1) Jobs are investment banks and asset management are not risk free and not conservative. There is almost zero job security and - as seen - you won't know you were fired until the day you are. With small startups CEOs will communicate things much better and you can usually see things coming. Case in point, Lehman UK had a fairly succesful business, however all their cash was pooled in Lehman US. So on Sunday they got a call that their cash was no longer available, so they had to put a profitable business in administration.
2) They are not risk free, because your bonus depends on your performance (not in all segments, but in many your performance is directly measurable in money). No one cares about salary - it's all about the bonus.
3) You do gain a broad skill set working in finance. It probably looks very narrow and simple from outside, just like programming would look to a non-programmer.
4) On one hand, in a startup you create something tangible and in finance you are just a glorified broker. On the other hand, startup valuation is very chaotic and many startups would not exist if there were no bubbles. In finance it is very clear what you and your company are paid for and how much it costs.
Agreed. I don't think any of my friends considered their jobs "predictable and secure" when they started. And in many cases the huge bonuses they received last year wil cushion the fall. Let's just hope they haven't become to accustomed to a certain lifestyle.
Let's just hope they haven't become to accustomed to a certain lifestyle.
We're all accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and most folks fall on tougher times at least once or twice in life, and have to downgrade their spending. I'm not suggesting folks here are a couple of paychecks away from being homeless, as I assume we're all of at least average intelligence and have some savings, good health insurance, and don't consider debt a fun hobby...just that we're all pretty spoiled, and we all probably have some expenses we wouldn't hang on to if our own personal revenue took a dramatic turn south.
But, I agree. I hope that folks who work in volatile industries (like finance, or our very own home turf, technology, to give another example) are thinking ahead when times are good, and have an understanding that times will not always be good. (You guys who missed the first bubble know that, right? We will see another crash in tech. Don't imagine human nature is so dramatically different this time around, or that enough of the folks who experienced the first one are still around and taking part to impart wisdom to prevent it from happening again. It'll look different, because it won't be played out in the public markets, and the names will mostly be different...but it'll come, and not every high flying Web 2.0 company will survive it.)
2) They are not risk free, because your bonus depends on your performance (not in all segments, but in many your performance is directly measurable in money). No one cares about salary - it's all about the bonus.
3) You do gain a broad skill set working in finance. It probably looks very narrow and simple from outside, just like programming would look to a non-programmer.
4) On one hand, in a startup you create something tangible and in finance you are just a glorified broker. On the other hand, startup valuation is very chaotic and many startups would not exist if there were no bubbles. In finance it is very clear what you and your company are paid for and how much it costs.