That comparison -- Wall Street versus Silicon Valley VCs -- reminds me of a Michael Church observation/complaint on how SV is really a tiny colony, a tail that likes to believe it wags the dog. [Direct link is gone, following text copied from other sources.]
> Zed has a strong point. The startup scene has the feeling of academic politics: vicious intrigue, because the stakes are so small. The complete lack of ethics seen in current-day technology executives is also a result of this. It’s the False Poverty Effect. When people feel poor, despite objective privilege and power, they’re more inclined to do unethical things because, goddammit, life owes them a break.
> That startup CEO whose investor buddies allowed him to pay himself $200,000 per year is probably the poorest person in his Harvard Business School class, and feels deeply inferior to the hedge-fund guys and MD-level bankers he drank with in MBA school.
> Zed has a strong point. The startup scene has the feeling of academic politics: vicious intrigue, because the stakes are so small. The complete lack of ethics seen in current-day technology executives is also a result of this. It’s the False Poverty Effect. When people feel poor, despite objective privilege and power, they’re more inclined to do unethical things because, goddammit, life owes them a break.
> That startup CEO whose investor buddies allowed him to pay himself $200,000 per year is probably the poorest person in his Harvard Business School class, and feels deeply inferior to the hedge-fund guys and MD-level bankers he drank with in MBA school.