{"id":73,"date":"2007-09-28T13:11:23","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T13:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=73"},"modified":"2007-09-28T13:11:23","modified_gmt":"2007-09-28T13:11:23","slug":"fast-and-loose-culture-of-top-finance-houses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/fast-and-loose-culture-of-top-finance-houses\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast and loose culture of top finance houses."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/16\/business\/16mba.html?th&amp;emc=th\">article in the NYT<\/a> describes how financial analysts are opting to learn on the job, rather than do MBA&#8217;s.\u00a0 While the article is largely anecdotal, what is apparent is that the culture of Wall Street encourages a cut-throat approach to business.\u00a0 While you can make more money than you need (maybe even more than you want) very quickly, there is little loyalty and only cash counts.\u00a0 The hedge fund career is mentioned frequently and raises the profile of a mercenary approach to investment.\u00a0 While those making money will fully support this culture, I&#8217;ve never been a fan of it.\u00a0Although philosophically it may be justified by\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29\">objectivist<\/a> (even hedonistic) perspectives like that of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ayn_Rand#Philosophy\">Ayn Rand<\/a> and Milton Friedman, which discount any value of a moral code to the duty of &#8220;rational self-interest&#8221;, it provides fuel for the criticisms of capitalism and globalisation.\u00a0\u00a0 And it would be wrong to say that this is what Adam Smith advocated or that it is the only or appropriate way.\u00a0 We may choose to manage assets so that the financial performance is enough, but our approach to business also leaves space for relationships, family and leisure.\u00a0 Growing up in an investment bankers&#8217; family can be a privileged path, but it ought to be underpinned by necessity to survive rather than greed because otherwise one finds oneself in later life with dysfunctional family and friends who only communicate with you if there&#8217;s something in it for them.\u00a0 It is not a happy result, as some realise after the first or second heart attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent article in the NYT describes how financial analysts are opting to learn on the job, rather than do MBA&#8217;s.\u00a0 While the article is largely anecdotal, what is apparent is that the culture of Wall Street encourages a cut-throat approach to business.\u00a0 While you can make more money than you need (maybe even more &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/fast-and-loose-culture-of-top-finance-houses\/\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fast and loose culture of top finance houses.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-worldofmoney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-1b","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}