course. He's in private equity, like many of our classmates. We talked about this one girl who decided to actually go into engineering. She joined a company called SpaceX as an early employee back in the days after uni. How we wish we'd done that.
- crdb 11y ago
  I don't know if it's the same for you Oxonians but my colleagues who headed for consulting/banking straight after graduation are often retraining to go into engineering, and many of the engineers are now heading towards consulting! I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. The engineers want money and status, the consultants want meaning and a healthier life. Although SpaceX is pretty awesome. I wanted to apply to Lockheed, Northrop and anybody else involved in aviation and space (reading about the X-37B these days, I still get that pulse of excitement), but unfortunately, they needed US citizens. Many of my neighbours ended up working for the various F1 teams. I worked briefly for Schlumberger's research centre in Cambridge which was, in hindsight, awesome. A massive, airy site, loads of expensive toys, really cool fun "engineer types" complete with thick beard, and an awesome French-run canteen including traditional Thursday leg roasts. What academia should be like! I got to chop stuff and make high tech toys and test them with not an MBA in sight. edit - and the most academically successful people almost all went on to MIT to do a PhD. No idea why. Something about that place.
  - lordnacho 11y ago
    Well, funnily enough I seem to be going that way. I know an awful lot about the financial side of things (Options, derivatives, etc), but I'm more and more drawn towards technological things such as latency minimization and smart execution. I think the real problem is pay. I got offered £11K/pa for an internship in engineering out in the middle of nowhere. I ended up taking an internship in marketing for 15. My friend at Goldman got 37.

Very interesting writeup, I appreciate you taking the time! Can I ask what exactly got you into this life? Was it just the drive to make big money and be one of the "elites"? Family pressure?

crdb 11y ago

It's actually all pretty random. The relevant steps: - my European mother moved the family to London so we'd learn English, she looked up the best schools in the country and arranged an interview in each. I was good at music so the best one took me despite my lack of English speaking ability. I picked it up quickly enough to get good grades (at one point was 2nd in my GCSE English class, lol). - at UCAS time ("pick your uni"), my tutor (this being a good school) pressured me into applying to these Oxbridge universities I never heard of. I got something like 7 mock interviews from various teachers so accidentally aced the entrance interview. I was good at maths and my country likes engineers so I did engineering (another sort of random choice). - A prof was looking for someone to work in India for a few months, I applied, got it by virtue of being the only one out of 44 classmates who wanted to go. This gave me a taste for working out of comfort zone. - after graduation, a friend introduced me to a banker in a country I won't name with a very strict visa policy, where I might have worked illegaly on starting a bank. He didn't manage to start it so back I went at the expiry of my visa. - he sent me a link to the consulting firm's JD, I applied more out of automatism than anything, and my perfect English and prestigious university impressed them or something. I actually interviewed in a different office to the one I should have gone to. Anybody working in consulting in Switzerland needs to master both English and either French, Italian or German. Short supply of that + good uni I guess, so I got the job. - I applied to over 200 banks and financial institutions. The crisis made it hard. So many interviews. The trading job was one of the few that went to final stage (another one had a whopping 17 interviews). I was interested in global macro/FX so moved into that space internally mostly because nobody else from my intake was as interested. - some guy called me a cold winter asking me if I wanted to move to Australia, so I said yes, quit my trading job and tried to learn to code. Every step is, technically, random. Like an opportunity that came about and I just said yes to. Which is why it always cracks me up to see people meticulously crafting their careers and thinking they know where they'll be in 20 years.

lordnacho 11y ago

I went to Oxford as well. There's a sort of soft sell there at recruitment season: It's heavily implied that the most successful people go into Banking and Consulting. They don't say it out loud, it's just what everyone concludes after seeing all the PR. I caught up with a friend who did the same engineering course. He's in private equity, like many of our classmates. We talked about this one girl who decided to actually go into engineering. She joined a company called SpaceX as an early employee back in the days after uni. How we wish we'd done that.

crdb 11y ago
I don't know if it's the same for you Oxonians but my colleagues who headed for consulting/banking straight after graduation are often retraining to go into engineering, and many of the engineers are now heading towards consulting! I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. The engineers want money and status, the consultants want meaning and a healthier life. Although SpaceX is pretty awesome. I wanted to apply to Lockheed, Northrop and anybody else involved in aviation and space (reading about the X-37B these days, I still get that pulse of excitement), but unfortunately, they needed US citizens. Many of my neighbours ended up working for the various F1 teams. I worked briefly for Schlumberger's research centre in Cambridge which was, in hindsight, awesome. A massive, airy site, loads of expensive toys, really cool fun "engineer types" complete with thick beard, and an awesome French-run canteen including traditional Thursday leg roasts. What academia should be like! I got to chop stuff and make high tech toys and test them with not an MBA in sight. edit - and the most academically successful people almost all went on to MIT to do a PhD. No idea why. Something about that place.
- lordnacho 11y ago
  Well, funnily enough I seem to be going that way. I know an awful lot about the financial side of things (Options, derivatives, etc), but I'm more and more drawn towards technological things such as latency minimization and smart execution. I think the real problem is pay. I got offered £11K/pa for an internship in engineering out in the middle of nowhere. I ended up taking an internship in marketing for 15. My friend at Goldman got 37.