But let's face facts. I'd love to think everybody's really here to "change the world" and "create value." But the biggest stories in tech entrepreneurship focus on silly, time-wasting apps that are sold for millions. Does that really make any more sense than giving a guy a million dollar bonus for designing a high frequency trading algorithm?
If we don't expect more from our community, we can't really criticize theirs.
Bullshit. The difference is that in finance (trading, at least), good technology is seen as a competitive advantage that makes a meaningful impact on P&L. When financial companies do well they tend to share the love in the form of cash bonuses. This is a strategy other industries could adopt but choose not to.
Also one other nit, there are only a few companies (the megabanks) that are big enough to have a government backstop if they blow up. There is a whole world of smaller outfits doing business without any such guarantee.
You may be right, but I just don't think there are a lot of tech companies that could offer a mean salary of $360,000 and remain profitable. Especially small to medium size companies. Compare that to hedge funds, which were basically printing money and could pay their small staffs extremely large salaries (and even larger bonuses).
decimated:
past participle, past tense of dec·i·mate (Verb) Verb
1) Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of.
2) Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): "plant viruses that can decimate yields".
Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): "plant viruses that can decimate yields".
decimated Intel's offer.
Drastically reduce the effectiveness of Intel's offer.
It fits exactly. Not only that, but you could also say:
Destroyed Intel's offer. (Def 1)
Decimate is the right word choice and it conveyed the intensity of how badly Finance Co. beat Intel's offer. Your definition of decimate may be used by heavy quants but it doesn't fit everyday usage.
Hedge fund managers make orders of magnitude more money than their employees. Investment banks work much like law firms, if you are a partner or partner track you can make tons, but frequently that is built on the back of average paid employees.
What would tech company compensation look like if we included Brin/Cook/Zuckerberg?
There are lots and lots of small shops out there that have good but not idiotic compensation packages. The tech companies could (should?) match them if it weren't an ingrained part of the culture not to.
As I have said before, really huge compensation levels in finance exist for VP-level people. Please keep in mind that "VP" in finance means something like "pretty senior", he might no be a manager at all. These guys have around 5 years experience and if all went well for them they can be making around 300k. These would be hard to match en masse while avoiding a situation when of two engineers doing the same job one is paid X and another 2X.
This is repeated a lot, but the skills of financial wizards are orthogonal to what most tech companies need.
It's also not the case that the tech industry can't afford to pay people high salaries.
There was never a real exodus of talent. The really talented people weathered the storm, and it seemed as if a whole bunch of B-people switched over and are now considering switching back.
This is all a bit depressing cause I feel like the conclusion a lot of society had reached in 2008 was that finance should be boring, simple, and shouldn't attract too much brain power from other fields.