Guess who's the next group of rich people thinking their bubble's never going to pop?
So what if that's true? Is the important story here how we've become victims of the media?
Also, software is one of the very few (only?) industries where women participation has been dropping steadily[1], so I find it likely that the situation in tech is worse than in finance (they've had years to learn). Besides, it is Silicon Valley that likes to wave the false flag of meritocracy.
[1]: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...
I have no idea how the tech industry compares to other industries in terms of treatment of women. What I can say for certain is that we do not have the amazing complaints of cocaine fueled parties filled with hookers that seem to regularly emerge from the world of finance.
Your finance industry stereotypes are about 30 years out of date. Wall Street is way less flagrant about their excess these days.
Meanwhile, in tech... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titstare
Not as blatant as the "golden age", perhaps, but it seems "hookers and blow" still figure in the lifestyle. A former hedge fund trader published a book a couple years ago detailing how his company (within the last decade) plied clients with prostitutes and a wide array of illegal narcotics:
http://nypost.com/2013/05/30/former-hedge-fund-titan-bares-a...
Then there's the BofA banker who, last December, was found to have gone off the rails, from continual partying, and killed two sex workers:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-02/bofa-banker-arreste...
> The excesses of 1980s New York investment banking as captured best (and with just a dose of hyperbole) by Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho may be long gone in the US...
According to one tip the SEC received in 2007 about Galleon: "Prostitution is rampant for executives visiting Galleon. You will find that the Super Bowl parties for the executives, paid for by Galleon Group, include prostitutes and other forms of illegal entertainment."
But I guess the author took it down on purpose. It is not hard to guess why, based on the nature of _this_ comment thread.
- Tech has this particular weird cultural self-view that we all see ourselves and each other as middle-school nerds emerging victorious, as people who got past the bullies and the ills of "normal people" society, as people who were friendless (and dateless) in school but have found our own little environment now where we can be accepted as we are. So there's a tendency to think that we're not capable of the same sort of awfulness, and that we're better people than the other industries. There's a tendency, subconsciously, to think that if someone's saying something bad about any of our people, they're no better than our middle school bullies. We need to get over that and admit that the tech industry is like any other industry.
- On a different and simpler note, tech is our industry. I don't have nearly as much say about the culture of, say, big law firms or furniture design studios, than I do about the culture of companies where I work and where I might consider working.
Regarding Google, did you see this discussion, which was on the HN home page yesterday? https://plus.google.com/+KellyEllis/posts/L4wawXpNt25