For a High-Powered Career, It’s Finance vs. Tech

Wall Street or Silicon Valley? That’s the choice facing many ambitious students across the United States looking to gain a toehold in a powerful industry upon graduation.

While finance was for years the natural path for a certain type of go-getter, a number of would-be bankers are finding themselves tempted by the tech industry’s allure, including the lofty valuations commanded by fledgling start-ups. Skilled programmers, too, are being courted both by technology companies and big banks.

The issue was put to a debate at a conference on Wednesday, with two academics squaring off over which industry would be more attractive to top talent. Robert J. Shiller, the Yale economist who was recently awarded the Nobel prize, found himself defending basic financial products like mortgages against the attacks of Vivek Wadhwa, vice president of innovation and research at Singularity University.

Wall Street’s major achievement in recent years was “cooking the system,” Mr. Wadhwa said at the Buttonwood Gathering, which is sponsored by The Economist.

As for world-changing financial innovation? That amounts to “world-changing financial skimming,” he said.

“I can’t believe I’m even having this debate,” he added.

Mr. Wadhwa praised Google and its self-driving cars, and he asked the audience to imagine a future in which 3-D printers performed important tasks and water was unlimited. He hailed crowdfunding as “transformative.”

His sparring partner took a different approach. Mr. Shiller, put on the defensive, tried to find common ground.

“We need more engineers than we need finance people. But we need finance people to provide the resources for them to do these things,” Mr. Shiller said. “It’s not a choice between Google and Goldman.”

Financial engineering, Mr. Shiller said, is neither evil nor new, pointing to mortgages as one example. As for Goldman, Mr. Shiller said the firm has long put an emphasis on its culture, dating to the business principles introduced in 1979 by John C. Whitehead, a former co-head of the firm.

This year, Goldman has also put an emphasis on improving the working environment for its entry-level recruits. The firm created a “junior banker task force,” composed of senior staff from different units, which made recommendations that the firm is implementing.

Though grueling hours are the norm for young bankers, the task force said that these junior employees, known as analysts, should be able to take weekends off whenever possible. The recommendations also included hiring more analysts and introducing new technology to make the work process more efficient.

To help retain employees, Goldman changed its analyst program last year so that analysts are now hired full-time on day one, rather than for a two-year period. “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” David Solomon, the co-head of investment banking at Goldman, said in a statement.

And yet, the industry continues to face an image problem - as Mr. Wadhwa’s attacks demonstrated. Mr. Shiller acknowledged as much.

“Anyone who lends money and asks for it back is going to look greedy,” Mr. Shiller said. “You’ll never be loved the way Mother Teresa was. But you’ll know inside you’re a good person.”