
How Wall Street recruits so many Ivy League grads - seferphier
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/15/5720596/how-wall-street-recruits-so-many-insecure-ivy-league-grads
======
nymph
It's like so obvious, if you've spent any time at all working for one of these
places. Or heck, even interviewing with them.

Here's what it all boils down to: aside the quants, the genuinely alpha
traders, and few other wonky actuarial types, most of the grunts (you know:
the "analysts"... and the vast majority of the IT types) don't seem to be
there, or to have any other propelling motive in life, other than: (1) the
above-average salary, and (2) once you're in, you're pretty much guaranteed to
do alright -- as long as you're willing to fit in, never even _think_ of
rocking the boat, and be ready and willing to continually supplicate your
superiors at all times.

Hence the ridiculously subdued style of dress (the dainty dress shoes, the
blue and bland off-white shirts), and the curiously submissive demeanor of
about 80% of the people you'll meet working there.

Oh, and that drug test, that everyone snickers about below their breath?
Including your hiring manager? As everybody knows, it certainly isn't there
out of any concern that you'd be abusing intoxicants (after all, you're more
than welcome to get shitfaced on alcohol every night of the week -- which most
nights you'll find yourself more or less needing to, to drown out the pain,
and there sheer inanity of what you're asked to do).

It's there as a gesture of supplication and obedience -- nothing more. Getting
you to drop your trousers, whip our your gear, and provide a "specimen" upon
demand -- _just because your superiors told you to!_ \-- isn't an unfortunate
side aspect of drug screening; it's the true purpose of the ritual -- the very
end goal, in itself.

~~~
nymph
BTW: the point about drug testing applies to the handful of cool, geeky,
"Agile" companies that adhere to this ridiculous practice, too.

In fact, a certain company by the name of Pivotal Labs comes to mind.

So -- anyone from Pivotal reading this? You're more than welcome to share your
true thoughts about your employer's urine fetish, here and now -- safely and
anonymously! On the off chance that upper management might actually care what
you think about the topic, and perchance, take you seriously.

But heavens, don't do this while your frontline manager is standing nearby!
You might get... _caught!_

~~~
chimeracoder
This is the first that I've heard of Pivotal Labs requiring drug testing.

That makes me really sad - I thought the tech industry was free of this
incredibly invasive, offensive, and counterproductive[0] practice.

Do you know any other tech companies that have these policies (particularly
startups)? I wonder if this is an outlier or just a commonplace practice I've
been unaware of.

[0] Because not all drugs remain detectable for the same amount of time, drug
tests simply encourage use of drugs that are tougher to detect (if you use
cocaine, amphetamines, DMT, or heroin on a Friday, it will all be gone from
your system by Monday). Marijuana sits at the far other end of the spectrum -
depending on the means of testing, it can be detectable weeks after use.

~~~
yannyu
My understanding is that it is not uncommon for VCs to push their companies to
start drug testing. Can't vouch for exactly why that is, but it seems to be
something that happens.

~~~
walshemj
Why do these VC's have shares in drug testing company's I can think of only a
handful of job (outside of DV/TS clearance) that should be allowed to test
there employees train drivers, airline pilots and so on.

Your MD doesn't have to have drug tests and they have access to the whole damm
candy store.

------
patio11
There exist several organizations which have the general template: Hello,
academic high achiever. You've spent _your entire life_ in a series of
meritocratic competitions. You're socialized to seek the validation of
decisionmakers above you, by hewing exactly to their published rubrics. This
is gives you a powerful sense of self-worth, brings you status with your
peers, and makes your parents feel like you've finally made it.

And now you're graduating from undergrad. And there's a wild, crazy world out
there. And many processes in it are not judged by meritocratic competitions.

#%(& that noise. Come do our program. It's like everything you've ever done in
life, except this time you'll be paid. Here's the application form, format for
the essay, and description of the interview.

For a certain psychograph of young people, surrogate teachers at surrogate
schools offering surrogate classes after surrogate admissions processes are
_incredibly compelling_. (I rush to say that I fit this to the nines after
graduation. My first job was an academic appointment and my second used
exactly the above playbook to sell a job opportunity I would never have had
any interest in as a quasi-study abroad option.)

------
rayiner
Wall Street has a few features that make it very attractive to ambitious young
people:

1) The money. The potential to make $500k-1m/year before 30. The odds of
getting to that stage aren't high, because of the culling at each step, but
are probably better than making comparable money through a start-up exit.

2) Substantive responsibility. It depends on what precisely you do, but my
brother is a year in and has a ton of autonomy and responsibility in his
particular area. You can get this in Silicon Valley, but most of corporate
America will not let a 24 year old do anything important.

3) Exit options and signaling. If you want to be a venture capitalist, the
highest-probability route is through an NYC bulge-bracket bank. A stint at
Goldman/Morgan Stanley/etc almost guarantees admission to a top business
school, and from there a wide range of careers in corporate
finance/development.

The only salient aspect of the article is the bit about risk: it is true that
the folks on Wall Street generally aren't risk takers. They often make big
bets, but with other peoples' money, and in any case if they are not
successful there's a soft landing for them at Harvard or Wharton.

------
datamatt
>The banks care less about their qualifications than their work ethic. Being a
Rhodes Scholar doesn't make much of a difference when you're a young banker.
More of it is being willing to stay at the office for 120 hours a week.

This is very, very true. In my experience, investment banking is by no means a
particularly difficult thing to do, given enough capital to play around with.
Quants aside, the concepts that are used (take, for example, "mezzanine
capital") are mostly buzzwords used to give a professional air to really very
simple processes/ideas. It is a far cry from the serious, dedicated abstract
thought demanded by fields such as software engineering/machine learning/data
science etc.

However, what large financial institutions need are people who are extremely
assiduous to small details, have a work ethic in which 7am-11pm hours creating
powerpoints are no big deal (and have good sounding qualifications to impress
investors).

~~~
a_c_s
How necessary are the 7am-11pm hours really? Could the banks do just as good
of a job if they hired more people who worked 40 hour weeks? (Increased salary
costs notwithstanding)

~~~
seferphier
I work at a law firm specializing in IPO. I had the same thought in mind when
I joined.

Hiring more people does help but there will still not be 40 hour work weeks.
In many instances, some people in the team has built up the knowledge on a
particular part of the deal that it is difficult to outsource since it would
be much faster for the person to complete the work themselves.

Hiring more people also means that the information is diffused around. If one
person working on a deal it means that he knows 100% about the deal. If 100
people is working on the same deal, efficiency would greatly decrease as
knowledge management becomes important (lots of emails).

~~~
a_c_s
Thanks for the info! Is the demand for detailed knowledge 16 hours at a time,
or is it more like being "on call" for when a client suddenly gets a wild idea
and wants numbers to be run for it?

~~~
salemh
From interviews by folks on Wallstreetoasis.com, this is my understanding of
the hours. Some days they may have 2-4 hour breaks (gym time / internet time),
then have to crunch in the evening when a client, or an internal-facing client
(such as a Managing Partner) comes back.

In my short time at a small consulting firm (Management / C level), this was
also the case.

Many times my long hours were due to "deliverables" (PowerPoints, documents,
etc.) being in a choke point based on an Analyst, Consultant, etc.

E.g., waiting on numbers to finish a presentation.

However, much of the time, their is ALWAYS something to do, and much of it is
very much face-time (butts in seats = working).

------
jcnnghm
Goldman Sachs 2011 net income was $162,913 per employee. Average pay was
$367,057. It's harder to get data on Google, but it looks like the mid-career
median salary is $141,000. Google's Gross Profit (Total Revenue less Cost of
Revenue) was $24.7B in 2011, and GS's was $24.5B. At the same time, Google had
32,467 employees to GS's 35,700. Yet, the Google net income was $9.7B compared
to $4.4B on the GS side. The difference seems to be made up entirely by the
difference in employee compensation.

It's the money, stupid.

~~~
dba7dba
Google's success doesn't and won't carry America's economy. And most of
google's top paid employees are programmers.

It's the success of companies that design/make things that will carry
America's economy. And these companies are losing their top prospects to Wall
Street. Not a good trend.

------
ritchiea
Anyone have thoughts on this gem?

> I talked to one guy who's a former Goldman Sachs guy who left to go to the
> tech industry who said the adage in the tech world now is "be wary when the
> pretty people show up."

~~~
gmisra
Arguably, the "pretty people" have been here for a few years now. But don't
take my word for it: [http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/go-west-
youn...](http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/go-west-young-bank-
bro)

~~~
ritchiea
Also, since when are bankers pretty anyway?

~~~
hkmurakami
Well groomed and well dressed, perhaps.

------
wtmcc
The portrait of the college grad painted in the article is consistent with
what I’ve seen as an undergrad at Harvard in econ and CS circles.

> [College students want money, structure, and sex appeal.]

But I’ll add another motivation to the laundry list, that draws smart grads to
selective/prestigious programs (including Harvard, Goldman, Google, and even
YC): Smart grads want to be surrounded by other smart grads, because they want
to build peer relationships with future co-founders and business partners.

~~~
walshemj
Yes most of the graduates from the top 10 universities and probably 100% of
the ones who go for IB are not insecure.

The only ones are the 1% for come from poor backgrounds and managed to get a
place on merit and who haven't learnt to fake it and are conflicted about
changing social class

------
the_watcher
Pet peeve: 120 hours a week is 17 hours a day, leaving 7 hours for sleep
assuming literally nothing else is done. While those kind of numbers are often
used to sum up the lifestyle of "wake up at 6, get to work at 7, get
breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks with work, get home at 10, go to sleep,
repeat," even that ridiculous schedule puts you at 15 hours a day, or 105
hours a week, assuming you treat weekends the same as weekdays. To hit 120
hours a week, you'd have to be arriving at work at 5 and leaving at 10 every
day (or 7 and 12, etc.), and that counts all meals and breaks as work hours.
No one I've ever met works that many hours (and I went to college with a lot
of bankers). There may be the occasional day like that, or the odd week where
you push 120 hours (but primarily based on one or two all nighters), but no
one regularly spends 71% of their total week working, unless you count any
non-leisure as work. It's simply not possible.

------
dba7dba
Wall Street is NOT building up America but is instead weakening America by
causing a Great Brain Drain from every other vital industry. It is a cancer
that's eating away America. Because America is losing the brightest kids who
could've really shined and played vital leadership roles in other industries,
I feel American industries are falling behind.

Some quotes from the article that you should remember:

1\. "so many kids who could seemingly do anything choose to work 120-hour
weeks"

2\. "something like a third of Ivy League graduates going to Wall Street"

3\. "They're not just getting finance-minded kids but they're getting the
smartest kids from all fields."

4\. "give us two years of your lives, don't see your friends, chain yourself
to your desk, but we will give you this glorious life where you're making many
times what you could ever imagine."

These are kids really really smart, socially adjusted (enough to be accepted
by Ivy League), and hard working. If they entered
science/medicine/engineering/etc, they would've added great positive impact.
Probably not immediately but eventually years down the line. And now they are
abandoning these vital industries that actually produce something for an
industry that is basically pushing papers around and printing money in the
process.

Seriously, WHY would anyone choose to enter a field where you have to work up
the ladder (or spend years in grad school and in poverty life) and possibly
live in some small towns with a hope of making a few million a year salary
ONLY near the end of your career, when you can enter Wall Street and live in
NYC (great city but really only for the super rich) and start making 6-7
figure salary/bonus almost from the beginning?

Other major economies do not have Wall Street equivalent and so their top
engineering/science graduates don't join finance but instead actually enter
the vital industries. And these smart kids actually produce something that is
tangible. I think we are already seeing the effect of this trend showing its
result slowly.

I know we live in free economy society and all that but I think we need to
find a way to 'regulate' how the wall street recruits.

Lastly, I believe the ratio of liberal-arts majors entering Wall Street is way
lower than the article seems to suggest. From what I hear, overwhleming
majority of the graduates entering Wall Street after graduation are
science/math/engineering majors.

~~~
rayiner
Ivy-league grads go into finance because it's an industry that really values
their particular pedigree, and is willing to pay for it. Engineering, on the
other hand, really doesn't. Engineering companies aren't paying $200k bonuses
to kids just a few years out of an Ivy-league school. Indeed, it's pretty hard
to set yourself apart, as an engineer, in a way that allows you to earn even
twice as much as another engineer of a comparable level of experience.

Thus, the complaint that Ivy-league grads flock to banks is confused. If the
banks are correct that Ivy-league grads are the best and the brightest, to the
point where it's justifiable to almost not recruit at all outside a small set
of "target schools," then the young kids are quite justified in going into an
industry that appreciates their qualifications in a way science and
engineering don't. On the other hand, if the banks are wrong about ivy-league
grads being so much better than everyone else, then nothing much is lost that
they go into banking!

~~~
gertef
> If the banks are correct that Ivy-league grads are the best and the
> brightest,

They aren't. Ivy League grads have "high-status branding" that the banks use
to get faux credibility when signing big deals.

~~~
rayiner
In that case, why lament they're going to finance instead of stem?

------
leoc
There was an article maybe a decade ago in the _Economist_ (I've never been
able to find it since) claiming that being the hot industry for new Harvard
Business School grads to join was, based on past performance, a solid
countercyclical indicator: the MBAs started to join just as the industry had
already peaked and trouble was on the horizon. IIRC it ended by observing that
now (ie. then) they had started to go to Wall Street. I don't know if that's
still true, or was actually ever true, let alone if anything similar is true
of Harvard first-degree holders, but I thought I'd leave it here. ;)

------
the_watcher
Last comment: I majored in PoliSci. If I went back and did it all again, I'd
recommend consulting (good pay, exposure to a lot of verticals). Banking would
be tempting purely for the pay. I may not have worked banking hours, but I
didn't come near a banking paycheck (my hours divided by stereotypical banking
hours > my salary divided by a standard banking salary). Wall Street pays
better than anywhere else for the background of their recruits, and the
difference is so stark that unless you are a big firm consultant, the
economically smart decision is banking.

That said, I'm happy where I am now, working on growth and customer
acquisition at a really cool YC company, where I actually want to work all the
time. I wouldn't be here had I chased banking dollars.

------
kosei
This title is missing an important part of the actual title: "How Wall Street
recruits so many _insecure_ Ivy League grads".

~~~
goodtyped
Interestingly, the post originally had that word in the title. Moderators
what?

------
robgering
I'm genuinely curious -- what do these recruits actually do while working
these massive hours? Is there really 80-120 hours of desk-based work to be
done, or does office politics or fraternizing play a role in those hourly
figures?

~~~
JackFr
I've worked for banks to 15 years or so, but always on the sales and trading
side, rather than the investment banking side. In general, I like the
industry. However, I've come to believe that the 90 hour analyst work week is
hazing, pure and simple. It doesn't really matter what they're doing. Being a
banker is a pretty plum job and it simply weeds out people who don't really
want the job that badly. The other aspect is to gauge your personality & fit
under adverse conditions, though the adverse conditions are artificial and
arbitrary.

On trading desk the analyst/junior guys typically will work like 6:30 through
7:30, which is not that much more than anyone else. They will be required to
get lunches, coffee and other assorted errands. Again, this too is a form of
hazing.

~~~
ceras
My friends in finance definitely make it sound like hazing to me, just like
you said. I have a friend whose boss had to talk to him about going too easy
on the new analyst, so he had to toughen up and make the analyst's life harder
just because.

------
ac1294
Investment banking gets a pretty bad reputation in the media, and there are
many misconceptions about the industry. I don't think this article was
terrible, but I do disagree with a few of the points. For the record, I'm an
undergraduate student at a non-Ivy but huge feeder into investment banks.

> They're going because they hate risk and are terrified about what to do next
> and Wall Street has figured out a way to calm their anxieties.

This is somewhat accurate, but it doesn't seem different from other careers.
Not all of friends know exactly what they want to do when they graduate. So
it's logical for them to pick a job that is well-paying, will continue to
exist for at least a few years, and offers good exit opportunities. For this
reason, most of my intelligent friends in computer science are looking to work
at Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. Similarly, most of my intelligent friends in
finance are looking to work at premier investment banks (or premier consulting
firms like McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc.).

> So they created the two-and-out program. The idea is you're there for two
> years and then you move onto something else. That let them attract not just
> hardcore econ majors but people majoring in other subjects who had a passing
> interest in finance and didn't know what else to do.

This is absolutely correct; it's well known that you'll stay for 2 years and
then move on to another finance world (Private Equity, Hedge Fund, Venture
Capital) or perhaps business school. But the way the article describes this
feature makes it sound as an evil trick. Maybe I'm the only one who gets that
vibe, but I think this is a great feature for students who aren't yet ready to
commit to a career (again, not exclusive to finance).

> And it's amazing, anecdotally, how often you see college seniors deciding
> between making huge money on Wall Street or making almost nothing with Teach
> For America.

I had a conversation with a TFA rep a few months ago, and he told me that my
school was the largest feeder into TFA. Yet, I have never met someone deciding
between investment banking and Teach for America -- obviously two very
different career options. The TFA rep also said the major with most students
applying to TFA was Accounting, which makes sense because the entry job for an
accounting student is not as high-paying or "exciting" as the entry investment
banking job.

> Being a young banker seems like an incredibly miserable existence. The
> people you follow are beyond unhappy.

Yes, some of my friends who did investment banking internships (it's near
impossible to get the full-time offer without an internship) ended up being
miserable. However, some enjoyed the internship very much, and they return for
full-time. Again, this isn't unique to banking. I'm had an engineering
internship at a top tech firm, and I haven't enjoyed it as much as I expected
either. Nevertheless, some of my friends in similar roles at other tech firms
are probably enjoying their experience.

> I talked to one guy who's a former Goldman Sachs guy who left to go to the
> tech industry who said the adage in the tech world now is "be wary when the
> pretty people show up."

This is not common. I'm majoring in Finance and EE, so I'm one of the few
people who would potentially be making this decision. If we're talking about
choosing between banking at Goldman Sachs and working on the acquisitions team
at Google, then sure, that's a legitimate argument. But the only time students
are making the decision between being a software developer at a tech firm and
being an investment banker is when they apply for college and decide on their
major.

Overall, I didn't think the article was horrible, but there were a few things
I wanted to clarify. And although I don't plan on working for an investment
bank, I hate to see the career ridiculed by misconceptions. I saw in another
comment that it doesn't really take intelligence to work at an investment bank
or it's not really difficult to do. Please don't insult a career if you've
never really experienced it. Some bankers may not be very smart, but others
are ridiculously intelligent and great at their job.

~~~
gertef
TfA is pretty much a gimmick to pad resumes of business/law school applicants.
Schools do not enjoy the TfA newbie teachers coming in, acting like they are
saving the shool, and then disappearing after a couple of years.

TfA it serves a similar purpose as these 2-year finance jobs: resume padding
for the next hop. TfA just has less salary.

~~~
chimeracoder
I went to an Ivy League school that served as a large feeder for Teach for
America. At least one year, Teach For America was the single largest employer
of graduating seniors.

Unlike GP, I would say that at my school, TFA and I-banking attracted students
with similar credentials, at least on paper (same majors - economics, poli
sci, histories, etc.). I can't speak to their motiviations or if any students
were considering both, but I _will_ point out that TFA uses the same
recruiting timetable as the investment banks and consulting firms, as well as
many of the same recruiting strategies, so TFA does appear to view themselves
as competing for the same pool of applicants to some degree.

I agree that TFA largely serves as a resume pad - some people do TFA because
they want to teach in the long run, but many (I think the majority) view it as
a "stepping stone" to law school or business school, and TFA certainly doesn't
make any attempts to quell that belief with their recruiting.

TFA also has questionable results - here is one op-ed written by a former TFA
fellow who explains some of the problems with the program[0].

Teach for America receives a lot of money from political groups and
individuals who oppose unions, because (for better or for worse), they
essentially undermine teacher unions in their districts and reduce their
power.

Teach for America certainly started off with very nobles goals - they may
still have the same goals today, but whether the actual net impact they are
making is a positive one is less clear, and is a very political question.

[0] [http://www.policymic.com/articles/62487/this-former-tfa-
corp...](http://www.policymic.com/articles/62487/this-former-tfa-corps-member-
thinks-you-should-join-city-year-instead)

------
the_watcher
The people who stick around Wall Street are the people who fit the stereotype.
The others are people like my brother, who went to Stanford, wanted to learn
something, and had a passing interest in finance. They paid him well enough to
set him up to be able to take a pay cut (on a total comp basis, not hourly)
for a better lifestyle, and gave him a ton of really valuable training. After
2 years, he moved on to private wealth management, and loves it. He may not be
a stereotypical example, but he didn't go to Wall Street in a risk averse
move. He went because it let him learn while being paid well.

------
yodsanklai
> They're going because they hate risk and are terrified about what to do next
> and Wall Street has figured out a way to calm their anxieties.

Isn't it a bit far-stretched. It's clear to me they're going because it's by
far the most lucrative path. It's not surprising that 1/3 of ivy grads are
looking to make as much money as they can.

> Being a young banker seems like an incredibly miserable existence.

When I graduated, many of my school mates went to work in the financial
industry (not investment banking though) and they didn't look miserable to me.
Retrospectively, it looks it was a good career choice.

This article sounds biased. It'd be interesting to have a more objective
account about this type of jobs.

------
joncooper
A related Quora answer I wrote a while ago:

[http://www.quora.com/Investment-Banking/Why-are-there-so-
man...](http://www.quora.com/Investment-Banking/Why-are-there-so-many-short-
careers-in-investment-banking/answer/Jon-Cooper-2)

------
the_watcher
>> A lot of kids graduated with a degree in sociology or English literature
and feel they don't know any skills that will help them get a job.

PoliSci major here. You don't have any skills you learned in school that can
help you get a job. However, if you went to a good school, you should at least
be able to demonstrate that you can learn fast, which is one of the more
useful skills out there. A lot of jobs require skills that simply aren't
taught in school, so being self motivated and a quick study can be more
valuable than anything.

------
001sky
_I talked to one guy who 's a former Goldman Sachs guy who left to go to the
tech industry who said the adage in the tech world now is "be wary when the
pretty people show up."_

------
the_watcher
Also, working for TFA in the Mississippi Delta after living in LA, NYC, or SF,
you can easily save a ton of money simply because staples and housing cost so
much less (my roommate at UCLA did Mississippi Delta, and while he probably
could have made more somewhere else, his savings after 2 years were pretty
impressive - although that may have been a skill unique to him).

------
the_watcher
The HN title of this leaves out a key adjective: How Wall Street recruits so
many insecure Ivy League grads.

Insecure is an important one, without it, I clicked thinking that the "how"
should be obvious, and the the right question is "why."

------
karzeem
People always talk about the money, but specifics are tough to come by. What
is the typical salary for a first-year I-banker? How about the median for the
ones who make it to year five and year ten?

------
wehadfun
why do these junior bankers do that require 120hr a week of work?

What kind of salery do they get after 1 - 10 yeard of working

------
pbreit
Uh...one character: $

------
michaelochurch
This guy has a fairly good understanding of entry-level finance culture but no
clue about the Valley.

 _You get the sex appeal and allure of the tech industry_

Lolwut. Sex appeal? Maybe _Mad Men_ 's Michael Ginsburg was on to something.

 _Now it 's people who are well adjusted, good looking graduates of elite
institutions. It's gone from weirdos in pocket protectors to the guys who used
to go to Wall Street._

Carpet-baggers. And they aren't any better (or worse) looking. Same with
bankers. On average, they're average looking. What they are is more assertive,
while engineers tend to be meek doormats. True-blue engineers don't get driven
out because business people are better looking, but because they're more
assertive. Blaming it on "pretty people" is refusing to take responsibility.
Gates, Jobs, Bezos, and Ellison are average-looking at best.

Ok kids, so here's what the analyst program is really about. When you're in
school, deadlines are easy to meet and well-tested. If you miss a deadline
that 20 of your peers made easily, then either something bad happened or you
fucked up. People coming out of school tend to have a "deadlines is deadlines"
mentality, because they've spent 16 years in a world where almost all
deadlines were well-tested and could be met by anyone with a work ethic (and a
stable home, and no health problems, but we're sampling from the upper-middle
class here). The difference, in business, is that many deadlines are untested
and arbitrary. Some deadlines you absolutely have to meet. Most are just some
guy's opinion, and as long as you aren't personally responsible for the miss,
it doesn't matter.

Soft-side finance and biglaw have larger-than-normal proportions of deadlines
that actually matter and want to put people through a wringer to see who has
the unconditional (again, "deadlines is deadlines") work ethic and who
doesn't. In some businesses that are heavily relationship-based, having at
least one person on the team with an unconditional work ethic can be a
lifesaver.

It's bad for tech that it answers to such people, though, because the sorts of
people who tend to have an _unconditional_ work ethic are a disaster in any
line of business that requires vision. It's the tradeoff between subordinacy,
strategy, and dedication (pick two). People who are subordinate and dedicated
(unconditional work ethic) will never be strategic, which means they'll be
poor at choosing what to work on. They're great in analyst positions and maybe
as VC-funded founders (because the VCs are the true executives) but absolutely
useless in decision-making roles.

------
cones688
> In previous lives, I've worked as a tennis-camp counselor, a juice bar
> barista, and a Biblical slave for a bestselling author. (Long story.) I've
> also written for magazines like GQ, Esquire, ESPN: The Magazine, and SPIN. I
> live in Berkeley, California.

Interesting the author has no finance experience ever, which makes me question
his motives.

~~~
rrradical
So, he's a journalist? Isn't that what journalists do?

