Tired of Being Your Corporate Whore
I guess it’s because I’m a Gemini. The conventional wisdom goes that Geminis, the sign of the twins, are two sided in nearly everything they do. If they have an artistic side, they have an equally opposing analytical side. If they are emotional then they are equally detached and emotional. It’s one of the most convenient excuses invented as are nearly all excuses derived from astrology or any other form of divination.
It is currently my excuse for the dizzying array of unrelated jobs I have applied for this year. Not that last year was much different but certainly this year, it’s astounding the way my brain is working. A short list: an Australian investment bank, a software consultancy whose only client is Cisco, the leading motion capture company in the movie industry, a software house publishing 3D video games for cell phones, a company with a really funky set of web-based thinginthamajiggers, and Google. Oh, and another investment bank.
Of course, you say, all these guys share one thing in common, they need nerdy guys to program things: but I’m applying for crap ranging from product marketing (hey, I’ve done that), trading (BOO-YAH!), mergers (1 + 1 = 1.5 + fees), algorithmic strategy (do { 1 + 0.000001 * 10^5 = 1.1 } while (feeling lucky); ), and a few programming positions in there as well.
One of the definite differences between last year is that I have bowed to money: there are no save the world jobs in that list. There are a few reasons for this: first, I will need a lot of money when I graduate to fund my army of robotic rodents. Second I’m really interested by a number of goings-on in the finance. Amazingly luckily for the computer industry, they’ve created a culture where smart people can go from baby to adult interacting with computers, which leads to a lot of the wrong people entering the computing profession. I think there are a lot of people who choose the wrong route due to this.
Further, because of finance’s high profile (and I quote: “if you aren’t a rock and roll superstar or a world-class athlete, the most money you can make is as a banker”) they get applications from people who should really set their sights on things like “high school principal” and “middle manager”. It turns out, however, that the two careers have a lot in common, and both know it. Bill Gates says that his biggest problem isn’t money, planning, or strategy, it’s Goldman Sachs and its amazing ability to steal his IQ from his own brain trust. Goldman Sachs knows it too. Goldman actively seeks mathematically minded youngsters from the Computer Lab not just to punch cards for their enormously complex home built software, but also for more general roles within the firm, in mergers, trading, and strategy.
And… three weeks later my mood has soured considerably on this front. I’m going to go ahead and post this lest the tone change confusingly and backdate it. Suffice to say that the shotgun approach actually had some purpose. More in the next post…
