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Comment by Jd | Hacker News Reader

The title is a suggestion. Discourage your friends from putting their energies into creating financial products of dubious value and instead encourage them to engage in substantive work that makes a clearly positive contribution.

Yes, yes, I know you want a secure source of income. Well, try think about ethics first, if not only.

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It's not even about a secure source of income. Unless you're a founder, simply low-single-digit employee number doesn't give you enough equity to beat even a low-end finance job. Simple math: if you do your business, 9-to-5 only, you'll be in the 150-200k range within 5 years of graduation. If you decide to manage and make it up a rung or two, join a financial startup, or just make "tech lead/architect" double that income.

Unless you're a founder, having a five-year startup exit strategy that pays out similarly to the income you could have obtained in a straightforward manner in finance is a microsoft/google/facebook/twitter-style long shot. And, the latter two haven't even IPO'd yet to allow full vested share liquidity...

All my friends consider it a fairly soulless industry. Though they joke about patent troll/NPE firms in the way most techies joke about financial firms.

These generalizations about finance being unethical are misguided and misinformed.

A bank/VC that gives a loan/investment to small business/startup. That's finance. Hardly unethical.

Allowing people to get a car today while paying for it over time (instead of paying upfront). Hardly unethical.

Yes, there are bad actors in finance as there are in every space. Don't the Zyngas and others of the world via their offers engage in "ethically questionable" tactics?

A lot of the financial industry though today works so many layers above actual loans it's hard to see how they contribute and even harder to see why they make so much more money than everyone else. I'm not an expert, I'm sure there is some justification, but it's not obvious to most people and that's why, sometimes, we the laypeople wonder.

I agree with you to some degree. There is a lot that happens well out of public (and sometimes regulatory) purview. I just think views that "finance is bad" or "startups are the best" are myopic, don't advance the discussion and ultimately fail to realize the inter-related'ness of all these different forces.

Ultimately, we live in a pretty free agent society and if Wall St can pay more (no matter the reason), the rational engineer whose primary motivation is money should take that job. There is nothing wrong with that. The engineer who is motivated by money and other factors (building something valuable, being his/her own boss, etc) also has avenues a la doing a startup.

This would be true if the losses from the last crash hadn't been socialized.

If the financial industry had actually had to bear the consequences of the risks they take in the same way that entrepreneurs do, the decisions would be rational. As it is, the finance sector is protected by the government whereas startups are not.

When the collapse of Facebook presents systemic risk (or the illusion of system risk depending on your perspective) to the US, I'm sure it will get a "bail out" as well.

Seriously? You're saying that it's fine for the financial industry to hold the country hostage when they fail because there's equal opportunity for other industries to do that too if they too can become large enough?

Not justifying it, but when people think the whole system could break down, crazya$$ isht happens. The rightness or wrongness of what was done is not what I was getting into.

Merely commenting on your point as to why the "finance sector is protected by the government whereas startups are not".

Right - but the finance sector wasn't chosen at random to receive a bailout because of 'craziness'. It was bailed out because it's dysfunctional. And now, people in the financial industry expect it to get bailed out when it screws up, since that's what's happened time after time. Whereas people joining startups have no such expectation.

If you don't seriously expect Facebook to get bailed out it's not a particularly meaningful thing to bring up.

I am guessing (and apologies if I'm wrong) that you've not worked in finance else I don't think you wouldn't paint the entire industry with such a broad brush. I don't disagree with you that a lot of stupid, ignorant and misguided things happen in the industry, but in general, I find that the "Wall St is bad" rhetoric is easy to get wrapped up into because it is fashionable and easy to do.

But nevertheless, I'll go back to my original point. If the gov't thought that Facebook (or any startup) presented systemic risk, it'd likely get bailed out. I'll leave it at that.

Equally relevant: if the government thought that Facebook had weapons of mass destruction, they'd topple Zuckerberg.

On the topic of straw men, I don't think you'll find me saying anywhere that the financial industry is "stupid, ignorant, or misguided", nor did I say that "wall street is bad". I'm not painting the people in the industry with any kind of brush at all. You make it sound like I'm kicking a puppy.

I believe that there's a systemic problem with the industry and its role in society and that it is damaging our future prosperity.

Yes, any sufficiently powerful institution could, in principle pose such a problem, but why distract ourselves with imaginary problems when we have a real one sitting in front of us?

Like General Motors?

And GM is blameless because they make SUVs?

What relevance has that comment?

Even engineers got a bailout : GM apparently presented a systemic risk to the US car industry.

You could as well say managers got a bailout. Or plant workers got a bailout. Are engineers the ones to blame the most for GM?

You are trolling, right?

Excellent point.

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