Do banks have a monopoly on sociapathic culture? I wouldn't disagree with anything in the article, but there are probably companies in other industries that are just as bad as banking, they just don't pay their employees as much. At least if you're going to work with crap get paid reasonably for it.
I'm sure they don't, but finance people are actually pretty unique creatures in my limited experience. Talk to someone working in criminal justice, for example, and they'll happily own up to all the ways their work creates human misery and they'll probably float some interesting ideas about how the system is broken.
Then go out and try to find a banker, trader or mortgage person and try to get them to accept some actual blame for the highly-leveraged, taxpayer subsidized horror their profession periodically unleashes on the world. It's surprisingly difficult to do, given the obviousness of the problems.
That's always been my attitude, after 15+ years working in Investment Banks.
I could work at a local council, or (gasp!) a startup, but I think arseholes can work in any industry, and if I'm going to have to deal with people like that I might as well get decent money for it.
Plus if you're going to work at a non-software firm, it's probably the most exciting industry you can work on. I can't imagine feeling very motivated writing software to manage the manufacture of, say, baked beans.
Except this excellent pay makes things worse because people are more "addicted" to stay despite how frustrated or downright disgusted they are - and then start taking their own frustrations out on others like the rest is doing.
To a degree, I can see it happening to myself - you simply cannot understand it while you are still in college or university and think all positive and idealistic and it is hard to grasp even when you are working a regular paying job... but once you get the bigger pay it is very very hard to go lower and it requires a LOT of very neutral, objective and conscious decision making that most people are probably not capable of because it is hard switching off your own feelings and gut reactions.
I can say that in the last three years I have gotten a front-row seat to seeing why a lot of people are so miserable and I don't even have it THAT bad; plus I have definitely become changed in ways I would never have thought possible 3-4 years ago when I was still working in startup-paradise.
