
Chinese Students Want To Know: How Do I Get Rich? - physcab
http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/27/chinese-students-rich-opinions-contributors_investment_banking.html?feed=rss_popstories
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jonmc12
Chinese Students: 'We like how you guys were making money, and profiting
immensely without benefit to others, how did you do that?'

Wharton Profs: 'Yeah, we've found that does not work so well.. at least for
the last few months. I guess if you do not want to provide value to others you
could figure out a good way to steal.. that has worked before'

Chinese students, to each other: 'Thanks for nothing..'

Wharton Profs, to each other: 'They seem to have the notion that because all
of our students are making huge iBanking bonuses, we can tell them how to make
a fortune without delivering any kind of value. Surely they could not have
learned that from us?'

~~~
Tichy
I don't quite follow: how were the profs making money without benefiting
others? Profs don't make that much money, or do they? Also stealing was just
one of three ways for getting rich they suggested.

I can't imagine business schools are to blame, much more likely seeing people
get rich in banking is to blame.

------
albertsun
Honestly, the problem isn't restricted to Chinese students. A lot of the US
students that these Professors teach at Wharton and other comparable business
schools see I-Banking and finance jobs as the path to personal wealth, not as
a way to create value in the economy.

But what would you expect when finance industry jobs pay so much more than
anything else.

~~~
rjett
I think you're right. I recently graduated from one of the nation's top
universities and I can tell you first hand that only a couple years ago, you
could ask almost any ambitious student what their aspirations were after
college and the default answer for many of them would be banking or
consulting. I think this default position can be partly explained by the large
salaries attached to these jobs and partly explained by students not knowing
what exactly they wanted to do with their lives. If they were going to do
anything, they should be well-compensated for it...right?

It is surprising, however, that graduating students are still gunning for
these i-banking jobs given current industry conditions. If you're bright,
ambitious, and hard working, I would think the odds of procurring some measure
of wealth from some form of entrepreneurship would be on par with i-banking.
Students lack foresight if they don't see that the banking industry will be
drastically changed given current events.

~~~
jerf
I think they think it's going to come back within a year or two or five at
most.

I think they are being delusional. For the next twenty years, _minimum_ ,
bankers in general and investment bankers in particular should come to expect
that if anybody's making lots of money, they're going to get scrutinized. Not
just by the government and not just by the people, but by the banks
themselves. The banks have seen what happens when you pay too much money to
those people, and while the upper echelon shall always be handsomely paid, I
think the rank and file are going to see a severe and long-term pay cut.

At this point, you tell an investment bank that if they don't pay a lot they
aren't going to get the smartest possible people and the reaction is likely to
be "Thank god! At least when they make mistakes they won't make _really smart_
mistakes! Those are the worst." Why should they pay someone five million to
destroy the company when they can find people for $200,000 who will do quite
adequately? (Recall that "beating the market" is very hard and that an index
fund is generally an astonishingly good investment, all things considered.)

It will come back, though. It will come back when those who remember how we
got here are flushed out of the system and the people of 2040 or 2050 make the
same damn mistake and fall into the credit bubble trap again, as the balance
of the workforce tilts away from those who are at least 20 today. But that's
probably not soon enough for the students of today.

~~~
bwd
I don't think the investment banks will be back for a while because all of the
action is moving to smaller firms. There will be a shakeout in the hedge fund
industry, but there will continue to be successful firms that do very well.
Believe it or not there is still a lot of money out there looking for
investments. I already see what looks like a bull market in the creation of
financial startups trading markets that are not related to fixed income. These
people will not have the government looking over their shoulder on
compensation so they will be able to attract the best young talent that is
sick of the uncertainty over pay and firm performance at a big institution.

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johnrob
"I then suggested that perhaps they might work for companies that made things.
Actual things."

Honestly, has anyone ever seen a better description of our problems right now?

~~~
wallflower
"The other thing is a survey that I just read about in the Times. Over six in
ten Americans think that someone in their household will lose their job in the
next year. That means six in ten people won't buy anything other than basics.
The economy comes to a full halt even worse than now."

[http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/02/we_are_all_vultures_now...](http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/02/we_are_all_vultures_now.html)

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Rod
I thought these "very intelligent" Chinese students wanted to know how to
start businesses. Then I read this line:

 _"How can I get that job? How can I get a high-paying job in investment
banking now?"_

How disappointing. It seems that these "very, very goal-directed" dudes are
more interested in a cushy job at some shiny office than in doing new things,
cool things.

~~~
chiffonade
Trust me, there's no shortage of entrepreneurialism in China.

Insert something about sufficient sample size and selection bias here. Is
there something hard wired in Americans' (specifically white Americans')
brains that assume that anything they read about a few Chinese people
automatically apply to the entire country?

~~~
megaduck
China has well over a billion people. You'll find a lot of ANYTHING in China,
including entrepreneurialism. However, in my experience, most Chinese don't
believe that starting a business is the best way to wealth.

Of course, I'm a white American (that happens to live in China). Perhaps you
have some insights that I'm lacking.

~~~
mattm
You're right. I've met many Chinese people who think the way to wealth is to
get a cushy government position with some kind of power over others so you can
get bribes or to be a purchaser for a company due to a similar reason.

------
liuliu
I believe that this group of Chinese students are brilliant as I used to be
one of them. They all have goals, some goals are even ambitious. They want to
help poor people, make a more balance world. The thing of why they want to
make money by making illusion because they see money as a method to achieve
their goal, that to say, the process to make money is irrelevant to what they
_really_ want to do. They just want to get rich quickly and then distribute
the wealth. Of course now I know that it is a naive thought but many still
believe this kind of financial freedom. They have to be given more time to
figure out that by distributing money will do nothing to the world as this
happened all the time. By making real thing, through value creation, in the
process of making huge amount of money, the world become much better.

~~~
jhancock
Your thoughts are very nice and I know there are many that think like you.
Unfortunately, the path to riches, as these students depict, almost never
leads to wealth redistribution.

I live in Shanghai. All I see the new wealthy do is park their cars illegally
in the bicycle lanes.

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jhaski
As a Wharton student, I feel that contrary to what the professor says, top
business school students (Wharton students) are still interested in creating
another paper monster, because historically finance offered a much greater
salary for the individual.

Operations, marketing, and the other essentials have a much lower salary and
potential to growth. I feel that the traditional product-making firms should
offer more "fast-track" positions to attract top students to create real
products.

I feel that in our global society today, people are more interested in me than
we.

~~~
jibiki
Making things, aka being an engineer, is an art and a craft that takes time to
master. Even if you work in software, there are no quick routes to riches.
Zuckerberg may have been young when he hit it big, but he had been programming
for a long time. I can't imagine that physical engineering takes less time to
master (but hey, I don't really know.)

My point is "traditional product-making firms" probably fail to offer fast-
track positions because there is no fast track to being good at traditional
product making.

~~~
jhaski
I think there is a difference between the engineers making the products and
the people marketing and managing the companies. I acknowledge that it is not
likely that the engineer will add huge value without substantial time to
master his field, but I do feel that a bright creative business person could
add substantial value. Unfortunately, I feel that they are lured away by the
finance riches, so we never are able to see their impact.

------
peregrine
Interesting insight into a small section of China's best and brightest.

I am certain though these people are the minority, just like the rest of the
world I'm sure some students want to just make money and the others want to
create wealth and products. And with the recession more people are wising up
to it.

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physcab
The financial mess sort of reminds me of the space shuttle disasters.

I remember thinking after the Columbia tore apart that space travel would be
finished. How could we possibly risk more people in space after such a
horrendous event? And that happened _twice_. There were lots of smart people
working on those projects, doing lots of complicated work that few could
understand. Did it affect millions of people? Other than emotionally, no. Were
there immoral people working for NASA? Probably.

My point is that it took about 3 years after the Challenger disaster, and
another 3 years after the Columbia disaster to get things moving again. Many
changes were implemented. But rockets still flew.

The science didn't get any easier, and neither did the math. Rocket science
and materials science are still chalk-full of tough, unpredictable problems,
but that doesn't scare people away from being employed in those industries.

I-banking needs some sweeping changes. Perhaps the compensation will change as
a result. At the end of the day though, financial engineering is still needed,
and intelligent ethical leaders will be more in demand than ever.

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helveticaman
At least they cut to the chase.

