The sentiment that finance and hedge funds are somehow evil seems to be quite common in the startup and technology world. I sometimes see it here on HN and I've come across it a few times during my career in Silicon Valley.
People going into finance are treated as if they are selling out. I wonder where this sentiments comes from, and whether you believe this to be true or false?
I've worked for both a hedge fund and tech companies, and personally found the former quite refreshing. People in finance are honest about just wanting to make money, while I found that many in tech secretly just want to make money but publicly pretend that they want to "make the world a better place." I think that keeping up this fake persona can be quite damaging psychologically, especially for young startup founders.
What do you think?
There are examples of big companies in every industry i can think of that figure out ways to squeeze more money out of the little guy without providing more value (teacher unions resisting policies that would benifit students and increase costs to tax payers, shitty universities costing students lots of money, big hospital chains that raise prices because they can rather than due to costs, insurance companies that screw out customers, software companies that trick customers into paying for things they dont need, etc.).
I think finance people can look so evil because lots of educated people simply don't believe the financial industry creates wealth, but view them more as scavengers who prey on blue collar workers and tax payers with "management consulting" tactics. Carl Icahn comes to mind here, people think of him as a big pump and dump activist investor, pretty frequently he gets accused of being this, and he takes out a sheet of paper with his historical investments to counter these claims.
I agree that tech companies who preach their corporate gospel can be confusing to employees not drinking the coolaid because objectivly its like, i know we say we are saving the world but we just sell a marketing tool right? I think companies like that are trying to motivate their employees to work harder with those cultures. The employees who dont like that stuff are free to look elsewhere for work but some people love it i think.