"Three years in New York, and I went north of 14th St maybe three times. Trips to the Met excepted, of course"
I'm supposed to believe this guy knows anything about New York when his definition of New York is "Manhattan south of 14th st."? Believe it or not there are people who manage to live in NYC without hemorrhaging money, who know where and how to eat and don't hang out in the financial industry social scene.
I don't doubt that NY's tech scene is no where near Silicon Valley but he has a pretty skewed view of this city.
The article is not loading for me (server overload?), but if that's a quote from the article I'm glad I didn't read it.
New York is not the financial district, it's not Wall Street, it's not Williamsburg, it's not Astoria, it's not Coney Island - it's a combination of all those things and much more. Each neighborhood has its own unique personality, and the "scene" is completely different in each.
I live in the East Village and the wall street types/lawyer types are nowhere to be found. I work in an startup incubator office building, with dozens of other startups.
New York is a big place, but it's really is what you make of it.
I have read the article and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it, even though I disagree with about 99.99% of it (as probably all New Yorkers do)
This is a brilliant move from PR point of view. It invoked feelings of Andy Kaufman from me, because at the core, it's a troll - yet it's not an "obvious" troll, so people still fall for it. I can only imagine the traffic/attention you're gonna get now that it's viral. Bravo!
To be totally honest, given the crappy Wall Street life, I spent 80% of my time south of Maiden Lane, in fact.
I don't think my experience is terribly different than many New Yorkers though. The trendy neighborhoods of the moment....Soho, the Villages, LES, Tribeca, are all down south. I felt almost like a tourist on the UWS.
As someone who works in finance, even a lower grunt than the quants, I basically do programming to build/maintain a high frequency trading platform, I was more interested in your other post on why you didn't like the Wall Street culture and decided to quit.
Is it the perceived lower status accorded to the geeks as opposed to the traders/sales-guys? Also likewise for compensation? Or is it the monotonous and/or political nature of the work?
What do you hope to gain by moving to the startup scene? To hopefully make it big and make more money than your former position at GS? Or is it simply to move to an environment where geeks are respected by peers and women?
Plenty of guys in bulge-bracket firms decide to quit their hectic lifestyle but choose the "middle-way." That is, take a job at a 2nd-tier prop shop for less (relative) pay but more reasonable hours and stress. Or some software-dev's go work for a startup for awhile and then transition back and forth to consulting/finance when things don't work out. What made you decide on a "all-or-nothing" kind of move?
These questions aren't meant to be personal interrogations, but rather reflects my feelings about working in finance; and I'm just curious to hear your takes on these issues as well.
I was hoping to unveil that post in a separate thread, but since you've discovered it, I'll reply.
Yeah, we got paid less than they did. A lot less. At least at the high levels. At the low levels, we made more than they did, but that's only because the trader analysts were errand boys.
As for the switch to startup-ness, I'll just say it's a certain messianic desire to create something totally new (as well as at least claim that I own it...however small it might be).
You're totally right about the 2nd tier firm thing. I know lots of guys who did that, and they're happy with it.
You must have either been worked to death or extremely incurious. I've lived all over the world and currently spend my time between Sydney and NYC. I moved here on a shoestring, ran a startup for the first year and half I was here, sold my share and went on to contracting (at startups, go figure!) and am about to launch yet another one.
I have mates that live in Bushwick (20 minutes from Manhattan on the L) that get by just fine on ~$400/week. I live in SoHo (in a bloody duplex, no less) and pay less than you did for your 500sq foot apartment.
Do you split your time evenly, or spend a little time in Sydney, and a lot in NYC? (My sister lives in Melbourne. Someday I'd like to spend winters there, instead of here...)
I'm supposed to believe this guy knows anything about New York when his definition of New York is "Manhattan south of 14th st."? Believe it or not there are people who manage to live in NYC without hemorrhaging money, who know where and how to eat and don't hang out in the financial industry social scene.
I don't doubt that NY's tech scene is no where near Silicon Valley but he has a pretty skewed view of this city.