

Where did all the bankers from collapsed institutions go? - cwan
http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/02/18/linkedin-analytics-financial/

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mcantor
I just want to note how delighted I am by these "data porn" posts that show up
every once in a while. The last notable one I remember was OKCupid's analysis
of communication success correlated with user photograph traits. Is there a
site devoted to Tufteian data visualizations and analyses like this? I'd
bookmark the hell out of its RSS feed.

~~~
smokinn
I'm not sure we'll see many more of the OkCupid posts hit the front page. I
think some sort of filter may have been added.

I recently submitted their latest:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1129738> and it got upvoted a lot in the
first hour (more than others that _did_ make the front page) but for some
reason never made it to the front.

Which is a bit sad because I think it was their most interesting one yet. (And
the visual aids were extremely well done.)

~~~
andrewljohnson
Really? The OKCupid posts were some of my favorite articles on HN in a while.

I wonder if it's you who is marked as a spammer somehow, as opposed to the
OKCupid blog.

I can't imagine why someone would want to blacklist that site, but I could
imagine HN's capricious, opaque, oft-changing spam filter could have nailed
you personally for no reason at all.

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kilian
As good as it looks, anyone that doesn't know it's the banks at the top of
that image that collapsed (like, say, a european like myself) is going to be
very confused by this chart.

It's explained in the text but for the graphic to more sense on it's own, some
sort of arrows would've been nice.

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jamesbkel
I'm not sure if the graphic is just confusing, useless or both. They appear to
say that BoA and Nomura benefited the most, followed by Barclay's. But the
width of the lines to Barclay are the the biggest of all. As far as I can tell
from the (very few) numbers they provided, these chart has no quantitative
link back to the data.

I really hope I'm just missing something, otherwise this is sad coming from
'Data Scientists'.

Can anyone enlighten me?

~~~
invisible
I thought the same thing, but there isn't enough data to suggest that it's
wrong. I think that there is a portion "unemployed" a portion "changed
careers" and a portion that are too small to individually plot. So that entire
graph may only be like 75% of those that were originally at those companies.

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BrentRitterbeck
For me, BoA back to school. Technically BoA didn't fail, but I viewed the
recession as time to go back and get graduate credentials. I am currently
working on a MSFE.

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jpablo
So, this ask the question; Where did the people that caused the collapse go ?

~~~
CulturalNgineer
Dude, they're still right where they were... running the show.

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allertonm
Everywhere but Goldman, it appears.

~~~
smokinn
If Goldman had wanted them they'd already be there.

~~~
nandemo
Actually there were lay-offs at Goldman too.

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bootload
_"... Barclays was by far the biggest beneficiary, scooping up 10% of the laid
off talent ..."_

Barclays was also laying off (UK). Maybe it was strategic re-investment in the
US.

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snorkel
Perhaps this pretty graphic is true for at most 15% of the 30000 people laid
off from Bear Stearns and Lehman but it's certainly not true for the all 30000
people who were working at those banks because the headcount at the remaining
banks has not risen accordingly. It's entirely possible that not everyone on
the planet has a LinkedIn profile.

~~~
chipsy
It's also likely that the "best" people at these companies (in terms of
staying on top of their career, keeping contacts, etc.) are the ones using
LinkedIn.

~~~
ig1
Unlikely, from my experience people back office/middle office people are far
more likely to use it than front office people. Which probably skews the data
a lot. FO people are much more likely to use Reuters instant messaging or
Bloomberg to keep in-touch, etc.

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yumraj
What's the movement from Bear Sterns to Merrill Lynch imply? It's the only one
linking two failed entities..

~~~
jrockway
Merrill Lynch still sort of exists, in the sense that people will still say
they work there. They have officially rebranded to "Bank of America Merrill
Lynch", but I imagine people that were originally hired by ML will still say
they work for ML and keep their LinkedIn profiles updated accordingly. (I'm on
the other side, and I tell people I work for the Bank of America rather than
"Bank of America Merrill Lynch", because that's a mouthful, and frankly, not a
very creative name.)

~~~
bendtheblock
I'm not sure if this is correct - the only bits that kept the ML brand were
the private wealth management and some parts of the non-US global markets
division. Even then, officially the full name is still "Bank of America
Merrill Lynch" and I think only a minority would keep their employer listed as
"Merrill Lynch".

Merrill Lynch was not bought by BoA until September 2008 and the merger did
not legally complete until December of the same year (followed by company-wide
rebranding throughout 2009). So I think the flow on the graph shows those that
were made redundant when Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008 and then went on
to employment with ML before the BoA merger, which happened nine months later.

EDIT: grammar.

~~~
jrockway
FWIW, our email addresses did not change from "bankofamerica.com" to
"baml.com"† until two weeks ago. If I used LinkedIn, this is the event that
would prompt me to update my profile, rather than whatever press releases were
issued.

(† Why yes, we _do_ use YAML...)

------
Tichy
Sipping cocktails on tropical beaches?

