That's quite interesting:<p>"
At the risk of getting sued, let me throw you geeks a bone and part the Goldman veil a bit. The Goldman Sachs risk system is called SecDB (securities database), and everything at Goldman that matters is run out of it. The GUI itself looks like a settings screen from DOS 3.0, but no one cares about UI cosmetics on the Street. The language itself was called SLANG (securities language) and was a Python/Perl like thing, with OOP and the ORM layer baked in. Database replication was near-instant, and pushing to production was two keystrokes. You pushed, and London and Tokyo saw the change as fast as your neighbor on the desk did (and yes, if you fucked things up, you got 4AM phone calls from some British dude telling you to fix it). Regtests ran nightly, and no one could trade a model without thorough testing (that might sound like standard practice, but you have no idea how primitive the development culture is on the Street). The whole thing was so good, I didn’t even know what an ORM really was until I started using Rails and had to wrestle with ActiveRecord. The codebase was roughly 15MM lines when I left, and growing. I suspect my retinas are still scarred by the weird color blue SecDB was by default.
"
So. This is funny. I actually work at Goldman, work in the system he talks about, and have been doing so for 5 years. You can get numbed by the experience of working here, but you don't have to be. I've become friendly with some of the best hackers I know, and for us, finance always takes a backseat to writing amazing code. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail, but we try to never say, "Meh. Good enough."<p>Wall Street is like any other business. Don't over-glorify working for Google and not Goldman: tech companies are in it for money too; so are startups. At least on Wall Street people tell you they're doing it for the money. It's easier to detach that way and remember that what you're doing is <i>just a job.</i>
Just to provide a balanced viewpoint: I've worked in corporate America (Fortune 5 company), dealt with banality and bureaucracy, banged my head against the wall over and over again, left, started my own company, grew it to millions, sold it, semi-retired. I love startups and the details of this blog, however, when you want to see your kids, sleep in the same bed as your wife, and have a paycheck deposited in your bank account every other Friday, there's nothing better than working for an established company.
The things he hated about Wall Street are just as prevalent in SV, too.<p>Instead of worrying about whether or not he went to an Ivy school, his concern now might be: does he have investors with the "right" pedigree for his startup?<p>Face time with traders and MDs is replaced by hoping that all the "cool" tech blogs are writing his startup (no? writing a few troll posts on the startup's blog should fix that).<p>Etc.<p>Or, he could choose to forget all that and just build his company.<p>But if that kind of petty and superficial stuff got under his skin before, I don't see why it's going to be any different for him now.
that was very well written.<p>"It got to the point that some papers had no authors, and had apparently written themselves. So it goes. No longer with the firm."<p>slightly vonnegut-inspired?
> The average salary at Goldman Sachs in 2005 was $521,000<p>Wow. New title suggestion: "Working at Goldman Sachs will earn you enough money to found a startup with zero revenue."
I'm curious about the author's opinion of Liar's Poker, especially the line <i>I got on a plane to New York within the week. I packed my copy of Liar’s Poker for reference.</i><p>I'm surprised that anyone would read Liar's Poker and think of it as a reference to Wall Street on an inspiration to work there. The "gorilla" culture described by Michael Lewis at Salomon Brothers in the 80s sounds very close to what the author experienced at GS in the mid-2000s. At the end of the book, Lewis leaves the firm after slightly more than a year, regarding his pay as obscene for the work he did and wondering about the utility and usefulness of the trading he did.<p>So, how could anyone read Liar's Poker and come away from it <i>wanting</i> to work on Wall Street? Or does obscene bonus pay blind people to all the negatives?<p>I don't think Michael Lewis ever intended the book to inspire people to work on Wall Street.
My favorite quote is actually a footnote:<p>"If doing a startup is like rolling a boulder up a hill, then working at Goldman Sachs is like rolling it down the hill: you just have to stay out of the way of the boulder."
<i>In fact, we were basically the trader’s little bitches, and any quant who’s honest with himself realizes that.</i><p>I wonder what it is that traders do that they can't be replaced by software? How do they manage to generate more value than quants?
> with the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers<p>Well, I'm very disappointed to find this.<p>1. One of the more common (and certainly well-known) medications for ADHD is Ritalin, which is methylphenidate. It's mildly related to meth. The long story short is that giving meth to someone with ADHD would not cause them to be able to focus <i>less</i>; rather, to be able to focus <i>more</i>.<p>2. Studies have shown that sugar does NOT cause hyperactivity in children, whether or not they have ADHD.<p>I'm saddened to see these incorrect stereotypes about ADHD. As an adult with ADHD, it's part of what makes my life harder than it has to be.
"There were other characters in this drama. The sales guys were complete tools, with a total IQ, summing over all of them, still safely in the double digits. The traders were crafty and quick-witted, but technically unsophisticated and with the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers."<p>Ok it seems perfectly possible to make a lot of money while being a complete idiot. I'm getting an MS in engineering and since I was studying the last few years I don't have any money (except about the minimum which is required for a living) What worries me most is that many engineering jobs are not well payed, even though they require skilled people. So I wonder how I could turn the hard work I did (and still do) to get my degree into money.
Favorite quote:
"But things weren’t all bad! At its best, when the markets presented an apocalyptic Boschian landscape of damned souls torn asunder by hellish tortures, every Goldman grunt, sargeant, or general would close ranks and form a Greek phalanx of greed."
As it turns, my kid likes to eat. So, in my oh-so-unique case of having, uh, responsibilities, it would be better for me to have a paying job (even at Goldman Sachs) than to found a startup with zero revenue.<p>Of course, that's assuming they are XOR, which they are not.
I was staying with a lady who worked at Goldman Sacks in San Francisco.<p>She said the 12-14 hour days, writing market reports were normal for her. I'm guessing there was limited schedule flexibility for her. I'm not surprised people would rather found a start-up.
An oddly appropriate (yet completely unrelated) quote from another article currently on the frontpage:<p>> <i>For all things (that are things I know) there exists a Context in which that thing I know is false</i>
What's interesting is that stories like this have been around for decades but never deterred young ivy league grads from joining Goldman when the industry is popular.<p>Now so many people is quick to criticize the finance industry. Although it's true that the bailout was a great crime, I don't see how lobbyists, pharmaceutical executives and advertisers are much better. These guys get paid millions too...at least Goldman doesn't screw with people's mind.
I love this article and after working nearly five years in big brand advertising, I have to agree that the startup way is the better way. Ad agencies may not be identical to Goldman, they have their own fallacies mind you, but the big lumbering giant feeding money does sound quite familiar.
i view such stories (emphasizing on controversy) more as link bait than anything else. There are several folks who are perfectly happy working @ GS and other big firms. Dont make bold and brash statements simply for the sake of it. Its a 'To each their own' world out there.
> Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs<p>until you have bills that come due. then the difference becomes very apparent!