Ok, so what I'm about to say is going to get me smacked if I say it wrong so a) please understand that I don't mean to give offense and that b) I occasionally word things really badly b/c I have terminal foot in mouth syndrome but:
1. I don't know what the cost of living is in Austin, so I'm not sure how to compare the numbers you just gave me to Manhattan and
2. I don't know about at other firms but my friends don't get bonuses unless they personally (meaning their clients and the accounts they manage) have profitable fiscal years.
I do understand your point and I don't disagree with it on principle but... in practice, idk. I guess I'm a little emotional and it's hard for me to separate personal friends of mine from the rest of the industry. Like you said, a good number of people (including I myself) work damned hard for way less than 50k a year (hell, I worked 100 hrs/week on a presidential campaign last year for way less than minimum wage) but like... God, there's just no good way to say this: When I work for a non-profit or on a government job, my motivations are rarely monetary. When my friends knowingly took on jobs where the *minimal expectation* is (openly) 80 hours a week of staring at spreadsheets and being yelled at like your someone's bitch on a string, it's in the hope that they can (quickly) pay off the six figures in debt they amassed paying for the finance degree from the top tier school they had to attend to even get their resumes into an inbox. By which I mean that these are people whose qualifications are pretty damned high and could, if they wanted to, go get a job with a 50K annual salary that worked them a great *great* deal less than these Wall Street firms do - when it comes to picking these jobs over other jobs however, that aforementioned bonus has a lot to do with why. Does that make them any less greedy than anyone else? No of course not, but those are what the incentives are and that’s the value the market assigns their work.
3. That said, I *do* understand your point. Hell, if you ask me, our soldiers in Iraq deserve those Wall Street salaries a lot more than a lot of Wall Street managers do - but that doesn't mean that *every person* in an industry deserves to be tarred, feathered, and lynched for the mistakes of others who work in their field – and if they make a 10k bonus (that’s taxed at a higher rate than their salary), well, if they worked hard for it – why shouldn’t they get it?
mindless gibberish ahead
1. I don't know what the cost of living is in Austin, so I'm not sure how to compare the numbers you just gave me to Manhattan and
2. I don't know about at other firms but my friends don't get bonuses unless they personally (meaning their clients and the accounts they manage) have profitable fiscal years.
I do understand your point and I don't disagree with it on principle but... in practice, idk. I guess I'm a little emotional and it's hard for me to separate personal friends of mine from the rest of the industry. Like you said, a good number of people (including I myself) work damned hard for way less than 50k a year (hell, I worked 100 hrs/week on a presidential campaign last year for way less than minimum wage) but like... God, there's just no good way to say this: When I work for a non-profit or on a government job, my motivations are rarely monetary. When my friends knowingly took on jobs where the *minimal expectation* is (openly) 80 hours a week of staring at spreadsheets and being yelled at like your someone's bitch on a string, it's in the hope that they can (quickly) pay off the six figures in debt they amassed paying for the finance degree from the top tier school they had to attend to even get their resumes into an inbox. By which I mean that these are people whose qualifications are pretty damned high and could, if they wanted to, go get a job with a 50K annual salary that worked them a great *great* deal less than these Wall Street firms do - when it comes to picking these jobs over other jobs however, that aforementioned bonus has a lot to do with why. Does that make them any less greedy than anyone else? No of course not, but those are what the incentives are and that’s the value the market assigns their work.
3. That said, I *do* understand your point. Hell, if you ask me, our soldiers in Iraq deserve those Wall Street salaries a lot more than a lot of Wall Street managers do - but that doesn't mean that *every person* in an industry deserves to be tarred, feathered, and lynched for the mistakes of others who work in their field – and if they make a 10k bonus (that’s taxed at a higher rate than their salary), well, if they worked hard for it – why shouldn’t they get it?