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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

Getting advice on which fields to study, which schools to apply to, what friends to make who also know which schools to apply to, and which companies to apply to all count as “right connection”. And of course, getting an interview because your friend’s parent knows someone at a firm looking for someone.

I know I like to hire based on personal recommendation of people I trust, it removed a lot of risk for me in dealing with random people. Hence “right connections”.

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That's an extremely watered down definition of "right connection." My brother is at JPM/MS/GS. We're immigrants, we grew up outside of New York entirely outside of the finance orbit, we went to public K-12, etc. He got into an Ivy-league school because he's a nerd who always turned in his homework early since age 6 and prepped hard for the SAT. I was the one who gave him advice on "which fields to study" and "which companies to apply to"--based on nothing more than doing some research on internet forums. (He was originally planning to go into a PhD program in STEM, something we had exposure to from our upbringing.) The interviewing process didn't require "know[ing] someone at a firm." The companies came on campus and interviewed the STEM nerds with the highest GPAs. The process isn't easy, but it's highly structured, and meritocratic for some definition of meritocratic.[1]

[1] I think its more accurate to say that the field requires lack of significant adversity more so than "connections." The median family income at Harvard is $168,000, the 80th percentile. These kids aren't working all summer to help their parents make ends meet. At the same time, their neighbors are engineers, doctors, government employees, etc., not hedge fund managers.

Same for my wife. She is quant at a top tier bank. Takes home the big bacon. I take home a slightly smaller slice of bacon working in tech

I can only wish to not only be so attractive, but to meet these types of women.

Exactly this. I have family (through marriage) who grew up in the New York / New Jersey area and went to nice public schools. Many people they went to high school with ended up in finance on the buy-side. They knew the path from high school onwards: Get into an Ivy League for college, major in CS, EE, or Math (but with no intention of working in those areas) get recruited by a top 3 bulge bracket (MS, JP, GS) in either M&A or LevFin, put in your two years, network with the people a year or two ahead of you in college who then went onto private equity or hedge funds, get an interview there, make bank.

Actually, you're spot on and maybe my comment is wrong.

Recruiting has these crazy dance steps. Unless you know in October of your sophomore year what the door knock is on this special process it can be hard to get in. But you can get in later. Its just much much harder.

I've been trying to figure out for a few years what that's called. It's not wealth, because knowing to apply is some sort of social/human capital, and its intergenerational. But I wonder like in the area where I volunteer...how much of the difference in outcome is related to just not knowing how the process works?

It is a type of wealth. There are different kinds of wealth. Having a good, supportive family is a type of wealth. Being born in a country with plentiful drinking water and other natural resources is a type of wealth. Being able to sell your services is a type of wealth. Having a network of contacts in many places around the world is a type of wealth. Learning how to do something is also a type of wealth.

Some wealth you’re born with, or you come by from circumstance (many times relating to who you’re born to). Some wealth you can work on obtaining yourself.

> Getting advice on which fields to study, which schools to apply to, what friends to make who also know which schools to apply to, and which companies to apply to all count as “right connection”.

Or you can "just" get into a top 5-10 MBA. Still hard, but at least you're an adult at that point

It's actually really hard to go from sell-side to buy-side, post-MBA. I went to a top-5 business school in the US and everyone recruiting for banking wanted to eventually move to the buy-side. I think out of a group of ~100, <5 might have made it into a decent buy-side job. Top private equity funds put their best analysts through business school and then just hire them back. Breaking in at a post-MBA level is really hard. You really have to know "the path" early in college and get into a top bulge bracket right after college graduation, put in your two years of 100 hour weeks, and then get on recruiters' radars for PE and HF.

Agreed. I was referring to breaking into sell-side from outside Wall Street. Apologies for the confusion.

Geez really just 5? That seems super low. So that implies 20ish non-prior-buyside people in North America break in post-MBA? Basically impossible?

That was just my school, 5 years out of graduation. That might change in another 5 years as bankers get to MD levels, and then have a client and relationship roster that they bring to the buy-side. There are also people who switched to Tier 3 or Tier 4 buyside firms, but then don't make the kind of money you make at a top PE or HF.

Also, I did not go to Harvard, which typically sends more people to the buy-side then the other top-tier programs (but is somewhat self-selection, because HBS tends to accept a lot of pre-MBA buy-side people from top firms)

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