Wall Street shrinks headcount as dealmaking and trading slump
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
1. The end of startup runway.
It's been about a year since VC money pulled back and there were a lot of startups that only had 12 to 18 months or runway left. I'm starting to see them go out of business in waves.
2. Late followers starting layoffs.
People I know at big corporate giants like insurance companies, retail chains, etc. are starting to get laid off. This took much longer than the big tech layoffs but seem to be starting in earnest.
3. Severance packages and savings running out.
This hasn't really happened yet for most people I know but will in the next 6 months.
1. Paying $200-600k a year is fine, as long as you're hiring the best
2. Why pay $200-600k a year when the recently laid-off person will do it for <$200?
Are companies still confident that they're doing #1 accurately?
Going to need some support for that...Because that's definitely not true in one of the most expensive housing markets in the U.S., Los Angeles.
There's a calculator you can use that will estimate AMI and generate lists of subsidized units available: https://www.boston.gov/metrolist/ami-estimator/
The limits in LA are lower, but a six person family still qualifies for public assistance at $117K: https://housing.lacity.org/housing/helping-low-income-first-...
In pretty much any flyover state 80k a year is decent, and somewhere like Rural Kentucky, will put you into a fairly nice house. I know folks who took a big pay cut to work remotely so they could leave NoVA and head to KY. They could get a sizable house for ~$290k (and they're from KY / have fam around, a big selling point) and basically as much land as they're comfortable with.
And to the parent poster's point, kids definitely change the equation. Not even talking things like private schools or fancy sports, just simple stuff like diapers, or replacing a torn backpack cuz Jr. decided he likes swinging it around as he walks home. And braces, jeez.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
You can argue from your data all you want, but it would 100% lead to divorce.
I’m just giving my personal perspective: I have assumed substantial responsibilities with long term duration and liability. A precipitous drop in income would be cataclysmic.
Move somewhere else indeed! How is that not destroying the life we’ve built so far?
* but not less than $200k, this is a marriage not a charity.
We’re you not putting away any sort of money for emergencies? Do you need to stay at the now theoretical 200k job even if cost of living in the area remains the same, or could you move to somewhere lower cost of living?
I see in your other comments that you would end up in a divorce if you had to lower your lifestyle, and then you described what is still above the average persons lot in life in the US by even owning a home (cramped and by the highway or not).
You and your spouse should get some therapy on why your’re so materialistic, or just accept that you are and then deal with living in a system that will drop you the second it can.
This seems pretty uncalled for. You don't know their story, don't make assumptions you do and that you are qualified to give smug advice.
I’m assuming they work in tech and so can handle the math behind finances which really only leaves living way beyond their means. I think that’s backed up him disparaging needing to live in houses near a highway as part of why he would get divorced.
In my opinion it’s not your place to tell others to “get some therapy”. My opinion: no amount of therapy can address your children going to a 4/10 school breathing leaded AV gas fumes.
And again you’re trying to bring up that living like the vast majority of your countrymen is unacceptable. How gated is your compound that you don’t have any leaded gas fumes in the air? If you’re in a HCOL area then you’re either on a super luxury property or by a city with airports and airplanes have leaded fuel last I checked(2010-2012)
EDIT: I was convinced what you said (or similar) was true and missed the better part of last year's gain. Going forward I will be very careful when people confidently claim that "things will be much worse". What I learned is that it is always the unpredictable stuff that tanks the market. So I might as well put money into the index and not wait or worry about it.
It's almost like… the bankers were paid too much?
Wait wait wait… the folks involved with moving money around decided that they're not worth as much as they've been compensated?
You mean to tell me moving money around professionally isn't as valuable to society as maybe the last 40 years postulated it was????
>You mean to tell me moving money around professionally isn't as valuable to society as maybe the last 40 years postulated it was????
As opposed to tech people working in adtech?
No, not at all, I think we can say the same about those people. Or even more broadly, tech in general, we are only paid these absurd sums of money because our work can scale very easily/cheaply to our employers, as an individual I produce millions of US$ worth/month to my employer but as value to society I don't know why I'm being paid multiples of what nurses, and teachers earn. At least I'm not in adtech or finance, lessens the disgust a little.
I think a lot of us are very aware of that fact.
Yes, and the fact that every tech giant is a monopolist in their field.
Advertising/Retail/Enterprise productivity/Social Media, etc.
That was outside the scope of this project.
Most of the folks getting fired are low level scut workers that are trying to get by and maybe even thrive (most wont), sort of like most of us.
The folks that truly deserve the hate for the direction financial services has gone in are the c-suite execs and their board of directors, with a little going to regulators that are bought and paid for.
My business relies on machine learning blockchain Web 3.0 to do all the work.
"Our customers are all AI and they pay with a crypto we made." - I call this the commerce centipede, based on South Park's HUMANCENTiPAD.
Basically, if these companies automate end to end, both product and customer they've enabled the endless money cheat. They can even build their own little parallel government where the board rules as benevolant benefactors.
an older buzzword but still gets eyeballs
Punchline is - economy is bad and getting worse.
Somehow doubt that will occur for finance functions
The primary way is to solve it is through systemic and habit change, so I would say if these people wanted to help the environment, they're better off getting into politics.
What or who is that? Wall Street’s rank and file is left of centre on social issues.
This theory of mine explains their post-2016 depression, I think. Everyone knew he would make chaotic policies and wild card political appointments. I’m sure he was horrid for their bottom line.
But yeah, I could be wrong. Never really got in with that crowd for some reason. If GS’ charitable arm has given some reasonable fraction of their pool to green charities or something, I’ll change my mind.
I think we’re starting to talk past each other, but for the sake of pointing out where we seemingly agree: GS employees are more-or-less self-interested, and they do depend on gaming (or mitigating risk, I suppose) regulations to stay employed. Neither of those make great bullet points on a green tech pivot resume, which was more or less my original point?
I brought up their charitable org specifically because I recall an acquaintance who works there saying it was more employee-driven than the average corporate tax amelioration scheme. Maybe he was wrong? He’s only been there for five years or so.
How will Web3 help with that?
UPDATE: Indeed — Apologies, this is what I get for reading on my phone in bed without my glasses. I mashed the passage together and misinterpreted the suggestion.
Good lord though at "unsophisticated parts of the country"
But, there are many 2nd/3rd tier cities and towns that have a reasonable number of jobs, better COL, and possibly better quality of life (depending on your priorities).
Places like Roanoke VA. Small, old industrial city. But, the downtown is fairly vibrant, outdoor recreation is excellent, and between Roanoke proper and the adjacent Blacksburg (Virginia Tech) and Christainsburg, there's a reasonably sized job market that spans quite a few industries. Someplace like this is our current plan for near-retirement into retirement.
I loved my 4 years in Charlottesville, but don't think I could live there. The COL drop from DC isn't enough to be worth the move. And the horse country "I got mine, so f--- you" vibe rustles my jimmies (we get the same thing in the western DC suburbs).
Your police experience is "normal" for Florida plates, and applies to the state troopers and suburban police too. "FL tag, must be a drug mule." Infuriating, but at least you can take solace in knowing you weren't singled out any more than another other FL resident driving through.
I don't think that was their suggestion, it was a pragmatic appeal to hiring chances in case a call to action on environmental issues alone isn't compelling.
This isn’t a pitch that will attract top talent. There is work in novel energy and industrial opportunities that hold potential to create billion-dollar companies. They may require travelling to exotic domestic locales, but you’ll meet people outside the mainstream and may be able to commute in from somewhere desirable.
I wouldn't be useful for those fields either as a software engineer. I have coding skills, but cannot really do anything else.
I don't know how you think that could mean you'd be useless. Coding skills are useful in a lot of places, especially so when there are few programmers around.
In my previous job there was a team doing calibration. They hired a software guy to do some scripting work. After half a year he automated all the calibration work and essentially made 30 engineers jobless. You basically only need somebody to record enough data and let the script auto-calibrate everything.
Not every job will have such low-hanging fruit in terms of automation potential, but in places where a software engineer hasn't looked there will usually be a lot of processes that can be automated.
I just met a family friend who changed careers from banking and mortgages to installing EVSEs and PowerWalls. He's also making $500k, 3x his previous salary.
I _do_ think we need to be changing our consumption habits, lifestyles, and careers to better ensure humanity's survival, but every single person is thinking like I am in that previous paragraph. I _could_ do the above, but for what… to do web app dev work for a company that's only kinda getting off the ground?
We've made employment in the US so precarious, even for the college educated people with skills and half a life of career left in them, that this calculus is just too much to take on. You need a small army of smart and capable people with some financial stability and social cushion to do this stuff.
Big problems demand big changes — I get it — but if you want big change in the US, you need to move political mountains that have not been moved for quite some time. I don't think the spreadsheet jockeys are would be good at that (just a guess).
Wow, that's just brutal.