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In Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, a book that’s never far from me, color refers to two careers. The first is the Army. The other is the priesthood. The setting is Bourbon Repair France, but it could be almost anywhere in the West, almost any time until the dawn of industry.
In our world, it is not difficult to name two dominant careers. Thech and Finance, T-shirts and Gilet are the most rejected graduates first. It is technology and finance that executives have been interviewed for meditation on politics and life. With King’s Cross’s Google office approaching completion, London, an ancient financial hub, is also a place to help assess these different clans.
And learn to prefer finance companies on average. The business has a client-facing aspect – dinner, silver sales calls – leads to minimal suavity. In many technologies, “clients” are vast and remote ordinary people. There is no such practice.
While almost all financial centers around the world are cities, it is important to note that Tech often chooses low-density settings, such as the Santa Clara Valley and Fens. Even Bengaluru is a garden city in India. Some of these are historic accidents. But it is also the result and perhaps the cause of the social difficulties of technology. I don’t need to stick to the hyper-individualist political turns of the sector here. Or Andrew Huberman-led enthusiasm for health. Its logical endpoint is a scandalized recoil from physical contact. Even on the warm side of tech, even those who hurt effective altruism and people doing good, there is a trace of Beatrice Webb about what they don’t like and should help when it comes to approaching humanity. The true or potential outcome of technology on our behalf may be small in the financial. But while drinking a drink? Please give me the FX Sales Trade BOD.
Something else. There’s a lot more to finance – don’t laugh too hard right now – humility. To be precise, there are bad names, especially in banking, and at least outside of Lehmann, at least outside the US, practitioners these days must follow the ingerly. People who are disciplined to hate the world tend to learn a kind of preemptive appeal. (That’s why the biggest snobs in the UK are rarely Etonians.) Tech doesn’t have 2008 yet, but may never have. That’s to a degree that’s easier to respect from afar than you’re around.
Of course, it does not mean “humility.” There is also no “suave”. I have to come up with ideas for a living, so I put up a lot for the conversations that cast Eureka moments. So which side is the more exciting company? The raw processing power of the technical mind I encounter stands out to me. But my test – am I still thinking about discussions in tube home? – You will not encounter them more frequently than bankers, hedges, or fewer golden occupations. One problem is the impatient nature of the technology world over history. This is inevitable if the most epic companies aren’t far ahead of the millennium. The result is a temporary event and a “trend” that can be perceived as bubbles by people with a wider lens.
Another conversational glitches are the undergraduate paradoxism you’re all up from local codes to billionaires classes. Your financial buddies are barely immune. (“President Putin just wants a hot water port.”) But something about belonging to the institutional profession tends to take the edge away. Typical technological geniuses are ridiculously qualified, but they must be unique to young industries, as if they somehow passionate about moving as an autodeduct.
Of course, all ethnographic observations about these two tribes must be qualified. For one thing, high-tech and finance can be difficult to communicate apart. (Where should I submit Sam Bankman-Fried?) Still, since I entered, the biggest change in the world of work is its relative decline with one another as a prestige industry. If all finances are maintained, technology decides that, when it is the most difficult to overcome, it is a trivial deficit next to wages and power.
janan.ganesh@ft.com
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