Instead of working to build a great company or discover a new invention, too many of our brightest minds were busy engineering credit-default swaps.
--Commerce Secretary Gary Locke via readwriteweb.com
Graduating in 2003, it was all to common to hear about my fellow Stanford classmates go on to prestigious and lucrative Wall Street jobs. It was like winning the lottery back then -- virtually everyone from every discipline was drawn to the glamorous lifestyle that slick recruiters and Banana Republic-clad returning analysts talked about.
It was a really far cry from what I was more used to-- the din of keyboard keys clacking into the night at Sweet Hall, where red-eyed, greasy haired engineers of all fields would converge to run simulations, design VLSI circuitry, and write all manner of code late into the night.
Now it's 2009 and it's cool to be a crusty engineer again. *high five*