Silicon Milkroundabout: Forget the banks, come and join a London startup | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Milkroundabout: Forget the banks, come and join a London startup

siliconmilkroundabout.com

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Yes, this is what's needed. I like the line about the banks. My biggest peeve with the UK scene is that we lose so much talent to banks and consultancies, especially among graduates; anything to turn that around is a step in the right direction.

Is this the first event of this kind in the UK? If it is kudos to the organizers, would really love to see something similar where i live (Italy, startup environment not mature enough yet, maybe in a few years).

Hard figures - more than half of the graduates from one of the top technical universities in the UK (Imperial) go to work for banks (computer scientists that is).

The reason is that they pay quite a bit more than most software houses do. Notable exceptions include Google which usually can match the starting salaries but otherwise, you're pretty much guaranteed to earn less.

The bottom line is that after several years of student life, a relatively high salary looks compelling and coupled with student loans to pay off, the choice is quite clear at this particular moment for the majority of people.

Thanks for the info (didn't know this)

Isn't there something inherently wrong with society when an industry that provides little value to society make so much money that they can afford to pay better than anyone else?

Yes, there is certainly something wrong with it, but for some reason the entire country is effectively owned by the banking industry at the moment (despite the fact the country in fact owns a good chunk of the banking industry).

Personally I'd quite like to see the government actually tax them at decent rates, and call the bluff that they're all going to up and leave if they have to contribute to the country. The chances of that happening when the current government all made a fortune in investment and banking careers is low though.

I don't know where you get that "little value to society" nonsense from. Asset allocation is a non-trivially hard problem, and the alternative to doing it our way is Five Year Plans and the like, which tend to result - and this is actual, historical fact - in tens of millions of people starving.

Yea it's definitely a non trivial problem to rip people off with as much success as the likes of Goldman. IBs are completely socially useless, excessively criminal, and for the most part just exploit clients through front-running etc. I used to work for one, now I work for a startup that actually makes stuff. Happy days.

You seem to be confusing what is difficult with what is beneficial to society. But if how hard a problem is would be an indication of how beneficial then there are plenty of jobs that is grossly underpaid.

You also seem to be assuming that there can be only two possible solutions to this problem.

But please don't let your strawmen be my burden.

No - my point is that countries that have sophisticated financial services industries have historically been extremely unlikely to make catastropic errors of asset allocation resulting in famine, etc.

If we had a group - let's call it The Party - deciding what to invest where, and they ballsed it up, then you get the Great Leap Forward (30M starving to death is half the population of the UK).

And where exactly did I promote such a solution?

Right where you made a value judgement about the "value" the algorithmic component of the financial services sector provides to society.

I'd rather live in a country with lots of lawyers and bankers than none. And some of these lawyers and bankers are, without question, very valuable to society.

People who look favorably on these industries would probably describe the rent-collection or wealth-destroying activities of these sectors as the regrettable but minor (and maybe inevitable) byproduct effect of an activity that is, on the balance, very positive. We all have these types - high tech has patent trolls (er, innovative technology development partnerships), but nobody would say that the tech sector is a rent-collecting segment of the economy (though many would say that patent trolls are part of the legal industry, not the high tech industry).

Other people like Wooley at the LSE (quoted in the article) take a far dimmer view:

“The amount of rent capture has been huge,” Woolley said. “Investment banking, prime broking, mergers and acquisitions, hedge funds, private equity, commodity investment—the whole scale of activity is far too large.” I asked Woolley how big he thought the financial sector should be. “About a half or a third of its current size,” he replied"

I think there are more than 2 alternatives to the Asset Allocation problem. There's no need to polarise the debate by saying that the alternative to Banker Bonuses (and the rest of the system) is millions of people starving.

False dichotomy - the choice isn't between a completely unregulated financial system and Stalin.

John Cassidy wrote a piece for the New Yorker titled "what good is wall street?" that takes a dim view of the economic usefulness of the financial sector (1)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_...

It's a long article, but this is probably the strongest case for banking as rent-collection (or even worth, wealth-destruction) you'll read in the mainstream press (ie., as opposed to academic journals).

(1) not an opposition to banking per se, which he sees as immensely valuable

  "an industry that provides little value to society"

Whilst this is a nice popular statement to trot out in the current climate, it is simply not true, at least not in fiscal terms. Some facts:

  * The financial services industry accounted for 10% of GDP in 2009

  * It provides 4% of total employment in the UK (1 million jobs)

  * It contributes 28% of the UK’s total exports of services

  * It contributed £53.4bn in tax in 2009/10 (11% of total government receipts)

Much as everyone would like to say "sod the bankers, let them go elsewhere", the truth is doing so would likely torpedo the economy.

Source: http://217.154.230.218/NR/rdonlyres/E01CD45A-053F-4C9B-BDAA-...

Um, nice try.

Takes a lot of 50 billions to add up to 1.5 trillion. Especially when you include interest.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfina...

You're assuming two things here:

(1) The country would have been better off financially not to bail the banks out and let them burn

(2) The nationalised banks won't end up turning a profit for taxpayers in the long run anyway

Both of which could be considered shaky assumptions. See Robert Peston's analysis on this very topic for more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/03...

The day that the banks choose to bail out it's customers I might consider changing my opinioin about the value the provide to society. (not saying that they don't provide any)

"The day that the banks choose to bail out it's people"

Sounds like a nice catchy statement, but what do you actually mean by this ?

That it was the taxpayers who bailed out the banks and that I hope the banks will remember that.

Robert Peston is generally a waste of space.

UK GDP is around 1.5 trillion. Therefore we spent the equivalent of ONE WHOLE YEAR OF OUTPUT FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY on bailing out the banks. You do not solve a debt crisis with more debt. You do not solve a financial crisis by supporting the financial institutions that caused it in the first place. Northern Rock has no assets other than a bunch of shit 125% mortgages and repo'd Barrats buy to let flats worth cents on the dollar. The idea this could turn a profit is absurd.

Not a great example to support your argument I'm afraid since Northern Rock was already back in profit over 8 months ago - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10848374

> You do not solve a debt crisis with more debt.

You must be new here.

We solve everything with more debt.

You need to think a little bigger to properly understand his point.

Humankind is mis-allocating some of its most talented labour to what is essentially an arms race in financial market predictive algorithms. It provides some benefit for humankind - increased liquidity in markets, but the value of the marginal liquidity is small compared to the talent that is wasted.

Salman Khan is an excellent example - he left his job as a hedge fund analyst to start Khan Academy. How many new Khan Academies would we have if the incentives were right to have talented people working on useful projects instead of the financial arms race?

Sure, the incentives are right for an individual or country to specialize in financial markets. Think bigger - an alien looking at what we're doing here on planet earth would say we're wasting a lot of our talent on stuff that just re-arranges the pie instead of making it bigger.

Trading algorithms is a minute portion of what a bank does. The primary function (and activity) of investment banks is to help clients raise money (via bonds issues, shares issues, etc). Some secondary functions include helping them insure against risks (e.g. with futures contracts), and acting as brokers for speculators (e.g. hedge funds), or as market makers to make the markets more liquid so that more trading happens.

I'm missing quite a few things, of course, but my point is: this "algorithmic trading arms race" that you mention is basically something like 1% of what the average investment bank does (and 0% of what retail banks do).

Yes but the question is not whether the banking industry is justified in it's existence. But rather whether they provide a value to society that is equal to what they take out of it.

They absolutely do. Focusing on investment banks (I assume you have no problem justifying the existence of retail banks and insurers, the other two giant topics in financial services), what they do is effectively make the allocation of capital more efficient.

Without efficient capital allocation, most enterprise becomes extremely difficult. Without banks, there would be no stock market. There would be no way for companies to raise large sums of money to grow faster. There would be no one keeping markets liquid, which would encourage people to stick their money under the mattress rather than invest it. There would be no way for startups to exit, and so there would be no VCs, and no angels either (or at least, much more limited ones, making maybe one or two investments to help out a friend). All of this would massively reduce the amount of capital available to work with, and decimate the business world.

Now, you might take the view that "you don't need capital to do business", but that's just a very limited viewpoint that applies in very narrow circumstances, like some small percentage of internet startups. Almost all businesses need capital to get started. There's a good reason why microloans are so successful - they provide capital that helps enterprise. Think of the banking system as an equivalent of microloans for people who need more than $100 (for example, because they need to design and sell new products, build new factories, buy stock, make strategic acquisitions, etc).

I agree but I think it's a little more complicated.

The problem is that we we loosing developers to high paying jobs in the banking industry. I.e. not your average netbank developer but the developer who can develop for those 1% you talk about.

So the problem is that the developers in talk here are the talented ones that goes for those jobs within certain parts of the banking industry that certainly don't provide anything close to the value they extract from the market.

Your argument only really stands if basically every single one of those programmers is Mark Zuckerberg, able to create a $50b company... I don't think that's a reasonable assumption.

My argument is that the startup community is loosing good developers to a specific part of the banking industry which I fail to see provide much value other than to their bosses.

I have no problem with them making more money. I think it's obvious why they make the choices they do.

The problem is that the part of the banking world they go to. That part of the banking industry that can pay the high salaries aren't benefitting society.

Do you really believe that allocation of capital is in general so inefficient that it requires 10% (and rising) of GDP to be allocated correctly?

A good point - I was looking at things from a purely fiscal perspective, and trying to challenge the prevailing opinion in the UK that banks == bad, but you are right that they suck up a disproportionate amount of talent and skill.

I guess for many graduates the banks seem to offer the best answer to the risk/reward question.

The challenge is how to change that mindset, in a way which doesn't just lead to all the qants leaving the industry to build another social photo-sharing app :)

Economic value is not the only value society lives of.

The very fact that value is a subjective dynamic variable underlines the importance of not getting too focused on the actual fiscal numbers.

You can have societies where the oil industry makes up most of the value for the countries export but where the actual money does not benefit society in general.

And again I am not saying sod the bankers. I am simply questions whether they are making too much money compared to the value they provide to society.

Do you think that the banks in Ireland and Iceland were equally valuable to their societies?

Thom, if you're so convinced that the financial industry provides so little benefit to modern society, why don't you try and live in a country without one.

The Great Depression in the US (which effectively wiped out a significant portion of the financial industry here) was the source of much misery and pain. Pick up a book on bond valuation and capital allocation and tell me if YOU would like to do that work for yourself. Finance is hard won and specialized knowledge. Don't dismiss that expertise.

Why the strawman?

I never said it wasn't of any value. I have repeatedly clarified that I am talking in the context of this article and about certain parts of the financial industry, namely the part can afford to pay better than anyone else. The developers working on your average netbank aren't in question here their salaries are not extreme.

All I am saying is that the kind of developers that the OP is talking about are being lost to parts of the financial industry that aren't providing value to society but primarily to themselves and I find that problematic.

That has nothing to do with my view of other parts of the banking industry.

They aren't being "lost" to the financial industry. They are proving "value" to the consumers of those (valuable) services.

You could make the same argument for home health care workers and cardiac nurses. Potential home health care workers aren't "lost" to the nursing industry. Society VALUES what they provide to a greater degree because it compensates them more.

You seem to be laboring under the assumption that a career in the financial services industry is a guarantee of high-income. The truth is quite different. Life in the financial services industry has its own downsides (insecurity of income, long hours, poor working conditions generally) which you seem to be glossing over to make your argument.

On my last flight to Mountain View, I sat next to a guy who left a job at Goldman Sachs (as a broker) to go do ad sales for Google. His reason: better working conditions and quality of life.

Don't assume that your choices are everyone else's. The high pay in the financial services industry is there because the work is hard and few people can or are willing to do it.

Maybe you should read the entire thread here and see what the argument is all about. You seem to be arguing against claims I am not making.

I have worked with everyone from Bofa to citibank to online trading services to private wealth. I think I have a pretty good idea about who is paid what and what they are paid for.

So again instead of arguing a strawman why not talk about what I am actually claiming.

I read the whole thread and it doesn't change my argument. You don't seem to understand economics or different value systems.

Obviously SOME people make the choice to go do startups even though they could make more MONEY (at least initially) at an IB.

Wonder how that happened?

Dude, what's up with the attitude?

This have nothing to do with understanding economics or value systems. You keep repeating the same strawmen that have nothing to do with my argument.

Why don't you point to something I said specifically instead of just weaving an argument against claims I am not making.

Here is my problem:

I see a lot of finance industry bashing in between the lines of your post. You're making an argument about the choices that individuals make based on their own personal goals and circumstances. When you bemoan the choices that other people make under the guise of "what's best for society" you're making a statement that you think differently and that inevitably leads to calls for the state (or some other authority) to involve itself.

Sorry but that is your problem not mine. Whatever you think I am putting in between the lines is up in your head.

As I said, you are attacking a strawman, a position I don't hold.

I have been pretty precise in what I mean and what part of the industry I am referring to. If you can't get paste seeing ghosts then obviously you have a problem, but it's not me nor my post.

"Isn't there something inherently wrong with society when an industry that [b]provides little value to society make so much money[/b] that they can afford to pay better than anyone else?"

I dont think I misunderstood you there.

Yes you did and if you had just an ounce of integrity you would aknowledge and admit that I actually clarified what I meant in countless other posts removing any possibility of reading in between the lines.

That's great for the graduates who get these jobs but can I add that it seems to me that there's precious little evidence (actually none at all) that their skills result in any kind of improvement in the service offered to the millions of ordinary customers of the monopolized banking industry in Britain.As far as I can see there's been a marked decline.

That's because the graduates don't go and work for the retail arms of the big banks. They work in the investment and trading arms and generally have very little to do with customers. Many of the Banks don't even have retail arms.

And that's not even thinking about Hedge Funds, Brokerages and other Financial institutions that are normally grouped into 'the banking industry'

Really? Do you queue in your branch still, or use the website?

Remember if you have an ISA or a pension you are "the stock market"...

I spend a lot of time abroad so my experience is almost entirely of internet transactions. I have no complaints about counter service when I use it. Decline in service? One small example: the website has been revamped so now I have no print option for my credit card (as supplied by the same bank) account. I am forced to copy-paste details from the site which they seem to have arranged to make as tricky as possible. The old ‘print account’ option has gone. I did wonder if statistically this might mean that enough folk would make mistakes in repayment to the bank's advantage in interest payments. But that's just my rotten suspicious mind. I mean - as if a bank would ever stoop so low!

You're absolutely correct. Think of it like this - if you're paying a lot of money to get the top people, you'll want to use their brains. Simply put, retail banking does not provide comparable returns on investment than putting the people into hedge funds, trading, etc.

You have to bear in mind that banks (from my personal experience and from my peers) are first and foremost profit oriented, which effectively guides their decisions. Hence, you'll not see those people working on things that directly impact retail customers.

I take your point of course. I would like to know though to what extent the zillions of pounds put into the system by retail customers contribute to opportunities for the investment arms of the bank.Isn't this the $64K question and the reason for much agonizing over future bank legislation?

You're confusing retail and investment banking.

When I become eyewateringly rich, I'm going to start a nonprofit retail bank. We're going to pay WAY under the market rate for salaries, have no shareholders and instead of profit we're going to give rates of interest on savings accounts WAY over the market rate, and give out loans at WAY under the market rate.

We'll attract talent through my own devastating personal charisma, and by offering people the chance to really really piss off the people working at the proper banks.

I'll make sure to do a Show HN post when it's sorted. See you there!

The good jobs aren't in retail banking. Take a look at Tescos banking plans, btw. And good luck giving loans way under market rate. That worked out great last time. (See: Everyone, everywhere, ca. first half last decade).

I'm curious, whats the avarage starting salary at a financial company in london? Sometimes I see salaries of 23k-25k pound per year (for other software companies) from which you can barely afford an appartment for yourself in London.

around £35k+bonus for dev at decent bank.

yup 35 - 40k starting, 50 to 60k after a few years, over 100k possible after 5 (top tier IB)

As a bit of a finger in the air estimate from looking at job ads here, I would probably estimate that a London finance company will pay about 50% more than a "normal" company.

Not sure what a starting salary would be, but I would bet it would be > 30k. After 5 years you would probably be on > 60k, but if you're quite specialist (in terms of finance based skills) you could be earning much more.

Working for Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and the lot, starting salaries for Imperial graduates are upwards of £40k (definitely know people who are starting at £50k).

You're correct, £25k seems to be a ballpark figure for software houses. Looking at it statistically, average salary for Imperial graduates is something like £35k, so you can do the math and infer what the top grads are earning.

Paying £25k (~$40k USD) for grad devs in London is a bit cheeky, when you consider the living costs are higher than in Silicon Valley (http://tinyurl.com/6e8d3th). Clearly, UK students enjoy selling their soul to live in bedsits eating noodles :-)

Agreed, and even many experienced developer jobs are advertised at only about £40k. When you look at the cost of living in London, its simply not worth it. I'm amazed they manage to recruit at all frankly. You could quite possibly have a better material lifestyle by living in a cheaper area in northern england and stacking shelves in a supermarket for a living. I can never understand why so many high tech companies base themselves in London, when they could relocate up north and get very talented developers for much less who will stick around and who will be happy too as a £20k salary in the north actually gives them a chance of buying a house.

London isn't a half bad city to live in. Good luck enjoy the kind of communities we have here (literally hundreds show up for the HN meetups) while stacking shelves in a supermarket up north.

Started two months ago, around £78k after taxes.

My friend is earning £40k pro-rata for a 10 week internship at one of the big IBs in London, so I'd guess starting salaries would be quite a bit above that..

throw away account...

I work at a small hedge fund in London, started on £28k (actually might have been less, I literally can't remember now), after 4 years I am up to £40k, with around £5k bonus each year.

I have basically been doing CRUD of various flavours the whole time under a bullying atmosphere, utterly soul-destroying and it's got me stuck in the Stockholm syndrome scenario, my skills ground down to the point where I literally can't get another job to get out of it. Am working very hard to counter it, but it's a big job, probably another year of work to stand a chance of getting a decent software job (I'm not going to try for another internal finance job, if that sucks as much it'll be pretty impossible to bear).

So yeah, I don't recommend it, though it might just me having bad luck here.

I think very few internal jobs, finance included, are even vaguely bearable for hackers - I heard the idea that finance likes to hire overqualified people for monotonous/trivial jobs to make sure they're done right, so you have to be really careful.

[1]:http://www.chadfowler.com/2010/12/30/dead-end-jobs-are-you-s...

You should have put a mailinator.com address in your account profile.

If you would, drop me an e-mail (see profile). My employer is hiring. Located near Moorgate. Not a deathmarch.

Edit: Hmm.. I think HN hides e-mail addresses. http://bhickey.net/contact

I emailed you. In summary: I don't think I'm capable of passing an interview atm, certainly if (as I presume) your place is good. But we can discuss, at least.

You're getting screwed.

With 4 years experience at an investment bank you could be making quite a bit more than that, at a hedge fund you should be getting a risk premium on top of that as well.

It depends. A common scenario in finance here is that you end up maintaining a specific piece of legacy software, often using ancient or unfashionable technology, and it can be very hard to sell yourself to another employer as your useful-to-anyone-else skills erode. Your bosses know this.

There are various tech roles in hedge funds and in finance, and it sounds like the @throwaway___ is in a role that is considered "IT" rather than part of a quant/trading desk, which translates to no real bonus, and to not being considered a source of revenue.

This isn't Silicon Valley. Rightly or wrongly, they just want someone to come in at 9am, work through their assigned bugs and feature requests, get a sandwich at Pret A Manger at 1pm, work through some tickets and go home at 5pm. Nobody's interested in hiring "hackers", experimenting with funky languages, or doing anything remotely unpredictable. If you're on a trading desk it's a different story, but it's definitely possible to work at a hedge fund or an investment bank and get a shit deal.

Edit: Basically, it's your responsibility to maintain your skill set, by any means necessary. Your employers aren't paying you to be a well rounded developer, even if you think they should be.

Yeah it's IT rather than being on a desk, maintaining back office systems largely.

I have been working on my skill set, I know C# pretty damn well, I have taught myself aspects of software engineering + computer science I didn't have, etc. etc. - it's just that there are gaps, lots of gaps and more than that, a complete lack of confidence. This stuff grinds you down so much that it becomes very hard to resurface, that's part of the problem.

I am working hard on filling those gaps, but I think it'll probably take a year before I've sorted it. I went for a bunch of interviews at other finance places recently and the gaps were exposed very clearly there, so this is based on evidence.

Anyway, I don't want to talk much more about this unless stuff starts becoming toooo identifiable.

Just grit my teeth time really, but it's hard.

My colleagues on placement (between year 2-3 of uni) get around £40k/year at investment banks.

I went to Imperial (did CivEng) and I can confirm this, lecturers even joked about it.

At one point the people in the class who were actually going to go into engineering were asked to raise their hands - around 1/3 did.

To digress briefly, part of the reason the City likes Imperial so much is that they work you into the ground. If you can survive Imperial then you're likely to do well under city-levels of pressure.

The truth is in the UK the only industry paying a decent wage for technical work (not just CS grads, but engineering, physics, maths, etc) is banking.

I am a Mech Eng graduate and my CV has been floating around in various databases for years, and I still get recruiters calling me and offering less than half of my current salary (and I'm no rockstar, just an ordinary worker) to go and work on something mechanical for a big engineering company. It really is a joke.

This is all tied up in the vestiges of the class system, technical people are still thought of as "blue collar" (despite being better educated than most white collar workers) and the management class will never pay us fairly - except in banking where they are quite clear about what is worth what. I gather in the US it's different, they don't have all that baggage holding them back.

Not sure about class, perhaps developers just are more valuable to banks than startups. Otherwise it sounds right.

However I'm sure I would have gone stir crazy with boredom by now if I worked in a bank :) (I have low boredom tolerance)

Er, or perhaps banks have a lot more money than startups (and pretty much everyone else) eh?

> developers just are more valuable to banks than startups.

That makes me wonder about the implications. What kind of tech startups you find in the UK?

Last.fm and Betfair

take a look at the logos on the link for this very submission, that's kinda the point.

"Bank" in this context isn't really about ATMs and check (cheque) processing : It's about trading rooms and algorithms that change daily.

Boredom isn't likely to be a problem : Stress is.

There's two types of boredom: the boredom that comes from inactivity and the boredom that comes from constant frenetic activity of no deep interest or challenge. Coding up a new algorithm every day still fails to be interesting if the only purpose of the algorithm is to squeeze and extra 1e-5 percent out of some transaction to help someone who isn't me make marginally more money.

Not that I have anything against the banking industry, it's just not for me. In Brave New World terminology it's a career for beta-pluses, not alphas.

(No offence, bank workers! Some of my best friends work in banks!)

So what are alpha jobs?

I shan't mention any specific job titles, but my general feeling is that you should be working on your own initiative, using your big ol' brain to create something.

Create something for the benefit of yourself, or create something for the benefit of all mankind, but don't create something for the benefit of some other jerk, that's just unseemly.

You can be Superman or you can be Lex Luthor, but don't be Senior Vice President of Product Management at Luthorcorp.

> This is all tied up in the vestiges of the class system, technical people are still thought of as "blue collar" (despite being better educated than most white collar workers) and the management class will never pay us fairly

That got me thinking. I am quite sure this kind of mindset is present in a lot of countries, including where I live (Brazil) :-/

That can't be good.

The higher salary is just the price they have to pay for your soul

I don't believe that's true in the US. Software works seems to be white collar.

But I still make a point of referring to my fellow software people as 'software engineers', since (1) it's how my company styles the titles[1], and (2), it reinforces the idea that we're not "code monkeys", grunting and beating on keyboards for bananas per day (not that I'd turn down fruit if offered :-) ).

[1] I work at a hardware/software company, we have an array of mechanical and electrical engineers as well.

The engineering designation also helps with Visas.

Wages are a price just like any other price.

What is closer to the truth is that nowadays "average" technical people are way more abundant than ever, mainly because there are ever more and better learning sources (books, ebooks, conferences, video tutorials, chats, forums, certification courses, crappy 2-year colleges and good universities, fancy IDEs, super high level programming languages, frameworks and libraries for everything, etc.) The learning curve is not as hard as it used to be, if you want to be an "average" technical guy.

And it's just basic economics that people (and entities composed of people, such as companies) don't like to pay a lot for something which is extremely abundant and available in their area (logically). This is because when humans are in the process of valuing things they're affected by a mixture of need, personal preference, the scarcity of the things in question, and the moment in time when this process is taking place.

I've been a "pawn" "low life" "technical monkey" developer for a while, and I actually began working as a developer from the start with a secondary hidden purpose of studying the ways companies act (because I was already an economics nerd before becoming a developer), and this is the usual result of my observations (plus studying the history of other companies):

- Technical Monkeys with NO additional nontechnical skills: They're like the average rock drummer who can keep a beat but other than that is not very useful. They will always earn a lower wage, because there's just too many of them out there: they're not especial. Wage is just another price, remember.

- REALLY GOOD Technical Monkeys with NO additional nontechnical skills: They are exceptionally awesome and productive, and will get paid accordingly, unless they work for a really stupid boss. They're like the really good session drummer that records albums for all kinds of artists, and as a hobby breaks world records for faster drum fills, longest drum solo, etc. He has no other skills but he's a absolute beast at what he does.

- And then there are those Technical Monkeys who are good (though maybe not the best) at the technical stuff AND have really good business ideas i.e. better management ideas than their bosses do. So they can manage teams AND they can speak technical monkey. They're the Phil Collins. They will either earn a good wage or start their own company.

The key phrase is unless they work for a really stupid boss. Because it doesn't matter how smart and ambitious you are if you're working for the IT department of some megacorp and spend more time filling in Change Request forms than doing real work. All you can do is a) quit and go have fun working for a games company (notorious for terrible pay) or b) go and do the same thing for a bank for 2-3x the salary.

I'd like to present a different perspective. I've worked at 3 startups in the past, including one of my own. None of which had much financial success and 1 of which cheated me out of several thousand pounds.

Though it's been interesting, in the sense of the chinese proverb, I sometimes wish that I'd just worked at a bank for the past 15 years.

Tell us more!

Though it's been interesting, in the sense of the chinese provert, I sometimes wish that I'd just worked at a bank for the past 15 years.

I can understand that. I worked at a big consulting company, at a global bank client, for 4 years. From personal experience, however, I'd like to correct your perception a little.

1) Yes, the money is better and more regular, but you end up spending a lot more as well. So you won't make as much as you think you will.

2) While you constantly hear about people making astounding sums of money in banking, the reality is that unless you work your socks off and are lucky to be in the right place at the right time (hey, that sounds like startups!) you will stagnate at a decent but not particularly amazing salary. And if you work your socks off, you won't have that much time to enjoy the money anyway.

3) This extra money comes with a cost: your soul. I'm not kidding. If you're the kind of person who derives great satisfaction from loving your work and making a difference, working at a large corporation for a long period will slowly but surely strangle and kill something very precious inside of you.

Money is a commodity. Enjoying your life, doing something you love, feeling like you make a difference - you can't buy those things, no matter your salary.

>> you end up spending a lot more as well

How come? Is it a case of "Keeping up with the Joneses"?

Your office is in the more expensive parts of the town. You work long hours and want a shorter commute, this will leave you with spending a lot of money on accomodation.

And when the team goes out for beers, if you want to be a part of the team, you go out with them. And if you're not part of the team, you won't be progressing fast and getting a better salary.

And you soon realise that the clothes you wear make a difference to your career. You buy proper suits, proper shirts, proper shoes, and so on.

And after working your ass off like that all the time, you need a proper break every once in a while. So you take proper holidays in places far away from work. Those cost money too.

I used to entertain the idea of trying my luck in the finance industry for my next job.

Thanks to this comment, not any more.

I'm going to take issue with #3. There's this falsely accepted wisdom that large companies are evil and small companies are good.

There are plenty of startups out there run by sharks (or sometimes idiots) looking to drain your talent dry for little or no reward. Working at a few of those can be just as soul sucking.

Also I'd like to add that if changing the world and leaving a legacy is your main desire, then yes working at a startup is probably your thing.

If you really just want to enjoy your family or extracurricular lifestyle without worrying about your paycheck then maybe something with a little more security is ok. I have friends who work blue collar non-technical jobs and enjoy the casual atmosphere and complete lack of stress.

Point #3 has nothing to do with large companies being evil - I don't think they are intrinsically evil or good, much like startups, as you point out.

What is certainly true about work in large corporations is that there is a lot of waste and politics, so much so that I think it's fair to say that a large percentage of the average job in a corporation is basically waste. If you're particularly unlucky (as I was on some of my projects), you can even end up doing a project which is a complete waste of time, where everyone knows that it's a complete waste of time, but it needs to be done in order to score someone somewhere some political points that will advance their career.

To me, that is soul-destroying. I can't work unless I care, and forcing myself to care when there is no reason to grinds away at an important part of who I am.

Hi, I've worked in a couple of startups & agencies around the British Isles and one investment bank in London. My experience would convince me to advise that you should work were you want to work, but in general my experience is:

1) if money is the prime motivator, work for investment banks, preferably as a contractor; 2) if you want a breadth of experience, work in a good web design agency; 3) if deep domain knowledge is what you want, work in a startup.

(Of course, you can't do the contracting without a few years experience in any of the above.)

The points are all a generalisation but this final one is not, it's not what you are doing, how much you are getting paid or where you are doing it, it's who you are doing it with. The human factor is, in the long run, the most important thing. Are they smart? Good, you'll get smart too. Are the decent human beings? Good, you'll live a long life.

Humans: the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems :)

Just wanted to back this comment up.

I'm in the same boat - I've contracted at various companies(financial, media, etc etc) and currently working at a startup.

Contract at large companies if you want money. Join a startup if you want lifestyle & scene.

Remember tho, if you work at bank you can still go to some of the many events the scene puts on :)

The interesting discourse here is why graduates find the big IBs/Consultancies so appealing, more so that joining a startup. In my opinion, this is due to the perception that a high flying blue-chip career gives - 99.9% of graduates would prefer to say ‘I work for Goldmans’ rather than ‘I’m going to work for an unknown technology startup around Shoreditch’ - this impresses grandma and the parents who have subbed the £30-40 university costs for their kids.

I think the counter to this is that within the UK, there is a dearth of success stories involving young tech entrepreneurs - the big one that sticks in my mind is the million-dollar-pixel guy, who as the name suggests made a million! (There are of course others, but I've not seen them as widely covered in the media)

Looking at the example of silicon valley, there are so many examples of tech entrepreneurs making it big at a young age - maybe once the London scene has a healthier number of well known (i.e. the Daily Mail writes about it) exits, the perception will improve and we will see a higher number of bright graduates preferring to join a startup.

I think impressing the other students is a big factor as well. It's alternately humorous and depressing to hear the way people talk about their mate who got an internship at Goldman/Deutschbank/wherever. I guess if you've been pushed all the way through 6th form to get into the most prestigious university you can, once you arrive at said uni you'll soon go looking for the next big shiny famous institution.

(That said, it seems the one employer that's even more impressive than an I-Bank is Google - but Google isn't a startup anymore. I wonder how many UK grads would happily join a company that might become the next Google?)

Anyway, I've long been a do-what-makes-you-happy-not-what-other-people-think-is-high-status kind of guy, but I think I'd still find it difficult working for a startup in London while encountering people who are my age, half as smart but earning twice as much. For that reason, my post-graduation plans involve me leaving the small, charming and damp island of my birth altogether... And taking an even bigger salary cut for the chance to live in the most exciting country on the planet, China.

Don't know about IBs, but consultancies offer the chance to work across a real range of clients and industries, and in a variety of roles. The ability to do something fresh on a fairly regular basis but without changing employers is appealing to certain minds.

Haha, yeah, they'll be photocopying at a wide range of different companies. Reality check, ask people who have actually done this stuff, all the ones I knew the work was dull but partying continued like it was uni because they're with a bunch of other graduates.

Most large companies don't let the noobs anywhere near the clients. They're pyramids, the longer you stay the more interesting work you get to do. This competes with the better the job you can get elsewhere, which causes gradual attrition in the ranks. It's all about who can stick it out the longest.

Ground zero is very, very dull work. Like photocopying while being charged out at hundreds of pounds an hour.

Remember, these are graduates, they're totally useless in the real world at the start.

I don't need to ask people what the work is like because I've first hand experience. I joined a top tier consultancy after several years in "proper" tech, and whilst I didn't come in as a grad, I've seen enough to know that at least here, photocopying roles are rare.

On the other hand, I've had a fantastic breadth of experiece - technical, commercial, in great teams and on my own. I work with really interesting and significant clients across sectors, and have the pleasure of seeing my contributions making a real difference. I have done work here that has quite literally resulted in lives being saved.

Not dull at all.

This sounds like a good afternoon. I'm going to a gig in the evening too.

I've been looking for something like this for a while, I've always wondered how people get recruited into startups without 'being in the know' as it were. When you look at job aggregators 99% of the jobs are for huge corporates, usually through the proxy of a recruitment agency.

My only concern about this event, for me personally anwyay, is I graduated 3 years ago and I've been working professionally as a developer as soon as I left University. I'm not sure if this event is aimed at people like me or fresh out of uni grads or not.

"Fresh out of uni, or looking for your next move?"

Yep, definitely come along.

At a senior employee at one of the companies hosting (Smarkets), I can say that we would welcome any and all interested developers to the event. Being fresh out of uni is certainly not a requirement!

I'm thinking of going even though I'm not graduating until next year. Would you be interested in meeting people who aren't immediately available but are looking to get familiar with the scene?

Whether they're interested in meeting you or not, if you turn up and start talking to them they won't have much of a choice in the matter.

For an event appealing to those "fresh out of uni" it's very badly timed. Most of us are still in exams, but only until the end of May. It should have been scheduled at least a couple of weeks later.

Did banks book up all good venues in that period? ;-)

Great idea. Will there be later events? I ask because the exam season is currently in full swing for some students who may be otherwise interested.

This is true, I live in Sheffield so attending means at minimum 1 valuable day lost in crunch time at uni so not sure if it is worth the risk.......

booking train ticket tonight then.

I was going to pass this discussion onto my friend who is doing dev contract work at a bank, but then I remembered he's not allowed onto anything on the internet while he's at work, LOL.

I've just registered. I'm on one of the better CS courses I get the impression from my peers that most of them want to go work for big organisations and consider the idea of working for a startup as unthinkable. I think thats such a shame

What's also a shame is that these UK companies don't allow remote work. I think lots of US devs would be interested, and since visas are capped anyway remote seems rather obvious.

Is there any way for other companies hiring devs in London to throw our weight behind this?

This event shouldn't just be about joining a startup in my opinion. It should also be about how graduates should start a startup.

Also the location in Shoreditch may put off some of the hardcore tech people. It would have also been nice to see some more hardware startups but you're probably going to have to go to Cambridge or Berkshire for those.

What's in Berkshire of relevance to hardware companies?

Along the M4 corridor there are quite a lot of hardware companies.

Websense has categorised your site as 'Potentially Damaging Content' - you might want to get that changed.

Thanks for the report btw, we got it recategorised to "Job Search". :)

Really? It's now categorized under 'Malicious Web Sites'..

Hi All,

I hope the Milkroundabout Folks don't mind me piggybacking on this post (I applied to come to their event, but didn't get in :(

I'd like to let everyone interested in mobile apps know about another networking event OPEN TO ALL on May 31st (Tuesday Night, 7-10pm) at El Paso EC1V 9NQ, just across the street from Bar Music Hall. The event is an official PechaKucha http://www.pecha-kucha.org/events/pknapp and we have some great presenters lined up so far from INQ Mobile, TurnedOnDigital (makers of The Situationist), Quipper and more.

You can register to attend here: http://www.amiando.com/WZJZCJU.html

Ryan Sommer Director, MaintainPR ryan@maintainpr.com

The problem is that it's too late, most of the banks and consultancies finish hiring in Jan-Feb, many of the big tech firms will have finished by now as well. Most of the good undergraduates will have already accepted offers, so this is actually coming too late for them.

If you want to go into "banking" (and have the skills needed), but would prefer a startup then maybe opengamma would be interesting: http://www.opengamma.com/

I'm in the US and would love to go to this, because if I had an offer and help with visa issues I'd move to the UK in a heartbeat. Unfortunately I can't afford the airfare.

I doubt any startup will be able to arrange you a work visa at the moment. Non EU worker visas are severly capped these days and the available is taken up by bigger companies.

I'm curious how the Non-EU Worker Visas impact things like telecommuting...

It doesn't. The parent worker was talking about moving to the UK.

Do any of these UK companies allow remote work?

Since there is no contact info on the website. Can I just ask why you want a URL for me?? :-) You say you won't share my email address but what are you doing with my other private info?

I mean this only because I'm actually curious and I'm trying to work out which URL to give... Hackernews profile page??

I think payment is still an issue with startups. Hopefully that changed but last year I interviewed with a couple of startups (some of them on this list) for summer internships and possibly remote work and was offered £1k/month in London.

Hi all, Acunu (http://www.acunu.com/jobs) will be here - if you're interested in algorithms and file systems or just a great hacker, come and find us! Say hello at jobs@acunu.com

Just a quick question on attire, am I correct in presuming this is a casual event and therefore we should not dress up like we would for an interview?

That's an awesome list of companies. There are a few missing from that front page who I hope are still around on the day.

Is there any indication of what kind of event this will be? Is it a conventional recruitment fair? A party?

It's at a nice big pub with fancy beer and a stage for live music, so I'd guess it's a social event plus the companies introducing themselves from the stage so you know who to focus your mingling on.

Hmmm...as a graduate I really don't know how to equip myself at these kind of events. I wonder how I should go about fixing that

There's not a huge amount you need to do. It might be worth having a look at the sites of some of the companies listed so that you know vaguely who you want to talk to, but other then that, just turn up and make sure you have some way of taking down contact details for people - a pen and a notepad are probably your best option, unless you're particularly good at typing on a mobile phone keyboard.

The important bit is to talk to people once you get there, since it's unlikely that people are going to come and seek you out in the corner.

What's with the milk?

Milk used to be home-delivered in Britain--the act of companies touring universities to attract recent grads to apply is known informally as a milkround.

Used to be? Don't tell that to my milkman! :)

I still get milk and eggs (and sometimes some pretty bad knock-off Irn Bru) from ours. We're in the semi-countryside just outside of Leeds, and it's not at all unusual around here. Wonderful service!

I think that it's some combination of a milk round being a boring and repetitive job (for those who have to go between all the universities) and some sort of youth/milk imagery. I think it's anachronistic as the only person I have ever heard refer to it in that way is my Dad.

The Milkround is a jobs fair for big corporations that goes round all the universities in the UK every year. http://www.milkround.com/

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