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Leave WallStreet - Join a Startup

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13 pointsauston8 comments

As anyone who has spent any time on Wall Street knows, the best way to be successful is to do what everyone else is already doing, only slower.

The problem with this argument is that most IT people working for banks, in my experience, as extraordinarily ill-suited to the start-up life and work-style.

I wouldn't hire most of the IT people I worked with in financial services. Hell, I wouldn't hire myself based on my performance in that environment. So how would you tell the geniuses from the clunkers?

I have actually encountered the opposite. The guys I know who used to work at Goldman Sachs are really good. Maybe it depends on what bank they worked at?

Probably does. I won't name the bank I was at, but it was a big one, and I worked in a number of departments there, from risk reporting to prime brokerage, and all over the place, there was a lack of the kind of singular talent that, imho, is best suited to start-ups.

That said, if you want people with a high level of professionalism, banking IT is a good place to poach from. For my start-up, though, I look for genius, not professionalism.

The people I know in finance are really smart, but their skillset is very different from what you need in a startup (unless the startup happens to be finance-related). It'd be like getting a physics grad student to start a company with you: yeah, you can be sure that the guy is brilliant, but when it comes down to the details of satisfying customers and building product, he's probably not what you want.

I might live in opposite world, because the Goldman Sachs guys I know are actually very successful at their startups. So were the physics grad students! And, one of them was a physics grad student, who then worked at Goldman Sachs, then worked with me at a startup. He was amazing.

Can anyone provide direct experience with hiring quants into a startup, be it consumer- or business-related?

My direct experience with folks in the finance sector has been limited. And each time I've been underwhelmed (if that's a word).

Regarding hirind "quants," I think it's a hit or miss. Quant's are good for throwing numbers through a spreadsheet all day (literally); however, the great ones see the big picture in what they're doing. Most don't.

You may want to look for more, "right-brain thinkers."

http://broadstuff.com/archives/1234-Is-the-Master-of-Fine-Ar...

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