Working in Finance?

Do NOT. I repeat: Do NOT work in finance. And I'm not telling you this because I love you and want you to be happy - I'm tellng you this because I hate finance people so gat dang much it hurts my soul just thinking about it.

For background, here's my credentials: I have a M.Sc. in Mathematics (focusing on geometry and algebraic topology), and I currently work simultaneously as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (THE financial consulting firm, #2 best place to work after google a la Forbes rankings) making $170/hour, and I am currently on a project as VP of Machine Learning and Distributed Computation at Bank of America, helping them migrate their codebase to support a more parallel infrastructure for their data streams using functional programming and proper JVM tuning. I am self-taught in CS. #yolo. It pays the bills.

Finance people are dumb. You will hate your life you have any brain whatsoever. Functional jobs (i.e. non-technical, front office jobs) are full of the sleaziest sleaze bags from all of your most hated classes. They don't grow up after highschool. Daddy gets them into their college of choice, and a position at firms with Daddy's friends when school ends. GPA doesn't matter. Ethics do not matter. I have met more cases of nepotism who shouldn't be anywhere near money let alone a computer than I care to think about, and if you're the type who's working hard, yeah, you'll get a great position, sure, but you'll be surrounded by the type of kid who has a manbun and owns $5000 worth of Christian Laboutin shoes in his penthouse suite in FIDI, talking about how BrewDog is the best beer company ever and how awesome Entourage the Movie was. These people suck. I hate them.

Also, the politics are horrendous. I recently finished a project with Barclays where the managing fucking director of research and development (who makes 7 figures annually, for reference) failed to document or properly dole out permissions for the securitized products models he was governing, such that the trading desk (don't even get me started on those greedy pieces of shit) got ahold of old Lehman Bros (yes, the failed corp) models from 2005 and were using htem to price and model $50billion-worth of VAR in their equities department. That means 50 bil worth of houses were priced from 2008-2015 using models that collapsed Lehman and fucked over countless americans. Think about that. And this fucker blocked us all the way because he knew he fucked up, because you see, people in high positions in finance nowadays never leave. They sit back on their 7 figure salaries and say fuck it. You have 0 upward mobility, and fuck you if you change the status quo. The only way we were able to oust him was through the CFO of Risk. You think this sounds bad? It's standard at every bulge-bracket corporation in the modern world. There's a reason why tech is growing and big banks are failing. People don't want to deal with their shit anymore, and you shouldn't either.

On top of this, they actively downplay the ethical portion of doing your job properly. If you're at the trading desk, you make money to no other end. If you're in sales, you sell to no other end. If you write code, you code the shittiest, most banal code you can come up with so the next guy can't read it and that means job security for you. It's a shit show.

But dat paycheck doh.

TL;DR Fuck banks, you'll go no where, but you'll be comfy and hate your life and it'll eat your soul.

ArabianDo NOT. I repeat: Do NOT work in finance. And I'm not telling you this because I love you and want you to be happy - I'm tellng you this because I hate finance people so gat dang much it hurts my soul just thinking about it.

For background, here's my credentials: I have a M.Sc. in Mathematics (focusing on geometry and algebraic topology), and I currently work simultaneously as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (THE financial consulting firm, #2 best place to work after google a la Forbes rankings) making $170/hour, and I am currently on a project as VP of Machine Learning and Distributed Computation at Bank of America, helping them migrate their codebase to support a more parallel infrastructure for their data streams using functional programming and proper JVM tuning. I am self-taught in CS. #yolo. It pays the bills.

Finance people are dumb. You will hate your life you have any brain whatsoever. Functional jobs (i.e. non-technical, front office jobs) are full of the sleaziest sleaze bags from all of your most hated classes. They don't grow up after highschool. Daddy gets them into their college of choice, and a position at firms with Daddy's friends when school ends. GPA doesn't matter. Ethics do not matter. I have met more cases of nepotism who shouldn't be anywhere near money let alone a computer than I care to think about, and if you're the type who's working hard, yeah, you'll get a great position, sure, but you'll be surrounded by the type of kid who has a manbun and owns $5000 worth of Christian Laboutin shoes in his penthouse suite in FIDI, talking about how BrewDog is the best beer company ever and how awesome Entourage the Movie was. These people suck. I hate them.

Also, the politics are horrendous. I recently finished a project with Barclays where the managing fucking director of research and development (who makes 7 figures annually, for reference) failed to document or properly dole out permissions for the securitized products models he was governing, such that the trading desk (don't even get me started on those greedy pieces of shit) got ahold of old Lehman Bros (yes, the failed corp) models from 2005 and were using htem to price and model $50billion-worth of VAR in their equities department. That means 50 bil worth of houses were priced from 2008-2015 using models that collapsed Lehman and fucked over countless americans. Think about that. And this fucker blocked us all the way because he knew he fucked up, because you see, people in high positions in finance nowadays never leave. They sit back on their 7 figure salaries and say fuck it. You have 0 upward mobility, and fuck you if you change the status quo. The only way we were able to oust him was through the CFO of Risk. You think this sounds bad? It's standard at every bulge-bracket corporation in the modern world. There's a reason why tech is growing and big banks are failing. People don't want to deal with their shit anymore, and you shouldn't either.

On top of this, they actively downplay the ethical portion of doing your job properly. If you're at the trading desk, you make money to no other end. If you're in sales, you sell to no other end. If you write code, you code the shittiest, most banal code you can come up with so the next guy can't read it and that means job security for you. It's a shit show.

But dat paycheck doh.

TL;DR Fuck banks, you'll go no where, but you'll be comfy and hate your life and it'll eat your soul.

lol this post sucks

ArabianTL;DR Fuck banks, you'll go no where, but you'll be comfy and hate your life and it'll eat your soul.

This is the most misleading and quite frankly downright useless piece of information i've seen on this site. Most analyst programs are 2 years and out, from which most move on to private equity, business school, hedge funds, etc. You clearly have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

You think you're tight and all, but you work for BCG, meaning you're probably traveling half the year, making the same salary as an analyst at any bulge bracket, and hating your life because half the time you're staring at the back of the plane seat in front of you on the way to bumble-fuck iowa to meet with some corporate client to present some cookie-cutter 4-step plan to fix some useless problem they couldn't figure out themselves.

skittitiThis is the most misleading and quite frankly downright useless piece of information i've seen on this site. Most analyst programs are 2 years and out, from which most move on to private equity, business school, hedge funds, etc. You clearly have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

You think you're tight and all, but you work for BCG, meaning you're probably traveling half the year, making the same salary as an analyst at any bulge bracket, and hating your life because half the time you're staring at the back of the plane seat in front of you on the way to bumble-fuck iowa to meet with some corporate client to present some cookie-cutter 4-step plan to fix some useless problem they couldn't figure out themselves.

I actually audit statistical models and their mathematics/programmatical implementation/CCAR testing. I don't do anything in the functional side anymore, having done both risk compliance (perdar, and other Basel III stuff), and been an analyst for goldman sachs. I travel probably twice a year, and my work is premium between 150-200/hour per job. But I also get to choose when I take a job, lots of time off. It's nice.

ArabianI actually audit statistical models and their mathematics/programmatical implementation/CCAR testing. I don't do anything in the functional side anymore, having done both risk compliance (perdar, and other Basel III stuff), and been an analyst for goldman sachs. I travel probably twice a year, and my work is premium between 150-200/hour per job. But I also get to choose when I take a job, lots of time off. It's nice.

I do have a lot of family members and friends on Wall Street, and I do agree with the frat boy mentality for most people. But you are making huge sweeping generalizations and that's not always true. My cousin also works for Goldman Sachs and he's now the manager of some finance section out in California he's probably going to be moving out there soon I haven't seen him in about 7 years because he's always working.