I graduated in mathematics from Columbia University in 2008. I was literally looking for a job in finance in New York when Lehman collapsed. Wrong place, wrong time. While most of my engineer friends are still working in finance now, a few, especially recently, chose the startup & tech path.

I find amusing the "BASHING WALL STREET" mentality in the tech space. For example in this post by a Columbia professor keeping engineers "off wall street" like it's the plague. Or this TechCrunch post "Friends don't let friends get into finance". More broadly, the new thriving New York tech scene was built on this adversity against finance.

But frankly, there is no reason to feel so superior.

Come work for us. We're cool, they're evil.

I think the main reason for bashing Wall Street is an HR communication battle. Startups and VCs in NYC and everywhere are dying for engineers and developers. High demand, low supply. So they're trying to attract engineers BADLY. They use the fact that the job market in finance is not so good and that you can get fired fast when things turn bad. Well guess what? It's even worse for startups. They are also very dependent on funding cycles, rumors of bubbles, and profits not coming in. I was too young in 2000 but it must have been pretty tough. Wait until Steve Jobs dies, Groupon starts losing money and Color IPOs, and engineers will have safer jobs at Credit Suisse. And they won't care about playing Guitar Heros like in this Dropbox office. At the end of the day, they have to pay rent.

Who's making money, really?

Few companies can bootstrap like 37signals, and we are not yet at the IPO 2.0 era when businesses can be completely and successfully crowdfunded.

So in the end, most entrepreneurs are like traders. If they make a lot of money, their shareholders will be happy, and other employees will get some kind of bonus. Nothing revolutionary here, plain capitalism.

When I quit my job at Lazard to start a company, I remember a partner from UBS told me "I'm sure it will be a success, come back to us when you'll make an IPO!". It felt weird. So I'm gonna do all these efforts to follow a different path, and if things turn great I'm just gonna go back to HIM?

Yep, that's the world that we live in. See Facebook and Goldman Sachs. LinkedIn and Morgan Stanley.

So who's changing the world now?

Entrepreneurs are like Michael Jackson, thinking they can heal the world and make it a better place. Actually, one of them really named his company BetterPlace. But a lot of startups do not change much. Yes, Twitter is probably changing the world. Google, definitely. But Lightsaber isn't. An e-commerce website for selling cufflinks isn't. When I was working on a bank restructuring deal of 20 Billion Dollars in Kazakhstan, I felt that it was pretty important for the economy. When I see one of the latest most successful French startup, Criteo, who's business is online ads retargeting, I'm not so sure it's a world changer.

I'm just saying, the best job is the one you love (cheesy, I know).

If you want to make money and wear suits like Barney Stinson, won't blame you.

And if you choose to work for a startup, find one you're really passionate about. With more meaning than trading options. Otherwise it's not worth the ramen, coding nights and renting your apartment on Airbnb to make ends meet.