Serious question: If someone is smart and capable enough to work on tangible things like AI systems or self-driving cars, why should they choose the NYSE outside of pure monetary reasons or affinity for a “modern” tech stack?
Wouldn't working with systems that keep the largest stock exchange for the largest economy in the world running where a simple mistake can cause "mayhem" when the market opens be considered more "tangible" than working in AI or on self-driving cars? It just doesn't have as much street cred as working on those particular projects in the tech community.
Not necessarily. If you're the type that's into finance, then sure, that might get you out of bed in the morning. I'm not into finance and kind stand the culture that surround finance. Yes, it's big and touches every single one of us, but doesn't mean I want to embrace it and go to work in it every day.
If I can take that same skill set and apply it to something with a much better culture surrounding it that affects people in a positive way, then I would definitely choose that over finance any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
At the end of the day, if the NYSE did not exist, the world would continue to turn. It's just not that big of a deal to a heck of a lot of people.
>if the NYSE did not exist, the world would continue to turn
This is startlingly ignorant of the complex machine that is the modern economic system. If something like the NYSE was to shut down today it would be pandemonium.
There is a difference between 'I don't understand how something works' and 'I don't understand how something works, so it is worthless'. The former is healthy and the first step to understanding, the latter is ignorant, and the first step to getting more ignorant.
I actually think both you and the guy you are arguing with are half correct.
The real answer here, in my opinion, is that yes there would be pandemonium, and then yes, the world would go on without it, but then something else just like it will pop up. And that is because a liquid market for financial assets (whether that is securities, options on securities, futures, etc) will always be a massive benefit to the ability of businesses to conduct business, and the ability of individuals to preserve and increase wealth.
All of my “culture” experience working in finance were uniformly better than pure tech.
The movie portrayals don’t match my experiences at all and I saw a lot more bad behavior in the tech companies I worked for.
Heck I saw more people working for the intellectual challenge of it in trading than I did in SV style tech firms where money drove nearly every decision.
It’s really hard for me to buy that SV style tech companies are a better place to work when for the last 2 decades the business models that have been front and center are panopticon style tracking to sell ads and legal arbitrage.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I pretty much abhor SV/VC culture too. It's why I don't have one inkling of a notion to work on either coast for the "big" corps.
It's not an either or, I can hate both ;-) I'm a big boy and get to make up my own mind on the matter.
I was remarking on the key word "tangible", not trying to express an opinion one way or the other on financial institutions. Accidentally forgetting to do something and ending up in the news because you caused havoc when the markets opened the next morning is more "tangible" (able to touch things directly) than working on AI or self-driving cars, at least currently. Certainly working in either of those fields might provide more benefits down the line.
There are problems in Fintech that are absolutely worth solving for altruistic reasons. One that I think is very important and might even need to incorporate AI is this :
Larger financial institutions have access WAY more and WAY higher quality data surrounding stocks and options. For example, publicly available SEC filings contain extremely useful information about companies. Professional traders have access to services which provide this data accurately in programatic form (like an API). Us normal people have only the SEC filings themselves, which are enormous documents. It would be impossible to read them fast enough to ever catch up on all of them in the last say year. There are free APIs, but they are absolute dogshit and provide incomplete and inaccurate information.
If someone could democratize this and provide this info for free or cheap to the public, it would be an enormous benefit to the general public.
There’s also geography. You go far enough East and you have mostly public sector or defense jobs. A little smattering of insurance data processing. And then fintech.
illinois.edu has one of the top rated CS programs, but once you graduate there are not a lot of options but to move to one of the coasts, or move back/to Chicago and try your luck there. Second City has a good deal of fintech.
>If someone is smart and capable enough to work on tangible things like AI systems or self-driving cars
Maybe they aren't as smart as they think they are? Or they find that there are interesting problems to solve in fintech? Problems they can tackle and see resolved in a realistic time frame vs 'tangible' (?) self-driving cars or chat bots.
I know AI encompasses a far larger range of things but right now, what problems is it solving? Artists, writers, and others can do that work. What do self-driving cars resolve beyond continuing the dominance of car culture in a world that could have better public transit and safer infrastructure?
I'm not recruiting for them, just sharing my experience. I included their careers link for people who might be interested because I know they're always looking for good engineers.
