Fifteen years ago I had a job offer from Jane St sitting in my inbox, and I turned it down to work in tech.
Could I have made more money at Jane St? No idea. Probably? But money isn't exactly holding me back right now.
Would I have felt like I was working on interesting problems? For me, personally, I don't think so. I don't find abstract problems as interesting as I do practical ones, and, practically, working at Jane St is working to make a few rich guys incrementally richer. Not really a problem I'm interested in, I guess.
(As an aside, it seems to me retention is much higher in tech than it is on Wall St. The rosy view of this seems to be that Wall St pays so well that everyone retires early, but then again, there's a reason they call it "compensation.")
You have to make your own choices. Jane St has a gleaming reputation--and maybe, for you, it would have been a perfect match!--but not getting hired there seems to me to be a strange thing to consider a "greatest regret."
I don't feel it's primarily about the money (but it helps). If it was about the money, it'd be the uncertainty of the bonus, rather than the wage itself.
Could I have made more money at Jane St? No idea. Probably? But money isn't exactly holding me back right now.
Would I have felt like I was working on interesting problems? For me, personally, I don't think so. I don't find abstract problems as interesting as I do practical ones, and, practically, working at Jane St is working to make a few rich guys incrementally richer. Not really a problem I'm interested in, I guess.
(As an aside, it seems to me retention is much higher in tech than it is on Wall St. The rosy view of this seems to be that Wall St pays so well that everyone retires early, but then again, there's a reason they call it "compensation.")
You have to make your own choices. Jane St has a gleaming reputation--and maybe, for you, it would have been a perfect match!--but not getting hired there seems to me to be a strange thing to consider a "greatest regret."